# LeadLocate: full text of the product, feature, help and glossary pages > LeadLocate is an automotive sales platform for car dealerships, auto brokers and salespeople: local buyer and seller leads, a CRM with texting, calling and email, SecureWebX secure credit applications, Inventory Link inventory merchandising, and DealTracker desking with customer deal pages. Month to month. US only. Phone 844-376-2274. Pricing: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/pricing ## Products ### Inventory Link: Dealer Inventory Software and Merchandising URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/inventory-link Inventory Link is the dealer inventory software inside the LeadLocate platform. It takes in a store's vehicles from any feed, or imports them from the dealer's own website when there is no feed, decodes every VIN, adds photos, and merchandises the result as an inventory website, an embeddable widget, OEM incentive offers, brand pages and a dealer page, all connected to the LeadLocate CRM. #### What is Inventory Link? Inventory Link is the dealer inventory software inside the LeadLocate platform: it takes in a store's vehicles from a feed or from the store's own website, decodes and enriches each unit, and merchandises the result as an inventory website, an embeddable widget, brand offer pages and a dealer page, all wired to the CRM so every salesperson can send a real car with one tap. That sentence covers a lot of ground, and the rest of this page walks through it module by module. The short version is that most inventory tools stop at the feed. They move a file from one place to another and call it merchandising. Inventory Link starts at the feed and keeps going: what the vehicle actually is, what it looks like, what the manufacturer is offering on it this month, where a shopper can see it, how a shopper can raise their hand on it, and how that raised hand lands in front of a salesperson who can answer with the exact unit. It is one product with two doors. The data engine does the importing, decoding and publishing. The dealer portal is where your team signs in to see the dashboard, the inventory list, the inbox and the requests. Both are part of the LeadLocate platform rather than a separate purchase, and both are reachable from the CRM with the login you already have. #### Connect any inventory feed, or run with none If your store already has an inventory feed, Inventory Link ingests it. There is a feed editor for mapping and correcting what comes in, a per dealer inventory store so your records stay yours, and a request change form in the portal under Feeds for the day a field arrives wrong and you want it fixed at the source rather than patched by hand every week. The mechanics of keeping a feed clean are covered on our inventory feed management page; this page is about what happens once the data is in. If you have no feed, you still have inventory. Inventory Link imports vehicles directly from your own dealership website, with your permission, and it recognises twenty eight website platforms out of the box. Point it at the site, and the units your web vendor is already displaying become records in your inventory store, without a file export, without an IT ticket, and without waiting on anyone. When your website is built on a platform outside those twenty eight, our team puts the connection in production for your dealership on request. This is the fact worth underlining, because it is the one that surprises dealers most. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required to use the platform. Franchise stores with a polished feed, independents whose inventory lives only on their website, and brokers with no lot at all run on the same product. The feed is an upgrade path, never a prerequisite. #### Every vehicle decoded, photographed and ready to list A feed row is not a merchandised vehicle. It is a VIN, a price and whatever your last vendor decided to put in the trim field. Inventory Link runs every unit through VIN decode and an automotive database that carries government safety and efficiency data, so a listing shows a real trim, real specifications and the safety and fuel economy figures shoppers look for, instead of the three words somebody typed at intake. Vehicle text parsing does the same job for units that arrive as a description rather than a clean record, which is common when inventory comes from a website instead of a feed. Stock numbers get their own treatment. Stores that keep their own stock numbering, or that inherit a feed with numbers nobody on the floor recognises, can apply stock number overrides so the number on the windshield is the number in the system and the number in the text message. Small thing, and it is the thing a salesperson reaches for first when a customer calls. Photos are where independents and brokers usually fall down, because there is no photographer on staff and the lot shots are whatever a phone produced at dusk. Inventory Link adds promo photos and stock imagery to listings that arrive without pictures, so a unit is never advertised as a blank grey box. When your own photos exist they lead; when they do not, the listing still looks like a car someone would want to click on. #### Build an inventory website, then publish it anywhere The inventory website builder lives in the portal under Builder. You choose a template, the builder fills it with your live inventory, AI assisted copy drafts the descriptions and page text, and you publish. When inventory changes, and it changes daily, you regenerate and the site reflects what is on the lot right now. The same builder produces per salesperson inventory sites from a template, so every person on your floor has a site under their own name showing your real vehicles, which we cover in more depth on the salesperson websites page. You may not want a new website at all. Plenty of stores are happy with the site they have and only want the inventory on it to be current and clickable. For that there is the embeddable inventory widget: one script tag, placed on any website, that renders your inventory inside the page you already own. It works on the dealership site, on a salesperson's personal page, on a broker's landing page, on anything that accepts a line of HTML. Then there is the vehicle finder, which we call Locate. A shopper describes the unit they want in plain language, the finder searches the inventory index and locates it. It is the search box shoppers actually use, the one where they type what they mean instead of navigating five dropdowns, and it feeds a request straight to your team when the match is found. Search, browse and ask for it, without leaving the page. #### OEM incentives, brand offer pages and a dealer page that takes the lead Inventory becomes offers through the OEM incentives engine, which tracks manufacturer programs for more than twenty makes and surfaces them in the Incentives Showroom. A salesperson working a deal can see what the manufacturer is offering on the unit in front of them, and a shopper on a brand page can see the same thing before they ever walk in. Offers are what shoppers respond to; a listing without one is a picture with a price. Brand pages and brand hero pages give every make you carry a page of its own, built automatically, with the current offers on it and a lead form beside them. There are six offer card formats, so a lease special, a finance offer and a cash incentive