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Changelog

What’s new in RateString.

Improvements and fixes, newest first. We ship often.

October 19, 2026
  • Every guide, news post, glossary entry, and calculator page re-checked against primary sources — the statutes, Title 8, DWC and WCAB materials, the 2005 schedule, and, for impairment figures, the AMA Guides — and corrected where the law was out of date or the wording was loose. Each guide now shows the date it was last checked, and the new editorial standards page explains how we check.
  • Correction: 2013 injuries now use all three of the year’s PD maximums under Labor Code §4453(b)(8) — $230 a week under 55%, $270 at 55–69.75%, $290 at 70% and up. RateString had used $270 for every rating, so figures for 2013 injuries rated under 55% or at 70% and above change.
  • Correction: commutation now reads the DWC’s Table 1 through its last row (week 950) instead of estimating past week 700, which changes the present value of awards over 700 weeks slightly.
  • The deadline calculator gives public-safety presumption claims their 75-day decision window (§5402(b)(2)) and shows the TD limit that applies to the injury’s era; the forms page links the QME panel request’s online form; seven hip and foot impairment names in the picker now match the schedule’s numbers.
October 18, 2026
  • Check our math: a new page prints the State’s own published rating examples — the 2005 schedule’s worked Examples A–C and the DWC’s SB 863 example — beside RateString’s output for the same inputs, computed as the page loads. All four reach the State’s final rating; the one printed step that differs is shown and explained. Every rating table has been re-audited cell by cell against the schedule, all 4,950 cells of the Combined Values Chart included, and the site won’t publish if a result ever drifts.
  • Shared ratings and the sample exhibit show their work: each impairment’s rating string and the Combined Values fold, with a pointer to the free decoder so whoever receives the link can check any string themselves.
  • Easier to trust at a glance: the calculator links its engine status to that proof and notes that unsaved work stays in your browser, pricing spells out checkout (Stripe), cancellation, and export, and the homepage and About figures show their real numbers from the first paint.
  • Link previews match the site: every page’s share card was redrawn in the light style, and each news post now has its own.
October 17, 2026
  • Two new guides for the forms that move a case: the EAMS Document Cover Sheet and Separator Sheet rules (8 CCR §10205.12), and the path from the Declaration of Readiness through the MSC to the Pre-Trial Conference Statement (Labor Code §5502).
  • Printable references, computed by the engine: the full Combined Values Chart (two pages) and the GAF → WPI chart, joining the one-page PD money chart and the rating-string desk reference added the day before — each a free PDF on its tool’s page.
  • Accessibility: every page is organized into header, main, and footer landmarks for screen readers, and the money chart scrolls from the keyboard.
October 16, 2026
  • Every new account starts with 14 days of Pro — no card. The workspace counts down the days; keep Pro anytime and your card isn’t charged until the trial ends, or do nothing and you’re back on Free with every saved case intact. We email a few days before it ends, and once when it has.
  • TD exposure is free: enter the TD periods and the calculator tracks weeks against the §4656 cap — 104 weeks (240 for the enumerated serious injuries) within five years of injury — with dollars at the TD rate. No account needed.
  • On Free, exhibits print as drafts: a DRAFT watermark under RateString’s header. Pro prints them clean, on your letterhead.
  • Share links and scenario compare are part of Pro (and the trial). On Free, the case file shows them as the way to Pro instead of a dead end.
  • The pricing page, support answers, and terms now describe the plans exactly as they work: Free saves up to 3 cases, saved cases are stored on every plan, and moving to Free never locks the cases you already have.
October 15, 2026
  • Pro: report history. Each impairment keeps every physician report — the initial QME, the supplemental, the AME — with the operative one rating the case and the rest on record as superseded. Switch the operative opinion in a tap, fill either side of Compare from any report, and exhibits name the report each rating follows and what it supersedes.
  • The body-part search reads the way reports are written: “lumbar spine,” “right knee,” “C-spine,” “shoulder ROM,” “PTSD,” “back pain,” and impairment numbers like 15.03 all find the right listing — and when nothing matches, it says so instead of silently closing.
