How repairs work
Before you configure anything, it helps to know three things: where the settings live, who can change them, and how SKU.io treats a piece once it's sent in for repair. This page covers all three; the rest of this section walks through each settings page in turn.
Where repair settings live
Open Settings → Repairs & Warranty (searchable by "repair", "warranty", "claim", "replate", "fix" or "guarantee"). Visiting the group with no page chosen opens straight on General. It holds ten pages:
| Page | What it configures |
|---|---|
| General | Numbering, intake automation, technician assignment, risk signals, quotes and follow-ups, the turnaround clock, quality alerts, warranty registrations, plating finishes, repair shipments, and the accounting options. See Configure general repair settings. |
| Warranty Policies | What's covered, for how long, and what a claim costs. Covered in Warranty & Coverage. |
| Issue Types | The tree of problems your bench diagnoses. See Build issue types and inspection checklists. |
| Inspection Templates | Checklists the bench works through at diagnosis and quality check. Same guide as Issue Types. |
| SLA Policies | Turnaround targets. See Set SLA policies and labour/bill rates. |
| Rates | Labour cost, bill rates, and per-issue flat prices. Same guide as SLA Policies. |
| Part Compatibility | Which repair parts fit which pieces. See Manage part compatibility and Import part compatibility. |
| Customer Portal | The public "Start a repair" form. Covered in Customer Claims. |
| Claim Sources | Taking claims from a help desk, a form tool, or your own system. Covered in Customer Claims. |
| Vendors | A read-only shortcut to the suppliers you send pieces out to for repair or replating. Described below. |
Vendors is a shortcut, not a setup page
Settings → Repairs & Warranty → Vendors lists every supplier flagged as a repair vendor — outside jewellers, repair shops, or platers you send customers' pieces to. The list is read-only: for each vendor it shows the turnaround days, how many rate-card fees are set, and the contractor warehouse (if one is linked), with a Go to Suppliers button and an Edit link on each row.
You don't flag a vendor or set its turnaround, rate card, or contractor warehouse here. All of that lives on the supplier's own record — open Contacts → Suppliers, find the supplier, and turn on "This supplier repairs or replates pieces for us" on its Settings tab. Once that's on, the supplier shows up on this list automatically. See Create & edit a supplier for the supplier record itself, and Vendors & Recovery for sending a piece to a vendor and working a dispatch.
If no suppliers are flagged yet, the page shows an empty state with a shortcut straight to Suppliers.
Nothing to turn on
None of the Repairs & Warranty settings sit behind a master on/off switch. The whole feature set is live for every tenant, with defaults chosen to match your existing returns flow — for example, repairs automatically link to a generated RMA so the receive station and return reporting keep working, but nothing changes for an order until someone explicitly chooses "Send to repair" on a return. You won't find, and don't need, an "enable repairs" step anywhere in these settings.
Who can change these settings
Settings → Users & Permissions, open a role's Permissions tab, and look for the Repairs & Warranty group. It's a dedicated set of permissions, separate from Returns and Sales Orders, including View, Create, Edit, Settings (every page in this section, plus the fee-guardrail confirmations), and more specific ones like Bench, Vendor repairs, and Supplier recovery. You need Settings to change anything on this section's pages; most fields are visible with just View. The full list, with what each permission actually unlocks, is in Roles & permissions reference.
Who owns a piece sent in for repair
A piece you're repairing doesn't automatically become your stock. SKU.io tracks two separate things about it:
- Ownership — whether the piece counts as real, valued inventory (brand-owned) or stays the customer's property that you're simply holding (customer-owned).
- Custody — where the piece physically is right now, independent of who owns it.
A piece defaults to customer-owned: it's never valued, carries no cost layer, and posts no inventory movement — SKU.io only tracks where it is, optionally against a non-sellable "Repair" location. It starts brand-owned instead only when the return behind it already carries a refund or sales credit, a disposition policy says otherwise, or the piece was already linked to a receipt line that was brand-owned.
Ownership can also flip during the repair — always as an explicit, recorded event, never silently. The flip happens when the customer gets a replacement or a refund/credit and you keep the original piece: SKU.io receives it into stock at the original sale's cost, through the same path an ordinary return receipt uses.
A double flip can't happen — SKU.io blocks a second transfer on the same piece. And if the piece arrived on a receipt shared with other repair lines, the transfer creates an isolated receipt for just that piece rather than changing the shared one.
Next steps
- Configure general repair settings — numbering, automation, and the rest of the General page.
- Roles & permissions reference — every Repairs & Warranty permission, in full.
- Create & edit a supplier — flag a supplier as a repair vendor.