each look like what they are, and one shared confirmation screen after the shopper submits, so the experience is consistent no matter which offer brought them in. The dealer page pulls the whole store together: offers, inventory, lead forms and the Schedule a Visit sheet on one page under your name. On a phone every panel rises from the bottom of the screen, the way native apps behave, so Schedule a Visit and the request sheet feel like something the shopper has used before rather than a web form fighting the keyboard. Every request lands in the portal under Requests and in the CRM, with the vehicle attached, so the first reply can name the car and the appointment time instead of asking what they were looking at. #### The dealer portal your team works in The portal is where the day to day happens. The dashboard shows the state of the inventory at a glance. The inventory list is the working view, searchable and sortable, with the decoded data on every row. Add a vehicle handles the unit that is not in any feed yet, the trade that just landed or the wholesale piece a manager wants advertised today. Edit vehicle and photos is where a listing gets corrected, reordered and finished, because the first image decides whether anyone clicks at all. The inbox and requests views hold what shoppers sent through the widget, the brand pages, the dealer page and the finder. The team view is where you invite people and set roles, so a salesperson can add and edit their own units while a manager controls what gets published and who sees what. Profile holds the store identity that the builder and the brand pages draw from, so a change to the phone number or the hours flows everywhere at once. Inventory Link also carries a directory of transport carriers and service providers, useful when a unit needs to move or be prepared and you want a list to call rather than a search engine. It is a directory, kept for the convenience of the stores using the platform. There is one login for all of it. A user signs in to the LeadLocate CRM and launches the portal from there with single sign on. Nobody keeps a second password, and when a person leaves the store, removing them from the CRM removes them from the inventory tools in the same motion. #### How Inventory Link connects to the CRM and the phone app Merchandising that lives in its own silo is only half useful. The reason Inventory Link exists inside the platform is the CRM bridge. Your inventory appears in the Inventory menu of the LeadLocate CRM and on the phone app, so a salesperson standing on the lot, or sitting in a customer's driveway, sees the same list the portal shows, with the same photos and the same decoded specifications. Our page on the CRM with inventory integration covers the sales side of this in detail. The part salespeople use fifty times a day is the vehicle insert button. It sits in every text and email composer in the CRM. Tap it, pick the unit, and a formatted vehicle card with photo, year, make, model, trim, mileage, stock number and price drops into the message. No copying a link from a third party site that shows three competitors beside your car. No typing a stock number from memory and getting it wrong. The vehicle the customer asked about is in the conversation, described exactly the way it is described everywhere else. In Store Now marks the vehicles that are physically on the lot right now, which is the question a customer asks before they get in the car to come see it. When a lead arrives on a specific VIN, the vehicle is attached to the lead from the first second, and the customer record holds several vehicle slots, so the car they want, the car they are trading and the car they might sell later are one conversation rather than three. #### Who Inventory Link is for, and what it replaces at the store Franchise dealers with a full feed use Inventory Link to get past what the feed vendor delivers: decoded trims, safety and efficiency data, incentives on the unit, brand pages that write themselves and a widget that puts live inventory anywhere the marketing team wants it. Independents use it because their inventory usually lives on a website and nowhere else, and importing from that website is the only way to get it into a CRM without retyping every car. The operational side of running a lot on it is on the dealership inventory management page. Auto brokers are the case people do not expect. A broker has no lot and no feed, and every other inventory product treats that as a reason to say no. Inventory Link has an auto broker inventory mode: switch it on and the broker gets brand offer pages connected instantly, with the manufacturer incentives on them, so a broker can advertise what they can get rather than what they are holding. Solo salespeople get the same thing on a smaller scale, a personal site with real inventory under their own name. What it replaces depends on the store. For many, it is the separate inventory website subscription, the third party landing page tool, the incentive lookup service and the habit of texting customers marketplace links. For a broker it replaces nothing, because there was nothing there before. The full list of what the platform carries is on the all features page. #### Built so your store keeps selling, and how to start Say it plainly, because it matters when you are choosing what to depend on. Inventory Link is additive, and it is built so your store keeps selling. It reads from your feed or from your website and then makes those same cars work harder in every place your store already sells them, without taking anything away from what you have. Your dealership website stays your website, your feed keeps flowing to everyone else who consumes it, your lot is still your lot and your phones are still your phones. Every photo set, price change, description and lead that passes through Inventory Link is safe on the vehicle record the moment it lands, the vehicle cards your salespeople have already sent are in your customers' hands for good, and the next import or regenerate always carries your store's latest cars forward. Starting is simple because there is nothing to buy separately. Inventory Link is part of the platform subscription, month to month with no long term contract. CRM Only is the plan if you want the software layer and already have your own lead flow; the lead plans add exclusive local buyer or seller leads on top. Current figures and what each plan includes are on the pricing page. Once your account is live, connect a feed if you have one, or point the importer at your website if you do not, invite your team from the portal, publish a site or drop the widget on the one you already run, and start inserting real vehicles into the messages your salespeople send that afternoon. