Your first repair order, end to end

Work starts with New estimate on the board, the top-bar quick-create menu or Ctrl+K. Every one opens /estimates/new, one screen where you find the customer or the car by name, phone, plate or VIN — or add either right there — and press Create estimate. The path is still customer → vehicle → estimate; it now happens in one press.

1. The customer

Customers → New customer. Start with name, company, phone, email and notes. A name is optional, and that is a decision rather than a gap: a night-drop car can be booked in with nothing but a plate, and the record saves as New customer and is found by its vehicle until you have a name to put on it. Inventing one to get past the form is how a shop ends up with forty customers called Unknown.

The same form now saves the whole customer record, not just the identity: up to six addresses, preferred contact method and preferred language, fleet and tax exempt status, DOT number, referral source and tags. When you tick Tax exempt, add the reason and, when one exists, the certificate identifier beside it. Torqix freezes that evidence onto the order, estimate and invoice, so a later customer edit does not rewrite old paperwork. The rest is optional, and none of it adds the car — that is still the next step.

There are two consent boxes and they do not mean the same thing. The tick marked Customer agreed to receive texts at this number (consent is tracked per number) is the one field worth being fussy about — without it Torqix will not text that number, and it is recorded per number rather than per person. The tick marked Customer agreed to receive marketing email at this address (estimates and invoices are sent either way) is marketing consent for that address and nothing more: leaving it blank does not hold up an estimate, an approval or an invoice, because those are transactional and go out either way.

Leaving a consent box unticked records "not asked", not "refused". A customer who actually says no is withdrawn from their own record afterwards, which is a different act and is stored as one.

Phones and emails are checked against your existing customers as you go. If it finds a possible match, the button changes to Create anyway so you have to mean it.

2. The car

You land on the customer's page. The car is added there, under Add vehicle, in one box: Enter License Plate, VIN, or Year/Make/Model. It asks your own records first, so a car you have seen before comes back as that car with a link to it rather than as a new one. Enter Vehicle Manually opens the fields — year, make, model, sub model, VIN, plate and type — and Scan VIN barcode will read a VIN off the door jamb with the camera; it fills the box and nothing more.

Under the box, Show license plate results for names the state a plate would be looked up in. If a plate provider is connected, Look up this plate appears in the result itself and answers there — you do not leave the card. Each candidate carries a match percentage, its engine, the registration window it is claiming, and where it came from, in words. Use this vehicle fills the form; it never submits it, and you can edit anything before you press Add vehicle. Candidates it threw out are shown with the reason rather than hidden, because a silent rejection reads as "no such car". The whole box has its own page: Finding a car by plate, VIN or year, make and model.

3. The estimate

Every repair order opens with a Next step box directly under its title. Its sentence follows the order's current state, and the one control that carries out that next step is the screen's single primary button. The other legal actions stay available without competing for attention.

From a customer record, each vehicle still has Start estimate. From anywhere else, use New estimate and choose or add both records on that one screen. Its optional First concern carries the customer's words onto the first service when you press Create estimate. Add jobs, labour and parts on the ticket; the labour rate and the tax rates were copied onto the order when it was created, so changing them in settings later will not move this one.

On the order's Services tab, Comments & Recommendations comes first: what the customer told you on the left, which saves itself as you type (Save comments sits in the box's corner for when it cannot), and the services you have marked recommended on the right. If this customer sent your work request form lately, it sits under the two boxes as one line quoting their words; open it for their photos, Use their words and Add their photo to this order. The search, New Service and the services themselves follow.

The order has six tabs across the top: Services, Summary, Inspections, Time Clocks, Parts & Tires and Notes. Services, Inspections and Parts & Tires show a count. Each tab has its own icon, and the strip shortens two names: Time is Time Clocks and Parts is Parts & Tires. Summary puts the order on one page: the hours logged against the hours the customer authorized, how many services are done, a To do list, a box for a crew note, Order info, Customer comments, Recommendations and the order's activity. Time Clocks has a timer card for each person on the car and the time logged against it. Parts & Tires lists every part on the order with the purchase order it is on, and the tires in a table of their own. Notes is the crew's notes, newest first — Notes are not visible by customers. Type @ and a teammate's name in a note to tell them. A note saved on Summary or Notes, or in the shop chat beside the order, brings you back to the tab you typed it on, and an empty note is refused there rather than sending you to the board.

