Manage warranty claims

Warranty is where the office runs the whole claim lifecycle — from configuring the policies a claim is measured against, through intake, evidence, a coverage decision, and the manufacturer return-and-credit follow-through. It's an Owner/Office/Dispatcher surface; technicians start draft claims from the field app but never see this queue.

Configure a policy

A warranty policy holds the terms a claim is evaluated against: which manufacturer it comes from, whether labor and parts are covered (and at what percentage), the coverage term, a per-claim deductible, an approval threshold, and the evidence a claim must carry before it can be submitted.

1. Open Warranty and scroll to Warranty policies.
2. Select Add policy.
3. Name it, pick the manufacturer (a manufacturer is a vendor flagged as one), set coverage, term, deductible, and the approval threshold.
4. List the required evidence as comma-separated keys — for example photo, failed_part_serial, purchase_receipt. A claim can't be submitted until every required key has at least one attachment.
5. Optionally add exclusion terms (matched against item descriptions) and a claim-number prefix.

Policies can be edited or deactivated later; an inactive policy no longer appears when a new claim is created but is kept for historical claims.

Work a claim

Each claim moves through a validated lifecycle — Draft → Submitted → Under review → Decided → Closed — with the current stage shown on the claim header. The queue's filter pills narrow by stage; the Needs decision count in the header is every claim waiting on the office.

• Overview shows the explainable coverage result from the coverage engine: the covered/expected-recovery split, what the customer is responsible for, the coverage window, which rules matched, and any missing evidence. Coverage is advisory — an owner or office manager can record a reason-required override.
• Evidence lists the policy's required evidence with an attached/missing indicator and lets you upload photos or receipts (with a retry if an upload fails).
• Use Submit claim on a draft (it's blocked while required evidence is missing), Acknowledge & review to begin a review, then record a decision — full, partial, or denial — with per-item approved and denied amounts.

Returns and credits

When a claim is approved and marked return-required, the Returns & credits tab opens the manufacturer follow-through for each approved item: quarantine and return the failed part, raise a replacement purchase order, receive the replacement into stock, then record the manufacturer credit and reconcile it against what was approved.

Credits are always review-required — a recorded credit stays pending until an owner or office manager approves or denies it, and nothing is ever auto-posted to accounting.

Assignment, SLA, and notifications

Assign a claim to a staff member and set a due date from the claim's side panel. When a claim is submitted, the office decision pool is notified; when a decision is recorded, the claim's assignee is notified. Notifications carry the claim number, equipment, and outcome only — never the attached evidence.