Asset Tracking Solutions For Car Dealers

Whether you sell the latest Tesla's and BMW's or run a used car lot, asset tracking solutions for your car dealership are a crucial, and sometimes overlooked, aspect of your business. When you can’t track the assets that help you make a sale, selling is much harder. And when you can’t sell, you can’t run your business.

Running a car dealership can be complicated if you don’t have the right systems to support you. Knowing what’s an asset and what’s part of your inventory can be tricky because vehicles are typically considered business assets. However, that isn’t the case when it comes to car dealerships.

How to Determine What is an Asset

Running a dealership can make it confusing to know what is an asset and what is inventory. However, there’s a simple way to determine the difference.

Anything you intend to sell is part of your inventory. Anything your business uses to track sales, obtain new cars, and support other aspects of your business is an asset.

For example, the cars on your lot are part of your inventory. However, the computers you use to track sales, the garage where you fix or store cars, and any maintenance equipment would be considered assets.

It’s important to track both your inventory and your assets. Each category has different bits of information you need to track.

Options For Car Dealership Asset Tracking Solutions

Forget trying to use a pen and paper solution. At the rate you sell your inventory, your records will quickly become outdated and nearly impossible to report on.

Spreadsheets will also give you a headache. They aren’t made to track the multitude of information you need to manage both your assets and your inventory. The only type of solution you should be looking at is a dedicated asset and inventory tracking platform. These software programs are set up with features to help you track all of the information related to each of your assets, and how they interact with other aspects of your business.

One option is to use Asset Panda to track inventory and assets in a holistic way. Our cloud-based database means you can access your system from anywhere on the car lot or beyond.

When you’re getting ready to show cars to customers, you can check and see what assets have been used for maintenance or detailing. You can set up a system so that each of your employees logs when they interact with assets, what models they’ve worked on, and when it happened. That way, you can be sure you’re not showing any cars that are in the middle of repairs, or that haven’t gotten necessary maintenance.

Setting Up Your Tracking Solution

Once you’ve found a system that works for you, it’s time to set it up and customize it to support your business. If you've chosen a system like Asset Panda, you can import your existing spreadsheet data quickly and work with an implementation expert to rapidly get your account up and running. After that, you’ll be surprised at how many ways it streamlines your business.

Just make sure you have the following in whatever system you choose:

• Which assets you use on a daily, weekly, monthly basis
• Who has access to your assets
• What those assets are used for
• Which parts of your inventory each asset interacts with
• When assets need to be maintained, replaced, or disposed
• How much your assets cost

As you track these things, you’ll get a more complete picture of how your assets interact with the rest of your business. When you know how your assets are supporting your sales, you can make more informed decisions for the rest of your dealership.