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Record authorizations, declines, and deferred work

Work is authorized Service by Service, not document by document. Each Service carries one customer decision (undecided, authorized, or declined), and every decision writes an Authorization Evidence record: who decided, by what method, at what time, and against what price and scope. Approving a whole Estimate is just every presented Service decided at once. Decisions arrive two ways: the customer submits them on the Customer Portal after you send the Estimate, or staff record a decision the customer gave in person, on the phone, or in a text thread. This page covers both paths, what happens to declined work, and how to handle work the customer wants to do later. Changing already authorized work afterward is its own topic; see Collect deposits and revise previously authorized work.

When the customer decides on the portal​

The portal shows each presented Service under its section heading (Customer requested, Urgent, or Recommended) with a checkbox. Customer requested and Urgent Services the customer has never decided on arrive pre-checked; Recommended ones start unchecked. Already authorized work is locked in and cannot be un-approved from the portal. The customer adjusts the checkboxes and taps Authorize with the running total. If nothing is selected, that button becomes Decline all.

Submitting decides the whole pending presented set. Checked pending Services are authorized; unchecked pending Services are declined in the same action. A customer who approves 2 of 4 Services has, in the same stroke, declined the other 2. With nothing selected, Decline all opens a short confirmation and records every pending Service as declined. The portal may call declined Services "skipped" in its copy, but the recorded decision is declined.

Before anything is recorded, the Confirm authorization dialog shows the selected Services, subtotal, fees, discounts, and tax, and asks for the customer's full name. A drawn signature is also required when the Customer signature setting is on; see Payment methods and customer-document settings. The dialog describes signing when the signature is required and authorizing when it is optional. In either case, the customer authorizes the selected Services at the listed prices and accepts your terms of service, and the authorization stores which version of the terms was accepted. Decline all uses a separate confirmation with no name, signature, required authorization facts, or terms acceptance.

One submission is one Authorization Event: every Service decided in it shares a timestamp, so a visit with several rounds of approval reads as a sequence of events, not a pile of loose decisions.

Record a decision staff collected​

When the customer decides at the counter or on a call, record it from the Estimate tab of the Estimate or Repair Order. The Authorize button in the bottom bar opens a Record staff decision menu with three choices: Authorize all, Decline all, and Authorize some…, which lists every undecided Service with a checkbox per row. Checked Services are authorized; unchecked Services remain undecided so they can be handled later. Each Service card's own actions menu also has Authorize and Decline for a single Service. When nothing is awaiting a decision, the button says so and stays disabled.

Every path opens the same dialog, which asks how the customer gave the decision:

  • In person: the customer decided at the shop. The customer-name field is pre-filled from the document's customer and can be corrected before recording the decision. Collect signature takes over a chosen monitor in fullscreen. Its top bar shows Close signature, the customer, vehicle, authorization total, Change display, Clear, and Done; the rest of the screen is the signing canvas. The drawn signature is optional unless the Customer signature setting requires it. After the customer taps Done, the advisor reviews the signature and records the authorization from the original dialog.
  • Phone: the customer decided over a call. The phone number is pre-filled from the first phone number on file when available. It is required and is stored with the evidence.
  • Text message: an SMS thread holds the decision. Record it here so the Service state matches what the customer already said; the thread itself stays in the Inbox.

Use Change display in the fullscreen signing header to choose the monitor that faces the customer. BayEngine remembers that choice on the workstation. An XP-PEN tablet must also be mapped to that monitor in the XP-PEN driver.

For in-person decisions, the name entered in the dialog is stored as the approver's name. Bulk decisions share one timestamp, so an "Authorize all" is one Authorization Event just like a portal submission. Recording a decision on an unreviewed Service also marks it reviewed; the dialog notes how many that affects.

To undo a mistaken entry, the Service card's actions menu has Reset Authorization, which returns the Service to undecided. It is for staff mistakes, not customer minds changing; a real reversal should be a new recorded decision.

Required authorization facts​

A Reason For Visit is a required authorization fact by default, and the odometer can be required the same way but is optional by default. There is no settings page to change either requirement yet. The full picture of those two fields is in Set the Reason For Visit, Visit Type, odometer, and Promise Time.

These facts are enforced on the portal: a customer cannot submit an authorization while a required fact is missing. The confirm dialog grows a Required details section where the customer supplies the missing pieces, typically the reason for visit and, where required, the odometer, and they are saved onto the visit as part of the authorization. The staff recording dialog runs no such check; the only requirement it enforces is the drawn signature for in-person decisions when the setting demands one. So a staff-recorded authorization can exist on a document with no Reason For Visit, and the gap simply remains for someone to fill in.

