What the AI can and can’t see
The AI reads what you recorded on this inspection — your ratings, your measurements, your notes, and the vehicle details. Shop-specific estimator guidance, where your shop has it, also shapes the draft. It does not know:- Your labour rate
- What you pay for parts
- What you charge for a job
- What you quoted this customer last time
Reading the tire placard
You photograph the door-jamb sticker. The image goes to a vision model, which reads the printed values back as text. It reads more than the inspection shows you. Extraction covers tire sizes, load index and speed rating, cold pressures in both PSI and kPa, the spare, and the weight ratings. The inspection displays the headline values — front, rear, and spare sizes and pressures, plus GVWR. You can edit the tire sizes and pressures. GVWR is display-only. It returns a confidence score with the result. The model reads a photograph of a sticker, and fading, angle, or shadow can change what it reads. The score does not verify the values. Check every extracted value against the placard.Why you verify it
When you edit an extracted tire field, DVI marks the reading as verified and saves it with the inspection. Tire sizes flow into everything downstream — what you quote, what you order, what the customer sees. A misread digit is cheap to fix at the door jamb and expensive to fix after the tires arrive.Drafting the customer summary
The AI writes the summary for the customer, not for you. It organises the findings by urgency, so the things that need attention now come first. It’s built from the items you rated and the notes you wrote. Sparse notes make a sparse summary — the model can only describe what you recorded. If any services have prices, the summary can reference the overall total. With no priced services, it leaves cost out entirely.Why it’s editable
You know the customer and the conversation you’ve already had. The draft saves you the typing; it doesn’t know that this customer just replaced two tires in March, or that they’re anxious about cost. Refine keeps your wording and fills gaps. Regenerate throws your text away and starts over — which is why it asks first, and why there’s an undo.Drafting the service list
The AI receives only the items you rated Required or Suggested. Anything left Pending is invisible to it, which is another reason to finish the inspection before generating. The AI groups related work into one service rather than drafting one service per finding, and keeps the list short. Each service carries a plain-language explanation aimed at the customer, and each links back to the findings it came from. Review every generated service and its linked findings.Where the prices come from
This is the part worth understanding properly. There is no price list in DVI. No table of your jobs, no shop-wide labour rate, no parts catalog. When the AI puts a number on a service, it is estimating from US national averages — a labour rate band and a typical parts markup. So a generated price is a plausible market figure for that job somewhere in the country. It is not your price.Why it isn’t a shop-wide setting
There’s no place to enter your rates once and have every future inspection use them. Prices are set per service, per inspection. That’s more work, and worth knowing up front so it doesn’t surprise you on your tenth report. For shop-specific estimator guidance, contact support. Guidance can affect the draft, so check every price before sending.Estimate or exact, and what the customer sees
Every service is one or the other, and the difference changes what the customer is agreeing to.
The customer report rounds each price to whole dollars. Its approval total always reads Maximum Authorized. Approval emails change their total label when any approved price is an estimate. The customer’s confirmation reads Max Authorized instead of Total Authorized. Your team’s email reads MAX AUTHORIZED instead of TOTAL APPROVED. The customer report page lists every price form.
AI-drafted services lean toward Est. by default, because their instructions ask for a range wherever parts cost varies. Services you add by hand default to Exact, on the assumption you know your own price.
An estimate is a spending ceiling the customer has agreed to. Work that lands above it needs a fresh approval, so set the high end where you can finish the job.
What follows from all this
Each of the three features leaves one thing only a person can supply:
That’s the shape of the whole design. It drafts fast from what you recorded, and it stops where your judgement starts. The inspection recipes cover each of those checks as a step.
Where to go next
Performing an inspection
The steps for placard capture, summary, services, and pricing.
Notification reference
Every notification, who receives it, and when.