Recoat & Inspection Reminders is SalesThumb's engine for winning back the recurring revenue that warrantied ceramic coating and PPF jobs create on their own: most tiers require the customer to come back for a periodic inspection, decontamination, or recoat to keep their coverage valid, and those visits are easy to lose track of once the original install is done. Turn it on at Settings → Notifications, and from then on a daily background job finds customers whose warranty is approaching its required inspection and texts or emails them a one-tap link to rebook — while the Warranties page shows your team exactly who's upcoming, due, or overdue so the front desk can work the list. It's off by default, so nothing goes out until you opt in.
Turning it on
Go to Settings → Notifications and find the "Recoat & Inspection Reminders" card. There are three things to set:
- Enable recoat / inspection reminders — the shop-wide switch. Off by default. Turning it on doesn't send anything by itself; it just arms the daily job to start considering your shop's warranties.
- Remind this many days before due — how many days of lead time the customer gets before their inspection date, from 1–180 (default 30). This is the window the reminder fires inside — not a delay after the due date.
- Default cadence (days) — how often (30–3650 days) a warranty should be inspected/recoated when neither its coverage tier nor its film/coating product specifies its own cadence. Leave it blank to only schedule reminders for warranties whose tier or film already defines a cadence.
Click Save. A confirmation pill appears once it's stored. If the save doesn't seem to take, it's usually a permissions issue rather than a bug — see Things to know below.
How the cadence and due date get set
A warranty only enters the reminder engine if it has a maintenance cadence attached, and that cadence is resolved in order of specificity at the moment the warranty is registered:
1. The coverage tier's own inspection cadence, if the tier defines one. 2. An automatic annual cadence, applied whenever the installed film/coating product carries its own manufacturer warranty — the same interval no matter which specific product it is. 3. Your shop's Default cadence from the Settings card above.
If none of the three specify a cadence, the warranty simply isn't part of the engine — it won't appear on the due list and will never generate a reminder, no matter how old it gets. The actual due date is calculated automatically at registration (registration date plus the cadence) — you don't set it by hand for a normal warranty.
Working the due list
The Warranties page shows a "Recoat & inspection due" card whenever at least one warranty needs attention — it stays out of the way entirely when nothing's due. Each row shows the customer, their certificate number, vehicle (if one's attached), the due date, and a bucket badge:
- Upcoming — inside the lead window, not due yet.
- Due — on its due date.
- Overdue — past due; the count badges at the top of the card total each bucket.
A row also picks up a small "reminded" note once the automatic nudge has gone out for that cycle, so you can tell at a glance who's already been contacted versus who hasn't.
When a customer comes back in and the inspection/recoat is actually done, click Mark resolved on their row. That rolls the warranty's due date forward to its next cycle and clears the "already reminded" flag, so the reminder engine re-arms for next time. If a warranty had drifted several cycles overdue, resolving it jumps straight to the next due date that's actually in the future rather than just adding one cadence length — so it won't immediately reappear as overdue.
What the customer receives
Once the shop is enabled, the daily job checks every ACTIVE (and TRANSFERRED) warranty that carries a cadence and due date and hasn't already been nudged this cycle. For anyone who enters the lead window, it sends a text if there's a phone number on file, or falls back to email if there isn't — the message references their vehicle where known, frames the visit as protecting their warranty coverage, and links to your public booking page pre-filled with their info so they can rebook in a tap. It sends once per due cycle; it won't nag daily, and it re-arms only after the cycle is marked resolved or rolls forward. If a warranty has neither a phone nor an email on file, nothing goes out, but the record is still marked so it isn't re-checked every day — it'll be considered again once the cycle rolls forward.
Things to know
- Saving the toggle in Settings → Notifications requires an OWNER, ADMIN, or MANAGER role on the shop — the same privileged-field guard that protects other shop-level settings. A rejected save now surfaces an error message rather than silently doing nothing.
- The switch is shop-wide — one toggle governs every eligible warranty at the shop. There's no per-warranty opt-in beyond the cadence itself.
- Only ACTIVE and TRANSFERRED warranties are eligible. CLAIMED, VOIDED, and EXPIRED warranties never appear on the due list and never generate a reminder.
- Reminders honor the same opt-out and consent gates as your other outbound sales messages — a customer who has texted STOP, opted out of your messaging playbooks, or hasn't opted in to marketing communications won't get a maintenance nudge, even if their warranty is genuinely due. These are sales nudges, not transactional messages.
- Like all outbound SalesThumb texts and emails, sends still count against your shop's monthly messaging spend cap.
- A per-warranty cadence and due-date override exists at the API level — useful for a one-off agreement or correcting a bad due date on a single warranty, including clearing a warranty out of the engine entirely — but there's no dedicated screen for it in the app today.
- The due list only ever shows warranties that are actually upcoming, due, or overdue. It disappears completely, by design, when there's nothing to work.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Where do I turn on recoat and inspection reminders?
A: Settings → Notifications → the "Recoat & Inspection Reminders" card. Toggle "Enable recoat / inspection reminders" on, set your lead time and (optionally) a default cadence, then Save. It's off by default, so nothing sends until you turn it on.
Q: Who can turn this setting on?
A: Only shop owners, admins, and managers. That's a permissions guard on the underlying save, so a lower-permission account attempting to save will see an error rather than a silent no-op.
Q: Which warranties actually get a reminder?
A: Only ACTIVE or TRANSFERRED warranties that have a maintenance cadence — from the warranty's tier, an automatic annual cadence when its film/coating carries a manufacturer warranty, or your shop's default cadence, checked in that order. If none of those apply, the warranty never enters the engine and won't show on the due list no matter how old it is.
Q: What does the customer actually receive?
A: If the shop is enabled and the customer hasn't opted out, they get a text (or an email if there's no phone number on file) once their inspection enters the lead window, referencing their vehicle where known and linking to a pre-filled booking page. It sends once per due cycle, not repeatedly.
Q: What does "Mark resolved" do?
A: It rolls that warranty's due date forward to its next cycle and clears the "already reminded" flag so the engine re-arms for the next cycle. Use it once the customer has actually come back in for the recoat/inspection — not just because a reminder went out.
Q: Can I change the cadence or due date for just one warranty?
A: The system supports overriding a single warranty's cadence and due dates independently of its tier or your shop default — including removing it from the engine entirely — but there's no self-serve screen for that in the app today.