Add vehicles and correct vehicle information

Add a Vehicle from its Customer's page or from the customer and vehicle picker while creating a document, let a plate search or VIN decode fill in the details, and correct mistakes from the same dialog later. A Vehicle's details are stored once and shown live everywhere it appears, so a correction also updates past documents.

Where to add a vehicle

A Vehicle always belongs to exactly one Customer, so you start from one:

• On the customer page, open the Details tab and select Add vehicle in the Vehicles section.
• While creating a Repair Order, Estimate, or Appointment, pick the customer first, then select New vehicle beside the vehicle search.
• On a Repair Order that has a customer but no vehicle yet, select Add vehicle on the Vehicle card.

Online bookings can also create Vehicles: a completed booking matches the customer's existing Vehicle by year, make, and model, or creates a new one from what the customer entered.

There is no bulk vehicle import. Vehicle records are built up as customers book, call, and check in — see Initial data imports and migration.

Adding a Vehicle requires the Vehicles create permission in the active Shop; editing one requires Vehicles update.

Start with the plate or the VIN

The Add vehicle dialog leads with two lookups so you rarely type the vehicle description by hand:

1. Enter the Plate and State and select Search. BayEngine finds the VIN currently registered to that US plate and decodes it, filling the VIN, year, make, model, trim, and engine along with the plate.
2. Or enter the VIN and select Decode. The VIN is decoded against the federal vehicle database (NHTSA) and fills year, make, model, trim, and engine. Any plate you already typed is kept.

If a lookup fails, the dialog shows a Lookup failed alert with the reason: a plate with no registration on file, an invalid VIN, or the lookup service being unavailable. Enter the fields yourself and save; nothing about a Vehicle depends on the lookup having worked.

Only make and model are required to save. Make is a text field that suggests the standard makes as you type, and you can enter a make that is not in the list. Color comes from a fixed list and drives the stock photo shown on vehicle cards. Internal notes are staff-only; customers never see them.

Classic vehicles with identifiers shorter than 17 characters can be saved in the VIN field, but Decode needs a full modern 17-character VIN. A saved VIN is also what unlocks the vehicle-data features on the Repair Order, such as fluid specifications, labor guide times, OEM maintenance schedules, and technical service bulletins.

When the VIN or plate matches another vehicle

As you enter identifiers, BayEngine checks the whole Organization for the same VIN or plate and shows any matches as cards inside the dialog. The same check runs again on save, so a duplicate created by a coworker moments earlier is still caught.

• An exact VIN match shows a strong warning. The match card shows who owns the Vehicle and offers the right way forward: Use existing Vehicle, Transfer Vehicle when another Customer currently owns it, Restore Vehicle when it was archived, or Merge duplicates for administrators. Using the existing record is almost always correct, because service and odometer history follow the Vehicle. If none of the matches is correct, select None of these vehicles. Choose VIN is incorrect or unverified to remove the VIN and its decoded details, then enter the Vehicle manually.
• When both Vehicles genuinely have the VIN, an administrator can instead choose Both vehicles really have this VIN and enter a verification note. The permanent audit record clears the duplicate warning and shows Shared VIN verified. See Find and resolve duplicate customers or vehicles.
• A matching plate and state is a warning, not a block, since plates move between vehicles. Select Continue with new Vehicle to acknowledge it and save.
• Another vehicle on the same customer with the same year, make, and model is shown only as a suggestion. It never blocks saving.

Transfers started from a match card are covered in Transfer a vehicle to another customer.

Correct vehicle details

Open the menu at the top right of the Vehicle's card on the customer page and choose Edit, or select Edit vehicle on the Repair Order's Vehicle card. The edit dialog has the same fields as adding, without the plate search and VIN decode buttons; enter corrected values directly.

Changing the VIN or plate re-runs the identity checks above, with the same match cards and the same rules. Editing cannot move a Vehicle to a different Customer; that is a transfer, covered in Transfer a vehicle to another customer. Changing the color regenerates the vehicle's stock photo in the new color.

What a correction changes

A Vehicle's year, make, model, VIN, and plate are stored once and read live by everything that shows the vehicle: search results, the customer page, Estimates, Repair Orders, the Customer Portal, and Invoice PDFs. Documents do not keep a frozen copy of the vehicle description. Fix a VIN typo once and a finalized invoice from last year prints the corrected VIN the next time anyone opens or downloads it.

That reach cuts both ways. Never repurpose a Vehicle record for a different physical vehicle. If a customer replaces their Civic with an Accord, editing the Civic into an Accord would rewrite the vehicle shown on every past invoice and run two service histories together. Add the Accord as a new Vehicle instead, and archive the Civic from its card menu if it will not be back. An archived Vehicle is not gone: entering its VIN later offers Restore Vehicle right in the Add vehicle dialog. How history and past invoices attach to a Vehicle is covered in Understand vehicle ownership, service history, and historical invoices.

A Vehicle with active work cannot be archived. Finish or cancel its open Repair Orders; draft, sent, viewed, or approved Estimates; and scheduled, confirmed, or arrived Appointments first so an operational Vehicle cannot disappear from the Customer's record.