What Is an ITEL Shingle Test, and When Do Roofers Actually Need One?

You climb a roof after a hailstorm, you find bruising across two slopes, and you write it up as a repair. The adjuster agrees it's hail. Everyone's on the same page on the damage. Then the whole thing stalls on a question that has nothing to do with the storm: can the homeowner's shingle still be bought? If the answer is no, a repair that the carrier scoped at a few squares can grow into a full slope or a full roof, because you can't patch a roof with a shingle that doesn't exist anymore. If the answer is yes, the carrier is going to hold you to that repair. An ITEL shingle test is the document that settles that question with a lab analysis instead of an argument.

Most roofers have heard the name. Far fewer can tell you what the lab actually measures, how to pull a sample that won't get the report kicked back, when ordering one helps the file versus when it quietly hurts it, and where the line is between using the report as documentation and crossing into territory a licensed contractor isn't allowed to touch. That's the gap worth closing, because an ITEL report is one of the few pieces of paper in this trade that is genuinely neutral. It doesn't take your side or the carrier's side. It tests a physical sample and reports what it is. Used well, that neutrality is exactly what makes it persuasive.

We'll walk the whole thing end to end: what ITEL is, what the lab measures and how to read every line of the report, the exact field procedure for pulling and shipping a sample, the decision tree for when to order one, the cost and turnaround math, the mistakes that get reports thrown out, and the compliance line every contractor has to respect when matching enters a claim. None of this requires you to interpret anyone's policy or promise anyone an outcome. It's documentation work, and documentation is squarely in your lane.

What ITEL actually is

ITEL Laboratories is an independent materials-testing lab. It started in flooring and expanded into roofing, siding, and other building materials, and it built its reputation by being the party that nobody in a claim controls. A contractor can order a report. An adjuster can order a report. Either way, the lab tests the same physical sample the same way and produces the same finding. That independence is the entire value. When you hand an adjuster a report from a lab that the carrier itself uses on thousands of claims a year, you've taken the disagreement out of the back-and-forth of "the roofer says" and "the adjuster says" and moved it onto a shared, third-party fact. (ITEL's roofing analysis is now offered under Nearmap, which acquired the company; you'll see both names, and the report itself works the same.)

Here's the part roofers get wrong about what the report is for. An ITEL test does not prove damage. It does not say the hail hit. It does not say the roof needs replacing. It answers two narrower questions, and only those two:

1. What exactly is this shingle? Manufacturer, product line, material type, weight, thickness, granule profile, color group. The lab fingerprints the sample.
2. Does a current product match it? Given everything the lab measured, is there a shingle on the market today that meets like-kind-and-quality, and if so, what is it?

That's it. Everything downstream of those two answers, whether a repair is feasible, whether matching applies, what gets scoped, is a decision made by the people on the claim using the facts in the report. The report is evidence, not a verdict. Roofers who treat it as a verdict ("the ITEL says I get a full roof") are the ones who get burned when it doesn't, because that was never what it said.

Why the match question controls the scope

To see why one little lab report can swing a claim from three squares to a full roof, you have to understand the mechanics of a partial loss.

Say hail damaged the south and west slopes. The undamaged north and east slopes are fine. The carrier's logic, reasonably, is: pay to fix what broke. Replace the damaged shingles, blend them in, done. That's a repair, and a repair is cheaper than a replacement, which is exactly why carriers prefer it when it's possible.

A repair is only possible if you can buy the shingle. Roofing shingles get discontinued constantly. Color lines get dropped. Manufacturers reformulate products and retire SKUs. A roof installed twelve years ago may carry a shingle that simply isn't sold anymore, in that color, in that profile, at that weight. When that's true, you physically cannot do the repair the carrier scoped, because the part doesn't exist. And you can't drop a visibly different shingle into the middle of a slope and call it a repair, because now you've got a patchwork roof that doesn't match.

That's the hinge. No available match means the repair isn't viable, and a non-viable repair is what opens the door to a larger scope. How much larger depends on the policy language and the state's matching rules, which we'll get to, but the trigger is the match finding. ITEL is the cleanest way to establish that finding, because instead of you asserting "this is discontinued," the lab tests the sample against current products and states in writing whether a match exists.

