What saves by itself, and what still needs Save

On a repair order you can type an hours figure, click straight into the next cell, and it is saved. The same is true of the rate, a part's quantity and price, the comments box at the top of the Services tab, each service's two note boxes, and the cause and correction. You do not have to press anything, and the top right of the screen tells you where it got to.

The four things the top right can say

Saving…

Something on this screen is not in the database yet. That includes the second or two after you stop typing, while it waits to see whether you are finished, and it includes a photo you took on an inspection sheet that is still waiting for signal. Saving… is honest about a wait as well as about a request in flight — it does not go quiet just because the last thing sent came back.

All changes saved

All changes saved means every box on this screen that saves itself is in the database, with nothing typed, nothing waiting and nothing in flight. It is a statement about all of those boxes right now, not about the last thing you typed — but it is not a statement about the boxes in the list further down that still need Enter or a button. Those it cannot see.

Could not save — retrying

Could not save — retrying means a write did not land. Your words are still in the box and they are not thrown away. It tries again on its own a couple of times, and again the moment your connection comes back. Do not retype the sentence; if it stays red, copy what you typed somewhere safe before you leave the screen. It keeps saying this even if you have moved to another screen while it was still trying, because that is the only chance you have to hear about it.

Could not save

Could not save with nothing after it means the same write is not going to be attempted again, because the answer would be the same: a figure the box cannot hold, or a change this ticket will not take. It is not a connection problem and waiting will not fix it. The box in question is outlined and a short line under it says which answer you got — for a figure it cannot hold, Not saved — this box cannot hold that figure. Correct what is in the box and it saves itself again straight away.

On a narrow phone there is no indicator at all, and that is a measurement rather than an oversight: the top bar at that width is already full to the pixel with the search box and the tools, and squeezing a dot in beside them pushed the search box out from under your finger. Between a phone and a full screen you get a small dot in the same corner instead of the words; read it with a screen reader and you get the sentence. The saving itself is identical on every size of screen — it is only the report that has nowhere to go on a phone, so on one, finish what you are typing before you leave the screen.

If you see nothing at all in that corner, there is nothing on the screen that saves itself — which is a fact worth knowing rather than an oversight. The indicator never appears above a page that has its own Save bar, because a screen saying All changes saved over a button nobody has pressed is the worst thing it could tell you.

What saves by itself today

• On a repair order's Services tab: a labor line's Hours and Rate/hr.
• A part line's Qty and Price.
• The What the customer told us box above the service cards.
• Each service's Note for the customer and Internal note.
• Each service's Cause and Correction.
• An inspection sheet's notes, gauge readings and ratings, which have saved themselves since the sheet shipped — see filling in an inspection.
• A photo you take on an inspection sheet. If the tablet has no signal the photo waits on the tablet and goes up when the signal does, and the top right of the sheet says Saving… for as long as one is waiting — so a sheet with a photo still on the tablet can never tell you everything is saved. There is also a note in the bottom corner counting them.

Every one of those still has its button. Save labor line and Save part line are in the row's … menu, Save comments, Save notes and Save cause and correction are under their boxes, and pressing Enter in a cell saves the line the way it always did. Nothing was taken away — a shop tablet that has lost its connection to our scripts still works exactly as it did before, buttons and all.

Both ways of saving agree about what a figure is, which matters most when a cell is EMPTY. Clearing the Hours or Qty box and pressing Enter before you type the new number does not save a zero. It leaves the line as it was and tells you Not saved — this box cannot hold that figure. An empty box is somewhere you pass through on the way from 6 to 8, not a price, and nothing on the ticket will treat it as one.

The forms that ADD a line hold to the same rule, one step earlier. Pressing Add labor under + Labor with the Hrs box empty adds no line at all rather than a line at no hours, and answers with the same sentence; so does a quantity under + Part that is not a plain figure. Every one of these boxes takes digits and a single point — 1, 1.5, .5 — and nothing else, so there is no notation that means one thing to the cell and another to the form.

The money boxes on those same forms answer for themselves. A Price or a core charge the form cannot read adds no line, and sends you back to the ticket with a sentence naming the box that was wrong rather than the whole form — so you are not left checking the two boxes that were fine. A currency symbol and a thousands separator are both fine: 1,250.00 is what a supplier invoice prints, so it is what the box takes, and it is stored to the cent.

When two people are on the same ticket

If somebody else changed the same field after your screen loaded it, your change is refused rather than written over theirs. Your text stays in the box, a line under the box tells you what they put there, and the top right stays on Could not save — retrying while it keeps trying. Reload the ticket to see their version in place, then decide. Nothing of theirs is lost and nothing of yours is thrown away without you seeing it.

Changing an hours figure or a price on a service the customer has already approved still asks them again, exactly as pressing the button did — and the cell says so, in the same words the button has always given you: Needs approval again — this service now costs more than the customer approved. Saving by itself changes how the figure gets into the database, never what it means — see holding a service back for what re-approval looks like to them.

Every one of these changes is on the ticket's Activity panel with your name against it, whether you pressed the button or let it save itself. A note is recorded by how long it was before and after, never by its words — see putting a change back.