One record follows a job from the first quote to the paid invoice. It changes name as it goes — estimate, repair order, invoice — but it is the same order, carrying the same number, and the workflow status is what moves it along.
The statuses, and what each one means
The workflow board has five lanes:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Estimate | Being written. Nothing has been sent. |
| Estimate sent | The customer has the estimate and can respond. |
| Approved | Something on it was authorized. |
| In progress | Work has started — the document is now a repair order. |
| Completed | Work is done, ready to invoice. |
Two things ride on the status without being obvious:
- The document changes name and prefix. Estimate, estimate sent and approved
all print as an estimate (
EST-); in progress prints as a repair order (RO-); everything after that prints as an invoice (INV-). An authorized estimate is still an estimate — the repair order begins when the work does. - The number does not change. There is one counter per shop, so order 1043
is
EST-1043, thenRO-1043, thenINV-1043. The customer sees a number they recognise at every stage.
Sending the estimate
The sidebar's next action follows the status: Send estimate on a draft, then Start work, Mark completed, Send invoice. Sending an estimate emails the customer a link to their portal copy and moves the order to estimate sent in the same action.
Atención
Sending is blocked until the owner's email address is verified — see set up your shop. Everything else on the order works while you wait.
What the customer does
The portal lists the estimate service by service. The customer opts in to what they want: a ticked service is authorized, an unticked one is declined. There is no all-or-nothing gate, so a customer can approve the brakes and defer the suspension in one pass.
To submit, they type their name, accept the consent text and sign. All three are required — the signature is the record you keep.
What happens on submit:
Each service takes the customer's decision
Authorized or declined, per service, recorded individually.
The order records an overall review status
Authorized if they took everything, declined if they took nothing, partially authorized in between.
The order moves to approved
But only if something was authorized, and only if it was still sitting at an estimate stage. An order already in progress is not dragged backwards.
The authorized total is frozen
The order is re-totalled from what they actually approved, and that figure is stored on the authorization. It is the yardstick for the change warning below.
The estimate PDF is regenerated afterwards so the authorization block on the document reflects the decision, and the signature is stored alongside it.
Each submission is guarded against a double signing: a second submit against an already-signed estimate is refused rather than silently overwriting the first.
Recording an authorization yourself
Customers approve in person and over the phone at least as often as they do online. Authorize on the order records that, using the same machinery — the same per-service decisions, the same frozen total, the same audit trail — with a method of in person, phone or email instead of a signature.
Nota
A staff authorization carries no signature, and the record says so: every authorization stores whether it came from the customer or from your team, which user recorded it, when, and any note attached. If you need a signed document, send the estimate and let the customer sign it.
You can record an authorization on the customer's behalf any number of times — the double-submit guard applies to the portal, not to your own staff. What you cannot do is authorize an order that has already been billed.
Editing after approval
You can keep editing an approved estimate. A walk-in who says "do the brakes too" should not force you to start over.
But if your edits push the order above the total the customer approved, a warning appears on the order showing the approved figure, the current figure and the difference, with a Re-send for approval action. Taking it clears the previous submission, refreshes the review link for another seven days, re-sends the estimate email and puts the order back to estimate sent so the customer can respond again.
Atención
The warning only appears when a customer approved the estimate — there is no signed agreement to exceed if your team authorized the work itself. Editing under a staff authorization is silent by design.
Troubleshooting
"The customer approved, but the order is still on estimate sent." They declined everything. Declining every service records the decision without moving the workflow forward.
"The approval link expired." Review links are good for seven days. Re-sending the estimate mints a fresh one.
"I edited the order and nothing warned me." Either the total is still at or below what was approved, or the approval on file is one your team recorded rather than one the customer signed.
"I can't authorize this order." It has been billed. An invoiced order is closed to authorization changes — the agreement it records has already been charged.