What happens to a declined Service​

A declined Service stays on the document. Nothing is deleted: the Service keeps its labor, parts, and notes, drops out of the Estimate tab's proposed totals, and is never billed. The Invoice lists declined Services alongside completed work when the Include declined Services on mixed Invoices switch is on, and an Invoice containing only declined recommendations always lists them at $0.00.

A decline is not final. On the portal, a declined Service renders unchecked and re-selectable, so a customer who reconsiders after a call from the advisor can approve it in a later round; staff can likewise use Authorize on it at any time. The re-approval is a fresh Authorization Event with its own evidence, so the record shows the decline and the later approval as separate decisions.

You cannot decline a Service that is already completed, has completed labor or part lines, or has a technician's time actively running on it. Finish the bookkeeping question of who pays for that work before touching its authorization state.

What an authorization locks​

Authorization freezes the price story, not the screen. Lines on an authorized Service stay editable until the Repair Order is invoiced, but three things change at the moment of authorization:

  • Automatic part repricing stops. Part lines on an authorized Service no longer recalculate from markup when costs or context change; only a deliberate manual price edit moves them.
  • Price increases get flagged. If edits push the Service's customer-facing total above what the customer last signed for, the Estimate tab shows an amber "+$xx.xx since authorization" badge and the portal tells the customer the price changed. The increase needs a fresh authorization before the work is billable; that workflow is covered in Collect deposits and revise previously authorized work.
  • The Service can no longer be hidden from the customer.

An approved Estimate also counts as active work elsewhere in BayEngine: it blocks vehicle transfers and duplicate merges until the work concludes.

Authorization gates billing, not purchasing. You can order parts for a Service that has no authorization yet; the Purchase Order confirmation warns that customer authorization is not recorded and makes you check "Continue before customer authorization" to proceed, and that acknowledgment is stored with the order.

Where the evidence lives​

The Authorization log panel, opened from the utility rail on an Estimate or Repair Order, lists every Authorization Event: the total authorized, the incremental amount that event added, who decided, when, by what method (with the phone number for phone decisions), which Services were authorized or declined, and the drawn signature when one was captured. Evidence is append-only; nobody can edit what a past event says. Each authorized Service's badge on the Estimate tab also shows its date and method on hover, an authorization on a Repair Order is recorded in the RO's Activity log, and an Automation can trigger when a Service is authorized.

Deferred work​

BayEngine has no deferred state. Work the customer wants "next visit" is recorded as declined, and the declined Services on past visits are the shop's deferred-work record: they stay on those documents, in the vehicle's service history, and print on Invoices per the mixed-Invoices switch, so the next advisor who opens the vehicle can see what was recommended and turned down.

To bring that work onto a new Repair Order, click Add service and open the Previously declined tab. Its badge counts eligible recommendations from prior finalized Repair Orders for the same Vehicle anywhere in the Organization, including declines recorded by the customer and Services administratively declined when a prior Invoice was finalized. Hidden Services do not appear. Select one or several rows and click Add service or Add N services.

BayEngine creates new editable Services in the current Repair Order; it does not move or alter the historical Services. Names, notes, categories, labor, parts, sublets, fees, discounts, quantities, and quoted prices carry forward. Authorization, presentation, completion, technician assignments, concern links, purchasing and receiving state, vendors, inventory links, and template provenance start fresh. The current Repair Order's default technician and tax settings apply. Review the copied quote before presenting it because current tax rules can change its total.

Once copied, the prior decline is superseded and leaves the tab, declined-work reporting, and reminder eligibility. Deleting the new Service makes its source available again. If the new Service is later declined and that Repair Order is finalized, the new decline becomes the current recommendation that can be carried forward on a future visit.

After an Invoice is paid, the portal offers Schedule follow-up, which shows the visit's declined Services pre-checked with a date, time, and note. Confirm & schedule creates a scheduled Appointment from the shop's online booking availability. The selected Services and note become Reasons For Visit on that new Appointment. It remains separate from the completed visit and can be checked in as its own Repair Order when the customer arrives.

If you want to build a Service now without presenting it at all, keep it hidden instead; a hidden Service is withheld from the customer rather than decided. Hiding is part of building the Estimate, not a decline.