  • Picking a body part moves straight to the WPI (or GAF) box, and a search that named a side — “left wrist” — fills the side in.
  • Paste rating strings into the calculator: a DEU rating, a report’s strings, or the other side’s numbers become impairments in one step, re-rated live.
  • The free tools hand their numbers to the full calculator — the quick rater, the GAF converter, the AWW calculator, and the string decoder. If a case is already open, the calculator asks whether to add to it or start a new one.
  • Life pension, PTD lifetime, the attorney-fee estimate, and commuted value now show in the calculator for everyone.
  • The “?” explanations open with a tap, so they work on phones and from the keyboard.
  • Pro and Firm trials no longer ask for a card: 14 days free, and you add one only if you keep it.
  • Signing up from the calculator’s Save button — including through the confirmation email — brings you back to your rating with the save ready to finish.
  • The workspace case file does more: mark a rating final (or reopen it), see whose report the rating adopts, and get the money behind the number — PD weeks, weekly rate, life pension, attorney-fee estimate, and commuted value — with the calculator’s cautions carried onto the case.
  • A “Coming up” list on your Cases page gathers MSC and hearing dates and the §5410 and §5405 windows across your library, nearest first.
  • Updating a final case from the calculator keeps it final, and the case audit trail names the occupational variants actually used — including the FEC adjustment for 2005–2012 injuries.
  • Account: your name saves, the password dialog changes your password (or sets one if you sign in with Google), and Sign out signs you out — on phones too. Your plan shows once, clearly, including complimentary and firm-seat plans.
  • Exhibits name the physician whose report the rating adopts, and exhibits, shared ratings, and the workspace write dates as MM/DD/YYYY.
  • CSV export adds status, physician, report date, P&S/MMI, MSC/hearing, and tags, with real dates instead of “2 days ago” — and any cell a spreadsheet could run as a formula is defused.
  • The firm name you enter when you first sign in now saves to your account, so it appears on your exhibits on every device.
  • Buying Firm sets up your firm and its seats right away, and coming back from checkout waits for your upgrade to land instead of showing Free.
  • Plans offers what you can actually do: Pro subscribers can switch to Firm, and returning subscribers see a plain subscription rather than a trial they’ve already used.
  • Unsubscribe links ask before they act, so an email security scanner opening the link can’t opt you out.
  • Rounding is exact at the half: an apportioned 45 at 70% now rates 32% PD (31.5 rounds up) where a floating-point quirk gave 31 — and money rounds to the cent the same way. Ratings that hit an exact .5 after apportionment may move up by one.
  • Impairments on the same arm or leg are apportioned the way every other body part is — each on its own, as its rating string shows, then combined — so equal shares no longer rate lower than nearly equal ones (a shoulder and elbow at 50% and 50% had rated below 50% and 51%). The limb’s amputation-value ceiling uses the highest occupational variant among its impairments, as the schedule directs, and an apportioned limb is held to that value apportioned at its highest share. Cases with several apportioned impairments on one limb may move by a few points.
  • One blue everywhere: the browser-tab and home-screen icons, link previews, and the sample exhibit now use the same blue as the site, the homepage headline no longer fades to teal, and the dark panels drop their last off-palette greys.
  • The Combined Values working shown with a result — on screen, in print, and on exhibits — now always ends on the combined PD, including when same-limb impairments combine first; the exhibit shows that same-limb step.
  • A new year’s injuries rate right away: the PD% no longer waits on that year’s rate table (weekly rates and dollars follow when it’s added).
  • The decoder takes a typo (a value over 100) without crashing and reads lines copied from the calculator’s Copy all; pasting them back keeps each side.
  • Dates type the way you’d expect on a phone (08152024), and impossible dates like 02/30 are flagged instead of accepted.
  • Finger and toe listings start on WPI; a femoral-neck hip fracture and leg skin loss keep their side, while hearing, balance, and disfigurement no longer ask for one.