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need an inventory feed or DMS access to use Inventory Link? A: Neither is required. Connect a feed if you have one. If you do not, Inventory Link imports your vehicles directly from your own dealership website, with twenty eight website platforms recognised, and a broker with no lot at all runs in auto broker inventory mode with brand offer pages instead. Q: My website is not on one of the twenty eight recognised platforms. What then? A: Our team puts the connection in production for your dealership on request. In the meantime you can add vehicles by hand in the portal, or upload a feed export if your web vendor can produce one, and the decode, photo and merchandising steps run the same way. Q: Where does my inventory show up once it is in Inventory Link? A: On the inventory website the builder publishes, on per salesperson sites, inside the embeddable widget on any page you own, on brand offer pages and the dealer page, in the vehicle finder, and in the Inventory menu of the LeadLocate CRM and the phone app, where the vehicle insert button drops any unit into a text or email. Q: Can a broker with no lot really use dealer inventory software? A: Yes. Auto broker inventory mode gives a broker brand offer pages connected instantly, with manufacturer incentives for more than twenty makes on them, plus lead forms and Schedule a Visit. The broker advertises what they can get, and every request lands in the CRM with the vehicle attached. Q: Is there a mobile app for the inventory side? A: Yes. The dealer portal is available in the app stores under the listing name MyInventory.Link, and the inventory also appears in the LeadLocate phone app, so a salesperson on the lot sees the same list, photos and specifications the desktop portal shows. Q: Is Inventory Link a separate subscription? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month, with no long term contract. CRM Only includes it, and the lead plans add exclusive local buyer or seller leads on top. The pricing page carries the current figures for every plan. ### Jax: The Bilingual AI Assistant Inside LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/jax-ai-assistant Jax is the AI assistant inside the LeadLocate CRM, built for the salesperson and the manager rather than the customer. It sits in the dock as a chat with voice input, detects whether you are speaking English or Spanish and answers in that language, and helps you draft texts and emails, work with merge fields, use call transcripts and navigate the CRM. It is included with the CRM. #### Jax is the AI assistant for your people, not a robot that talks to your customers Here is the one sentence version, because a page like this should be quotable. Jax is the bilingual AI assistant inside the LeadLocate CRM: a chat in the dock, with voice input, that helps a salesperson or a manager write, dictate, review and find things faster, and answers in English or Spanish depending on which one the rep is speaking. That last clause is the part most vendors blur. Jax faces the rep. It does not text your customers, it does not call your customers, and it does not pretend to be a person named Jax on your website at two in the morning. The customer facing side of the platform is a separate product: the free live chat widget for dealer sites and the automated assistant that can run on it, which have their own pages at AI chatbot for car dealer websites and live chat for car dealers. Jax is what the person on the other side of the desk uses. The distinction matters for a practical reason. A message that goes to a shopper about their money should come from a human who owns the relationship. Jax makes that human faster and more consistent, and it makes a rep who thinks in Spanish just as fast as one who thinks in English. It stays out of the conversation itself. #### Who Jax is for at a dealership Three people get the most out of it. The first is the salesperson working a pipeline between ups, who has eleven texts to answer and a blank composer staring back. The second is the BDC agent who sends the same kinds of messages all day and needs each one to read like it was written for that shopper, not pasted from a document. The third is the sales manager who reviews what the team is sending and coaches from call transcripts, and who would rather ask a question than hunt through menus. It is also for the store where half the floor speaks Spanish. Bilingual teams are common in the markets we serve, and most software assumes everyone thinks in English. Jax listens to how the rep is talking and answers in kind, so a Spanish speaking salesperson gets a Spanish speaking assistant without changing a setting or switching apps. And it is for the solo operator or broker running the whole show alone. The platform was built so that a one person store can use the same tools as a forty person one, and an assistant in the dock is a cheap way to get a second set of hands that never leaves early. #### What Jax includes, piece by piece Jax chat in the dock. The bottom taskbar of the CRM, the same row that holds My Office, Marketing Tools, Design Studio, My Inventory, Reports and SecureWebX, carries a Jax button. Open it and you get a chat window. Type a question or tap the microphone and speak it. When you are done with a thread, clear the conversation and start clean. It is deliberately simple; the point is to get an answer without leaving the record you are working on. The AI writing assistant in every composer. The Send a Text and Send an Email buttons on the top bar, and every composer in the Messaging and Email modules, include an AI writing assistant. Tell it what you want to say, what tone you want, and it produces a draft you can edit, shorten or throw away. The draft lands in the composer, not in the customer's phone; you still read it and you still press send. AI merge fields. Ordinary merge fields drop a first name or a vehicle into a template. AI merge fields go one step further: the field is filled in by the assistant from the record, so a bulk text or an automated template can carry a line that reads like it was written for that lead rather than for a list. Voice dictation. In the composers you can speak a message instead of typing it, then edit the text by hand before it goes out. On a lot at noon, or with a customer sitting across the desk, that is the difference between a note that gets written and one that does not. Call transcripts. Calls placed and received through the CRM can be recorded and transcribed, and the transcript opens in a lightbox from the call record. That gives the rep and the manager text to work from: bring the points from a fourteen minute call into Jax and ask for a follow up draft that mentions what the customer actually said. Our page on call transcription covers the recording side in detail. #### Jax answers in the language the rep is speaking This is the headline capability and it is worth being precise about how it works. Jax does not ask you to pick a language. It reads the message or the voice input, works out whether the rep is speaking English or Spanish, and replies in that language. A rep can switch mid shift, or two reps can share a workstation, and the assistant follows whoever is talking. Why it matters in a store: the bilingual salesperson is usually the busiest person on the floor, because every Spanish speaking customer gets routed to them and every English speaking manager needs something translated. Give that person an assistant that thinks in their first language and you take a real load off. Give the English only manager the same assistant and the two of them are finally working from the same tool instead of one translating for the other. What it is not: it is not a promise that Jax handles Spanish speaking customers for you. It helps a Spanish speaking rep serve them well, which is a better outcome for the customer anyway. The rep reads the draft, decides if it says what they mean, and sends it under their own name from their own tracking number. #### How Jax connects to the rest of LeadLocate Jax