It cuts the other way too, and honest contractors need to sit with this. If the shingle on the roof is a current, widely available product, the ITEL report will say so, and now you're holding a document that supports a repair, not a replacement. That's the moment a lot of roofers wish they hadn't ordered the test. The report is neutral. If you only want it when it helps you, you'll occasionally get a result that doesn't, and you have to be ready for that before you pull the sample.

Why so many shingles really are gone

Roofers sometimes assume "discontinued" is a rare edge case worth invoking only on ancient roofs. It isn't. The asphalt shingle market churns harder than people think. Three things keep retiring products out from under homeowners:

• The organic-to-fiberglass shift. Organic-mat shingles, built on a felt/paper base saturated with asphalt, were the standard for decades and were largely phased out in favor of fiberglass-mat construction. A huge population of roofs installed before that transition carries a shingle that is, as a category, no longer manufactured. If the lab calls organic mat, you're almost certainly looking at no current match on material alone.
• Constant SKU and color turnover. Manufacturers add and drop colors and product lines on their own schedules. A color blend that was a top seller fifteen years ago may simply not exist now, even if the product line technically continues, because the granule color formulation changed. The lab catches that at the color-group and granule level even when the eye says "close enough."
• Product reformulation. Makers improve products over time: heavier laminates, different sealant chemistry, new algae-resistant granule packages, revised weights. A product that carries the same marketing name as one from a decade ago can be a measurably different shingle. "Like kind and quality" is about the physical material, not the name on the bundle, which is exactly why a lab measurement beats a catalog lookup.

The practical upshot: on roofs roughly fifteen-plus years old, an unavailable original is common rather than exotic. That doesn't mean order a test on every old roof, it means the discontinuation question is real often enough to be worth your attention whenever you've got a partial loss and a shingle you can't readily source.

What the lab actually measures (and how to read every line)

When the report comes back, it's a short technical document, and every field on it is doing a job. If you can read it line by line and explain it to a homeowner or an adjuster, you've turned a piece of paper into a conversation you control. Here's the anatomy.

Manufacturer and product line

The headline finding. The lab identifies the maker (GAF, Owens Corning, CertainTeed, Atlas, TAMKO, IKO, and so on) and, where the sample allows, the specific product line within that maker's catalog. This matters because "it's a GAF" isn't enough; GAF's Timberline lines alone span multiple products and weights across the years. The product line is what you compare against current SKUs.

A caveat pros learn the hard way: the more weathered and granule-stripped a sample is, the harder a precise product-line call gets. The lab works from material composition and construction, not from a logo. Give it a thin, beat-up corner and you may get a manufacturer and a material class but a softer product-line ID. Give it a clean, intact sample and you get a sharper answer.

Material type and construction

Fiberglass mat versus organic mat is the big fork. Nearly all modern asphalt shingles are fiberglass-mat; organic-mat shingles were largely phased out, so an organic finding by itself tells you the roof is old and the original product is almost certainly gone. The report also pins down whether the shingle is a single-layer three-tab or a laminated (architectural/dimensional) shingle, sometimes a multi-layer laminate. This is the "kind" half of like-kind-and-quality.

Weight per square

Reported as mass per square (one square equals 100 square feet of coverage). Three-tab shingles typically land in roughly the 230 to 250 pounds-per-square range; architectural laminates run heavier, often in the 400 to 430 pounds-per-square range and up for premium designer products. Weight is a proxy for quality tier. A current shingle that matches the color and profile but comes in 60 pounds-per-square lighter is not the same quality, and the weight number is how you show that in objective terms instead of opinion.

Thickness

Measured directly. A thin single-layer product runs roughly 3/16 to 1/4 inch; a heavy laminate can approach 1/2 inch in the laminated zones. Thickness, alongside weight, separates a true quality match from a lookalike that's actually a cheaper grade.

Granule analysis

This is where the lab earns its independence. Granules are sorted by size through a sieve analysis to get the size distribution, and the lab can run X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to read the chemistry, for example detecting the copper compounds used in algae-resistant granules. Color group is assessed here too. Two shingles can read as "weathered gray" to the eye and have measurably different granule blends and color formulations. The granule data is what turns "close enough" into a defensible yes-or-no, and it's the part of the report a human eyeball simply can't reproduce on a ladder.

Color group

The lab assigns the sample to a color group rather than a marketing name, because the same physical color was often sold under different names over the years and across distributors. Color group is what gets compared against current offerings for the visual-match question.

