VIN Scan lets you photograph a vehicle's VIN plate on your phone and immediately see what the car is, along with anything your shop already knows about it. You do not need a work order, an invoice, or even a customer record first. It is built for the conversation you have standing next to a car in the lot.
**Where to find it**
Open Manifold on your phone and tap the **VIN Scan** tile on the home screen.
**Scanning a VIN**
- Tap **Photograph a VIN**. The camera opens with a wide box across the middle of the screen.
- Hold the phone upright and move in until the VIN fills the box. Six to eight inches away is about right. There is no need to turn the phone sideways.
- If the plate is in shadow, tap the flashlight button in the top corner.
- Tap the round shutter button.
The VIN plate is usually on the driver's side of the dashboard, visible through the windscreen, or on the sticker inside the driver's door jamb.
**What you get back**
Two things, and the second is often the more useful
- **What the car is.** Year, make, model, trim, engine, body style, door count and everything else the national vehicle database publishes for that VIN. Tap "Vehicle details" to see the full list.
- **Whether you have seen it before.** If the VIN matches a vehicle already on file, you will see "Seen before" with the owner's name and how much history there is. Tap "History" for the invoices, work orders and any serialised parts you installed in it.
That second part is what makes this worth doing before you quote. If you fitted an amplifier in this car two years ago, you will know before the customer tells you.
**Check the characters before you keep it**
The read is a suggestion, not a fact. Compare the characters on screen against the plate before you tap Keep. If one is wrong, tap the field and correct it, and the details will refresh for the VIN you corrected it to.
If a VIN looks wrong, Manifold will say so and ask you to confirm a second time. That warning is worth taking seriously: a VIN can look perfectly readable and still belong to a different car.
**Nothing is saved until you tap Keep**
Taking a photograph writes nothing. If the read is bad, or the customer walks, tap Retake or just close the sheet and it is gone.
**Recent scans**
Scans you keep appear in the Recent scans list underneath, and they stay there for seven days. Two things to know:
- **The list is shop-wide.** Everybody in the shop sees every scan, with the name of whoever took it, and your own scans sort to the top. This is deliberate: the person who scans a car in the lot is often not the person who writes the estimate at the counter.
- **A scan is not a vehicle record yet.** It is a photograph and seventeen characters, sitting in a list. It becomes a real vehicle on a customer only when somebody attaches it.
Tap the X on any row to dismiss a scan you do not need.
**Using a scan on an estimate, invoice or work order**
There are two ways round, and most shops will use the first.
*From the desktop, when you are writing the paperwork.* Start the estimate, invoice or work order as usual. When you add the vehicle, click **Use a recent VIN scan** underneath the VIN box and pick the car from the list. The VIN, year, make, model and trim fill in for you. This is the one that fits the walk-back-to-the-counter flow: scan in the lot, write the estimate five minutes later.
*From the phone, when the paperwork already exists.* Open the scan from the Recent scans list and tap **Send to**, then choose the invoice, estimate or work order. If that document already has a vehicle on it, Manifold will ask you to confirm before replacing it, and the prompt tells you what else moves. An invoice and its work orders always share one vehicle: send the scan to the invoice and its work orders follow, send it to a work order and the invoice and any other work orders on it follow too.
Either way, if the customer already has this car on file, Manifold links the existing vehicle rather than creating a second copy, so the car's service history stays in one place.
**Who can use it**
Everyone, by default. If you want to restrict it, it is the "Scan a VIN with the camera" permission under CRM / Customers in user permissions.
Sending a scan to an invoice or estimate needs Point of Sale, and sending it to a work order needs Service. If your shop does not have one of those, that option simply will not be offered. Scanning and saving to a customer's vehicle works either way.
**The same lookup at a desk**
If you already have the VIN and are sitting at a computer, Service > VIN Lookup answers the same question with the full history laid out: every owner the car has had, every invoice and work order, and the parts you installed. See "VIN Lookup: a vehicle's complete history, by VIN".