Every job on a jobcard carries its own authorisation status, separate from the jobcard's workflow status. Authorisation tracks whether the customer has agreed to this specific piece of work, and what eventually happened to it.
The seven values
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
not_authorised | Default. Job exists on the jobcard but the customer hasn't agreed to it yet. |
authorised | Customer has approved the job. Work can proceed. |
complete | The work is done. This counts towards billing. |
declined | Customer was offered the work and said no. |
postponed | Customer agreed in principle but wants it next time. |
recommended | Future work for a future visit — feeds into next-visit recommendations. |
estimate | Came up mid-job and needs pricing or further investigation before the customer decides. Lives in its own Estimates tab on the jobcard. |
Why this matters for the invoice
Four of these statuses — declined, postponed, recommended, and estimate — are deliberately excluded from the jobcard's billable total and from VAT calculation. They show up on the jobcard for tracking and for the customer's awareness, but they don't appear as billable lines on the invoice.
That means you can capture future work and customer decisions inside the same jobcard without inflating the bill. Useful when an inspection turns up advisories or when a customer says "next time, not today".
In practice
- Add a "Brake pads — front" job at the time of inspection, mark it
recommended. It rolls up into the customer's recommendations and the vehicle's next-visit list. - A "Drive belt replacement" job marked
declinedkeeps a record of what you offered without billing the customer for it. postponedis a softer "declined" — the customer agreed in principle but wants the work spread across visits.