Match determination

The bottom line. The report states whether a currently available product matches the sample on the criteria above, and when a match exists, it names the closest matching product, often down to the specific SKU, and may include supplier and pricing information. A clear yes or no, with the measured evidence sitting right above it. That structure is the whole point: the conclusion isn't a vibe, it's the readout of the measurements.

A worked reading

Suppose a report comes back like this:

• Manufacturer: CertainTeed
• Product line: an organic-mat three-tab from a discontinued series
• Material: organic mat, single layer
• Weight: ~240 lbs/square
• Thickness: ~0.21 inch
• Color group: weathered wood family
• Match determination: No current product match

Reading that out loud to a homeowner: "The lab confirms your roof is an organic-mat three-tab. The industry stopped making organic-mat shingles years ago, so there's no current product that matches it in material and quality. That's documented now by a lab, not only my opinion." You haven't promised anything about their claim. You've explained a fact the lab established. What the homeowner does with that, and what their insurer decides, is up to them. That's the right altitude, and it's also the persuasive one, because you're standing behind a neutral lab instead of standing in front of it.

When to order one: the decision tree

The most common mistake isn't pulling a bad sample. It's ordering the test on the wrong roofs, or skipping it on roofs where it would've made the file. Here's how the strongest documentation crews decide.

Order a test when

• You have a confirmed partial loss and the shingle looks discontinued. Older roof, organic mat, a color line you haven't been able to source, a profile you don't recognize from current catalogs. This is the bread-and-butter case. The test converts your hunch into a documented fact.
• You suspect discontinuation but can't prove it cleanly. Maybe you think the product's gone but the manufacturer's discontinuation letter is slow, vague, or unavailable. The lab test is often faster and more specific than chasing a manufacturer letter, and it tests the actual sample rather than relying on a catalog cross-reference.
• An aesthetic/quality match is genuinely in doubt. The closest current product looks like it might be a lighter weight or a different granule blend. The weight, thickness, and granule data give you objective numbers instead of a "looks different to me" argument.
• The file is contested and you want a neutral third party on the record. When the adjuster and you are circling the same drain on whether the shingle's available, a report from a lab the carrier itself uses ends the loop.

Think twice before ordering when

• The shingle is obviously a current, common product. If it's a Timberline HDZ in a color sitting on every distributor's shelf, a test will confirm a match and hand the carrier documentation for a repair. You don't need a lab to tell you what's in the rack down the street.
• There's no covered damage to begin with. ITEL identifies the shingle; it does not establish a loss. If you don't have documented storm damage, a match report does nothing for the file. Sequence matters: damage first, then match.
• You're hoping it'll say what you want. It's a measurement. If you can't live with a "match available" result, don't pull the sample.

A simple flow

1. Is there documented, covered damage? No → stop; document the damage first. Yes → continue.
2. Is the loss a partial (some slopes/areas, not the whole roof)? No (full loss already) → a match test usually isn't the lever. Yes → continue.
3. Can you readily source the exact shingle, same line, weight, and color, today? Yes → likely a repair; a test will probably confirm that. No / unsure → order the ITEL test.
4. Got the report → read it line by line, attach it to your documentation package, and let the homeowner and their insurer take it from there.

Edge cases worth knowing before you order

A few situations trip up even experienced crews:

• Layered roofs (a tear-off over an older roof). If the roof has two layers, the sample you pull from the top is the current field shingle, which is what you want for a match question, but be aware the lab is reading the visible product, not the buried one. Note the layering in your documentation; it can affect both the match logic and the scope.
• Mixed roofs. Additions, prior partial repairs, or a re-roofed section can mean two different shingles on one house. If you suspect more than one product, that's a reason to be precise about where each sample came from, and sometimes a reason to identify each separately. Don't assume one sample speaks for the whole roof when the roof isn't uniform.
• Premium/designer and specialty products. Heavy designer laminates, synthetic slate, and tile-profile asphalt are more likely to be discontinued or hard to source, and a current lookalike is more likely to differ in weight and profile. These are strong candidates for a test because the quality-match question is genuinely live.
• Very new roofs. A roof only a few years old almost always carries a current product. A match test will confirm that and document a viable repair, which is rarely what you ordered the test hoping for. On young roofs, the energy belongs on damage documentation, not match.
• Catastrophe-zone supply gaps. Right after a big regional event, a shingle can be technically "available" but back-ordered for months because demand spikes. That's a real availability problem, but it's a supply-and-timing fact, not a discontinuation, and an ITEL match report won't capture it. Document supply realities separately; don't expect the lab report to do that job.

