How to document damage for a business insurance claim

The strength of an insurance claim is decided early — often in the first two days after the event, when the damage is fresh and nothing has been moved. Owners who document well tend to have smoother claims. Owners who clean up first and photograph later often spend months proving what they lost.

This guide is a practical method you can follow with just a phone, a notebook and a bit of discipline.

Why does documentation matter so much?

An insurer has to answer three questions: what happened, what was damaged, and what it’s worth. Every gap in your evidence becomes a question — and every question adds time. Good documentation:

• shortens assessment
• reduces disputes over quantities and values
• supports business interruption and increased cost of working claims
• helps with grant applications, which often ask for photos and invoices
• helps with tax, because the ATO expects records of losses and payouts

What should you photograph and film?

Before you touch anything

Once the site is safe:

1. Start outside. The building, the street, signage, the roof, any debris or water levels. Include something that shows the date — a newspaper, a phone screen with the date, or simply make sure your phone’s timestamps are on.
2. Walk each room with video. Talk as you go: “This is the storeroom, water came to here, these shelves held…”
3. Take wide photos of each wall of each room.
4. Take close-ups of damaged items, especially equipment model plates and serial numbers.
5. Capture the cause — the burn origin, the roof hole, the water line, the broken pipe.
6. Photograph what looks undamaged but may not be — electrical equipment that got wet, stock in smoke-affected areas.

As you clean up

• Photograph items as they’re moved out, so each skip load is recorded.
• Photograph damaged stock laid out and grouped by type.
• Keep samples of materials or stock if the insurer asks.

Tips that save time later

• Upload photos to a cloud folder daily, organised by area.
• Name folders simply: “01 Front shop”, “02 Storeroom”, “03 Office”.
• Don’t delete blurry or duplicate photos until the claim is settled.

How do you build a loss list?

Photos show damage. A loss list turns it into a claim. Use a spreadsheet with these columns:

Column	Example
Area	Storeroom
Item	Commercial dishwasher
Make, model, serial	From the model plate
Quantity	1
Age or purchase date	From invoice or finance agreement
Cost or replacement value	From invoice or a current quote
Condition before event	Working, serviced last month
Photo reference	02-Storeroom-014
Status	Destroyed / damaged / salvageable

For stock, you may be able to export quantities from your POS or inventory system and add a damage column. For fit-out, the original fit-out invoice or a builder’s quote helps.

If records were lost, rebuild them from bank statements, supplier purchase histories, finance agreements and old photos — even your social media posts can show what equipment and stock you had.

What receipts should you keep?

Almost every cost after the event may matter — for the insurer, a grant, or your tax return:

• make-safe work (tarps, boarding up, security, fencing)
• emergency power and equipment hire
• cleaning and restoration
• rubbish removal and skip bins
• moving and storing salvaged stock
• temporary premises
• extra wages for clean-up

The ATO also notes you can claim deductions for the cost of disposing of damaged trading stock and moving stock to protect it from a disaster, so keep those receipts even if the insurer won’t pay them.

How should you deal with the insurer?

Lodge promptly

business.gov.au’s advice after an emergency is to file insurance claims immediately. Ask for your claim number, the name of your contact, whether an assessor will visit, and what you’re allowed to remove or repair.

Send one organised bundle

Rather than emailing photos and documents in dribs and drabs:

1. Wait until you have the core evidence (usually a few days).
2. Put it in one shared folder with a numbered index.
3. Send the index and link in one email, with the claim number in the subject line.
4. Add to it as new information comes in, updating the index.

Keep a claim diary

Every call, email and visit: date, time, who, what was said, what was promised. This is your best friend if the claim is delayed or disputed.

Know the timeframes

Under the General Insurance Code of Practice, subscribing insurers generally commit to telling you what information they need within 10 business days, updating you at least every 20 business days, and making a decision within four months. If things stall, our page on delayed claims and our guide to insurance complaints and AFCA explain the next steps.

What about business interruption?

If you have business interruption cover, documentation of lost trade matters as much as physical damage:

• sales reports for the same period last year and the weeks before the event
• daily records of whether you traded and what you took
• evidence of extra costs to keep trading (hire, temporary premises, overtime)
• notices of closures or outages

Our 13-week recovery cash flow forecast guide doubles as a clear record of the trading impact.

Common mistakes to avoid

Mistake	Why it hurts
Cleaning up before photographing	Evidence is gone
Discarding items without asking	Insurer may dispute quantity or value
Starting permanent repairs early	Can create disputes about scope and cost
No receipts for cash purchases	Costs can’t be proven
Relying on phone calls only	No record of what was agreed
Guessing values	Invites challenge; use invoices and quotes

While the claim is being assessed

Even a well-documented claim takes time, and the business still has bills. That’s where a timing gap opens up. If you need funding to make repairs, restock or keep staff paid while the insurer works through the claim, a short enquiry will get a real person looking at your options — there’s no credit check at that stage.

Illustrative example only: a hardware store floods overnight. The owner films every aisle before moving anything, exports stock quantities from the POS, and sends the insurer a single indexed folder on day four. The assessor accepts the stock claim within a few weeks, and the store uses a short facility to restock in the meantime, repaid when the claim pays.

How should you store and share the evidence?

Evidence is only useful if you can find it and share it quickly. A simple structure works:

• One cloud folder per claim, named with the claim number.
• Subfolders by area — “01 Front shop”, “02 Storeroom” — and one for “Receipts” and one for “Correspondence”.
• An index document listing each file with a short description.
• Share view-only access with the insurer, assessor and your broker rather than emailing attachments.
• Keep originals — don’t edit or crop photos you send as evidence; make copies if you need to annotate.

The same folder will serve for grant applications and your accountant, so it’s worth setting up properly once. Our business emergency grab-bag guide explains how to keep “before” photos in the same place, so you can show the insurer what the premises looked like before the event.

What if you disagree with the assessor?

Assessors are human and work under pressure after big events. If you think something was missed or valued wrongly, say so politely in writing, with evidence: a second quote, an independent report, an invoice. Ask for the assessor’s report. If the disagreement can’t be settled, the insurer’s complaints process and then AFCA are available — see our page on insurance complaints.

Ready to bridge the wait?

Good records give you the strongest possible claim. If the wait for the money is the problem, a short bridge can help.

An enquiry doesn’t touch your credit file; that only comes up if you choose to go ahead. You won’t get a wave of calls from lenders you’ve never heard of, because we don’t pass enquiries around. A specialist looks at your situation properly before picking up the phone.

Accurate details on the form (amount, purpose, state, any property) are what let us match you properly on that first call. Tell us what happened.