Printout types — customer vs technician vs invoice vs inspection

The four kinds of document Pistonlog produces from a jobcard, and who each is for

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A single jobcard can produce several different documents depending on who's reading them. They all share the same data underneath but the formatting differs: a technician needs the work, a customer needs the cost, a fitter signing off an inspection needs the checklist.

The four types

Customer-facing jobcard / estimate

Shown when you print or share a jobcard with the customer before invoicing. Includes garage branding, customer name, vehicle, the full list of jobs with their parts and labour, and the cost breakdown with VAT. For: the customer.

Invoice

The same shape as the customer-facing jobcard but framed as a billable document — invoice number, due date, payment status, and your bank or payment instructions. Issued from the jobcard once the work is done. For: the customer (for payment) and your records.

Technician work order / job sheet

A stripped-down printout for the workshop floor. Registration, make/model, mileage, jobs, parts, labour. No customer name. No contact. No dates. See the PII rule for why. For: the technician doing the work.

Inspection report

Generated from an inspection submission linked to the jobcard. Shows the checklist results, condition ratings, photos, and any signature captured. The customer-facing variant carries garage branding and vehicle details; the internal variant is for your records. For: the customer, plus an internal copy in your records.

Same data, different lens

Every document is generated from the live jobcard — change the labour rate on a job and the next print reflects it. The difference between document types is which fields are shown, not which fields exist.

Server-side filtering of financial fields

Users without payments.view get a jobcard payload from the API that already has rates, prices and unit costs removed. So a technician who somehow ended up viewing a jobcard JSON couldn't print a customer-style document by accident — the data isn't there to print.

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