# How Repairs works

The chain a repair travels, from the machine arriving on your counter to the invoice being paid.

A repair moves through Repairs in one direction, and every screen in the app is a stop along it. Learn the chain once and you will know which screen you want without hunting for it, because the answer is always "the one after the last thing that happened".

## Highlights

- **The ticket is the spine.** Everything else either feeds it or comes out of it.
- **Nothing is billed until a ticket says so**, and nothing is billed twice.
- **Estimates come before the work**, invoices after it.
- **Parts you do not have** become a purchase order and a ticket on hold.
- **The job is not over when the repair is**, it is over when the machine is back.

## The chain

*One repair, from the counter and back again*

| Stage | The screen | What it records |
| --- | --- | --- |
| The machine arrives | Tickets | The customer, the equipment, the fault and the serial number |
| You price the work | The ticket's services and parts | What the labour is worth and what it will consume |
| The customer approves | Quotes | The estimate they said yes to, and the price you are held to |
| A part is missing | Purchase Orders | What was ordered, from whom, and when it is promised |
| A technician works on it | The ticket's statuses and work report | Who did it, what they found, and what they guarantee |
| You bill it | Invoices | What is owed, carrying only the lines not yet charged for |
| They pay | Payments Received | The money, allocated against that invoice |
| It goes home | Packages, then Shipments | What was in the box, who is carrying it, and when it arrived |

## What a ticket turns into

A ticket never asks anybody for money. Converting is what turns recorded work into a document a customer can act on, and the menu offers the three destinations at once.

![Ticket RPT-00021 with the Create menu open in its header, offering three entries each with a plus icon: Create Invoice, Create Estimate and Create Package. Behind the menu the Associated Documents panel is on its Quotes tab, showing quote QT-00030 dated 16/07/2026, marked Draft, for 12,074.52 pounds.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/repairs/tickets/create-menu.png)

*Three things a ticket becomes, and the documents it has already produced behind them.*

- **Forwards, before the work**: Ticket to quote. Raise the estimate early, while the price is still a proposal rather than a bill.
- **Forwards, after the work**: Ticket to invoice. It carries only what has not been billed yet, which is what makes staged billing safe.
- **Sideways, when parts are short**: Ticket to purchase order, and the service row goes to Waiting for Parts until the delivery lands.
- **Outwards, at the end**: Ticket to package to shipment. The package says what went in the box; the shipment says where it is.

## Two habits that keep the chain honest

> **Note:**
>
> **Move the status when the thing happens, not when you remember**
>
> Nothing in the chain advances itself. A delivery arriving does not take the ticket off **Waiting for Parts**, and a shipment marked delivered does not close the job. Those are two separate acts, and a workshop that skips them ends up with a list of repairs that finished weeks ago.

> **Tip:**
>
> **Follow the reference number when you are lost**
>
> Every document a ticket produces carries the ticket number in its reference field, and the ticket carries the documents in its **Associated Documents** panel. Whichever end you are standing at, the other end is one click away.