How to pull a sample that won't get kicked back

A huge share of bad ITEL outcomes are sampling failures, not lab failures. The lab can only test what you send it. Send it a crumbled, contaminated, or unrepresentative piece and you'll get a weak ID or a kickback. Here's the field procedure that gets clean results.

Before you go up

• Confirm you're authorized to remove material. You're cutting into someone's roof. Have the homeowner's go-ahead, and know you'll need to seal the spot when you're done.
• Bring the right kit: flat pry bar, a sharp hook blade or utility knife, gloves, a rigid envelope or small flat box, a permanent marker, your phone for photos, and roofing sealant/cement to close the hole.

Choosing the sample

• Pull from an undamaged, representative area when the goal is identifying the original shingle, typically a less weathered or protected spot, not a shattered hail strike. You want the lab reading the true product, not storm debris. (If the lab's specific submission instructions for your claim type say otherwise, follow those.)
• Get a full, intact shingle or as close as you can. A whole tab or a full laminated section gives the lab mass, thickness, and granule data to work with. A thin sliver starves the analysis.
• Avoid the very edges and any patched/repaired areas that may not be the original field shingle.

Removing it cleanly

• Warm shingles are pliable; cold ones crack. If it's cold, work gently and expect more breakage, or wait for a warmer part of the day.
• Break the sealant strip with the pry bar, lift the course above, and remove the target shingle without folding or snapping it. Folding fractures the mat and scatters granules, which degrades the granule analysis.
• Handle it by the edges. Don't scrub it, don't tape over the face, don't let it bake on a hot truck dash for a week.

Documenting and shipping

• Photograph everything: the roof overall, the slope, the exact spot before removal, the sample in place, and the sealed repair after. This ties the sample to the address and shows you closed the hole.
• Label the sample and fill out the submission form completely: property address, claim/reference info, your contact details, and any required fields. Incomplete forms are a top cause of delay.
• Package flat and rigid so it survives shipping intact, then submit. ITEL accepts physical samples shipped in, and offers a mobile submission path (the iTEL NOW app) that lets you submit imagery/data directly from the loss site. Use whichever fits the claim and the lab's current instructions.
• Seal the removal site immediately with roofing cement so you don't create the very leak you came to prevent.

A field checklist you can hand a crew

• Homeowner authorization to remove and reseal
• Sample pulled from a representative, undamaged area
• Full/intact shingle, not a sliver, not folded
• Photos: wide, slope, spot before, sample in place, repair after
• Submission form fully completed (address, claim ref, contact)
• Sample packaged flat and rigid
• Removal site sealed before leaving the roof

ITEL versus the other ways to prove discontinuation

A lab test isn't the only path to documenting that a shingle can't be matched. It's usually the strongest, but knowing the alternatives helps you pick the right tool and explain to a skeptical adjuster why you chose the lab.

The honest read: your catalog knowledge tells you whether to investigate, a supplier call is a quick gut check, a manufacturer letter is solid when you can get it cleanly, and the lab test is the one that holds up when someone wants to argue, because it tests the physical material and comes from a party nobody on the claim controls. On a clean, uncontested file with a clearly-gone product, a manufacturer letter may be all you need. The lab earns its fee when the match is disputed or the quality question is real.

Cost, turnaround, and who pays

The economics are modest, which is why the test is worth running on the right files.

Turnaround depends on the path. A physical sample shipped to the lab and analyzed historically runs in the neighborhood of a week, give or take, roughly 7 to 10 days door to door once you account for shipping. The digital/mobile submission path is dramatically faster, with results advertised in as little as 30 minutes for qualifying mobile transactions. The takeaway: if speed matters on a moving file, the mobile path can collapse a week into the same afternoon, while a physical sample is the move when the lab needs the actual material in hand to make the call.

Cost is a per-report fee, generally a modest amount relative to the size of the roofing decision riding on it, the kind of expense that's trivial next to the difference between a three-square repair and a full slope. Pricing isn't fixed and isn't something to quote a homeowner as a promise; check current rates directly with the lab.

