Work order
Workshop glossary › Workshop operations · UpdatedThe shop-floor document — paper or digital — that captures vehicle, customer, requested work, parts, labour, and authorisation. Also called a repair order, job card, or RO.
A work order is the central record of a single service visit. It links the vehicle (by VIN or registration), the customer, the technician, the requested work, the actual work performed, parts consumed, labour hours, and the customer's written authorisation for the cost.
The same document is called a repair order (US dealer language), a job card (UK and Commonwealth), an arbetsorder (Sweden), an Auftrag or Werkstattauftrag (Germany), or simply a ticket in some independent shops.
A well-kept work order matters beyond billing. It is the evidence trail for warranty claims, the legal record that authorisation was given before extra work was performed, the data source for service history when the customer comes back in two years, and increasingly the audit trail for OEM warranty work or insurance-paid repairs. Loose paper job cards have been the single biggest source of disputed invoices in independent workshops for as long as workshops have existed — which is most of why workshop management software exists.