Car lot software: what a small dealer actually needs

Open any dealer software website and you will be shown forty features. CRM, desking, F&I menus, equity mining, multi-rooftop reporting, OEM integrations, a mobile app, a website package.

Then look at a lot that sells eight cars a month, run by one person and a part-time detailer. Almost none of that list is what decides whether the year works.

The useful way to choose is backwards. Start from what the rules make non-optional and what the arithmetic makes non-optional, and treat everything else as preference.

What the federal rule makes non-optional

The FTC’s Used Car Rule is the floor, and the threshold is lower than most people selling a few cars assume.

The FTC states that car dealers who sell, or offer for sale, more than five used vehicles in a 12-month period must comply. Note the wording. Offering counts, not just selling. It applies in every state except Maine and Wisconsin, which have their own equivalent disclosure regulations, and it also applies in the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa.

What the Rule actually requires of your process:

A Buyers Guide posted before display. You must post a Buyers Guide before you display a vehicle for sale, or let a customer inspect it for the purpose of buying it, even if the car is not fully prepared for delivery. The same applies to consignment vehicles on your lot.

Displayed so both sides are visible. The Guide must be displayed prominently and conspicuously, in plain view, with both sides visible. The FTC lists where that works: hung from the rear-view mirror, on a side-view mirror, under a windshield wiper, attached to a side window. And where it does not: a Guide in a glove compartment, trunk or under the seat is not conspicuous because it is not in plain sight.

Replaced after every test drive. You may remove the Guide for a test drive, but you must replace it as soon as the test drive is over.

Handed over at the sale, reflecting final changes. You must give the buyer the original or a copy of the vehicle’s Buyers Guide at the sale, and the Guide must reflect all final changes.

Updated when you negotiate. If you and the consumer negotiate changes in the warranty, the Buyers Guide must reflect the changes. The FTC’s own example: if you first offer the vehicle as is but then agree to provide a warranty, you must cross out the “As Is-No Dealer Warranty” disclosure and complete the Warranty section properly.

In Spanish when the sale is. If you conduct a used car transaction in Spanish, you must post a Spanish language Buyers Guide on the vehicle before you display or offer it for sale.

The form itself is prescribed, not suggested. You must use the wording, type style, type sizes and format specified in the Rule, you are not allowed to place any other wording or symbols including logos on the Buyers Guide, and the Guides must be printed in 100% black ink on white paper cut to at least 11 by 7.25 inches. Colored ink is allowed only for filling in the blanks.

Exceptions exist and they are narrow: motorcycles, agricultural equipment, and any vehicle sold for scrap or parts where the dealer submits title documents to the appropriate state authority and obtains a salvage certification.

The FTC’s own figure for getting this wrong, as published on that page: penalties of up to $53,088 per violation in enforcement actions, a number the page notes was last adjusted for inflation in January 2025.

So requirement one for any system you pay for: it produces a current, compliant Buyers Guide for every car, or it gets out of the way of whatever does.

What your state may add on top

The federal rule is a floor, not a ceiling, and the state layer is where dealers get caught by surprise.

California is the clearest published example. Dealers there must obtain a National Motor Vehicle Title Information System report from an approved provider before a used vehicle is offered or displayed for sale, and if that report shows junk or salvage history, or the title carries a brand, the dealer must post a disclosure statement on the vehicle while it is displayed. California also states plainly that sellers including dealerships are legally required to disclose a vehicle’s salvage title and history.

Whether or not your state requires it, running the federal title check on every car is the cheapest protection in the business. Carfax vs AutoCheck vs NMVTIS covers which check answers which question.

Requirement two: whatever you use has to store the check you ran, against the car you ran it on, in a form you can produce later. A report sitting in your email is not a record you can find in two years.

What the arithmetic makes non-optional

Compliance keeps you legal. The next three requirements are what decide whether the business makes money.

Every cost attached to the individual vehicle. Not to the month. The auction fee, the transport, the parts from three suppliers, the labour, the inspection, the second attempt at the inspection, the detail. The true cost of a car sets out which lines usually go missing, and they go missing the same way every time: they arrive after the car does.

Days held, per car. Not average age of inventory. The individual number, visible while the car is still sitting there and can still be repriced. Days on the lot covers what holding time does to the return on a deal.

Real gross, before you shake hands. The figure that already has reconditioning and fees in it, not the one you get by subtracting the purchase price from the sale price. Gross profit per car goes through the difference and why the second number flatters every deal.

Requirements three, four and five. If a system cannot do these three things at a glance, the feature list does not matter.

What a small lot can safely skip

These exist, they are legitimate, and they are built for a different business than yours.

At eight to fifteen cars a month, buying these buys complexity. Every one of them is a module someone has to set up, learn and keep current, and none of them changes whether the Buyers Guide is on the window or whether you know what the Escape actually cost you.

Spreadsheet or software

The honest answer is that a spreadsheet works until it does not, and it fails quietly.

It holds up while you are entering costs the day they happen. It breaks in the week you are busy, which is the week with the most deals in it, and the gap does not announce itself. You find out at the end of the year, when the figures disagree with the bank.

Spreadsheet vs dealer software works through where the line sits. The short version: the question is not how many cars you sell, it is how many days pass between a cost happening and you recording it.

How to evaluate what you are being sold

Four questions, in this order, and get the answers in writing.

1. What does it cost per month, and what is extra? Pricing in this category is often quoted rather than published, which makes comparison harder than it should be. Ask for the number.
2. What happens to my data if I leave? Export format, who owns it, how long you have. Ask before you depend on it.
3. How long until I am actually using it? A system that takes six weeks of setup costs you six weeks, whatever the monthly price says.
4. Does it do the five things above without a module? If per-vehicle costs, days held, real gross, the Buyers Guide and the history check all need separate add-ons, the base price is not the price.

A last point that applies whatever you choose. The system that helps is the one you actually update on the bad weeks. Capability you do not use is indistinguishable from capability you do not have.

Deelary is built for the end of that list rather than the start of it. Every cost attached to the individual vehicle, real margin and days held per car, on a phone, so the entry happens at the auction and the shop rather than on the evening you finally sit down to catch up.