Who pays is a judgment call. Some contractors absorb the report cost as a cost of doing thorough documentation, the same way they'd absorb the time to take proper photos. Others fold it into the job. What you should not do is tell a homeowner the insurer "will" reimburse it or that it's "free" to them, because you don't control that decision and promising it is exactly the kind of overreach that gets contractors in trouble. Document the cost, be straight about who's covering it, and move on.

The compliance line every contractor has to respect

Here's the part that separates the operators who last from the ones who get a cease-and-desist. Matching lives inside the insurance claim, and there's a bright line around what a roofing contractor is allowed to do with a claim. Cross it and you're practicing unlicensed public adjusting, which is illegal in most states and a fast way to lose your license, your reputation, or both.

What you may do, all day, no problem:

• Inspect the roof and document its condition thoroughly with photos and measurements.
• Pull a sample and order an ITEL test to identify the shingle and the match status.
• Write an accurate, complete repair estimate for your scope of work, aligned to industry-standard estimating (Xactimate is the common format carriers use), reflecting what it actually takes to do the job right.
• State facts about your scope to the carrier, and explain what the ITEL report measured.
• Hand the homeowner the documentation, the photos, the ITEL report, and your estimate, so they have a complete file.

What you may not do, ever, for a fee:

• Negotiate, adjust, or "handle" the claim on the homeowner's behalf.
• Interpret their policy or tell them what is or isn't "covered." Coverage is the insurer's call and the policy's language, not yours.
• Promise a specific payout, a specific approval, or that the claim "will" get a full roof.
• Tell anyone their deductible is waived, absorbed, eaten, or going away. Don't touch the deductible. Ever.
• Advertise a "free roof."
• Represent the homeowner against their insurer. That's public adjusting, and it's licensed work you don't hold.

The clean mental model: you document and estimate; the homeowner files; the insurer decides. The ITEL report fits perfectly inside that model because it's documentation. It establishes a fact, the shingle and whether it matches, and facts are yours to gather and present. The instant you start telling the homeowner what that fact "means for their coverage" or promising what the carrier will do about it, you've stepped off your side of the line. Stay on the document-and-estimate side, hand over a file so clean and complete it answers questions before they're asked, and let the people whose job it is to decide coverage do their job.

The practical upside of staying disciplined here is that it makes your documentation stronger, not weaker. An adjuster who has dealt with a contractor trying to "handle" the claim gets defensive. A contractor who shows up with a neutral lab report, dated damage photos, and a clean, accurate estimate, and who talks only about scope and facts, is the one who gets taken seriously. Compliance and persuasion point the same direction.

What the adjuster does with your report

It helps to picture the report from the other side of the table. When you hand an adjuster an ITEL report, here's the chain it sets off, and why a clean one moves a file:

1. It removes a fact in dispute. The adjuster no longer has to take your word that the shingle is discontinued, or argue that a lookalike is "close enough." The lab measured weight, thickness, granule profile, and color group and stated a match finding. Many carriers already work with the same lab, so the report arrives pre-credentialed.
2. It forces the repair-versus-replace logic into the open. If the report says no match exists, the question of whether a partial repair is even physically possible is settled, and the conversation moves to what an appropriate scope looks like under the policy. If it says a match exists, the adjuster is reasonable to scope a repair, and you should expect that.
3. It documents the file for everyone who touches it later. A reinspection, a second adjuster, a desk review: the report sits in the file as a neutral artifact that doesn't change with who's reading it. That stability is worth a lot on a claim that gets handed around.

Notice what you did and didn't do in that chain. You provided a fact. You didn't tell the adjuster how to apply the policy, you didn't argue coverage, and you didn't promise the homeowner an outcome. That's the whole discipline: be the most factual party in the room, and let the facts carry the weight.

Writing the estimate around the finding

The ITEL report pairs with your estimate; it doesn't replace it. A few practical notes on the estimate side, all squarely on your scope:

• Estimate the work the roof actually needs. Your estimate should reflect a correct, code-compliant installation of your scope, not a number reverse-engineered to chase a result. The industry-standard format (Xactimate is what most carriers read) lets you line-item the work so it's legible to an adjuster.
• Tie line items to documentation. If your scope reflects that the original shingle can't be matched, the ITEL report is the supporting document for that reasoning, attach it. If local code requires something on a re-roof (for example, certain underlayment or ventilation requirements), cite the applicable code so the line item isn't a mystery.
• Keep it honest and keep it yours. No padding, no phantom items, and no line items that amount to adjusting someone else's claim. You're estimating your work. The estimate plus the photos plus the lab report is a package an adjuster can evaluate without friction, which is the entire goal.