Each of those tabs has the reference's own presses. On Parts & Tires, Place all orders lists every part on no purchase order with the vendor it goes to — one choice for all of them, and each part's own — and every draft already on the order. Place orders drafts one purchase order per vendor and marks every order that names a vendor ordered, all at once or not at all; a part left on Decide later is drafted and waits for a vendor. A part already installed off your shelf or the tire rack is never listed. On Time Clocks, + Add time manually opens the same form as the Time screen, on the order: the person, the service, the day and the two times. An owner or manager also sees Start and Clock out on a colleague's card; the time is marked as entered by whoever pressed it, and a technician sees only their own. On Notes, the paperclip attaches a file or photo to the note, and the padlock says where it goes: locked, the file stays on the note with the crew; unlocked, it goes on the order's files for the customer's copy and the note says it was shared. The note itself is never sent to the customer either way.

A service made from an inspection finding is filed under Recommendations as what we found, with the inspection's own words for how urgent it is — never under Customer comments, because the customer did not say it. The customer's approval page shows it the same way, under What we found, in their language.

The order the lines read in is yours to set. Open a labor or part line's row menu to find Move up and Move down. Moving a line moves it on the customer's estimate and invoice too — both read the same order this screen does. An estimate you have already sent is a frozen copy and does not change.

For a walk-in price with no car and no commitment, use Quotes instead. A quote has its own numbering and turns into a real order with Convert to repair order when the customer says yes.

To take a part back off, open its row menu and choose Remove part line. A part issued from the shelf is put back through a new stock movement; its original movement is never erased. A draft purchase-order link is detached. A part on an ordered purchase order that has not arrived stays until you cancel that order, because the order would still bring it. Once the vendor has delivered it, the part is in your building and the removal puts it on your shelf as stock, at the cost it was bought at — keep it, or send it back to the vendor from the part's own page. A quoted core charge leaves with the part, but an invoiced core deposit stays on its issued document and must follow the core-return and refund path.

4. Getting it approved

Send, in the toolbar beside Print, opens the Send Estimate window, where you compose the send: text, email or both where the customer has a consented mobile and a working address, which address and which number, the subject, and your own message for this customer — starting from one of the shop's templates if you have written any. A number without texting consent is not offered and cannot be texted. Its Send for approval emails the estimate to the customer and shows you the link to their approval page at the same time. Both, every time — so if the email cannot go (no address on file, an address that has bounced, or a shop whose mail is not set up yet) you still have a link in your hand to text them, and the banner says which happened. The classic order screen also has a one-press Send for approval beside its own Send.

The panel also decides what the customer's page will offer, and those answers stick to THAT link. Whether the inspection findings ride along, whether a signature is asked for, whether the page shows your conversation and what they have already authorized. Change a shop setting next week and the link you already sent keeps behaving the way the panel described it — which is the point, because a customer was told what to expect. Links inside the shown conversation are stripped back to the site they pointed at, so an older estimate's signing link can never travel on a newer one.

Reminders are on the same panel and in the same price: pick up to three days to chase an unanswered estimate and each nudge goes out at nine in the morning, your time, on the channels the send used and through the same consent gate. Approving, declining, sending a newer version or the car simply coming in ends the chase in the same moment — nobody is asked to approve something they already answered.

The link works for fourteen days and is used up by signing. Sending again makes a NEW version and retires the previous link, so a customer holding an older email cannot approve prices you have since changed — they get a page telling them to look for the newer message. The link is only shown for a few minutes after the send, on that ticket; reload later and it is gone, and the way to get another is to send again.

On their side they get each job with Approve or Not this time, type their name, and press Submit approval. Back on the order you then see who signed, when, against which version of the estimate, and how many jobs they took. Declined jobs are not lost — they become follow-ups.

Beside Submit approval, You are approving keeps a running total as the customer changes each answer. When tax, fees or a discount mean the chosen jobs are not the final invoice amount, it says Work only — before tax, fees and any discount. instead of presenting an estimate as a final total.

5. Through the shop

Photographs on a service and images or files on the order appear as preview tiles. Press an image to open it in the viewer over the repair order; use Download there or on the tile to save the original file.

On the order, the Workflow Status select in the rail on the right moves the car between lanes, and it lists only the lanes the order can legally go to next — a lane it cannot reach from here is not in the list at all. On the board, a card carries the same step as a button that says where it is going: → In Progress, → Complete. The ordinary route uses ten statuses: Estimate, Approved, In Progress, Quality Check, Complete, Invoiced, Paid, Closed, Declined and No-show. The board has six stage lanes: Estimates, Approved, In Progress, Quality Check, Complete and Invoiced — the same names the select, the lists and the reports use. A card can also go back a stage (Complete to Quality Check or In Progress, In Progress to Approved, Approved to Estimates), but never behind a live invoice. An older ticket may still show Parts hold; its only move is back to In Progress. New parts waits are a flag on a card in its real stage. Paid and closed leave the board, which is the point of them.