is not a separate app with its own login. One login opens the CRM, Inventory Link, SecureWebX and the My LeadLocate account portal, and Jax lives inside the CRM session you are already in. There is nothing to connect, no key to paste and no second bill. Because it sits inside the CRM, everything it helps you produce lands where the rest of your records live. A text drafted with the writing assistant goes out through the same SMS inbox with the same delivery status on the bubble, sent, delivered or failed. An email goes through the same composer that can authenticate your store's own domain. If you attach a vehicle with the inventory button, the unit's photos and price travel with the message as MMS or email, exactly as they would without the assistant. And every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail still lands in the one communications log on the lead, so a manager reviewing the record sees the whole conversation, not just the parts a person typed by hand. It also sits next to the other AI that already does quiet work in the platform: call transcription, document reading, VIN scanning from a phone camera, driver license and insurance card scanning to a customer record. Our AI automotive CRM page lists those, and AI sales assistant for dealerships is the clearest read on what this whole category really does. Jax is the piece of that stack you talk to. #### What Jax replaces at the store Mostly it replaces a document. Every dealership has one: the shared file of text templates that somebody wrote three managers ago, that every rep copies from, and that customers can spot from across the room because they have received the same message from two other stores. The writing assistant produces a draft for this shopper, about this vehicle, in this rep's voice, in a few seconds, and the template file quietly stops being opened. It replaces the manager as proofreader. A good sales manager spends more time than they would admit rewriting texts before they go out, or wincing at ones that already did. With a draft that starts clean, the manager's review becomes a glance, and the coaching moves to what was said on the call, which is where it belongs. It replaces the bilingual coworker as the translation desk. Nobody hired that person to translate for the rest of the floor, and it is the first thing that gets skipped when they are with a customer. An assistant that answers in Spanish gives the Spanish speaking rep their own tool and gives the coworker their afternoon back. And it replaces the search through menus for a rep who has been on the platform for a week. Ask how to do something in the CRM, in plain words, and get pointed to it. The video training library and Live Training are still there for the deeper walk through; Jax is for the question you have right now with a customer waiting. #### The rep stays in control, and the consent rules apply exactly the same Software that writes messages raises a fair question about who is responsible for them. The answer with Jax is simple: the rep is. Nothing the assistant drafts goes anywhere until a person reads it and presses send, from their own login, under their own name and tracking number. The message record shows who sent it. There is no mode where Jax sends on its own. Because the rep is sending, every rule that already governs texting at your store governs this too. Consent has to exist before a text goes out, and it does not become optional because the wording came from an assistant. Opt out has to be honored the moment it comes in, across the store, not per salesperson. The DNC Blacklist in the CRM keeps blocked numbers out, includes a two way inbound spam block, and runs a live do not call lookup on numbers so a rep is not the last line of defense. Our page on texting compliance goes deeper, and your own counsel still owns your policy. On the data side, the customer information Jax helps you work with is the same Customer Profile the rest of the CRM uses, one shared buyer record with personally identifiable data encrypted. Access follows the roles you set in User Management, so a User, a Manager and a Master Administrator see what their role allows, with the assistant or without it. #### Built so your store keeps selling Jax is built to make a good store faster, and the platform around it is built so your store keeps selling. Every tool a rep uses to reach a customer belongs to the rep: the Send a Text and Send an Email composers, the softphone, click to call, the calendar and the deal on the desk. Jax sits alongside all of it as the shortcut, drafting the message, answering the question in English or Spanish, reading back the transcript, and handing the work to a person who decides what goes out. Every draft that is sent, every call recording and transcript, and every note typed on a lead is safe on the customer's record the moment it lands, and it stays there for the manager who opens it next month. Your main store line, your DMS and your website stay your own, and nothing your customer receives has to travel through the assistant to reach them. #### How to start with Jax Jax is part of the LeadLocate CRM, not an add on with its own line item. If you have the CRM, you have the assistant in the dock, the AI writing assistant in the composers, AI merge fields, voice dictation and call transcription. CRM Only fits a store that already has lead flow and wants the platform, and the plans that include lead generation bring the leads as well. Everything is month to month, and the current figures are on the pricing page. The way stores get value fastest is unglamorous. In the first week, have every rep draft their next ten follow up texts with the writing assistant instead of the template file, and have the manager read them. In the second week, turn on call transcription and have the manager skim a day of transcripts, then bring the best and worst into a five minute meeting. Let the Spanish speaking reps find Jax on their own; they will, and they will tell the rest of the floor. If you would rather see it than read about it, the recorded demo shows the CRM with the dock open, or call 844-376-2274 and we will walk through it on your own screen. The full list of what ships with the platform is on all features, and you can contact us with the questions this page did not cover. #### Questions and answers Q: What is Jax? A: Jax is the AI assistant inside the LeadLocate CRM. It lives in the dock as a chat with voice input, helps reps and managers draft texts and emails, work with merge fields and call transcripts, and answer questions about the CRM, and it replies in English or Spanish depending on which language the rep is using. Q: Does Jax text or call my customers on its own? A: No. Jax faces the rep. Every draft it produces lands in a composer where a person reads it and presses send under their own name. The customer facing chat on your website is a separate product with its own pages, and it is not Jax. Q: How does the Spanish support work? A: There is no language setting. Jax reads what the rep types or says, works out whether it is English or Spanish, and answers in that language. A rep can switch back and forth and the assistant follows. Q: Is Jax an extra charge? A: No. Jax, the AI writing assistant in the composers, AI merge fields, voice dictation and call transcription are all part of the LeadLocate CRM. Every plan includes all of it, month to month, and the pricing