Guide
Repair order and work order template
Every block a repair order carries from intake to pickup, the bay copy that prints from it, and a worked diesel ticket with the hours and gross profit checked.
A repair order is the shop's working ticket, and it holds more than the printed estimate ever shows: intake and concern, vehicle, technician assignment, hours quoted against hours logged, the authorization history, parts status, then the totals. The work order is the same ticket printed for the bay, with the money taken off and five fields for the technician added on. Below is every block of both, a worked diesel ticket with the hours and the gross profit checked, plus the one notation a statute demands in writing.
Key takeaways
- The repair order outlives the estimate. One ticket can carry several quotes.
- Hours quoted and hours logged are two fields. Storing one of them wastes the other.
- Hours print on the bay copy. Dollars stay on the ticket.
- Verbal approval on extra work gets a written notation on the ticket.
What blocks does a repair order need?
Block 1. Ticket identity
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Repair order number | The number everybody says out loud |
| Date and time opened | When the vehicle arrived |
| Promise time | What the customer was told |
| Workflow status | Where the car is right now |
| Advisor | Who owns the conversation |
| Source | Appointment, walk-in, tow, fleet dispatch |
Block 2. Customer and payer
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Customer name and best number | Who authorizes |
| Second contact | The spouse or the fleet manager who also says yes |
| Account or fleet number | Where the payer differs from the driver |
| Purchase order | Where the account issues one before work starts |
| Preferred contact method | Call, text or email |
| Waiting or leaving | Changes how the job gets scheduled |
Block 3. Vehicle
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Year, make, model, sub-model | Sub-model changes axle and brake content |
| Engine | The field that changes every labor lookup |
| VIN | Decoded, not typed |
| Odometer in | At arrival |
| Plate and key tag | So the truck gets found in the yard |
| Unit number | The fleet's own name for it |
Block 4. Concern and findings
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Customer concern | In the customer's own words, verbatim |
| Inspection reference | The completed inspection this ticket sits on |
| Technician finding | Cause, in the technician's words |
| Correction proposed | The operation |
| Severity | Safety now, service soon, monitor |
| Photo or video reference | What the customer will be shown |
Block 5. Jobs
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Job name | The line the customer reads |
| Status | Recommended, authorized, declined, deferred |
| Labor hours quoted | From the canned job or published book time |
| Labor hours logged | What the clock recorded |
| Labor rate applied | Posted rate or matrix rate |
| Technician assigned | Who has it |
| Parts status | On order, on the shelf, backordered, will-call |
| Source of the hours | Canned job or labor guide, named on the line |
Block 6. Authorization history
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Amount authorized | The figure agreed to |
| Date and time | Both |
| Method | In person, phone, text, email |
| Who authorized | Name, and their relationship to the payer |
| Supplemental entries | One row per increase, each with its own amount |
| Declined jobs | With the date and the stated reason |
Block 7. Close
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Odometer out | At completion |
| Quality check | Who road-tested it and what they checked |
| Old parts | Returned, shown or held under a warranty arrangement |
| Totals | Labor, parts, sublet, supplies, tax |
| Payment | Method, amount, balance |
| Next visit | Recommended work carried forward |
How is a repair order different from an estimate or an invoice?
The estimate is a printed view of the repair order before the work. The invoice is a printed view after. The repair order is the thing itself, and it holds the fields neither printed view shows: logged hours, technician assignment, parts status, workflow position, plus the reason a job was declined.
That difference is why deleting a declined line to tidy a ticket costs money. The printed estimate never carried it anyway. The repair order is where it lived, and the repair order is what somebody searches in nine months when the customer calls back about the noise.
What does the technician's copy carry?
The work order is the third printed view, and it is the one the customer never sees. It drops every dollar figure and adds the fields a technician fills in. Five blocks, printed off the same ticket.
