What the tool does, why it does it that way, and where every control lives. Written for marine professionals who already hold their own subscriptions to sold-sales data.
Every part of this guide, in the order the work happens.
Read this part once. Everything after it assumes you have.
This is a calculation aid. You supply comparable sales, guide figures, condition ratings and the adjustments you choose; it does the arithmetic consistently, shows its working, and drafts a narrative you can paste into your own document.
It does not verify your data, it does not exercise professional judgment, and its output is not an appraisal. Every figure it produces depends entirely on what you put in. The result, and anything built on it, remains your professional judgment and your responsibility.
The tool does not have a sales database and cannot fetch one. It is built for marine professionals who already hold their own subscriptions to sold-sales resources — BoatWizard / Soldboats for achieved prices, BUC for guide values. If you do not have access to recorded sold prices, this tool has nothing to work from.
What it is actually for is consistency. The same boat, worked twice, reaches the same answer by the same disclosed route — and every exclusion, every assumption and every extrapolation is named in the output rather than buried in it.
These are not preferences you can switch off. They are what the code does.
The whole reason the tool exists is that these are applied the same way every time. Open any of them for the reasoning.
What a buyer actually paid is the evidence. Everything else in the worksheet is context, corroboration, or a fallback for when recorded sales are thin.
An asking price is a hope, not a transaction. Listings appear in the document as market context. They can become a working basis — but only after an expected-sale deduction, and that deduction is measured from your own comparables wherever they carry both an asking and an achieved price.
This is the path you will use most when you are working before anyone has been aboard and there are no sold comparables yet. It is a supported route, not a compromise — but the document always says what measured the deduction.
Not by model year alone. A 2021 boat that sold in 2021 was nearly new when it changed hands; the same boat selling in 2025 was four years old. Those are different pieces of evidence and the tool treats them so — which is why a sale date is worth chasing down even when it is inconvenient.
A 10% and a 5% adjustment make 15%, not 15.5%. This is deliberate and it is not configurable. Compounding produces figures nobody can recompute by hand, and a figure your reader cannot check is a figure they can dismiss.
Published guide figures are never quietly averaged into the answer. They sit alongside it as corroboration. If you want them to carry weight you say so, explicitly, using Blend sources in Section 6 — and the document records that you did.
You can exclude any sale. What you cannot do is make it disappear. An excluded comparable is named in the finished document along with why it was set aside.
Silently dropping inconvenient evidence is the exact thing this tool exists to prevent. If a sale is genuinely not comparable, saying so in the open is stronger than hoping nobody asks.
A figure that cannot be substantiated is omitted, never hedged. The narrative gets pasted into signed documents, and a hedge in a signed document is worse than a silence — it invites the question it was trying to dodge.
One calculation engine. Two documents, for two very different readers.
The concluded figure is identical in both modes. So is the primacy of sold comparables, and the rule that asking prices never enter the value at face value. If switching mode appears to move the number, it has not — something else changed. Mode changes who is being addressed, not the arithmetic.
A document that must withstand examination. Its reader is a bank, an insurer, a court, or a client's advisor — someone who was not present and is looking for reasons to doubt it.
So it justifies its method at length: the full narrative, every step from basis to conclusion, every excluded comparable named with its reason. It states a point figure. Replacement cost belongs here and only here.
A document that opens a conversation with an owner. Its reader is the seller, or a prospect deciding who to list with. It is not defending a figure to an examiner, so it does not justify its method in the same detail — it uses the concise narrative and leans on comparative graphics, so a reader can see the subject against the comparables rather than read an argument about them.
Its real job is often to help an owner's expectation meet the market. Replacement cost does not appear at all — brokers do not need it.
You switch mode on the worksheet itself, outside the numbered sections, using the mode switch marked Marine Surveyor / Yacht Broker. You can switch at any time; nothing you have entered is lost.
Your evidence will often be thinner, and the tool bends rather than breaks. Where a surveyor's document would refuse and state why, yours states a range and says what measured it. That is by design.
The single most useful habit in the tool. Learn this before the field list.
Almost every data section has a drop target, and most accept a listing address. Drag a file onto it, paste an image, or give it a link, and the tool reads the specification out for you.
Typing a specification out of a document you already have open is the slowest path in the tool, and it is the one most people default to. The manual fields are always there underneath as a fallback — but reach for them second.
Beside every drop target sits a Paste button. It exists so the tool works without a keyboard shortcut and on a phone, where dragging a file is awkward. If dragging is not available to you, that button is the route.
The boat being valued, its specification, and the date the value speaks to.
Year, make, model, length, beam, draft, engines, hours, fuel, hull material and configuration, water use, and location. Also the subject's own asking price if she is currently listed, and the effective date of the valuation.
The vessel being valued.
These sit beside the drop target rather than in the field list, which is why they get overlooked.
Ticked by default. Brings the listing's photograph in along with the specification when a listing is read.
Off by default. When you tick it, reading a listing does a second pass and returns an itemized list of material improvements it can see, each with a rough contributory value. Those land in the improvements list in Section 6.