page has current figures for the lead plans. Q: Does using an AI to draft a text change my consent obligations? A: No. The rep sends the message, so the same consent and opt out rules apply as for any text from your store. The DNC Blacklist, live do not call lookup and communications log all work the same whether the wording came from Jax or from the rep. Q: Does my team depend on Jax to talk to customers? A: No, and that is the point. Jax drafts and your team sends. Texting, email, the softphone, the lead record, the calendar and the desking tools are all yours to run on their own, so Jax is pure speed on top of a floor that already works. Nothing a customer receives leaves the store until a person chooses to send it. ### LeadLocate CRM: Every Module in One Login URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/leadlocate-crm LeadLocate CRM is the dealership customer relationship system at the center of the LeadLocate platform: lead intake, texting, email, a browser phone, follow up automation, desking, customer facing deal pages and reporting in one login, with SecureWebX, Inventory Link and DealTracker launched from the same account. It is sold month to month, with plans on the pricing page, and an inventory feed or DMS access is not required. #### What LeadLocate CRM is, and who runs on it LeadLocate CRM is the dealership customer relationship system at the center of the LeadLocate platform: every lead, text, call, email, appointment, deal and report for a store lives in one login, and that same login opens SecureWebX, Inventory Link and DealTracker. That is the sentence to remember. The rest of this page is that sentence unpacked, module by module, using the names you will actually see on screen. It runs in the browser at the desk and as the LeadLocate app on the phone. The main menu reads Workspace, Leads, Contacts, Desking, Inventory, Messaging, Calendar, Email, Calls, Files and Website. The dock along the bottom carries My Office, Marketing Tools, Referral Program, Design Studio, My Inventory, SecureWebX, Reports, Feedback, More Options and Jax. If you have only ever seen the lead inbox, you have seen about a tenth of it. Who runs on it: franchise stores that want lead intake, communications and desking in one place next to the DMS they already own; independent lots that need the same tools without a franchise software budget; buy here pay here operations, which the desking engine covers with its own field set; auto brokers who work without a lot or a feed; and individual salespeople who want their own website, booking link and follow up engine under their own name. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required, which is exactly why the last two groups can run on it at all. When you do have a feed, Inventory Link takes it and the CRM shows your actual units in every text and email composer. #### Leads and contacts: the menu you work from every day Leads is where the day starts. The lead inbox and lead detail autosave in real time, so a note typed while the customer is still on the phone is already on the record when the manager opens it. Contacts hold everyone who is not yet a lead, and contact import brings in the list you are carrying over from the last system. Each store sets its own custom lead statuses, row colors and tags, keyword triggers can act on what a customer texts back, and when a lead is marked lost a lost reason popup captures why, so the end of month report says something more useful than lost. Lead Feeds Manager is the intake side. Each source gets its own feed, custom source feeds handle the sources nobody else supports, and new leads push into the CRM instantly. Distribution is rules based: round robin across the team, global lead distribution with distribution lists, and routing rules per rooftop for groups. Duplicate leads merge into one record. The Customer Profile is a single shared buyer record, co-buyer included, with the personal information encrypted. The housekeeping most CRMs make you ask support for is on the menu. The DNC Blacklist page blocks a number in both directions, imports a blacklist you already keep, and runs a live do not call lookup on a number. Quality Control Requests let a rep report a bad lead for approval or rejection and replacement review, which is how LeadLocate backs every delivered lead with a person's review, decided on the record. A trash bin restores what somebody deleted by mistake. Notifications go to the emails and numbers each user chooses, with sound alerts and on screen toasts, and the In-Store Now flag tells the whole floor who is physically on the lot right now. #### Texting, email and the phone system, all inside the CRM The top bar of every screen starts with Send a Text, Make a Call and Send an Email, and each is a working tool rather than a launcher for another vendor. The SMS inbox shows every thread with delivery status on every bubble, sent, delivered or failed, so nobody wonders whether the customer saw it. MMS carries pictures and multiple attachments. RCS messaging runs where the customer's phone supports it and falls back to SMS automatically. A vehicle button in every text and email composer attaches a unit from your inventory with photos and price, and trackable short links report who clicked. An AI writing assistant drafts texts and emails on request, AI merge fields personalize them, and voice dictation lets a rep talk instead of type. Email is its own inbox with a composer, single message view and archive, plus email campaigns and lists, Bulk Email with recipient management, and Email Automation drips. Email domain authentication means messages go out from the store's own domain rather than a shared one. The Email Validator and Phone Validator check contact information and show the result as validity dots right on the lead, which gives you a cleaner list before the first campaign goes out. The phone system is the part dealers most often assume is a separate vendor. It is not. A VoIP softphone runs in the browser, click to call dials from any record, and a call can be triggered to a physical desk phone instead. Calls are recorded, and a transcript opens in a lightbox next to the lead. Tracking phone numbers are provisioned per source and synced to SecureWebX. Call forwarding rings a Forward Calls To list built from your own users. The virtual receptionist switches on or off, hours can be set to 24 hours, and press 5 call screening is there when you want it. An IVR call flow builder holds your options, uploaded audio and revisions. Company and per user voicemail greetings are recorded in the browser, and the Voicemail Drop library sends a drop to an entire list. Inbound calls show a caller ID name lookup, outbound caller ID can be confirmed, business hours routing sends after hours calls where you decide, and answering service controls cover the missed ones. Every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail lands in one communications log on the record. The Marketing Tools menu on the dock collects the campaign versions of all of this in one place: Bulk Texting, Texting Chatbots, Text Automation, Voicemail Drops, Phone Validator, Bulk Email, Email Automation and Email Validator. The all in one dealer software page goes further into the calling and texting side. #### Automation, calendar and desking with DealTracker Automated Templates are the inbound responses: a template set per lead feed, a master set, and