Bay block 1. Dispatch header
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Repair order number | Same number as the ticket |
| Work order number | Where a shop splits one ticket across technicians |
| Bay or lift | Where the vehicle is |
| Technician assigned | Who owns this work |
| Priority | Waiter, promise time, fleet down |
| Date and time dispatched | When it left the counter |
| Special equipment | Lift kit, plow, PTO, aftermarket tune |
Bay block 2. Authorized jobs
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Job name | The operation |
| Authorized flag | Set only after the customer said yes |
| Flat-rate hours | What the job pays |
| Source of the hours | Canned job or published labor guide |
| Sequence | Which job comes first |
| Notes for the tech | Torque specs, known-bad hardware, prior repair history |
Bay block 3. Parts staging
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Part name and number | What was ordered |
| Quantity | Counted |
| Location | On the shelf, in the cart, will-call, on the truck |
| ETA | When it lands, if it is not here |
| Core out | Whether the old unit goes back |
| Single-use hardware | Bolts and gaskets that cannot be reinstalled |
Bay block 4. Technician write-back
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Cause | What the technician found |
| Correction | What the technician did |
| Clock start and stop | Per job, not per day |
| Parts used | With numbers, including anything pulled off the shelf |
| Additional findings | Work discovered mid-job, priced by the advisor |
| Road test result | Speed, condition, what was verified |
| Old parts | Tagged for the customer, or scrapped |
Bay block 5. Close-out
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Hours logged | Total on the clock for these jobs |
| Quality check | Who verified it and against what |
| Defect certification | Where a DOT inspection report listed defects |
| Odometer out | At completion |
| Technician signature | The name attached to the repair |
| Returned to service | Date and time |
The write-back block is the one that gets squeezed onto two lines and should not be. Cause and correction in the technician's own words become the narrative on the invoice, and they are the only record of what was found once the vehicle leaves. A write-back reading "replaced bearing" gives a future advisor nothing. One reading "bearing roar at 45 mph, play measured at the hub, replaced bearing and seal, verified to 55 mph" answers the comeback call before it turns into a free repair.
The additional-findings row is the second reason the block earns its space. A technician who spots rear pads at 4 mm while the axle is apart has handed the advisor a job that costs nothing extra in labor to sell today. A bay copy with nowhere to write it loses it.
What does the law require the ticket to record?
One thing gets written down, and it catches shops out constantly. When a customer approves extra work by phone, California Business and Professions Code 9884.9 says the record goes on the work order:
"If that consent is oral, the dealer shall make a notation on the work order of the date, time, name of person authorizing the additional repairs, and telephone number called, if any, together with a specification of the additional parts and labor and the total additional cost"
Five facts, recorded at the moment of the call. Date. Time. Who said yes. What number you rang. What the extra work costs. Block 6 above exists to hold exactly that, and a shop that leaves it to a sticky note has nothing to show when the invoice is disputed.
The same section decides when a job is allowed to reach the bay at all:
"No work shall be done and no charges shall accrue before authorization to proceed is obtained from the customer."
No charges accrue. A shop in that state which puts a teardown on the lift while the estimate sits unsent has no billable hours to point at when the customer walks away. That is why the authorized flag in bay block 2 gates the print, and why an unauthorized job should never appear on a dispatch sheet.
Work you send out gets its own sentence, and it is the sublet field most templates forget:
"The automotive repair dealer shall include with the written estimated price a statement of any automotive repair service that, if required to be done, will be done by someone other than the dealer or his or her employees."
The old-parts question gets decided before the technician touches anything. Under section 9884.10 the customer's request has to be made when the work order is taken, so the tag goes on the part during the repair instead of being reconstructed from a bin at pickup. The FTC gives customers the same advice from the other side in Auto Repair Basics:
"Ask for all replaced parts. State law may require this."
For a vehicle running under a DOT number there is a third gate. 49 CFR 396.11 puts the duty on the carrier or its agent, and your shop is often the agent:
"Prior to requiring or permitting a driver to operate a vehicle, every motor carrier or its agent shall repair any defect or deficiency listed on the driver vehicle inspection report which would be likely to affect the safety of operation of the vehicle."
And on the two hours fields, the FTC describes the two pricing methods a repair order has to be able to represent:
"Some shops charge a flat rate for labor on auto repairs. This published rate is based on an independent or manufacturer's estimate of the time required to complete repairs. Others charge on the basis of the actual time the technician worked on the repair."
A ticket with one hours field can only do one of those. A ticket with two can do both, and it can tell you which of your canned jobs is priced wrong.
What does a filled-in repair order look like?
A 2017 Chevrolet Silverado 3500 with the 6.6L Duramax, fleet unit 07, in on a hard-start complaint that the inspection turned into an injector job. This is an illustration and no line on it came off a real ticket. Inputs are stated: assume the labor guide returns 12.6 hours for the operation, the posted labor rate is $165.00 per hour, technician cost is $32.00 per flat-rate hour, and the costs are illustrative supplier costs run through the bands in the parts matrix template.
