Vehicles
What Is a Vehicle Record?
A vehicle record in Complete Shop Manager represents one real car, truck, or other vehicle. It stores everything your team needs to know about it — specs, ownership, and a full history of every repair order that has ever been written for it. Vehicle records are linked to customer records so you always know who the current owner is.
What Gets Stored
VIN
The Vehicle Identification Number is the key identifier for each car. CSM uses the VIN to automatically fill in Year, Make, Model, Trim, and Engine by looking them up from NHTSA’s free database — just enter the 17-digit VIN and press Decode VIN. If a VIN you enter is already in the system from another shop that has serviced the same car, CSM links you to the shared record instead of creating a duplicate.
Year, Make, Model, Trim, Color, and Engine
These fields are filled automatically by VIN decode or can be entered by hand. The Year, Make, and Model fields offer live suggestions as you type, pulled from a catalog of vehicles — but you can always type something not in the list.
License Plate and State
Store the plate number and the state it is registered in for quick identification.
Mileage
The current mileage as of the last update. Update it each visit to keep a running reference for your team.
Label (Shop Name for the Vehicle)
An optional nickname your team gives the vehicle — for example, “Dad’s truck” or “Company van.” This label belongs to your shop and is not shared with other shops that may service the same car.
Finding a Vehicle
The Vehicles page has a search bar that matches against license plate, VIN, year, make, and model. Use the Make > Model rail on the left to drill down by brand — click a make to see all models under it, then click a model to narrow to just that vehicle type. You can also filter the list to a single customer’s vehicles by clicking through from their customer record.
Adding a New Vehicle
Click New Vehicle on the Vehicles page. Enter the VIN and click Decode VIN to auto-fill the vehicle details. If the VIN is not available yet, you can fill in the fields by hand — Year, Make, and Model will suggest options as you type. You can also assign an owner (customer) right on the create form.
If you enter a VIN that your shop already has on file, CSM will block the duplicate and show you the existing vehicle instead.
Ownership and Service History
Every time you change who owns a vehicle, CSM automatically records the ownership period behind the scenes. This powers the Customer Portal — a customer who logs in can see the full service history for every vehicle they have owned, with detail limited to the time they actually owned it. When a customer sells a car, their portal still shows their ownership period, but the new owner’s contact information is not shown to them.
Locking a Vehicle
You can lock a vehicle record to prevent edits or deletion. Locking is per shop — if another shop services the same car, their record is independent. Unlock the vehicle at any time to make changes.
Importing Vehicles in Bulk
If you are onboarding with an existing fleet, go to Account Settings → Data Migration → Vehicles to import from a CSV file. VIN is the only required column. You can include owner email to link vehicles to customers you have already imported. Upload your file, review every row, and confirm — nothing is written until you approve the preview. This feature requires the Pro plan.