Workshop: intake through estimate approval

Use this workflow to build a traceable record of a visit: the customer's request, what the inspection found, the priced proposal and the decision about that proposal. Start from the Workshop setup guide if your team, vehicles or templates are not yet configured.

The instructions follow the reviewed Odoo 20 source. Earlier introductory scenes cover selected screens; this guide is not a new runtime or complete role-acceptance test. Confirm the authorization form, including authorizer selection, in your own test environment before relying on it for daily decisions.

Arrange the handoff

A Service Advisor normally records intake and customer decisions. An inspector needs the appropriate Workshop role and access to the repair order; Service Advisors, Technicians and Quality Inspectors have inspection editing access. An Estimator, Workshop Manager or Workshop Administrator manages estimate revisions. The person preparing the quotation also needs the appropriate native Sales access. Workshop roles do not automatically include every other Workshop role.

Have a published inspection template for the order's company, the vehicle and customer records, and a clear agreement about who can authorize work. Use the actual customer's decision and evidence; an estimate's existence is not approval to repair.

1. Receive the vehicle

1. Open Workshop → Customers & Intake → Customer Vehicles. Search for the existing vehicle before creating another. Check its customer, owner, make, model and available registration or VIN details. A vehicle record requires a customer, make and model.
2. Open Customers & Intake → Vehicle Intake and create the repair order. Choose the vehicle and check the company, customer, owner and contact. The order must agree with the vehicle's company and customer/owner relationships.
3. Set the service advisor and record the incoming odometer and customer reference when available. In Requests, preserve the customer's wording. Add diagnosis and recommendation details when known rather than replacing that original request.
4. Save the draft and select Open when reception is ready to begin the visit.

Keep the repair-order reference for the next team. Home → Front Desk Today provides a reception queue; the order's linked-record buttons and tabs keep inspection, findings and estimates attached to that visit.

2. Complete the inspection

1. From the repair order's Inspections tab or linked inspections, create an inspection for this order. Select a published template version from the same company and check the inspector.
2. Save the inspection. Its responses are created from the template's items. Open the response lines and enter the requested condition, yes/no response, text, number or choice. Complete every required item using the appropriate response control.
3. Record findings against the inspection or individual response when that context matters. Give each finding a clear title, description and severity. For example, separate the customer's report of a noise from the inspection finding that explains it.
4. Add relevant images under Workshop Images, or link them to the finding. The upload form accepts JPEG, PNG and WebP images. Keep them on the same repair order; a filename alone does not establish which visit the image belongs to.
5. Review the responses, then select Complete Inspection. The source validates required answers and response types before completion. Completed responses are frozen, so resolve missing or incorrect responses first.

A finding begins as Restricted. Use Mark Internal after internal review. An advisor, estimator, manager or administrator can then use Prepare for Customer Review where appropriate. Images have their own approval and audience controls. A finding or image prepared for customer review is only a candidate for a separate reviewed publication; it has not automatically been sent or exposed to the customer.

3. Prepare the priced proposal

The estimator reviews the requests, findings and relevant images, then prepares the native Sales quotation using the organization's pricing procedure. This guide does not assume that findings automatically become quotation lines.

1. Prepare a quotation in the same company as the repair order, for the same commercial customer. Check its products, descriptions, quantities, prices, taxes and currency.
2. Open Workshop → Quality & Customer → Estimates, or the order's Estimates button, and create the estimate linked to the repair order and that quotation. Home → Estimator Work is also available for the estimator's daily queue.
3. Select Generate Revision. The quotation must still be in draft or sent status. Review the resulting frozen lines and totals before publication.
4. Select Publish on the draft revision when the snapshot is correct. Publication records the revision and publisher; it does not send an email or create an invoice.

If the quotation changes after generation, publication is blocked. Use Discard Draft on that unpublished revision, correct or finish the quotation, and generate a fresh revision. A published revision is retained as history. When the proposal changes later, generate its successor and use Publish and Supersede rather than editing the old snapshot. Only one draft revision can be pending for the estimate.

4. Record the customer's decision

Use Home → Customer Decisions or Quality & Customer → Authorizations. Advisors, estimators, managers and administrators can record these decisions; the Financial User role alone provides read access.

1. Create an authorization decision and choose the current published revision.
2. Leave Estimate Line empty for a decision about the whole revision, or choose a specific priced line. Ensure this matches what the authorizer actually agreed to.
3. Choose Approve, Decline or Defer. Select the authorizer, the authority basis and the communication channel. The available authority bases include Customer, Insurer, Fleet or Other Payer, Warranty Provider, Internal Approval and Other.
4. Add an explanatory note and relevant same-order evidence, then save. Reopen the saved decision and check the authorizer, scope, amount and recorded user. The recorded decision timestamp is generated when the decision is saved.

The channel describes how the decision was obtained; choosing Email or Insurer System does not send a message or settle a claim. If the decision changes, create a new decision that explicitly identifies the current decision it supersedes for that same scope and authority. Do not overwrite the historical decision. A decision on an older, superseded estimate revision cannot authorize the replacement proposal.

Check the result before handing over

The order should now have its original request, a completed inspection, understandable findings, the intended published estimate revision and the recorded decision for the correct scope. Hand over approved work through planning, repair and quality checks. Keep declined and deferred work visible to the advisor instead of treating all estimate lines as approved.

If you are blocked	What to check
No inspection template can be selected	The template version is published and belongs to the order's company. Ask a manager to review configuration.
Inspection will not complete	Required responses are answered with the expected type and allowed choices.
Estimate generation or publication fails	Quotation status, company/customer match, an existing draft revision, or changes made after generation.
A decision cannot be saved	Current published revision, authorizer selection, matching line/evidence and any decision that must be explicitly superseded. Report an unavailable authorizer selector to the implementer; do not substitute another person.
A colleague cannot see the order	Their company access, Workshop role and assignment or explicit order access.

Invoice creation, payment collection, insurer settlement and delivery closure are separate procedures. This workflow records the proposal and decision; it does not establish that any of those later actions occurred.