The ticket's life
| Time | Status | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1, 07:10 | Arrived | Concern recorded verbatim, odometer 178,240 |
| Day 1, 07:40 | Inspecting | Technician assigned, inspection started |
| Day 1, 09:05 | Estimate sent | Draft priced and sent for approval |
| Day 1, 10:22 | Authorized | Fleet manager approved $7,644.80 by phone |
| Day 1, 10:25 | Waiting on parts | Eight injectors ordered, will-call |
| Day 1, 13:00 | In progress | Clock started |
| Day 1, 17:42 | In progress | Clock stopped for the night, 4.7 hours logged |
| Day 2, 07:30 | In progress | Clock restarted |
| Day 2, 14:12 | In progress | Clock stopped, 6.7 hours logged |
| Day 2, 14:45 | Quality check | Road tested, no codes |
| Day 2, 15:30 | Ready | Odometer out 178,246 |
Jobs and hours
| Job | Hours quoted | Hours logged | Rate | Labor extension |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fuel injectors, all eight | 12.6 | 11.4 | $165.00 | $2,079.00 |
Parts
| Part | Qty | Unit cost | Band multiplier | Extension |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fuel injector | 8 | $412.00 | 1.55 | $5,108.80 |
| Injector hold-down bolt | 8 | $9.40 | 2.40 | $180.48 |
| Valve cover gasket | 2 | $38.50 | 1.95 | $150.16 |
| Fuel filter kit | 1 | $64.80 | 1.95 | $126.36 |
What the ticket made
| Measure | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Labor sale | 12.6 hours at $165.00 | $2,079.00 |
| Labor cost | 11.4 logged hours at $32.00 | $364.80 |
| Labor gross profit | $2,079.00 less $364.80 | $1,714.20 at 82.5% |
| Parts sale | Four parts lines | $5,565.80 |
| Parts cost | $3,296.00 plus $75.20 plus $77.00 plus $64.80 | $3,513.00 |
| Parts gross profit | $5,565.80 less $3,513.00 | $2,052.80 at 36.9% |
| Ticket total | Labor plus parts | $7,644.80 |
| Ticket gross profit | $1,714.20 plus $2,052.80 | $3,767.00 at 49.3% |
The logged hours come off the clock in two pieces: 4.7 on the first day and 6.7 on the second, which is what an eight-injector job on a will-call looks like when the parts land at lunchtime. Technician efficiency is 12.6 divided by 11.4, or 110.5%. The shop billed 12.6 hours of published time against 11.4 hours on the clock. None of that appears on the printed estimate or the printed invoice. It lives on the repair order, in the two hours fields most templates collapse into one.
What do the technician's numbers say?
Take a different ticket, dispatched to one technician: a 2020 Ram 2500 with the 6.7L Cummins, three jobs authorized by phone at 08:40. Again an illustration, with stated inputs. Hours come from the shop's own canned jobs, the posted rate is $165.00, and technician pay is $34.00 per flat-rate hour.
Dispatched
| Job | Authorized | Flat-rate hours | Hours source | Parts location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rear wheel bearing and seal, driver side | Yes | 3.2 | Canned job | On the cart |
| Rear differential service | Yes | 0.8 | Canned job | On the shelf |
| Driveshaft U-joints, both | Yes | 1.9 | Canned job | Will-call, 10:15 |
| Front brake pads | No | 2.1 | Canned job | Not ordered |
Written back
| Field | What the technician recorded |
|---|---|
| Cause | Bearing roar at 45 mph, play measured at the hub |
| Correction | Bearing and seal replaced, axle cleaned, fluid refilled |
| Clock start and stop | 08:55 to 14:31, less a 30-minute wait on the will-call |
| Parts used | Three staged parts plus two single-use axle nuts off the shelf |
| Additional findings | Rear brake pads at 4 mm, quoted separately |
| Road test | Verified to 55 mph, noise gone |
What the numbers say
| Measure | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Flat-rate hours produced | 3.2 plus 0.8 plus 1.9 | 5.9 hours |
| Hours clocked on those jobs | 08:55 to 14:31 is 5.6, less the 0.5 wait | 5.1 hours |
| Hours at work that day | Shift length | 8.0 hours |
| Efficiency | 5.9 divided by 5.1 | 115.7% |
| Productivity | 5.1 divided by 8.0 | 63.8% |
| Labor sale | 5.9 hours at $165.00 | $973.50 |
| Technician pay | 5.9 hours at $34.00 | $200.60 |
| Labor gross profit | $973.50 less $200.60 | $772.90 at 79.4% |
Those two percentages disagree on purpose. The technician beat the book on every job they touched and still spent 2.9 hours of an eight-hour day not turning a wrench. One of those numbers is a technician question. The other is a parts question, and the will-call line in the dispatch block is where it came from.
What should the workflow statuses be?
