What customer-facing outputs always include

The standard set of fields on every invoice, estimate, and customer inspection report

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Every document Pistonlog prints, emails or texts to a customer follows the same template so your branding and the customer's record stay consistent. This article lists what you can rely on appearing.

What's always there

Your garage branding

Logo, garage name, address, phone number, and VAT number. Pulled from Company Settings and the garage profile — set these once and every output uses them.

Jobcard reference

The auto-generated reference number (e.g. Jobcard142 or #Estimate 17) so the customer can quote it back to you and you can find the record instantly. Formal invoices additionally carry their own document number (e.g. INV-2026-0004).

The date

The date the document was issued. Customer-facing outputs always carry a date — that's part of what makes them a record of the transaction.

Customer details

The customer's name, always. The formal invoice's "Bill to" block also carries whichever address, email, and phone you have on file; jobcard and estimate printouts show the name only. The customer's record is the source — there is no separate "customer address" stored on the jobcard.

Vehicle details

Registration, make, and model. Jobcard and estimate printouts also carry mileage in/out; the formal invoice doesn't show mileage.

Full cost breakdown with VAT

Each job's labour and parts laid out as line items, with VAT calculated at the garage's rate on VAT-enabled jobs. Hourly rates and parts prices are visible to the customer by default (you can hide line-level prices on an individual print).

Set this stuff once

Your branding, VAT rate, and default hourly rate live in Company Settings and Pricing. Every customer-facing output pulls from those, so you only enter them once.

What customer-facing outputs never include

Internal-only fields — like the unit cost you paid for a part — stay hidden. That column is gated behind the parts.view_cost permission and never makes it onto a printout the customer sees.

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