How work orders work

What this does

The work order is the job from approval to hand-over. It carries the lines being worked, who's working them and where, the promised date, and a status that the whole shop reads from lists, the Shop Floor board, and the technician dashboards.

Statuses

Estimate → Approved → In Progress → Waiting Parts / Awaiting Authorization → Ready for Pickup → Delivered → Invoiced → Paid, with Declined, Cancelled, and In Storage off the main line.

Three of them do more than change a label. Approved stamps the approval milestone the first time it's reached and never clears it. Ready for Pickup is the completion point: stock parts on the job are deducted from inventory, the parts are written to the vehicle's parts history, and the work_order_completed automation event fires. Invoiced and Paid are set by people, not by the invoice; the invoice tracks its own money status separately.

Fields

Title, Customer, Vehicle, Status, Priority (Low, Normal, High, Urgent), Promised Date, Billing Type (see Billing types), Mileage In, Description, Customer Notes, Internal Notes, plus a Bay and a Technician assignment. Line items live in their own section; a Change History records edits; Job Costing shows margin once parts are costed.

Who sees what

Technicians see work orders assigned to them (and, on the Shop Floor board, everyone's). They can read lines and notes and attach inspections and diagnostics, but they don't create or edit the job or see the invoice.

Common problems

A job vanished from the Estimates list. It became a work order the moment it left the estimate band. Same number, under Sales → Work Orders.

Inventory didn't go down. Stock is deducted when the status reaches Ready for Pickup, not when a part line is added. If the job skipped straight to Delivered, set it to Ready for Pickup first.