Quality Check can bounce a car back to In Progress. If you have set a QC checklist in shop settings, Complete leaves the select and the checklist takes its place under it, ending in Move to Complete; a manager who wants past it types a reason that goes in the audit trail with their name.

The line under the order's name — Estimate, Repair Order, Invoiced, Paid, Closed — ticks itself off as the order goes, and the heading above it says which document you are looking at: Estimate, Repair Order or Invoice.

6. Invoice and payment

The order rail's Payment terms row says which terms the invoice will be issued on, and where they came from: this repair order, the customer's account, or the shop default. Change it here and only this repair order moves — the account keeps the terms it had. The due date is worked out once, when the invoice is issued, and frozen on the document, so editing a term afterwards never moves an invoice you have already sent. Once the invoice exists the row stops being a picker and says what is frozen on it.

The Order Status button in the rail carries the order's next step and names it: Convert to Repair Order on an estimate once at least one service is authorized, Invoice once approved work is waiting to be billed, and Archive & Close once the invoice is paid, which walks the order to Closed in one press with every check on the way still applied. A step that is not available yet says why when you press it, rather than doing nothing. Under it, the hold row says what the car is waiting on — Nothing is holding this up until you flag parts, approval or the customer — and one press sets or clears it.

Once the invoice is issued, Send in the toolbar opens Send Invoice: text, email or both, which address and which number, and a sentence of your own, then Send invoice. The email's subject names the invoice and what is still due. Inside, it lists the invoice total, what has been paid and the balance due — the same balance the order and the customer's page show — with the invoice attached as a PDF and a View invoice button that opens the customer's copy. Each send makes a fresh link and retires the one before.

The Grand Total bar sits at the foot of the rail; its arrow lifts the breakdown — labor, parts, fees, taxes, what has been paid and the remaining balance. Under it, New Payment opens a small window over the order: the amount starts at the balance, Full balance and Half fill it for you, and with cash picked it works out the change due from what you were handed. Once the balance is clear the bar's pill reads Fully Paid.

Taking part of it is the same window with a smaller amount. When it closes, the bar says what you just took and in what — "$50.00 Cash payment recorded." — and, while some is paid and some is still owed, shows both on one line under the total, so you never lift the breakdown to find what is left. A payment the order cannot take — more than the balance, an amount that cannot be read — is refused inside the window, which stays open with the reason at the top; nothing is recorded, and pressing twice on a slow connection still records the payment once.

Money before the invoice is a deposit. Take a deposit in the Order Status menu asks how much — a fixed amount or a percentage of the authorized work — and Request deposit brings the window straight back to take it with Record Deposit. It comes off the invoice when the invoice is issued. On a phone the bar at the foot of the screen holds the one next step: Invoice until the invoice is out, then New Payment.

Prefer the older layout? ⋯ beside Close has Switch to the classic order screen, and the classic screen's own ⋯ has Try the new order workspace to come back. The choice is yours alone and sticks until you change it. On the classic screen the button in the money bar reads Issue invoice, then Record payment, and once the balance is clear it is a pill reading Paid.

A new shop starts with five payment methods — Cash, Check, Card, Financing and Other — and that is a starting point rather than the list. Add your own on Settings › Payment types: name the tender the way your shop says it, say whether it counts as cash in the drawer, and press Add type. Types can be renamed, reordered and retired, and the only refusal is retiring the last active one. Tips are recorded separately and never folded into the balance. Payments are append-only: a mistake is corrected with a refund line, with a reason, not by editing history.

7. Printing, and the oil-change sticker

Print in the toolbar prints the customer's copy in a new tab — the invoice, once there is one. The arrow beside it opens the rest: the estimate or repair order and the work order, each with its own options, then Print Oil Sticker and Oil Sticker PDF.

Print Oil Sticker opens the windscreen sticker for this car: your shop's name and phone, Next service, a mileage and a date, whichever comes first, then the car, its plate and the order number. The mileage is the odometer reading on the order plus 5,000 miles. The date is the order's date plus your shop's Service reminder interval, or six months when you have not set one; the page says which it used. With no odometer on the order the mileage is left blank for you to write in.

Above the sticker, Next-service mileage and Next-service date change either number for this sticker — leave a box blank to keep the worked-out one — and Sticker size picks a 2 x 2 inch label or a Letter sheet with the label in its top-left corner. Update sticker redraws the page with what you typed, and Open PDF opens the same sticker as a PDF for a label printer. Oil Sticker PDF in the print menu goes straight to that PDF at label size with the worked-out numbers. A mileage that is not more than the order's odometer, or a date before the order or more than five years after it, is refused by name, and nothing prints until it is fixed. Nothing you type is saved: the next sticker starts from the order again.