Eight, and each one has to mean the same thing to everybody who sets it. A status nobody can define is a status that lies on the board.
| Status | It means | It does not mean |
|---|---|---|
| Arrived | Vehicle on site, ticket open | Anybody has looked at it |
| Inspecting | Technician assigned and working | Findings are complete |
| Estimate sent | Priced and delivered to the customer | Anybody has read it |
| Authorized | Customer approved a stated amount | Parts are here |
| Waiting on parts | Something is ordered with an ETA | The job is stalled forever |
| In progress | Clock running on an authorized job | Anybody is standing at the vehicle |
| Quality check | Work complete, verification under way | Ready for the customer |
| Ready | Road tested, invoiced, keys on the hook | The customer has been called |
The right-hand column is the useful half. A board reading in progress on six tickets tells an owner nothing if two of them mean a technician stepped away to a will-call run. Write the definition next to the status, and the board becomes a report.
How should jobs be sequenced on one work order?
By what is already apart. Three jobs dispatched together are three jobs whose labor overlaps, and the sequence decides whether the shop pays for that overlap or the customer does.
| Situation | Sequencing rule | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Two jobs share a teardown | The larger one leads, the second is added at overlap hours | Billing both at full book time bills the same teardown twice |
| One job is waiting on a part | Dispatch the others first | The bay keeps producing while the will-call runs |
| A safety-rated finding is on the ticket | It leads regardless of size | The vehicle does not leave with it outstanding |
| A road test is needed for two jobs | One road test, recorded against both | Two tests is time nobody paid for |
| An additional finding appears mid-job | Stop, quote, get the approval | Work done before approval may not be collectable |
The overlap rule costs money in both directions. Billing two full book times for jobs that share four hours of teardown is a line an informed customer disputes. Billing one and eating the second is a shop giving away hours it earned. The honest version is the lead job at full time and the second at its own incremental time, with the dispatch sheet showing both so the technician knows what they are being paid.
That decision belongs on the dispatch document. Leave it in an advisor's head and the technician is the one who discovers two jobs share a teardown, usually at the point where both are already quoted.
Which fields get skipped?
| Skipped field | What it costs | Why it gets skipped |
|---|---|---|
| Hours logged | Efficiency and canned-job pricing become unknowable | Nobody clocks small jobs |
| Concern in the customer's words | The tech chases the wrong noise | The advisor paraphrases at intake |
| Second contact | Approval waits for one person's voicemail | Never asked for |
| Purchase order | The fleet invoice goes back before it gets paid | Asked for at billing instead of intake |
| Parts status per job | The board says in progress while a part is two days out | Status lives on the ticket, not the job |
| Parts location on the bay copy | The technician walks the building | The counter knows where it is |
| Authorization method | A disputed approval has no evidence | Verbal feels quicker |
| Single-use hardware list | The axle nut gets reused | It was never on the dispatch sheet |
| Declined reason | Follow-up calls have nothing to open with | The line gets deleted |
| Odometer out | Warranty on your own work turns into an argument | Nobody reads it at pickup |
| Defect certification on fleet work | The carrier's file has a gap | No close-out field names the listed defects |
The declined reason is the one worth fixing first. Price and timing are different objections, and a shop that records which one it was can call the timing customers back in three weeks with something to say.
How do you copy this into a spreadsheet?
Four sheets. Header on the first, jobs on the second, authorization history on the third, because the third one grows every time the ticket does. The fourth is what prints for the bay.
ro_number,opened_at,promise_time,status,advisor,customer_name,phone,account_number,po_number,year,make,model,engine,vin,odometer_in,odometer_out,unit_number
job_name,job_status,concern,cause,correction,hours_quoted,hours_logged,labor_rate,hours_source,technician,parts_status,declined_reason
auth_datetime,auth_amount,auth_method,authorized_by,phone_called,additional_parts_and_labor,additional_cost
work_order_number,bay,technician,priority,dispatched_at,job_name,authorized,flat_rate_hours,hours_source,sequence,part_name,part_number,qty,part_location,part_eta,core_out,clock_start,clock_stop,road_test_result,tech_signature
What changes when the ticket builds itself?
The blocks stay. What disappears is the pass somebody makes over block 5, looking up hours for the exact engine, chasing three suppliers for injector pricing, then keying twelve lines onto the ticket while the phone rings.
Mechanica writes those job lines onto the repair order the technician was already working, from the inspection they already completed. Labor comes from the shop's own canned job where one exists and from published book time where one does not. Parts get quoted at the shop's own suppliers. Every line shows its source, so the work order prints with hours already attached and the technician's day does not change. The advisor's does. Sublet, shop supplies, cores and tax stay on the lines your shop already sets, and a human reads the draft before anything reaches a customer.
The estimate template is the printed view before the work and the invoice template is the view after. The authorization form covers block 6 in detail, and the vehicle inspection checklist and form is where the findings on this ticket came from. For the two percentages above, see technician efficiency and technician productivity. Everything else sits on the guides hub.
