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Send Estimates and Inspections to customers

Nothing you build in BayEngine reaches a customer until you Send it. Send is always its own explicit step: completing an Inspection or finishing an Estimate does not notify anyone. This page covers what Send does to the Estimate or Inspection, the checks that can block it, and how you track whether the customer looked and answered. Picking the channel and contact, writing the message, resending, and delivery problems are covered in Send Estimates, Inspections, and Invoices.

What Send does​

Every paper-airplane Send button opens the same dialog. Pick a contact and delivery method first; Email and Text then open a second step where you can edit the prefilled message before clicking Send. Behind that gesture, sending an estimate publishes every reviewed, non-hidden Service to the Customer Portal and raises the "Review recommendations" prompt asking the customer to approve or decline each one. Until then, recommendations are staff-only; a Service the customer has never been Sent does not exist on the portal.

The message editor does not show the Portal Link. BayEngine adds it at the end when the message is sent, so editing the wording cannot remove or change the customer's destination. Copy portal link skips the editor and completes from the first step.

The first Send of a visit also creates its durable portal link and pins the visit's customer-facing presentation: the Customer detail preset and the terms-of-service version in effect at that moment stay attached to the visit, so later settings edits change future visits, not this one.

All three delivery methods run the same Send on the server. Copy portal link publishes the Services and raises the portal prompt exactly like Email does; it just leaves delivery to you. So don't copy the link "just to peek" at a draft estimate: the customer-visible state changes the moment you click Send.

Estimate statuses​

A standalone Estimate moves through a fixed set of statuses, shown as a chip next to its number and filterable on the Documents list:

  • Draft: being built, customer has seen nothing.
  • Sent: Send published it to the customer; the sent date is recorded.
  • Viewed: the customer opened the portal link.
  • Approved: the customer authorized at least one Service, or staff recorded an authorization.
  • Declined: every presented Service was declined.
  • Converted: an approved Estimate became a Repair Order.
  • Expired: the expiration date passed before a decision.

Send moves a Draft Estimate to Sent. Viewed happens on its own when the customer opens the link. Approved and Declined come from decisions, on the portal or at the counter; see Record authorizations, declines, and deferred work. A Converted Estimate is read-only, and an Expired one cannot come back: its portal stays visible but decisions are disabled, with a message telling the customer to contact the shop.

On a Repair Order's Estimate tab, Send works the same way but the RO's own status does not change; the RO records when approval was requested, and the activity log gets an entry like "Requested customer approval for 3 services."

What blocks a Send​

The Send button on the Estimate tab is disabled, with a tooltip naming the reason, when the document is read-only, has no customer, or has no visible Services. The dialog itself disables Email or Text when the chosen contact has no email or no SMS-capable phone.

A shop-level gate applies the first time an Estimate is sent: the shop must be launch-ready, meaning business information complete, a confirmed tax config, and an enabled payment method. Otherwise the Send fails, naming the missing pieces; see Shop identity, contact information, hours, and closures.

One more gate is about content rather than configuration. If any visible Service has not been marked reviewed, clicking Send first opens a "Mark services reviewed?" checklist, because AI-generated Services need a human look before a customer sees them. Only reviewed Services are published; skipping the checklist sends without the unreviewed ones. A Send where nothing at all is visible to the customer is rejected outright.

Send Inspection results​

Inspections are sent from the Repair Order's Inspections tab, separately from the estimate. The Send button there counts what is sendable (it reads Send 2 when two reports qualify), and one click sends every completed, customer-visible Inspection that has not gone out yet. There is no picking individual reports within a Send; make an Inspection not-customer-visible if you want to hold it back.

An Inspection has its own status trail: Not started, In progress, Completed, Sent to customer, and Customer viewed. Send moves each report from Completed to Sent to customer and stamps the time. Unlike estimate recommendations, a completed customer-visible Inspection already appears in the portal's documents before you Send; what Send adds is the notification and the "Review inspection" prompt asking the customer to look. When the customer opens the report, it moves to Customer viewed. Reopening a sent Inspection to fix something pulls it back to In progress; completing it again makes it sendable again. Completing and marking visibility are covered in Configure and perform Inspections.

After every completed report has gone out, the Send button remains available for another Text, Email, or Copy delivery of the same Portal Link. The dialog shows a green check confirming the earlier Send; another delivery does not rewrite the report's original sent or viewed state.

What the customer sees​

The portal link lands on one page per visit, with a single prompt for whatever needs attention: review the inspection report, or approve or decline each recommended Service, with a signature if your shop requires one. Recommendations outrank the inspection prompt when both are open. The full portal walkthrough is Use the Customer Portal for approvals, status, documents, and payment.

Track what happened​

Every portal open updates the visit's first-viewed and last-viewed times. The Send dialog shows this directly — "Portal last viewed Jul 20, 2:14 PM" or "Portal not viewed yet" — so before resending you can tell whether the customer has looked at all. On a standalone Estimate, the first open also flips the status chip from Sent to Viewed.

The Repair Order's activity log records each Send: "Requested customer approval for N services" and "Sent inspection 'Courtesy check'", each with who clicked and when, followed later by the customer's portal decisions. Automations can also trigger on Estimate sent and Inspection sent to customer, for example to create a follow-up Task for the advisor when an estimate sits unanswered.

Sending again after changes​

Editing a sent Estimate does not reset its status; Sent and Viewed stand, and the portal always shows current prices. When you add new Services after a Send, they stay off the portal until the next Send publishes them, so click Send again after review. Sending again keeps the original sent date and re-raises the portal prompt. Adding work after the customer has already authorized is its own flow; see Collect deposits and revise previously authorized work.