Auto Dealer Software Data Integration Experts Blog

It's the end of the month, time for the monthly retail delivery reporting to the auto manufacturer and there is a stack of deal jackets sitting in your office. You do anything to avoid the stack knowing eventually the work will need to be done. The stack of new vehicle sales will need to be reported to the auto manufacturer in order to meet sales goals for your dealership and earn the monthly incentive. If you don't get the vehicles reported, it will be you that will need to explain to the General Manager or Dealer Principal why they didn't earn that additional incentive that allows them to afford the trip to Hawaii in February with the wife and kids.

Reporting new vehicle sales to the automaker has traditionally been a time consuming task that can always be done tomorrow. The vehicle has been delivered, financing has been established or the cashiers check has been cashed. Just throw the deal jacket on the stack until later because there are more important items on the to-do list. Before you know it, the last reporting day of the month has arrived and you are working late cursing the person who came up with the VIN; a random number of letters and numbers that challenge even the most efficient typist.

The VIN is just a small piece of the vehicle sales report. As you enter the customer information, insurance, extended service plan and possibly more (depending on the automaker) the true frustration of this task sets in. All of the information you are manually entering is already in your dealer management software. You ask yourself, why do I have to renter all of this data into the automaker's portal when it has already been entered into my system during the sales process.

Vehicle delivery reporting, for many automakers, no longer needs to be a dreaded end of the month task. Many automakers have worked with Dealer System Providers to develop integrated solutions that electronically send the the information directly from your dealer management system to the automaker. These solutions vary from real-time submission at the time of contracting to programs that create a single file of multiple vehicle sales over night for batch processing.

Automotive dealer management software integration solutions come to the rescue by streamlining the new vehicle sales process, providing a better retail delivery reporting experience to the manufacturer and increasing transparency in meeting sales goals during the time of the month when a dealership can actually do something about obtaining the goals.

Rich has over 19 years automotive solutions experience with auto dealer management software. Over his 15 years with Reynolds & Reynolds (then UCS), his responsibilities included dealer management software support, auto dealer software installation, auto manufacturer account management and dealership consulting.

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