The digital glovebox

Every customer eventually asks the same question: when did you last do the brakes. The glovebox answers it without them ringing you. It is one private link, per customer, giving them their own cars' records from your shop — no account, no password, no app.

Open a customer, go to the Customer info tab and find Digital glovebox. The line there says whether this customer already has a link. Open Send the glovebox link, choose Text, Email or Text and email and press Create and send. The link goes to them and is also shown to you for a few minutes in case they are standing there.

What they get

A page headed with their own name, listing the cars they own now. Each car opens onto three sections:

What's due

Their service reminder and any maintenance schedule that has come round, each badged due or overdue.

Service history

Every finished visit at your shop, with the date and a line per job — what was actually done, not the menu name.

Documents

Paid invoices, and inspections you shared with them, each one openable.

A shared inspection opens in full — every item, its rating, the notes and the photographs. The intro line sets the tone the whole thing is going for: Service history, paid invoices, shared inspections, and what is due next — a private bookmark from and then your shop's name.

What it will not show, ever

Four fences, and they are worth knowing before you hand a link to anybody.

• Cars they own now. Ownership is checked twice, in two places that would have to be wrong together. Sell the car and the previous owner's link stops showing it that day; the new owner never sees a word of the old owner's history.
• Paid invoices only. An open one, an unpaid one or a voided one is not there.
• Inspections you actually sent them. An internal check that never went to the customer stays internal — the query requires that the visit had an estimate the customer was given.
• Money is off unless a manager turned it on. It is a shop-wide setting rather than a per-customer one, and it fails closed: if the setting is missing or unreadable, prices are hidden. When they are hidden the amounts are not even fetched, and the page says Amounts hidden by the shop.

Beyond that: no estimates, no quotes, no counter sales, no messages, no balance, no statement, nothing from another one of your locations, and nothing at all about anybody else. Somebody who guesses at a different car's address gets a plain not-found page rather than a hint that it exists.

Why a send is sometimes refused

The glovebox link is treated as marketing rather than as paperwork — a durable link that brings somebody back is not a receipt — so consent is checked at the moment of every send and there is no override anywhere. A text needs consent on that number; an email needs an opt-in on that address and a working unsubscribe link on your sending domain.

• The text was NOT sent — no SMS consent on file for this number
• The email was NOT sent — No email opt-in on file for that address, so this was not sent. Review requests and reminder campaigns need one; an estimate or an invoice does not.
• The email was NOT sent — Marketing email needs a working unsubscribe link and this deployment has none configured, so nothing was sent. Estimates, invoices and "your car is ready" are unaffected and still send.

That last one catches shops out. An estimate reaching a customer is not evidence that a glovebox link will, because the two go out under different rules.

Replacing and revoking

The badge tells you where you stand without opening anything: not created, link active, revoked. Once a link exists, the controls sit behind Manage the glovebox link. Re-send link rotates rather than duplicates — the old address dies in the same breath the new one is minted, so a customer who had the previous link loses it. Revoke kills it with nothing to replace it, and someone opening a dead link is told Ask the shop to send a fresh private link.

Creating and revoking both land on the audit trail. Sending needs the customer-messaging key; revoking needs the customer key; the price switch needs settings and is therefore an owner or manager decision.