Common mistakes that wreck an ITEL file

Patterns worth memorizing, because each one shows up over and over:

• Sampling the storm damage instead of the original shingle. You wanted to identify the product; you sent a hail-shattered fragment and got a fuzzy ID. Pull from a representative area.
• Folding or crushing the sample. Snapped mat and scattered granules degrade the analysis. Handle by the edges, keep it flat.
• Sending a sliver. Too little material limits weight, thickness, and granule data. Send a full, intact shingle.
• Incomplete submission forms. Missing address, claim reference, or contact info delays the report. Fill every field.
• Ordering it on an obviously current shingle. You hand the carrier proof of a viable repair. Know your catalog; don't test what's clearly on the shelf.
• Leading with the claim, not the damage. No documented loss means a match report does nothing. Damage first.
• Treating the report as a guarantee. It's a measurement, not a promise of a full roof. When it says "match available," believe it and adjust.
• Editorializing on coverage. The moment you tell the homeowner what the report "means for their claim," you've stepped toward unlicensed adjusting. Report the fact, stay off the coverage question.
• Not resealing the sample hole. You came to protect the roof; don't leave it leaking. Cement the spot before you climb down.

How matching coverage actually works (the part the test feeds into)

The ITEL report establishes whether a match exists. Whether a mismatch entitles a homeowner to a broader replacement is a separate question governed by the policy and the state, and it's a question you document toward but never decide. Roofers should understand the landscape so they document the right things, while leaving the coverage call where it belongs.

Matching, sometimes called line-of-sight coverage, addresses what happens when replacement materials won't match the undamaged ones nearby. The governing principle in many places is a "reasonably uniform appearance within the same line of sight." Iowa's administrative rule (191-15.44) is a frequently cited example: when replaced items don't match in quality, color, or size, the insurer replaces as much as needed for a reasonably uniform appearance within the same line of sight. Other states have their own statutes, regulations, or none at all, and many policies treat matching as an optional endorsement rather than something baked into the base coverage. The result is that the same mismatched roof can be handled differently in different states and under different policies.

What that means for you operationally: the ITEL report is the evidence that a match does or doesn't exist; the policy language and the state's rules determine what that triggers. You gather the evidence and write your scope. You do not interpret the homeowner's endorsement, opine on whether their state's line-of-sight rule applies, or tell them how much roof their carrier "has to" replace. If the homeowner asks those questions, the honest and compliant answer is that coverage and matching entitlements are decided by their insurer under their specific policy and state law, and that your job was to document the roof and the shingle accurately so they and their insurer have the facts. That answer protects you and serves them better than a guess that turns out wrong.

Where targeting the right roofs comes in

Everything above is downstream work: you're already on a roof, the damage is documented, and you're deciding whether a lab test strengthens the file. The harder, more expensive question most roofers never solve is the one upstream of all of it: which roofs are even worth getting on a ladder for in the first place.

That's the gap RoofPredict works in. Instead of scanning aerial imagery one address at a time, it ranks the roofs in an area by two signals that matter to exactly the kind of documentation work covered above: a roof-age range per address read from aerial imagery (a range, not an install date, because re-roofs are invisible to county records and Zillow's "year built" is the house, not the roof), and storm exposure modeled per individual roof rather than looked up on a hail map. A hail map shows you where it hailed. Modeling the storm on each roof, hail trajectory and wind scored house by house, points you at the roofs a storm most likely wore out, which are the same roofs where you're more likely to find a real partial loss and an older, possibly discontinued shingle when you get up there.

The honest limits matter, because overpromising here is the same sin as overpromising on a claim. RoofPredict gives you a roof-age range, not a guaranteed install date. Storm modeling gives you odds, not proof of damage; nothing replaces a contractor getting on the roof and documenting what's actually there, and nothing about a model tells you whether a current shingle matches, that's still a lab's job and yours. What it does do is stop you from burning gas, mail, and payroll on new roofs that aren't due, and concentrate your crew on the older, storm-exposed roofs where the documentation workflow above, including an ITEL test when the shingle looks discontinued, is most likely to pay off. It also enriches a roofer's own CRM and mailing list with roof-age and storm signals, so the homes already in your book get prioritized too. It's targeting, not lead-buying: it tells you which doors are worth the knock, then your expertise takes over from there.