They are a starting point to edit, not a finished answer. But this is by far the fastest way to populate improvements from a broker's own equipment list, and it works from a dropped PDF or screenshot as well as from a listing address.
A separate image for the document, independent of anything a listing supplied. Include in the report decides whether it actually prints.
The evidence. This section carries more weight than all the others together.
Each comparable is its own card: vessel name, year, sale price, sale date, location and a description. Every per-comparable adjustment lives inside that comparable's own card, in its adjustments block — not in a central table. That is the single most common thing people hunt for and cannot find.
| Adjustment | Entered as | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Regional Adjustment | Percent | By hand. |
| Condition Adjustment | Percent | By hand. |
| Equipment Adjustment | Dollars | Contributory value, not installed cost. |
| Freshwater / Saltwater | Percent | Direction is set automatically from the two vessels' water use, so it unlocks only when both are stated and they differ. |
| Gas / Diesel | Percent | Same automatic-direction rule. |
| Engine Hours | Percent | Driven by the hours figures. |
| Hull Material | Percent | Locks unless both hull materials are stated and differ. |
| Size and Type | Percent | By hand, and deliberately never computed. |
Several of these stay locked until both vessels' attributes are filled in. That is the tool declining to guess a direction. Completing the attributes on both sides turns a manual estimate into a signed, directional adjustment — which is one of the cheapest ways to strengthen a thin file.
The control is in this section, labeled Depreciation Scale, and Martin is the default. Beside it sits the annual rate, and the market-conditions entries for each sale year.
The scales exist to compare effective age — how old each vessel was at its own relevant date — so that a model-year difference and a sale-date difference collapse into one comparison instead of being counted twice.
Past a scale's published range the value is extrapolated, and every affected row says so. If the fleet is older than 35 years on Martin, or 40 on INA, that disclosure appears in the output.
The scales are applied here as a ratio between the subject's retained value and the comparable's, which cancels replacement cost out of the arithmetic. That is an extension beyond the scales' stated purpose, and the narrative discloses it.
Each card carries an Exclude as outlier checkbox. Ticking it removes the sale from the calculation and names it in the finished document, with the reason.
Use it for a real sale you have decided not to rely on. Do not use it to tidy away a row that was entered twice — that is a data-entry mistake rather than a piece of evidence with a story, and it should be removed instead. See Banners and warnings.
Current asking prices — market context, and a fallback basis when sales are absent.
Paste several listing addresses at once into the box built for it. Fetch listing photos controls whether images come with them.
This is also where the deduction lives — the discount applied when listings actually inform the value rather than merely providing context. Its basis is a choice:
Measured is better whenever the evidence supports it, because it is defensible. A typed figure is an opinion, and it will be read as one.
Where the comparables sold at or above asking, there is no spread to measure and the control falls back to manual rather than inventing a premium.
Published figures, carried as corroboration.
BUCValuPro, J.D. Power and Boat Value Guide figures — low and high, and the basis they were taken on. Drop the guide page or a screenshot of it rather than transcribing.
Nothing entered here reaches the concluded value unless you deliberately choose Blend sources in Section 6 and include guide data among the contributing sources. Left alone, these figures sit beside the answer as corroboration and are reported as such.
Surveyor mode only.
This section does not appear in broker mode at all. It is a surveyor concern — confirmed by a working broker — and a listing conversation has no use for it. If you are reading in broker mode you can skip straight to Section 6.
Establishes what it would cost to replace the vessel, which an insurer or a lender may ask for alongside market value.
Look up index values from BLS fetches the published boat-building producer price index for a year. That lets an older build cost be escalated to the effective date on published figures rather than on a guess — which is the difference between a number you can cite and a number you have to defend.
The busiest section, and the one people most often cannot find something in.
It holds four different kinds of thing. If you are hunting for a control and it is not in Sections 1 to 5, it is almost certainly here.
Pick one method. These are alternatives, not a stack — choosing one replaces the others.
A slider with named steps and a percentage readout. This is where you mark the subject above or below average.
A list of individual items, each with a contributory value. Add Improvement Item adds a row; Clear all receipts empties the list.
This is what Section 1's Propose improvements fills in, if it was ticked when the listing was read.
Include improvement description in the narrative decides whether the written analysis describes the improvements or merely accounts for them.
One lump sum instead of a list, for when the detail is not worth itemizing.
Money spent rarely returns dollar-for-dollar, and the document supplies the facts rather than an argument. If you judge that condition or equipment warrant a higher return, that case is yours to make to your client — from these same facts, and with what you know that the tool does not.
Three settings: No inspection, Limited inspection, or a full one — labeled Survey inspection in surveyor mode and Broker inspection in broker mode.
It is a floor, not an assumption. Nobody should publish a document claiming an inspection that did not happen because a control was left alone.
If you have been aboard, set it — it changes what the document is entitled to assert.
Comps primary is the default and is correct in nearly every case. Recorded sold prices are what a vessel actually changed hands for, and the tool takes the strongest evidence you have supplied.
Blend sources is for when more than one source carries genuine weight and none dominates — typically when sold comparables are few or absent. It opens the choice of which sources contribute: sold comparables, guide data, active listings.
The review threshold for flagging heavily-adjusted comparables lives here, and defaults to 30%.