  • Batch rating reads “Industrial %” and “Date of Injury” headers, quoted names, and semicolon-separated files — and lists any column it skipped.
  • A wage typed as “$1,200” is read as $1,200.
  • Saving tells you when it didn’t work and why. A teammate’s case you can’t edit offers “Save as my own copy,” and a double-click — or a reload after saving — keeps updating the one case instead of making duplicates.
  • “New rating” no longer throws away a rating in progress: the calculator asks whether to keep working on it or start fresh.
  • Changing only the physician, the report date, or the TD periods now counts as an unsaved change.
  • A case that can’t be deleted (a teammate’s, or during a connection problem) says so instead of vanishing until the next refresh, and bulk tagging skips teammates’ cases and tells you how many.
  • If your case library can’t load, the workspace says so and offers Try again — instead of greeting you with an empty library.
  • Forgot password works end to end: the email link opens a form to set your new password.
  • Signing in from a members-only page brings you back to that exact page.
  • Compare scenarios starts “My rating” at the case’s actual rating — UE and LE values converted, pain included — and a pasted opposing position counts only the body parts they rated. Scenarios are scratch work; export the comparison exhibit to keep them.
  • Shared ratings name the firm that shared them, and a link to a case that can’t be opened says so instead of showing a sample rating.
  • Firm invite links show which account is about to join and wait for you to accept — opening the link no longer uses it up.
  • Enter in the paste box starts a new line instead of adding a row.
  • Pages open faster: guides and reference pages no longer flash a loading screen as they start, each page’s code downloads alongside the page instead of after it, and pages that don’t rate anything no longer download the rating engine.
  • Fonts download once instead of once per weight — 100–140 KB less on a first visit.
  • If you’re not signed in, pages no longer download the sign-in library — about 46 KB less on every page, the calculator and pricing included. It loads the moment you sign in.
  • Each guide now loads only its own text instead of all 84 guides at once — about 80 KB less to download on every guide page.
  • The offline calculator is sturdier: it’s ready to use offline as soon as it installs, and offline, other pages say you’re offline (with a link to the calculator) instead of claiming an update.
  • Links to the calculator and the sample exhibit preview with their own title and description.
  • The changelog fits on a phone screen.
  • A mistyped or retired link now gets a real “page not found” answer, instead of a copy of the homepage.
  • Accessibility: links inside sentences are underlined instead of marked by color alone, the selected year and section chips meet WCAG AA contrast, “Skip to content” lands on every page’s content, and the money chart, glossary, and homepage read correctly to screen readers — 100 on Lighthouse’s accessibility audit across the pages we checked.
October 14, 2026
  • Launch Console goes light: the same type, the same console calculator, now on a clean light background — with the dark instrument readout kept front and center. Prefer the dark look? Workspace → Settings → Appearance → Night brings it back for the calculator and workspace.
  • The light palette is tuned to WCAG AA contrast — buttons, field hints, and the statute-window warnings on saved cases included.
  • The embeddable widgets now default to light; add ?theme=dark to the iframe src on dark-background sites.
  • Search the whole site: press ⌘K / Ctrl K (or "/") on any page to find a guide, calculator, glossary term, or occupation.
  • On phones, the header is one slim row with a menu — Guides and Calculators are a tap away instead of hidden.
  • The calculator gets you to the impairment search faster: once the case facts are in, they fold into a one-line summary and the cursor moves to the body-part search.
  • Guides gain an “On this page” list, and money guides a one-click jump to their built-in calculator.
August 17, 2026
  • Every one of the 15 body-system pages now explains how its rating scale actually works — DRE categories for the spine, the GAF conversion for psych, why a 20% UE shoulder becomes 12% WPI, the audiometric basis for hearing loss, and the 3% pain add-on cap — each verified against the 2005 schedule itself.
  • The sitemap now tells search engines exactly when each page last changed.
