The Vehicle That Came Back with the Same Complaint
A customer returned six weeks after a four-wheel alignment claiming the car was still pulling left. The technician who did the original job couldn't remember the before-and-after values — they'd been recorded on a workshop carbon copy that had long since gone into a folder nobody organized. The alignment printout from the machine had been left in the car. It was gone.
Without the original settings, there was no way to prove the job had been done correctly, no way to know whether the customer had kerbed the wheel since, and no way to defend the work. They redid the alignment for free and lost two hours of bay time.
That is the argument for this template.
What the Alignment Record Actually Captures
The core technical fields — Front Toe, Front Camber, Second Toe, Second Camber — store the final adjusted values for both axles. A proper four-wheel alignment job produces four numbers that the technician takes from the machine readout after adjustment. Stored against the vehicle registration, customer name, mileage at time of service, and date, these four values become a permanent technical record that no alignment printout left in a glovebox can replicate.
The vehicle registration is the search key. When that same car returns — owned by the same customer or sold to someone new — you pull the record and see every alignment job, the settings on each visit, the mileage progression. If the camber has shifted 0.3° since the last job and the mileage increase is consistent with normal wear, you have data. If the camber shifted 0.8° in 2,000 miles, you're looking at a suspension component failure.
ADAS Jobs Are a Different Category
The Job Type field distinguishes between TRACKING and ADAS. ADAS calibrations — forward-facing camera, radar, lane assist systems — have documentation requirements that a standard tracking job doesn't. The Report Required boolean flags records that need a formal calibration report issued to the customer, which for ADAS work is often required by the vehicle manufacturer's warranty terms or the customer's insurance. Filtering by Job Type = ADAS and Report Required = true produces the outstanding report queue for the week.
The Job Photo field captures the work verification image — a photo of the alignment screen readings, the vehicle on the ramp, or any relevant condition found during the job. For ADAS calibrations, this photo is part of the documentation chain.
Invoiced — The Field That Keeps Cash Moving
The Invoiced boolean is the AR filter. At end of day, filter for Invoiced = false and you have the uninvoiced jobs. The Price exc VAT field is set at job entry, so the value is already there — it just needs a tick when the invoice goes out. For a two-person alignment shop running 15-20 jobs per day, that filter is a ten-second cash flow check.