You are the buyer, the detailer, the salesperson and the bookkeeper. Three of those jobs have tools.
Deelary is a used car dealer app for the one-person lot: every cost on the car it belongs to, margin and days on the lot on your phone, no office hour required. Free for two cars.
A one-person lot runs on a specific kind of arithmetic. There are twelve cars out front. You know roughly what you paid for each. You know roughly what you have put into most of them. You know which three have been sitting too long, because you walk past them every morning.
Roughly is the problem. The dealer management systems that would make it exact are built and priced for a lot with a sales manager, an F&I office and someone whose job is the software. They assume a desk. The one-person lot does not have a desk. It has a phone, a parts counter, and a buyer standing by the silver Camry asking what you can do on it.
The three numbers that decide the month
Everything else a DMS does is useful and most of it is not urgent. Three numbers are urgent, and most software built for small lots tracks none of them properly.
- What the car really cost. Not the auction price. The auction price plus the buyer fee, the transport, the parts, the labour, the detail, the inspection and the title work. Deelary keeps each of those on the car, entered by photographing the receipt when it prints.
- What the car will really make. The margin at your asking price, recalculated every time a cost is added. When the buyer at the Camry asks what you can do, the floor is on the screen in your hand.
- How long it has sat. Days on the lot on every car, with a nudge at 45 and a harder one at 75. The car you walk past every morning gets a number instead of a feeling.
The whole lot in one screen
The inventory view shows every car with its total cost, asking price, projected margin and days held, sortable by any column. Sort by days and the cars that need a price cut are at the top. Sort by margin and the cars paying for the month are at the top. Sort by source and you can see which auction has been feeding you the good ones.
That last one matters more than it sounds. A solo dealer buys from two or three places out of habit. After a few months of data the habit gets tested, and it is common to find that the lane you like is the lane that costs you an extra $300 a car in reconditioning.
Built for where the work happens
- VIN scan. At the sale, in the lane, before the hammer falls. Make, model, year, engine and body fill in from the plate.
- Receipt photo. At the parts counter, at the tire shop, at the detailer. Amount, date and category read on the device.
- Appointments on the car. Showings, test drives and shop drop-offs sit on the car they belong to, with reminders, so Saturday's buyer is not in a notebook.
- Offline. Auction sheds and shop bays rarely have signal. Everything saves on the device and syncs later.
- iPad for the evening. Same account, more room, for going through the month without scrolling.
- CSV export. Every car, cost and sale, whenever you want it, for the accountant or for your own spreadsheet. The records are yours.
What it is not
Deelary is not a dealer management system. It does not do deal jackets, state forms, lender submissions or payroll. If you are at the size where you need those, you need a DMS, and spreadsheet vs dealer software walks through when that line gets crossed. Most one-person lots are nowhere near it. They need the three numbers, and they need them standing up.
Before the first car
If you are setting the lot up rather than running it, the state-by-state dealer licence guide has the fee, the bond, the lot requirement and the statute for each state covered, including the ones that publish no figure at all. How to get a dealer license covers what actually stops applications.
Price
Free for two active cars, every feature included. Deelary Pro is $8.99 a month or $49.99 a year with a 7-day free trial, billed through your Apple ID. Details on the pricing page.
Flipping from a driveway rather than a lot? Deelary for car flippers is the same app from that side. Want to see the arithmetic first? The profit calculator runs it on one car in the browser.
Questions
I run the lot alone. Is this too much software for me?
It is built for exactly that. There is no setup call, no implementation, no admin screen. You scan a VIN, you photograph a receipt, you mark a car sold. Everything else is the app doing arithmetic you would otherwise do on a napkin at the end of the month.
Does it replace a full DMS?
No, and it does not try to. A dealer management system does deal jackets, forms, lender integrations and payroll. Deelary does the three numbers that decide whether the month was good: what each car really cost, what it will really make, and how long it has sat. If you need the forms, you need a DMS as well. If you need the numbers, this is the cheaper and faster way to get them.
How many cars does it handle?
Two active cars free, unlimited on Pro. Dealers running thirty to forty cars at a time use it daily. Beyond that you are usually big enough to have staff, and at that point the team features of a DMS start to matter more than the speed of a phone.
Can I see the whole lot at once?
Yes. The inventory view shows every car with its total cost, asking price, projected margin and days on the lot, sortable by any of them. Sort by days and the cars that need a price cut are at the top. Sort by margin and the cars paying for the month are at the top.
What about the iPad in the office?
Same app, same account, more room. Most solo dealers add cars and costs on the iPhone during the day and go through the month on the iPad in the evening. Nothing to sync by hand.
What does it cost?
Free for two active cars with every feature. Deelary Pro is $8.99 a month or $49.99 a year with a 7-day free trial, billed through your Apple ID. A one-person lot usually spends more than that on a single wrong price.