August 14, 2026
  • RateString has a new look: Launch Console — a dark, high-contrast interface built for long days in a claims file, with Space Grotesk display type, JetBrains Mono for every rating string, and one launch-blue signal color. Exhibits and shared ratings stay court-paper white on purpose.
  • The calculator is now a console: your case file on the left, the engine’s live output — the glowing rating, string traces, and Combined Values fold — on the right, with an engine status bar along the bottom.
  • Social share cards regenerated for all 109 pages in the new style.
August 13, 2026
  • A readability pass across the calculator and all seventeen tools: bigger type everywhere (nothing below 10.5px), every grey lifted to WCAG AA contrast, larger touch targets, and 16px inputs so iPhones stop zooming on focus.
August 12, 2026
  • New free tool: the award interest calculator — Labor Code §5800 interest on unpaid WCAB awards at the 10% judgment rate, day-counted from the award date, with the §4650(d) and §5814 distinctions explained.
August 5, 2026
  • New free tool: the AWW calculator — enter pay in any period, hourly to annual, and get the average weekly wage plus the TD and PD rates against the year’s statutory rails.
  • Batch rating: paste CSV rows and rate a whole list of claims at once.
August 4, 2026
  • Three new free tools in one day: the life pension calculator (§4659(a) — the weekly benefit after PD weeks for 70%+ ratings), the SIBTF checker built for SB 171’s brand-new qualification doors, and the commutation calculator (present value at 3% under the DWC’s own CCR §10169 table).
  • A Pro band on every tool page: see a live court-ready exhibit built from the numbers you’re looking at.
July 14, 2026
  • Print a draft rating straight from the calculator: the Print button (and ⌘K → Print draft rating) now produces a clean one-page sheet — case facts, every rating string, the Combined Values fold, and the dollars — instead of a screenshot of the form. Nothing needs to be saved first.
  • Hover any case in the claim library to peek at its rating strings and combined value without opening it.
July 9, 2026
  • Split a rating across dates of injury: when the evaluator parcels apportionment between a specific injury and a CT (or up to three dates), the new Split DOI tool rates each date as its own case — its own era, rate year, and age at injury — with live per-DOI rating strings, a paste-ready summary for contribution negotiations, and one-click creation of the per-DOI cases (Benson-style separate awards). Splitting a case you already saved updates it in place as its own DOI — no duplicates.
  • The calculator now reports crashes to us automatically (no personal or case data), so bugs get fixed before you have to tell us.
  • TD exposure (Pro): enter the periods temporary disability was paid and the calculator tracks weeks against the §4656 cap — 104 weeks (or 240 for enumerated serious injuries) within five years of injury — with dollar totals at the TD rate.
  • One checkbox estimates §4650(d) exposure: the 10% self-imposed increase if PD payments ran late.
  • Ctrl+K now works in the calculator too — add an impairment, save, split by DOI, load the demo, print, or jump to any reference page from the keyboard.
  • Deleting an impairment row now offers a five-second Undo.
July 8, 2026
  • A plain-English glossary of every PD-rating term — WPI to life pension — with deep-linkable anchors (ratestring.com/glossary#cvc) and links into the guides.
  • An about page: what RateString is, who builds it, and how the engine is verified against the State’s own worked examples.
  • Two new guides: How Age Changes the Rating (the ten brackets, with the same case computed at 21, 40, and 62) and How Psychiatric Injuries Are Rated (GAF→WPI, a computed clerical-vs-laborer pair, and the §4660.1(c) limits).
  • The money chart now has a page per year of injury — /money-chart/2020 for a 2020 case — with the full 1–99% table computed for that year.
  • The calculator flags §4660.1(c): adding a psych impairment to a 2013+ physical-injury case now shows the add-on bar (and its violent-act / catastrophic exceptions) right on the rating.
  • Embed the money chart on your own site, free: a copy-paste widget with the live 1–99% table — grab the snippet at the bottom of the money chart page.
July 7, 2026
  • The PD money chart, reborn as a living page: every percentage 1–99%, weeks under §4658, the weekly rate for any injury year 2005–2026, and total indemnity — personalized to the worker’s actual wage in one field.
