Improvements and fixes, newest first. We ship often.
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.