The Appraisal Case That Moves Itself Forward

The situation

As case volume grew, tracking appraisals by hand stopped working. Communication, scheduling, documents, and case status each lived somewhere different, and answering 'where is this case right now' meant asking someone who happened to remember. With five different stakeholder types on a typical case, a missed email or an unscheduled inspection stalls everything behind it.

What we built

A ClickUp-based case management platform shaped around how an appraisal actually runs. Every case is a card that travels through eleven defined stages from intake to final resolution, carrying every party, figure, and document with it. Stage changes trigger the right emails, and scheduling happens from the case rather than from someone's calendar.

How it works

1. 01A new case enters at intake as a single card carrying customer information, insured details, opposing appraiser contacts, umpire assignment, financial positions, and supporting notes.
2. 02The card moves through eleven stages toward resolution. Its position on the board is the answer to 'where is this case', available to anyone without asking.
3. 03Specific stages automatically generate a personalized email to the right party, with the option to edit or suppress it before it sends, so consistency never costs control.
4. 04Inspections, meetings, and umpire appointments are booked onto Google Calendar directly from the case, keeping every party's scheduling attached to the matter it belongs to.

The challenges we solved

• A single case involves five different stakeholder types with different contact details and roles. The field structure had to capture over forty data points and still stay readable to someone opening the card cold.
• Automated emails to attorneys and opposing appraisers can never go out blind. Every automated message can be customised or suppressed before sending, keeping the automation useful in the cases that do not follow the standard path.
• Documents already lived in Dropbox and the team knew where things were. Rather than migrating anything, document access was surfaced inside the workflow so the existing filing habits kept working.

The result

Every appraisal now runs through one visible pipeline, with communication and scheduling firing from the case itself. Case status is a glance instead of a conversation, and the administrative work of chasing parties and booking appointments largely stopped being work.