Automobile inventory management software, and the automobile inventory management system behind it
- Variance in units (negative is a shortfall)
- -86
- What the shortfall cost you to replace
- $1,075
- Count accuracy, percent of expected found
- 96.4
The arithmetic on these sheets is your own count: units, unit cost and reorder point in, variance and value out. Nothing is estimated and no industry average is applied to your numbers. Where a page states an outside figure it names the document it came from and links to it.
There is a difference worth keeping straight between the software you buy and the system you end up running, and on a vehicle lot the gap between them is where most of the money leaks. The software is a product with a licence. The system is the agreed answer to a handful of questions: when a unit is created, who photographs it, what happens on the day it crosses your aging threshold, and who is allowed to change a price. Products that are easy to buy do not supply the second part, and a lot without the second part gets an expensive database of stale cars.
Open the Inventory spreadsheet template Free to use. No account, no card, no trial clock.
Define when a unit enters the record
On the auction bid, on collection, or on arrival at the lot? Each is defensible and each produces a different aging figure, which is why the number is meaningless until the answer is fixed and written down. Most disputes about whether the aging report is accurate turn out to be disputes about this.
Make the identifier the key and decode it once
The vehicle identification number assigned under the federal VIN standard is the only field that is guaranteed unique, so it should be the key, entered once, decoded once, and never retyped. Systems that let a unit be created by stock number alone accumulate duplicates that nobody notices until two people are advertising the same car.
Attach the disclosure record to the unit, not to the deal
Odometer disclosure under the federal odometer rule and the buyers guide required by the FTC used car rule both describe a specific vehicle. Holding those against the unit rather than against a completed sale means the record survives the deal falling through, the car being re-advertised, and the salesperson leaving.
Set one aging threshold and make something happen at it
Aging only costs money when nobody acts on it, and action means a named person and a named decision: reprice, wholesale, or move it to the front. A system that produces an aging report nobody is required to respond to is a system producing a monthly reminder that you are losing money.
Keep the parts shelf out of it
If the business also runs service, resist the temptation to make one product hold both. The lot's record is per unit and per day; the shelf's record is per line and per count. The free sheet here handles the second, and keeping them apart is what stops either becoming the half the vendor added later.
Stock counts: what people ask before the first one
How is this different from what a dealer management system does? A dealer management system is the whole business platform. What is described here is the inventory layer alone, and for a small independent that layer plus a spreadsheet often outperforms a platform bought before anybody agreed the rules above.
Should photographs live in the inventory record? Yes, attached to the unit. Photographs held in a marketing tool separate from the unit record are the commonest cause of a car being advertised with another car's pictures, and that is an expensive mistake to make in public.
What about vehicles out on consignment? Give them a status rather than removing them. A unit you can sell but do not own behaves differently in the aging and in the valuation, and deleting it from the list is how it goes unadvertised for three weeks.
Does the free sheet on this page work for vehicles? Not for the lot itself. It counts quantities, and a vehicle is a one-off. It is the right tool for the parts and consumables the same business holds, which is usually the half nobody has ever counted.
What is the smallest useful version of this? A spreadsheet with one row per unit, keyed on the VIN, with the date it entered the record and the date it sold. That alone gives you a true aging figure, which is the single most valuable number on a lot.
Will the Automobile inventory management software fit what you count?
Tell us what you are counting and how you count it today, and we will tell you whether Stocktaka fits before you pay for anything.