Customer approval

Customers never log in and never install anything. The text link opens a branded page with everything they need to say yes.

The approval page

The page reads like a printed estimate from your shop: your name and address at the top, the vehicle, who it was prepared for, and an estimate number the customer can quote back to you.

• Services listed one per row with a plain-English title, a short description, and the price. A discounted job shows its original price struck through beside the new one, and the summary lists the total savings as its own Discounts line, so the customer always sees the deal. The printed estimate and the PDF strike the original price on each discounted line the same way. Parts & labor opens the line detail (parts, hours, fees, discounts) for customers who want it; the report (why, evidence, what happens if it waits, safe to drive) lives in the same fold.
• Approve and Decline on every row, so the customer can say yes to the brakes and hold off on the cabin filter. A selected row reads Selected. Select all for approval takes the whole list in one tap.
• Your selection on the right (below the list on a phone): the selected services, shop supplies, fees, tax, and one Total. A flat shop supplies or environmental fee is charged once per visit: it rides in full on the first job the customer approves and adds nothing when they approve more later. A percent fee follows the approved parts and labor. Nothing is sent until the customer signs and presses Approve N services; until they sign, the button reads Sign to approve, and once they have, it shows the count and the amount. On a phone a bar at the bottom carries the running total and jumps to the next undecided service or to the finish step, then steps aside once the summary is on screen so it never covers the signature.

Approving takes one signature: the customer signs in the box (their name is filled in under it) and presses Approve, with a single sentence above the button stating that signing authorizes the selected work for the total shown. That signature then prints on the approved estimate, its PDF, and the customer's status page, the same way an invoice carries its signature. Parts work also offers Save my old parts. CarSignal records the drawn signature, name, timestamp, device, and consent text, which satisfies California BAR-style authorization requirements. No payment is taken on this page.

Save my old parts is the first of your Approval terms (Settings, Pricing & invoicing, under Warranty & invoice terms): checkboxes in your own words that sit directly above the Approve button, for example "I authorize the bodywork listed above, agree to the quoted price, and understand that full payment is due upon completion of the repairs." Every shop starts with that one optional save-parts term; keep it, reword it, remove it, or add more. A term you mark Required holds the button (it reads Agree to the terms to approve) until it is ticked; an optional one is the customer's choice. The exact wording they ticked is kept with the approval and prints as ticked boxes under the signature on the approved estimate and its PDF, so a later edit of your terms never changes what an earlier customer agreed to. Record approval in person shows the same checkboxes on your screen. A shop that never changes the list sees no change.

Questions without phone tag

I have a question opens a chat. An AI answers instantly, grounded only in this quote and report. Anything it should not answer gets deferred to you: the customer sees "checking with the shop," and the question lands in your inbox to answer in the same thread.

Declines

A decline can include a reason and marks the work declined, not deleted. Declined services show up later in Outreach follow-up, so the work is not forgotten. When the customer tells you no at the counter or on the phone instead of using the link, record it with Decline on the job card on the vehicle page; it lands in the same place.

The moment they approve

Automatically, without another shop step:

1. You get a notification: Quote approved, $842.50.
2. The work flips to approved and the car moves to In shop, next action Order parts.
3. A draft invoice assembles itself from all approved, unbilled work.
4. If your shop allows slot picking, the customer's chosen time is booked on the schedule with capacity checked.
5. The customer gets a confirmation text and email, and their link becomes a live status tracker (Approved, Scheduled, In progress, Ready, Completed) that updates as you work.

On your side it is live too: with the vehicle page open, the quote card, the job statuses, and any quote preview you have open flip to Approved or Declined within a few seconds of the customer's tap, and the card notes when the customer first opened the link. No refresh needed.

The chosen time is checked again when approval lands. If another booking took the capacity first, CarSignal keeps the approval, leaves the work unscheduled, and asks for another time instead of force-booking the shop. A customer moving an existing appointment gets the same hours, lead-time, time-off, and bay checks; the original appointment link stays valid and the new time starts a fresh confirmation cycle.

Changing work after approval

An approval holds to the amount the customer agreed to. Money roles can still add to an approved job, but if the add raises the price, CarSignal asks how the customer authorized the increase before it lands on the bill: record that they said yes in person or by phone, capture their signature at the counter, or send an updated quote for them to approve fresh. Whichever you pick is stamped on the job's history with the old and new amount, so the bill always matches what the customer authorized. Removing work or lowering the price needs no extra step, since the customer already agreed to more.

The same rule protects a signed invoice: change it after it's signed and the signature clears, so the customer signs again for the new amount before paying.

Sent quotes are protected the same way, before approval: once a quote goes out, the jobs on it are locked. Changing one voids the quote first (the customer's link stops working), then you make the change and resend. The customer can never be looking at a price that's being edited underneath them.

Mobile service visits

When the visit carries a service address, everything the customer reads follows it: the quote page asks when works for the shop to come to them, the live status page says "we'll come to you at your scheduled time," and the finished-work message says the car is all set instead of ready for pickup.