A repair order, often abbreviated RO, is the document an auto-service business builds for each vehicle in the shop. It contains the customer's stated concerns, the inspection findings, the recommended services, the parts and labor estimates, the authorization, and eventually the final invoice. The RO is the operational record of the visit.
In Tekmetric, Shop-Ware, Mitchell 1, and other shop management systems, the RO is the central object every other workflow attaches to. Appointments are scheduled against ROs, parts orders are linked to ROs, technician time clocks against ROs.
For an AI agent serving an auto shop, the RO is the artifact the agent reads and writes. A booking call should create a draft RO with the customer's stated concern. A status check should pull the current RO and report back. A pickup-ready notification should fire when the RO transitions to a particular status. An agent that talks about cars without touching the RO is doing make-work; one that updates the RO natively is doing the actual job.
Vorel writes natively to the RO model in Tekmetric and Shop-Ware. Booking calls create draft ROs with the customer concern; status calls read the live RO state.