The Confirmation Stage: Pausing a Job for a Decision
There is one moment that makes repair shop owners hold their breath, and nearly every customer dispute starts there.
A unit comes in with an estimate of three hundred thousand. The technician opens it up and finds damage that was invisible from the outside. The number is now seven hundred thousand.
What happens next decides everything. Most shops take the road that feels easiest: do the work now, mention it later. The customer needs it anyway. They will understand.
Then collection day arrives. The customer reads a bill for seven hundred thousand while remembering a conversation about three hundred thousand. And now you are arguing about parts that are already fitted and cannot be un-fitted.
The confirmation stage is the brake for that moment. It does one thing: it stops the work officially until a human decides — and leaves proof that the decision was made.
Understand this from the start: Automan does not replace the conversation. There is no approve button the customer can press from anywhere. You still call, you still explain. The difference is that once you hang up, the decision is recorded with a timestamp, rather than living in the head of whoever happened to answer the phone that day.
Before you start
- You have recorded at least one incoming job.
- The customer contact number is filled in — without it there is nobody to call.
Steps
-
Understand the three families of status first
Automan job statuses fall into three groups. Process (queued, in progress, waiting for parts, and so on) means the unit is moving. Confirmation means the unit has deliberately stopped, waiting on a human decision. Final (done, failed, cancelled) means the matter is closed. The confirmation stage is the only brake the system gives you.
Learn the three status families first. -
Record an estimated cost when the unit arrives
The estimate goes in on the intake form and prints on the intake receipt. This is not paperwork for its own sake: that number is the benchmark that tells you when to stop and ask. With no starting estimate, there is nothing to compare against.
The estimate goes in the moment the unit arrives. -
Stop work the moment the findings exceed the estimate
The technician opens the unit and finds something else. This is where the temptation bites: just carry on, mention it later. Do not. Move the status to awaiting confirmation now, while the bill has not grown yet.
Stop the moment findings exceed the estimate. -
Call the customer and give them the number
Phone or WhatsApp — the system does not replace this conversation. Tell them what you found, what it now costs, and how much longer it takes. A customer called at the 400,000 mark is far calmer than one who discovers it at collection.
Deliver the figure through a channel that leaves a trail. -
Record the decision exactly as given
Agreed: move it to confirmation approved and carry on. Not agreed: move it to confirmation rejected. One thing must be clear — your staff record this after speaking to the customer. The customer does not press an approve button anywhere; the tracking page only shows where the job stands, with nothing on it to click.
Record the decision exactly as given. -
Follow through, and never leave it hanging
Rejected does not mean stop typing. The unit still needs its route finished — returned as it came, or repaired only as far as was agreed. A job abandoned at confirmation rejected for weeks is a unit piling up on the shelf that nobody feels responsible for.
Act on the decision; never leave it hanging.
What you end up with
Any job whose cost changed carries a full trail: when it was stopped, the figure quoted, the customer decision, and who recorded it. When a bill is questioned, you have a history rather than a memory.
If something goes wrong
The customer has been unreachable for days
Leave it at awaiting confirmation — that is precisely what the status is for. What you must not do is quietly carry on working. A unit waiting on a decision is safer than a unit already repaired and then refused.
The customer says nobody told them
This is where the trail earns its keep. The status history shows when the job was stopped and when the decision was recorded. Which is why you change the status while you are on the phone, not in a batch at closing time.
The customer only agreed to part of it
Record it as approved, then do only what was agreed and write the limit into the work log. Mention what was deliberately left undone on the collection receipt so it does not become a fresh argument.
Can the customer approve it themselves from the tracking page?
They cannot, and we do not promise it. The tracking page shows where the job stands so customers stop asking whether it is ready. Cost approval still happens in conversation, then gets recorded by your staff.