Putting it together: a clean documentation package

By the time you'd order an ITEL test, you should be building a file that stands on its own. The strongest packages on a partial-loss roof look like this:

1. Damage documentation first. Dated, geo-tagged photos of the actual storm damage, slope by slope, with enough wide and close shots to show pattern and severity. Damage is the foundation; everything else sits on it.
2. Roof identification and measurements. Accurate measurements and a clear record of what's on the roof.
3. The ITEL report, when the shingle looks discontinued or a quality match is in doubt, identifying the product and stating the match finding, read and explained in plain terms.
4. An accurate repair estimate for your scope, in the industry-standard format, reflecting what the job actually requires, no padding, no fantasy.
5. A clean handoff. All of it given to the homeowner so they and their insurer have a complete, factual file. You document; they file; the insurer decides.

Do that consistently and you become the contractor adjusters don't dread and homeowners trust, not because you fought the claim, but because you showed up with facts and stayed in your lane. The ITEL test is one tool in that kit, a sharp one, neutral by design, and most powerful precisely because you're not the one who controls what it says.

If you want the upstream half handled, knowing which roofs in your area are old enough and storm-exposed enough to be worth this whole workflow, that's where pointing your crew with roof-age and per-roof storm data pays for itself. Get on the right roofs, document them cleanly, and let the neutral evidence do the talking.

FAQ

What is an ITEL shingle test in one sentence?

It's an independent lab analysis of a physical shingle sample that identifies the exact product (manufacturer, line, material, weight, thickness, granule profile, color group) and states whether a currently available shingle matches it on like-kind-and-quality.

When do roofers actually need an ITEL test?

When you have a documented partial loss and the shingle looks discontinued or a quality match is genuinely in doubt. It converts a hunch about availability into a documented, third-party fact. You generally don't need it when the shingle is an obviously current, common product still on distributor shelves.

Does an ITEL report prove there's hail or storm damage?

No. ITEL identifies the shingle and whether a match exists. It says nothing about damage. You document the storm damage separately and first; the match report only matters once a covered loss is established.

How long does an ITEL test take and what does it cost?

A physical sample shipped to the lab typically runs roughly 7 to 10 days door to door, while the mobile/digital submission path can return results in as little as 30 minutes for qualifying transactions. Cost is a modest per-report fee that isn't fixed; check current rates with the lab rather than quoting a homeowner a guaranteed price.

How do I pull a shingle sample so the report isn't kicked back?

Get authorization, pull a full intact shingle from a representative undamaged area (not a hail-shattered spot), handle it by the edges without folding it, photograph the location before and after, complete the submission form fully, package it flat and rigid, and reseal the removal hole with roofing cement before leaving the roof.

What does it mean if the report says no match is available?

It means the lab found no current product that matches the sample's material, weight, thickness, granule, and color. That documents that the original shingle can't be bought, which is the fact a partial-repair decision hinges on. It does not, by itself, decide coverage or guarantee a full roof; the policy and state matching rules determine what a mismatch triggers, and the insurer decides.

Can a roofer use an ITEL report to get the homeowner a full roof replacement?

A roofer can gather the report and present it as documentation, but cannot promise an outcome. Promising a specific approval or payout, interpreting the homeowner's coverage, or negotiating the claim crosses into unlicensed public adjusting. Document the facts, write an accurate estimate for your scope, and let the homeowner file and the insurer decide.

Is an ITEL test better than a manufacturer discontinuation letter?

They serve a similar purpose, but the lab test analyzes the actual sample and compares it against current products, which is often faster and more specific than chasing a manufacturer letter. The lab report also carries the weight of an independent third party that many carriers themselves use.

Does matching coverage apply automatically if the shingle is discontinued?

No. Matching (line-of-sight) coverage depends on the policy and the state. Some states have rules like Iowa's reasonably-uniform-appearance standard; many policies treat matching as an optional endorsement. The ITEL report establishes whether a match exists; whether that entitles a broader replacement is a coverage question the insurer decides under the specific policy and state law.

Can the adjuster order their own ITEL test?

Yes. Either party can submit a sample, and the lab tests it the same way regardless of who ordered it. That independence is the point: a report from a lab the carrier itself uses takes the disagreement off the table and replaces it with a shared, neutral finding.