Every person who brings a vehicle to your workshop is a customer record in Pistonlog. Once created, that record follows them across every future visit — their contact details, vehicles, and full jobcard history are always one click away.

What a Customer Record Stores

Each customer record holds:

Name — first and last name (both required)
Phone number — optional
Email address — optional, used for invoices and reminder emails
Address — optional, postal address for printed documents
Business name — optional free-text field for trading-as / sole-trader customers (separate from business accounts which are full company records)
Notes — internal-only free text
Contact preferences — contactByEmail / contactBySms flags controlling whether reminders go via each channel

Customer records are company-scoped — visible across every garage you run.

Creating a Customer

There are two ways to add a customer to your garage.

From a jobcard

This is the most common route. When you create or edit a jobcard, type into the Customer field. If no match is found, click Add New Customer and fill in their details. The customer is saved to your database automatically and linked to the jobcard.

Creating a new customer inline while building a jobcard

From the customer list

You can also add customers ahead of time — useful when onboarding a fleet account or entering records from a previous system.

Open the customer list

From the sidebar, click Customers.

Click New Customer

Click the New Customer button in the top-right corner.

Fill in their details

Enter the customer's name, phone, email, and address. Click Save to create the record.

Creating a customer directly from the Customers page

One record, used everywhere

However you create a customer, the result is the same — a single record available across all future jobcards in your garage. You never need to enter the same person twice.

Finding an Existing Customer

The Customers page shows all customers in your garage. Use the search bar at the top to find someone by name, phone number, or email address.

When adding a customer to a jobcard, the same search works inline — start typing in the Customer field and matching records appear as you type.

Finding an existing customer by name or phone number

Editing Customer Details

Phone number changed? New address? Open the customer record and update it.

Open the customer

Find the customer in your list (or click their name from any jobcard) and open their record.

Edit their details

Update any field — name, phone, email, or address. Click Save to confirm the changes.

Changes apply everywhere

When you update a customer's details, the change is reflected across all their linked jobcards and documents. No need to update each jobcard individually.

Viewing Customer History

Open any customer record to see their full history with your garage:

Jobcards — every jobcard ever created for this customer, with status, date, and totals
Vehicles — all vehicles linked to this customer

This gives your front desk a complete picture before the customer even walks through the door. You can see what was done last time, what was quoted, and which vehicle they're likely bringing in.

Browsing a customer's past jobcards and linked vehicles

Customers and vehicles

Customers and vehicles are company-scoped records linked through shared jobcards, not through a direct foreign key. There's no customerId column on the vehicle — the link is per-visit: jobcard A might link "Sam" to "AB12 CDE", jobcard B (years later) might link "Jane" to the same registration.

That matches how cars are actually owned in the real world: when a car gets sold, the new owner picks it up on their next visit's jobcard, and the previous owner's history stays attached to the past jobcards. No "transfer of ownership" admin needed.

Vehicle history vs customer history

A customer's record shows the jobcards linked to them. A vehicle's record shows the jobcards linked to it. The two are different lenses on the same underlying jobcards. See Customer history and Vehicle job history.

In this section

Creating a customer

Three ways to add a customer — manual, inline from a jobcard, or CSV import

Contact preferences

Customers can opt in or out of email and SMS — gates reminders, payment links, and review requests

Importing customers from CSV

Move customers from another system in bulk — Pistonlog parses, validates, and creates the records

Customer history

Every jobcard a customer has ever had with you — across every garage in your company