automation for leads that land unassigned. Follow Up Processes are the multi step drips per lead type, with a restore defaults control for the manager who experimented too far. Intake Process Automation is the in house replacement for the third-party automation tools stores used to pay for separately, with an intake hook for the sources that post into it. The Workspace screen gathers appointments, reminders and to-dos with snooze and bulk clear, so the first ten minutes of a shift are a list rather than a hunt. The Calendar has one Calendar Settings popup with a booking link and booking hours per calendar, team availability, and a Google Calendar connect and disconnect. Round robin assignment works on the shared calendar as well as on leads. On the phone, Quick Schedule mirrors the rep's public booking link, so a customer standing at the desk is booked in a few taps. Desking is the DealTracker engine, and it sits on the main menu rather than behind a separate purchase. EZ Desking builds cash, finance and lease structures, with a multi pencil grid and goal seek bays, a 50 state tax matrix, semimonthly frequency, trade credit caps, three lease tax methods and centralized deal defaults. The field set is universal, covering auto, RV, powersports, marine, BHPH and fleet. Every deal has a Road to Sale checklist, a Deal Jacket with upload, rename, rotate, preview and delete plus QR intake from a phone camera, a trade-in form with photos and a trade VIN scan, and OEM incentives shown at deal level inside the Incentives Showroom. Start New Deal works from a lead or straight from the Unit field, deals duplicate, and deal history and a visit log record what happened. The customer sees a deal page branded to the store, with PIN access, e-signature, a revision view and deal chat with the salesperson, and PencilRecap produces a shareable recap sheet. Print packets carry payment ranges and a finance breakdown, with #10 envelope templates and First Class postage with printed indicia. The desking tool page walks through the engine in detail. #### Customer facing tools, team tools, Jax and the mobile app The Website menu is a landing page builder called Lead Pages, with per page URL settings, personal salesperson websites, and a free live chat widget for the dealer site. The website editor is organized in tabs: Business Info, Branding, Menu Links, Social Media, Inventory and Analytics. Domains can be searched, purchased and transferred out, with a self service DNS editor. Visitor analytics show overview, realtime, sessions, geography, devices, sources, search, top pages, session detail and performance without a separate analytics account. The personal websites page and the live chat page cover those two in depth. The Referral Program is a standalone page with referral campaigns, a shared referral code and real gift card style rewards paid to the referrer. Design Studio makes business cards, referral cards, NFC cards, vCards and floating buttons from a stock media library, with print ready output. My Office is a personal desk canvas with widgets, text to speech, AI images, VIN decode, link previews and saved spaces. Team Chat gives every user channels, direct messages, reactions, polls, file upload, presence and read receipts. The Files menu is a file library with folders, secure file sharing with tracking, and QR file share. Reports cover activity, company and management reporting, with the Reports dashboard on the dock. User Management assigns the User, Manager and Master Administrator roles, per user notification toggles, a Quick Access PIN per user and default file folders. The Feedback button on the dock sends an idea or feature request with a screenshot attached, and the video training library, Live Training and Schedule Training sit in the top bar. Jax is the AI assistant inside the CRM, opened from the dock, with chat and voice input. It detects whether the rep is speaking English or Spanish and answers in that language. Jax assists the rep; the live chat agent that talks to shoppers on your website is a separate product. The LeadLocate app for iPhone and Android carries the Workspace, Leads, the SMS inbox and composer, the Email inbox, the Deal Chats inbox, Calendar, Call Logs, a VoIP dialer with an inbound call alert screen, a voicemail greeting recorder, the inventory list with a detail sheet and picker, Quick Schedule, New Lead, the File Library, DealTracker desking and the deal jacket, Team Chat, Profile, Video Training, VIN lookup and driver license scan, and Quick Access PIN login. The bottom dock on the phone is Text, Call, New Lead, Email and Team, which is the whole job in five buttons. #### One login connects SecureWebX, Inventory Link and DealTracker The platform is four products, and the login is what makes them one. Ecosystem single sign on means one set of credentials launches the CRM, Inventory Link, SecureWebX and the My LeadLocate account portal. The phone app adds biometric login, and My LeadLocate adds passwordless login by magic link or text message. Inside the CRM, the SecureWebX button on the dock opens the credit application console directly, and the store's users and tracking phone numbers sync across, so there is no second user list to maintain. Data crosses in both directions. A worksheet penciled in CRM desking can be pushed into SecureWebX, where the worksheet engine runs at parity with the CRM. An application a customer abandoned on a SecureWebX apply link feeds back to the CRM for follow up. Inventory Link ingests the dealer's feed, or imports inventory from the dealer's own website when there is no feed, and that inventory is what the CRM's vehicle button attaches to a text, what the Inventory menu lists, and what the mobile inventory picker shows. DealTracker is the desking engine on the Desking menu and the customer's deal page at once, so the number the rep built and the number the customer signs are the same number. My LeadLocate is the account portal: billing, invoices and receipts, add ons for an active subscription, Skip A Month and Automatic Renewal controls, service and referral credits, support tickets, and which users can launch which apps. The platform overview lays the four products out side by side. #### What LeadLocate CRM replaces at the store, and what the store keeps as its own Walk the software bills at a typical store and most of them line up against a module on this page. A texting app for the sales floor. A bulk email tool and a separate list cleaner. A softphone subscription, a call recording add on, and a virtual receptionist or IVR bill. An appointment scheduler with booking links. A link shortener. A business card designer. A team messaging tool. A landing page builder and the hosting under it. A referral platform. A file sharing service. Third-party automation tools stitching intake together. An e-signature service for deal sheets. LeadLocate CRM absorbs those into one subscription, and the store stops paying for the integration work that used to connect them. It works beside the DMS, and that is by design. LeadLocate CRM is the customer layer of the store. Accounting, contracts, deal posting and the rest of the back office stay in the DMS the store already owns and trusts, and the CRM sits beside it as the customer layer. That is also the shape of a platform built so your store keeps selling. Your DMS is yours, so deals post and paperwork prints where it always has. Your store's