Vehicles live under a customer record in SalesThumb — you attach one (or several) to a customer rather than creating a standalone vehicle. Quotes, invoices, and appointments can each be tied to a specific vehicle too, but that field is optional on all three, not required — a vehicle isn't forced onto every record. Attaching one just keeps year/make/model, VIN, plate, and mileage sitting right next to the job, which starts to matter the moment a customer has more than one vehicle on file.
Adding a vehicle
1. Open the customer's profile and find the Vehicles card. 2. Click Add (top-right of the card). 3. In the Add vehicle dialog, paste a VIN and click Decode VIN to auto-fill year, make, model, and trim — this uses the free NHTSA vPIC database and works for any US-market vehicle from 1981 or newer. It only overwrites fields NHTSA actually returns data for, so anything else you've already typed (like Color, Plate, or Mileage) is left alone. 4. Fill in whatever else you know: Year, Make, Model, Trim, Color, Plate, Mileage, and an optional Fleet unit # for shops running multi-vehicle accounts. Notes is a free-text field for paint quirks, prior damage, or customer preferences. 5. Click Add vehicle to save.
None of these fields are required to save a vehicle — enter what you have and fill in the rest later.
Editing or removing a vehicle
Click any vehicle in the Vehicles card to open the Edit vehicle dialog, pre-filled with its current details. Update any field (including re-running Decode VIN) and click Save changes — every edit is logged to the customer's activity history.
To remove a vehicle, click Delete vehicle in the edit dialog and confirm. SalesThumb only allows the delete to go through if the vehicle has a clean slate — no quotes, invoices, appointments, or warranties have ever been attached to it. If any of those exist, the delete is blocked and you'll see an error naming exactly what's attached (for example, "Cannot delete a vehicle with existing 2 quotes, 1 invoice"), so nothing gets silently wiped out. In practice this means a vehicle you just added by mistake deletes cleanly, but a vehicle with real job history on it won't — edit its details instead if you need to correct or retire it.
Vehicle history lookup
Once a vehicle has a full 17-character VIN, a Vehicle history card appears on the customer's profile pulling a third-party CarFax/AutoCheck-style report — owner count, accidents, open recalls, title status, and recent service records.
This integration needs to be connected before it returns real data. Until you add a CarFax or AutoCheck key under Settings → Integrations, the card shows realistic demo data labeled Demo data, with a note under the heading reading "Demo data — configure CarFax or AutoCheck in Settings → Integrations to pull real reports." It's there so you can see the surface and layout, not a live report. Once a real provider key is connected, the same card starts returning actual pulled reports, and you can use the Re-pull button to force a fresh lookup (this bypasses the normal 24-hour cache and may carry a per-pull fee on real providers).
Need help? Email info@roffik.com.