So does the firm block — firm name, credentials, contact details, and the logo, which can be dropped straight onto it. That block is what brands the finished document. It is the answer to “where do I put my logo” and “where do my credentials go”.
Three more controls sit on the page rather than in a section: the mode switch (Marine Surveyor / Yacht Broker), the theme (Standard, Classic, Tech), and two resets.
Appears in the navigation rail once a calculation exists.
Calculate Estimated Market Value is the button that produces the analysis. Recalculate reappears whenever an input changes afterward — and while it is showing, the analysis on screen is out of date and the page says so by graying it out.
If you want a range and are not getting one, the answer is more comparables, not a setting. There is no control that widens a band, because a width nobody can trace is worse than no width at all.
A seller's stated expectation is compared against the recommended asking range, never the value range. A seller's number is almost always a listing aspiration, and comparing it to market value overstates the gap by the whole list-to-sold spread.
Where no comparable carries both an asking and an achieved price, there is no observed spread, so no asking range is produced. The comparison falls back to the supported range and the document says plainly which range it used and why.
An asking price above the supported range gets a warning marker. One below does not, and that asymmetry is deliberate. The marker exists to inject reason where reason is needed — to help a prospect understand why their perception of the market needs adjusting. An identical marker on the low side would spend that attention on a case where nothing is wrong, and make the one that matters look ordinary.
Below the range, the document states the fact plainly — the vessel is well positioned for a timely sale at that figure — and stops. The display is the disclosure.
The band runs green at the low end, through amber, to red at the high end. The ends are not symmetric for a seller: the low end sells faster, the high end may sit unsold. Position implies timing — it never predicts a number of days.
Alongside the document you get the convergence chart, the magnitude-of-adjustment chart, the depreciation curve, the asking-against-achieved chart, and the evidence-strength band.
These are the part of your document that does the work. A seller who can see the subject sitting among the comparables argues less than one reading a paragraph about them.
What the colored strips on a comparable are telling you.
It is a prompt to look, not a verdict. The exclude control sits directly beneath it and the decision stays yours.
When the divergent sale is the one carrying the least adjustment, no banner appears on that row. Instead a notice appears above the whole set.
A sale that diverges while making the fewest assumptions is evidence about the others, not about itself. The usual cause is several older sales being marked down heavily to reach a newer subject — and the remedy is the market-conditions entries for those years in Section 2, not deleting the recent sale.
The tool watches for the same sale entered twice. It is easy to do when comparables arrive from several sources, and damaging, because a duplicate quietly doubles the weight of one sale.
A flagged row gets a banner reading Possible duplicate, Probable duplicate or Likely duplicate, naming the row it matches and what matched. The three tiers are how confident the match is, not how serious it is.
Compare is not a click. Hold the mouse button down — or hold your finger on it, or hold Enter or Space with it focused — and a panel appears showing the two rows side by side for as long as you hold. Let go and it disappears.
It works that way on purpose: the matched row is often far up a long list, and this brings its values down to the flag without expanding anything or leaving a panel open. If you click it once and nothing happens, the control is not broken.
Not duplicates dismisses the match, for when two rows really are different sales that happen to look alike.
The Remove control sits at the top right of each comparable's card. Exclusion is for a real sale you have decided not to rely on, and it is disclosed by name in the finished document — which is right for an outlier and wrong for a row that should never have existed.
Six export controls, for different jobs.
| Control | What you get |
|---|---|
| Copy Ledger | The adjustment table on its own. |
| Copy Narrative | The written analysis on its own. |
| Copy Full Statement | The value statement, long form. |
| Copy Concise Statement | The value statement, short form. |
| Download Word | The whole document as a .docx file. |
| Download HTML | A self-contained file that opens in any browser. |
| Print / Save as PDF | Your browser's own print dialog. |
| Comparable | Sale price | Net adj. | Indicated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Comparable 1 | 385,000 | +4.0% | 400,400 |
| Comparable 2 | 412,000 | −2.5% | 401,700 |
| Indicated value | 402,500 |
This is the part people get wrong. Copy the ledger and the narrative separately and paste each into its own place in the report — not the whole document in one block.
In InspectX specifically, both normally belong in the Summary section, under the Valuation Adjustments heading.
The tool explains itself. Here is where.
Scattered through the sections are small Why?, Hint, What these mean and How to use this buttons. Each opens the tool's own explanation of the control beside it. They are the fastest answer available, and once you notice one you start seeing them everywhere.
The worksheet carries a chat panel that answers questions about using the tool. It can see what you have entered, so it can tell you which comparable it is talking about and what a particular banner on your screen means.
It explains; it does not calculate. The worksheet owns every figure. If the two ever appear to disagree, the worksheet is right.
If you need evidence and do not have it:
Both need your own subscription and login. The tool does not fetch from either.
The honest ladder, strongest first:
It is a route to a better-supported one. The figure may well move down.
Use the Send feedback link at the foot of the guide panel in the worksheet. A comment written there reaches the people who maintain the tool, and it is a real route to an answer rather than a brush-off.
This guide describes a calculation aid. Its output is not an appraisal.
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