Here it is. Print pages 6 through 15; those are the working pages. If you're standing at a service counter right now, skip to page 10. The six questions work on their own.
US Letter, prints in black and white. Free to print and share unmodified and in full.
Pages 2 through 5 are reference. Read them once. Everything after that is a page you fill in with the estimate beside you.
Page 6. Shop, advisor, date, mileage, the total, and the shop's hourly labour rate. Then the symptom in your own words, not theirs. Half of all estimate disputes start with a symptom described one way and written down another.
Pages 7 and 8. Mark each line S for safety, M for maintenance, or a question mark for suggestion. Then add up three totals instead of one and check the maintenance lines against your owner's manual. Half of that list is often not due yet.
Page 9. Hours times rate should equal the labour dollars printed. If it doesn't divide cleanly, ask why. Look up two or three named parts online for an order of magnitude, not a match. And don't take the printout to the counter as an argument.
Page 10 is the script, page 11 is where the answers go, page 13 is what you're authorising and what you're declining. Page 14 asks the last question: can you decide this on your own? For most estimates, yes.
If the car is unsafe to drive, stop reading and deal with that first. Brakes that grind or go to the floor, steering that wanders, a wheel that wobbles, anything leaking fuel. Page 4 lists what genuinely cannot wait. That's not a budgeting question.
Most people who use the decoder won't need either of these. That's fine, and it's the point. These are for the two situations the workbook can't settle on its own.
A written review of your estimate within 24 hours: what's genuinely urgent, what can wait, whether the diagnosis explains your symptom, and whether the parts and hours are in a normal range for your vehicle and your area. Send your filled-in pages 6, 7 and 11 and it goes fast, because the sorting is already done. If the quote is fair, I'll say so. Same price either way.
The decoder is for the car you already own. If you're looking at a car you might buy, this is the 46-page version of the same idea: inspect it, document it, question the seller, test drive it on a planned route, and score it before you commit. Six fill-in worksheets and a scorecard that tells you when to walk away.