main phone line is yours. Your website is yours, wherever it is hosted. Each LeadLocate product, the CRM, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and DealTracker, is its own application under one login, so a store gets one bill and one password while each product stays focused on its own job. And every record the store creates here, every text, every call, every deal and every application, is safe the moment it lands and is exactly where the store left it the next time somebody opens it. #### Compliance and security are part of the CRM, not an add on Contact rules live on the record, not in a binder. The DNC Blacklist blocks a number in both directions and backs it with a live do not call lookup, and blacklist import brings in the list the store already keeps. The communications log holds every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail against the lead, with delivery status on each message, which is the record you want when a question about a conversation comes up months later. Call recording and transcription turn a disputed phone call into a playback rather than a memory contest. Email domain authentication keeps the store's outbound email identifiable as the store's own. Access is by role, User, Manager and Master Administrator, with a Quick Access PIN per user and biometric login on the phone app. The Customer Profile stores personal information encrypted. Customer deal pages are PIN protected and e-signed with a revision view, and a store can share them, revoke all of them at once, or void one. Where a credit application is involved, SecureWebX adds two factor authentication on every sign in, encryption at rest, a full audit log, virus scanning on uploads, a watermarked PDF viewer and an archive never delete policy. LeadLocate stores consumer data in order to do all of this, and the Privacy Policy describes what is held. #### How to start, month to month Every plan is month to month with no long term contract. CRM Only is built for a store that already has its own lead sources and wants the software. Plans that include exclusive local leads add lead flow inside your zone, and every one of them includes the full CRM, because the CRM is what receives and delivers the leads. Leads always require the platform subscription, and if you want them routed into a CRM you already run, that is done at no price change. Current plans and figures are on the pricing page. Setup is the ordinary sequence: users and roles in User Management, tracking numbers and a receptionist choice, Lead Feeds Manager pointed at your sources, Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes reviewed against how your store actually follows up, and a Calendar Settings booking link for each rep. Contact import brings your list along. The recorded demo shows the screens before you commit, and the contact page reaches a person who will set it up with you. The full feature list is the long version of this page. Skip A Month is on the plan list for the slow season, and Automatic Renewal is a switch in My LeadLocate, so staying is a monthly decision rather than a contractual one. #### Questions and answers Q: Is LeadLocate CRM a DMS? A: It works beside your DMS. LeadLocate CRM is the customer layer: leads, communications, follow up, desking, customer facing deal pages and reporting. Accounting, contracts and the back office stay in the DMS the store already owns, and the CRM sits beside it under one login with SecureWebX, Inventory Link and DealTracker. Q: Do I need an inventory feed or DMS access to use it? A: No. Neither is required, which is why auto brokers and individual salespeople run on the same platform as franchise stores. When you do have a feed, Inventory Link ingests it, or imports inventory from your own website, and the CRM attaches those units to texts and emails. Q: Is the phone system part of the CRM or a separate vendor? A: It is part of the CRM. The VoIP softphone, click to call, call recording and transcription, tracking numbers per source, call forwarding, the virtual receptionist, the IVR call flow builder, voicemail greetings and Voicemail Drops are all on the Calls menu and the Marketing Tools dock under the same login. Q: What does my store keep as its own? A: Your DMS, your main phone line and your website stay yours, and the CRM sits beside them as the customer layer. Each LeadLocate product is its own application under one login, and every record you create, every text, call, deal and application, is safe the moment it lands and is where you left it when you come back to it. Q: Can one salesperson or a broker use it without a dealership account? A: Yes. A single user gets the same CRM: personal website, booking link, texting and calling, follow up automation, desking and the mobile app. CRM Only is chosen at sign up, and the month to month lead plans are on the pricing page. Q: How does the CRM connect to SecureWebX and Inventory Link? A: Through ecosystem single sign on and a CRM bridge. One login launches all of them from the CRM dock or from My LeadLocate; users and tracking numbers sync into SecureWebX; a worksheet from CRM desking pushes into SecureWebX; an abandoned credit application feeds back to the CRM for follow up; and Inventory Link supplies the units the CRM shows. ### LeadLocate Mobile App for iOS and Android URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/leadlocate-mobile-app The LeadLocate mobile app is the full LeadLocate CRM for iOS and Android: leads with realtime autosave, texting with pictures, email, a VoIP dialer, calendar and Quick Schedule, inventory, DealTracker desking with the deal jacket, VIN and driver license scanning and Team Chat, all behind a Quick Access PIN or biometric login. It is included with every plan. See pricing. #### What the LeadLocate mobile app is, and who lives in it The LeadLocate mobile app is the LeadLocate CRM built for a phone: the same leads, texting inbox, email, dialer, calendar, inventory and DealTracker desking a rep uses at the desk, packaged for iOS and Android and opened with a Quick Access PIN or a fingerprint. It is not a notification viewer with a login screen in front of it. Every screen in it does real work. The app is on the App Store and on Google Play, and it signs in with the same account as the desktop CRM. Whatever a manager sets up at the desk, the custom lead statuses, the tags, the Automated Templates, the shared calendar, the tracking numbers, is exactly what the rep sees on the phone. There is one system behind both screens, not a mobile copy that catches up later. Four kinds of people run their day in it. Salespeople on the lot, who need to answer a text while walking a customer to the car and log the visit before the customer has left the driveway. BDC agents, who live in the inbox and the call logs and want the next conversation one tap away rather than three menus deep. Managers between tasks, who want to see the Workspace, jump into a Deal Chat, approve a number or answer a rep in Team Chat without walking back to an office. And auto brokers who work from a phone all day, for whom the app is the entire office, which works because an inventory feed and DMS access are not required to run the platform. It sits alongside the rest of the LeadLocate platform, and our mobile CRM for car sales page covers what separates a working mobile CRM from a read only one. This page is about what is actually in the app. #### The