Email in the inbox in Service VIN: setup
Connect your shop's reception email so inbound and outbound emails land in Email and on the customer's profile, the same way texts do — and write proper emails from the compose window.
Settings & integrations10 in this section
The short answer
Can I see customer emails in Service VIN?
Connect your shop's reception address and email joins the same timeline as texts and calls on the customer's record. You can answer by email from the inbox without opening a mail client, and the person who picks up the thread tomorrow sees the whole conversation rather than half of it.
Related feature
CRM for auto shops is the page about what this article sets up.
Your shop can send and receive email inside Service VIN. Turn it on and every email between you and a customer lands in Email and on their profile, beside their texts and calls — so whoever picks it up sees the whole history. The Inbox stays for texts and calls.
It is off by default. Until you turn it on, your shop still sends email as it always has (quotes, invoices, receipts), but when a customer hits Reply that message goes to your own mailbox and Service VIN never sees it.
Not everyone has this yet. Two-way email is still in a limited test on a small number of accounts, so if you don't see Email inbox in your settings list, it isn't switched on for yours — see the troubleshooting note at the bottom of this page. Everything else about your email is unaffected.
Turn it on
- 1
Open Settings → Email inbox
Go to Settings → Email inbox. It shows exactly what your customers currently see on your outgoing email, and where their replies go today.
- 2
Turn on the email inbox
Your shop gets its own Service VIN address, e.g.
your-shop@email.servicevin.com. You don't have to choose it and you don't need to give it to customers — it's the address their replies come back to automatically. - 3
Write from Email
Open Email and press Compose, or press Email on a customer or on a text thread. The compose window has formatting (bold, links, lists), Cc and Bcc, your templates, ✦ AI to draft or polish, Preview, Send later, and a few seconds to Undo after you press Send. What you see in the editor — greeting included — is exactly what the customer gets.
- 4
Optional — forward your public address
Customers who email your public address (say
info@yourshop.ca) directly still land in your own mailbox. To log those here too, set up a forward from that mailbox to the Service VIN address. Gmail: Settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Outlook: Settings → Mail → Forwarding.
Where your customers' replies go
Turning this on moves replies out of your own mailbox and into Service VIN, so anyone working the inbox can see and answer them instead of them sitting in one person's Gmail. That's the point of the feature — but it is a real change, so it's your choice per shop and you can switch it back off at any time. Nothing already logged is lost when you do.
Nothing sends itself
Inbound emails are logged and shown to you. Service VIN never auto-replies to them — every outgoing email is still a person deciding to send it.
What gets logged
Troubleshooting
There's no "Email inbox" entry in my Settings list.
Why: Two-way email is still in a limited test and is switched on for a small number of accounts only, so the section is hidden for everyone else rather than showing a page that can't do anything. (It also stays hidden on a deployment that isn't set up to receive mail at all.)
Fix: Ask support to put your shop on the list — there's nothing to buy and nothing to configure at your end. Your outgoing email — quotes, invoices, receipts — keeps working exactly as it does now in the meantime, with replies going to your own mailbox.
A customer emailed but nothing appeared in Email.
Why: Most often the mail went to your public address and forwarding isn't set up — or the sender's address doesn't match any customer record.
Fix: Check the forwarding step above. If the address is new, the email creates a new customer record; look for it under Customers by their email address. Settings → Email inbox shows when the last email arrived — if a reply you just sent yourself never shows there, tell support.
There's no Email button on a text conversation.
Why: The button only appears when the customer has an email address on file.
Fix: Add their email address to the customer record, then open the conversation again.
Replies are still going to my Gmail.
Why: The email inbox is switched off for this shop, so Reply-To is still your own mailbox.
Fix: Open Settings → Email inbox and turn it on.
Common questions
Do my customers see a servicevin.com address?
Your emails go out under your shop's name. The reply address is a Service VIN one, which is what lets replies come back into your inbox — most customers never look at it, they just hit Reply.
Will I stop getting emails in my own mailbox?
Replies to email your team sends from Service VIN come back here instead of your mailbox. Everything else — mail to your public address — keeps arriving exactly as it does now, unless you set up the optional forward. Most providers let you keep a copy when forwarding, and we recommend you do.
Can I attach photos to an email?
Yes — use the paperclip in the compose window. Attachments a customer sends *to* you aren't stored in Service VIN yet: the email is logged with the filenames listed, and the files themselves stay in your mailbox.
What if a customer has no phone number, only an email?
That works fine. Their conversation lives in Email, and you write to them from the compose window.
Can I schedule an email for later?
Yes — press Send later in the compose window and pick a time. Scheduled emails wait under Scheduled in Email, where you can cancel one before it goes.