Building an estimate

The estimate builder is the repair order screen while the work is being quoted: you group work into jobs, price parts and labor as lines, and the totals on the right update as lines land. Everything saves as you go — there is no save button for the estimate itself. New here? Start with Your first repair order.

Jobs and lines

Every line on an estimate belongs to a job — “Front brakes”, “Oil change” — and each job is its own card with a parts table, a labor table, and a running subtotal. Jobs are more than tidiness: the customer approves or declines each job separately when you send the estimate for approval.

A job card. ① The job label — click it to rename. ② + Add line opens a new line row. ③ Every line’s ⋯ menu holds edit, move, and delete.

Click + New job under the last card to add an empty job, then click its label to name it. Jobs also arrive ready-made: applying a canned job creates one (below), and promoting an inspection finding adds a job with zero-priced lines for you to price — see Digital inspections. Lines from a finding carry a from inspection tag that jumps back to it.

Add a line

1. Click + Add line on the job card.
2. Pick the kind — Part or Labor — in the select at the left of the new row.
3. Fill the fields. A part takes a name, part number, quantity, and price (a blank quantity saves as 1). Labor takes a description, rate, hours, and price.
4. Press Enter or click ✓ to save the line. Esc or ✕ discards it.

Three conveniences while you type:

• Labor prices prefill. The rate field starts with your shop’s default labor rate, if one is set in Settings, and until you type a price yourself the price follows rate × hours. Typing your own price takes over.
• Parts can come from your catalog. Typing in the part name or part number field lists matching catalog parts; picking one fills in name, number, price, and cost, and links the line to your stock — see Inventory.
• Cost is optional. The Cost $ field under a part row feeds parts-margin reporting. Leave it blank when you do not know the cost — blank means unknown, never zero.

Edit a line

Click anywhere on a line to open it in place. Change the fields, then press Enter or click ✓ — a brief “Saved” note confirms it landed. Esc cancels without saving.

A line in edit mode. Enter or the ✓ button saves; Esc cancels.

Move, delete, and assign

The rest lives in each line’s ⋯ menu:

• Edit line — the same as clicking the row.
• Assign technician — on labor lines, pins a staff member to the line so hours and labor revenue report under their name in Reports.
• Move to a job — one entry for every other job on the estimate.
• Delete line — asks you to confirm first.

To delete a whole job, move or delete its lines first — a Delete button appears on an empty job’s card.

On a desktop you can also drag a line between jobs: grab the dotted handle at the left edge of the row and drop it on another job card.

Dragging a line. The chip follows the cursor; the outlined cards are the jobs it can drop into.

Tip: drag is mouse-only. On a phone, or from the keyboard, the ⋯ menu’s Move to entries do the same thing.

Apply a canned job

For work you quote all the time, build it once as a template and apply it in two clicks:

1. Click + Canned job under the job cards.
2. Click the template (search first if the list is long).

The template lands as a new job with its parts and labor copied in at the template’s prices. Edit anything afterward — the estimate’s copy and the template stay independent. See Canned jobs for building and managing the library.

The canned job picker. Each template shows its line count and total; one click applies it.

Applying a canned job — the template lands as a priced job with its own subtotal.

A vehicle with open recommendations from earlier visits also shows a Recommended Jobs card under the summary — see Customers and vehicles.

Status

The status select in the header saves the moment you change it — no separate save step. You can set Estimate, Authorized, or In-Progress by hand. A repair order usually moves to Authorized on its own when the customer approves by text (Customer approvals); the select covers the walk-in who says yes at the counter.

The header status select. Changing it saves immediately.

Invoiced and Paid are deliberately not in the list — a repair order only reaches them through Generate invoice and recorded payments (Invoices and payments).

Note: a job the customer declined stays on the estimate for the record — struck through, excluded from the totals, and never invoiced.

The summary rail

The card on the right is the money view. BayDocket computes every figure from the lines — parts, labor, subtotal, tax, and total update the moment a line changes; nothing here is typed by hand. The headline reads Total while you quote and switches to Balance due once deposits or an invoice are in play. On a phone the summary is a bar at the bottom of the screen — tap it to raise the full breakdown.

The summary rail. The tax chip sits on the Tax row; the Add… menu offers Discount, Fee, and Deposit.

The Add… button at the bottom of the card holds the three money extras:

Discount

Add… → Discount. Enter a dollar amount or a percent (the $/% toggle switches). The discount comes off the subtotal before tax, and a fixed discount can never exceed the subtotal. Once added it shows as its own row — click Edit on it to change it, or Clear inside the editor to remove it.

Fee

Add… → Fee. Give it a label (for example Shop supplies — it prints on the estimate and invoice) and an amount, fixed or a percent of the discounted subtotal. The fee is added after tax and is not itself taxed.

Deposit

Add… → Deposit records money taken up front: amount, method (Cash, Card, Check, Other), and an optional note. Deposits are held on the repair order and applied automatically when you generate the invoice; until then the headline shows the balance due after deposits. An unapplied deposit can be undone from its row with Reverse — the full amount, in one step. More in Invoices and payments.

The tax chip

The chip on the Tax row shows your shop’s tax rate (or the word “Taxable” when a single rate does not describe this estimate). Click it to make this one visit tax-free — it flips to an amber Exempt and tax drops to zero; click again to undo. A customer marked tax-exempt on their customer record shows the Exempt marker permanently — the per-visit toggle cannot override it. Rates themselves live in Settings.

When the estimate locks

Clicking Generate invoice moves the repair order to Invoiced: jobs, lines, and adjustments all lock, and a banner says so. If something needs fixing, Reopen voids the invoice and unlocks the estimate — Invoices and payments covers the rules.

Two things still work on a locked repair order:

• Assign technician on labor lines — a payroll correction never needs a reopen.
• Save as canned job on a job card — yesterday’s invoiced brake job is exactly the one worth saving as a template.

Role note: building estimates is Owner and Advisor work. A Technician sees this screen read-only — no add, edit, status, or summary controls — and works from inspections instead.

Tip: the Customer card on the right edits in place too — changes save when you leave a field, so fixing a misspelled name never means rebuilding the repair order.