Abstract: Method for producing a list of parts and labor records to determine the total cost to repair and/or replace damaged parts of a vehicle involved in a collision that can evaluate millions of estimates previously written for vehicles similar to the one being assessed to produce a reliable repair estimate based on evaluation of all previous estimate data of vehicles that have incurred damage on the same points-of-impact, with similar extent-of-damage, presented as a number between 0 and 10, 10 representing the maximum amount of damage. A user inputs or selects a series of values and the method also receives input from various other sources to query a database containing millions of previously written estimates for vehicles, or structured repair data specifically produced for this propose. A cost estimate for repairing the damage and presents it as the output of the method based on the input and predictive models applied.

Abstract: Devices, systems, and methods are disclosed which use known characteristics of a part to identify that part's equivalent from a supplier with a proprietary part catalog which contains characteristics defined using different structure, standards and nomenclature. The system tries to identify the correct part number or equivalent to a given part, but the supplier may have a different part numbering system than used by the individuals performing the search. The system then utilizes at least one part characteristic and/or a vehicle identifier and uses them to search the proprietary supplier catalog to retrieve a part record with substantially similar part characteristics.