  • Three new guides: AME vs QME, How Your Occupation Changes the Rating, and California Workers’ Comp Settlement Value (Stips vs C&R, commutation, attorney fees).
  • Insights: your claim library, analyzed — filing pace, PD distribution, top body systems, and apportionment exposure, computed privately in your workspace.
  • Exhibits paginate cleanly in print and can append a per-impairment step trace — every segment of every rating string, shown with its source.
  • Optional night mode for the calculator and workspace (Settings → Appearance), alongside four accent themes.
  • Keyboard and screen-reader hardening: focus-trapped dialogs, a live rating readout, and a skip-to-content link.
July 6, 2026
  • A free public reference library: PD weekly rate caps for every year 2005–2026, all 45 occupational groups (with every one of the 1,812 titles mapped), body-system conversion pages, and plain-English guides — each figure computed by the same engine as the calculator.
  • Two new guides: How Apportionment Works (§4663/§4664) and The Combined Values Chart, Explained — including why apportionment costs more dollars than rating points, and what one point at the 70% life-pension threshold is worth.
  • Sharper on small screens: header navigation wraps cleanly and the landing page no longer scrolls sideways on phones.
July 2, 2026
  • Pre-2013 ratings are here: dates of injury from 2005–2012 now rate under the original 2005 PDRS FEC method — rank-based adjustment, era-correct rating strings like [5]45, and 2005–2012 statutory weekly rates.
  • Every data table in the engine — occupational variants, occupational adjustment, age adjustment, and the FEC grid — has been verified cell-by-cell against the official 2005 PDRS document.
  • The occupation list grew to 1,812 entries: ~45 titles the old list missed (and a few dozen “AND” titles) restored from the schedule.
  • The engine now reproduces the State’s own worked rating examples end-to-end — they run as permanent tests on every change.
July 1, 2026
  • Duplicate any saved rating into a fresh draft — model variations without touching the original.
  • Install RateString to your home screen: the calculator now works as an app on phone and desktop.
  • Exported exhibits save as PDFs named after the applicant — no more “document.pdf”.
  • The claim library shows full dates of injury, and scenario compare reads as clean stacked cards on your phone.
  • Newsletter signups now include a real one-click unsubscribe, and new trials get a proper welcome email.
June 30, 2026
  • Type or paste dates of injury and birth in any common format — no more matching an exact mask character by character.
  • Occupation and body-part menus now list every entry: occupations A→Z, impairments most-common first.
  • Hide any rating string — on a saved case or in a comparison — to watch the combined value update live.
  • Scenario compare, rebuilt: add or remove body parts per side, hide ratings on either side, and export the full side-by-side as an exhibit.
  • Editing a saved case is clearer: the action reads “Update case,” a banner shows whose rating you’re editing, and the calculator warns before you leave with unsaved work.
  • “New rating” opens a clean, blank calculator, and operative-report fields stay tucked away until a case names a physician.
  • A date of injury before the 2013 schedule is now flagged immediately, with earlier-year support on the way.
  • Exhibit branding (firm name + letterhead logo) now syncs to your account, so it follows you across devices — shared firm-wide for teams.
  • Clearer account menu in the header: your avatar, with quick access to your dashboard and sign-out from any page.
  • A prominent Sign-up path for new visitors.
  • Privacy-first product analytics with a consent banner — your case data is never recorded.
  • Rich link previews when RateString is shared in email, Slack, or messages.
June 29, 2026
  • Firm plan: a shared claim library, per-seat billing, member roles, and invite links for your whole office.
  • Separate ADJ # and Claim # fields on every case — for adjusters and attorneys who track each.
  • One-click “Copy all rating strings” from a saved case.
  • Cloud-backed case library so your saved ratings are available wherever you sign in.
June 28, 2026
  • Live at ratestring.com with secure accounts and exhibit-ready, branded PDF export.
  • Support is one email away: support@ratestring.com.