Sources
Questions shops ask
- What is a repair order?
- The ticket a shop opens when a vehicle arrives and closes when it leaves. It carries the concern, the vehicle, the technician assignment, the hours quoted and the hours logged, the authorization record, the parts status, then the totals. The estimate and the invoice are two printed views of the same repair order at two moments in its life.
- What is the difference between a repair order and an estimate?
- The estimate is the priced quote the customer approves before work starts. The repair order is the working document the shop runs the job on, and it outlives the estimate. One repair order can carry several estimates as work is added, declined or re-quoted, which is why the authorization history belongs on the repair order and not on any single printed quote.
- Is a work order the same as a repair order?
- They share a number and they hold different fields. The repair order is the whole ticket, including pricing, authorization history and totals. The work order is the technician's printed view of it: authorized jobs only, hours, parts location, plus the fields the technician fills in. Most shop systems print the second from the first, which is why one template covers both.
- Should the work order show the customer's price?
- Show hours, not dollars. A technician needs to know a job pays 3.2 hours and that the part is on the shelf. Putting the sell price in front of the bay invites a conversation about margin in the middle of a repair, and it does nothing for the work. Keep the money on the repair order where the advisor reads it.
- Should the repair order show hours quoted and hours logged?
- Yes, in two separate fields. Quoted hours are what the customer is paying for. Logged hours are what the job took. The gap between them is technician efficiency, and a shop that only stores one of the two numbers cannot compute it, which means it cannot tell whether a canned job is priced correctly.
- Can a technician start work before the customer authorizes it?
- In California, no. The statute states that no work shall be done and no charges shall accrue before authorization to proceed is obtained from the customer. In practice that means the authorized flag gates the dispatch, and a job sitting at recommended never reaches the bay. Check your own state's rule, because thresholds and wording differ.
- What has to be written on the repair order when a job grows?
- In California, a notation. If the customer's consent to work above the estimate is oral, the statute requires a notation on the work order of the date, time, name of person authorizing the additional repairs and telephone number called, together with a specification of the additional parts and labor and the total additional cost. A shop that skips it has no record when the invoice is disputed.
- What does the technician write back on the work order?
- Cause and correction in their own words, hours started and stopped, parts used with their numbers, anything found that was not on the ticket, then the road-test result. That written-back block becomes the invoice narrative, and it is what somebody reads in nine months when the customer calls about the same noise.
- How do you measure a technician from the work order?
- Two numbers, and they answer different questions. Efficiency is flat-rate hours produced divided by hours clocked on those jobs. Productivity is hours clocked on jobs divided by hours at work. A technician can run above 110% efficiency and still be unproductive if half the day was spent waiting on parts.
- How many workflow statuses should a repair order have?
- Few enough that everybody uses them the same way. A workable set is arrived, inspecting, estimate sent, authorized, waiting on parts, in progress, quality check, ready. Adding a status nobody sets is worse than having one fewer, because the board stops telling you the truth about where cars are.
- Where does declined work live on a repair order?
- On the repair order it was declined from, with a date and a reason. It is the cheapest source of future work a shop has, and it disappears the moment somebody deletes the line to make the ticket look tidy. Keep declined jobs on the closed order and pull them into the next visit.
- Does the repair order need the customer's parts-return request?
- In California the request has to be captured when the ticket is written. The statute requires the dealer to return replaced parts upon request of the customer at the time the work order is taken, which means a checkbox at intake instead of a conversation at pickup. Size and weight exceptions apply, as does anything going back to a manufacturer.
- Do fleet tickets need anything extra?
- A unit number, a purchase order where the account issues one, plus the defect certification when the vehicle runs under a DOT number. Under 49 CFR 396.11 a motor carrier or its agent must repair any defect listed on the driver vehicle inspection report that would be likely to affect the safety of operation before the vehicle is driven again, so the ticket has to record which listed defects were addressed.
- Can a repair order be built automatically?
- The priced job lines can. Mechanica reads the completed inspection and writes the drafted jobs onto the repair order the technician was already working, with labor from the shop's canned job or a published labor guide and parts quoted at the shop's own suppliers. The advisor still reviews it, edits what they want, then decides what the customer sees.
Sources
- California Business and Professions Code 9884.9 (estimate, authorization, work order notation)official
- California Business and Professions Code 9884.10 (return of replaced parts)official
- 49 CFR 396.11, Driver vehicle inspection report(s)official
- Auto Repair Basics, Federal Trade Commissionofficial
- Automotive Service Technicians and Mechanics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticsofficial
- Last verified: July 29, 2026