One sheet written while the work happens, with numbers instead of words like a bit low.
Every car that comes into a bay here gets a card on the windscreen with a job number at the top, and every customer leaves with a copy. This is what is on it and why each part of it is there.
At the top: the job number in the form TAS 2026 0412, your registration, the odometer reading, and the time the car arrived. The odometer is there so that next year's card can be compared with this one, which is the whole reason cards are worth keeping.
The middle is the checklist, and it is filled in by the person doing the work, as the work happens, not by somebody at the office afterwards. Every item is green, watch or attend to. And where an item can be measured, it is written as a number. Pad thickness in millimetres. Disc thickness in millimetres. Battery voltage under load, not at rest. Tread depth at three points across each tyre, because a tyre that is worn on one edge is telling you about the alignment and not about the tyre.
This is the part people underrate. The words a bit low mean nothing next year. Four point five millimetres means something next year, and it means something to a different garage in a different country if you move.
Then the parts, each with its price beside it. Then the hours. Then, and this is the line that matters most, any telephone call we made to you about an extra figure, with the time of the call and what you said. It is written down while it is fresh, by the person who made the call.
What that buys you at collection is simple: a card written as the work happened cannot disagree with the invoice. In four years the office has never had the conversation where a customer says they were quoted something different, and it is not because our customers are unusually agreeable.
What it buys you in three years is better. Somebody tells you your suspension bushes have gone. You open the file, look at three cards, and see that they were marked watch two years ago and watch again last year, and now they have gone, which means they really have. Or you see they were green nine months ago, and you ask a second question.
Every card is copied into the office file under your registration and we keep them indefinitely. Ring up and ask what oil went in three years ago; somebody will tell you in about a minute.