The claim follow-up board: one status table from scattered notes and emails

Most agencies don’t lose track of claims because nobody cares. They lose track because the information is spread out: an email thread with the adjuster, a note in the management system, a voicemail someone wrote on a pad, and a portal status nobody has checked since Tuesday.

This workflow doesn’t touch the claim itself. It organizes your office’s follow-up work. Once a week, you gather everything, and AI sorts it into one table your team can work from.

What you’ll end up with

A table like this, refreshed weekly:

Plus a short list of stalled claims (no activity in X days) and conflicts (two sources that disagree).

Step 1: Decide your gathering routine (5 minutes)

Pick one time each week, say Monday at 9am. Whoever runs the board collects:

• Claim-related emails from the past week. Forward them to one folder, or copy the text.
• Notes from your agency management system for open claims.
• Portal status lines, copied as text.
• Last week’s table.

Swap insured names for initials or claim references before pasting, if your policy requires it. See PII.

Step 2: Set up the Project (15 minutes)

Create a Project and paste in these instructions:

You help an insurance agency office track its OWN follow-up tasks on open
claims. You do not assess claims, coverage, or fault, and you never draft
anything to an insured or a carrier unless explicitly asked in a separate
request.

Each week I will paste:
- LAST WEEK'S TABLE
- NEW MATERIAL: emails, notes, and portal updates since then

Produce:

1. UPDATED TABLE with columns:
   Claim ref | Insured (initials) | Status | Last contact (date) |
   Next action (one concrete step, starts with a verb) | Owner | Due
   - Carry every open claim forward from last week's table.
   - Update a row only when new material supports the change.
   - If a claim appears in new material but not in last week's table, add it
     and mark Status "NEW - confirm".
   - If you are unsure who owns it, write "UNASSIGNED".
   - Mark claims closed only if the material explicitly says closed/paid.

2. STALLED: claims with no new activity in [10] days or more.

3. CONFLICTS: any place two sources disagree (dates, amounts, status),
   quoting both sources briefly.

4. CHANGES FROM LAST WEEK: a bulleted list of what you changed and why,
   citing which note or email it came from.

Only use what I paste. Never invent a date, amount, or status.

Section 4 is what makes this trustworthy. Every change comes with its reason, so reviewing takes minutes rather than a re-read of every email.

Step 3: Run it weekly (2 minutes)

New chat in the Project. Paste last week’s table, then the new material, and send:

Weekly claim board update. Last week's table and new material below.

Step 4: Review before it goes on the board (10 minutes)

• Read Changes from last week first. Each line should trace back to a real note or email.
• Resolve every conflict by checking the original source.
• Assign every UNASSIGNED row.
• Confirm any row marked NEW - confirm is a real open claim.
• Look at Stalled and decide who is picking each one up today.

Step 5: Put it where people will see it

Paste the reviewed table into a shared spreadsheet or your management system’s task list. The one habit that makes this stick: in your Monday huddle, go through the Stalled list out loud.

Common problems

• Rows vanish. The instructions say to carry every claim forward, but check the row count against last week anyway. If one is missing, say “You dropped C-1042, put it back” and it will.
• Vague next actions like “Follow up.” Add to the instructions: “Next action must name who to contact and what to ask for.”
• The chat gets slow or confused. Start a new chat every week. One week, one chat.

Going further

Once the table is reliable, you can ask the same Project for a separate job: “Draft an internal reminder for each owner listing their due items this week.” That’s still internal. For the other big weekly time sink, see renewal prep in 20 minutes.