bottom dock puts Text, Call, New Lead, Email and Team one tap away Every screen in the app shares a bottom dock with five items: Text, Call, New Lead, Email and Team. Those are the five things a salesperson does most, so they never move and they never hide behind a menu. Text opens the texting inbox, Call opens the dialer and call logs, New Lead opens a fresh contact form, Email opens the email inbox and Team opens Team Chat. A rep who has never seen the desktop CRM can be productive in the app within a few minutes because the dock is the whole map. Above the dock, the Workspace is the day. Appointments, reminders and to-dos sit in one list, with snooze for the ones that can wait an hour and bulk clear for the ones that are done. It is the same Workspace the desktop shows, so a to-do a manager assigns at the desk is on the rep's phone the moment it is saved, and a reminder the rep snoozes on the lot is snoozed at the desk too. Leads is the lead inbox and the lead detail. The detail view saves in realtime as you type, which sounds like a small thing until you have watched a rep lose ten minutes of notes because a call came in and the form was still open. On the phone there is no save button to forget. Type the note, take the call, and the note is already in the record. The lead detail carries the same custom statuses and tags the store configured, so a rep on the lot sees what the desk sees. Notifications carry sound. A new lead, a reply to a text, an inbound call and a Team Chat mention each announce themselves, and each user chooses which ones they get in their own notification preferences. The point of a mobile CRM is response time, and response time starts with the phone making a noise. #### Text with pictures, read email and run Deal Chats from one phone The texting inbox in the app is the same SMS inbox as the desk, threaded by customer, with every message showing its delivery status on the bubble: sent, delivered or failed. That last word is the one that matters on a lot. A rep knows immediately that a text did not land instead of assuming the customer went quiet. The composer sends pictures. Snap the trade, the window sticker or the odometer and attach it, or attach several at once. Where the customer's phone supports RCS, the message goes as RCS and falls back to SMS automatically, so nobody has to think about it. Every composer also carries a vehicle button, the inventory insert, which attaches a unit from the store's inventory with its photos and price directly into the text. A customer who asks "what else do you have in white" gets a real vehicle with real pictures, from the lot, in under a minute. Trackable short links work in the app the same way they do at the desk. Send a link to a personal salesperson website or an apply link and see whether it was opened. The Email inbox is the store's email, not the rep's personal mailbox, so replies to a lead's email thread show up in the app and are logged against the customer. Deal Chats is a separate inbox for the conversations that happen on a customer's deal page: the customer asks a question on their phone about their numbers, the rep answers from theirs, and the thread stays attached to that deal with link previews and photo drops. Every text, picture, email, call and voicemail lands in the one communications log on the customer, which is what makes a handoff between a salesperson and a manager clean instead of a guessing game. #### Take calls, record a greeting and book from the calendar Call logs in the app show every call on the store's tracking numbers, inbound and outbound, with the recording and transcript where the store has them turned on. A BDC agent can scroll the morning's calls, tap one, read the transcript and text the customer back without leaving the screen. Outbound calls go through the VoIP dialer, which places the call from the store's number rather than the rep's personal one. The customer sees the dealership on caller ID, the call is logged to the lead, and the rep's own number stays private. For a rep who prefers their handset, the platform can also trigger a call to a physical phone, so the store's number still shows and the call is still logged. Inbound calls get their own alert screen. When a customer calls a tracking number that rings to the rep, the app shows who is calling with the caller ID name lookup, so the rep answers "Hi, Mr. Alvarez" instead of "Hello?" The voicemail greeting recorder lets each user record their own greeting from the phone, in the app, rather than asking someone at the desk to upload a file. The Calendar is the store's shared calendar with the rep's own appointments on top, the same one the desk uses with round robin assignment and team availability. Quick Schedule is the mobile shortcut: it mirrors the rep's public booking link, the one from Calendar Settings that customers use to book themselves, so a rep standing with a customer books the test drive into exactly the same slots the customer would see online. No double booking, no separate mobile calendar to reconcile later. #### Inventory, desking and the deal jacket travel to the lot The Inventory list in the app is the store's live inventory. Tap a unit and a detail sheet slides up with the photos, price, mileage, trim and the details a customer asks about in a walkaround. The inventory picker is the same list in chooser form, which is what the vehicle button in the text composer and the Unit field on a deal open when a rep needs to pick a car. Desking runs on the phone with the DealTracker engine, not a mobile approximation of it. Cash, finance and lease, the state tax matrix, semimonthly frequency, trade credit caps and the lease tax methods all come from the same centralized deal defaults the desk uses, so the payment a rep pulls at the car is the payment the desk would pull. From the deal, the rep can share the customer's deal page, so the shopper leaves with their real numbers on their own phone rather than a photo of a worksheet. The desking tool page goes deeper on the engine. The deal jacket lives on the deal, and the phone is the fastest way to fill it. Photograph the license, the insurance card, the trade title and the signed forms straight into the jacket, then rename, rotate, preview or delete from the phone. The jacket also has a QR intake path, so a document can be captured by a phone camera and land in the right deal without emailing it to anyone. VIN lookup reads a VIN from the windshield or door jamb with the camera and decodes it, which is how a trade gets appraised in the lane without anyone typing seventeen characters. The driver license scan captures the customer's license into the customer record, so the name, address and date of birth on the deal are what the license says rather than what somebody typed from memory. Both feed the Customer Profile, the one shared buyer record with co-buyer support and encrypted personal information that the desk and the deal both read from. #### Team Chat, files, training and the companion apps under one login Team is the fifth dock item and it opens Team Chat: channels for the sales floor, the BDC and the managers, direct messages between any two users, reactions, polls, file upload, presence and read receipts. It is included for every user, which means the store's internal conversation stops living in a group text on personal phones where the store has no record of it and a departing rep takes it with them. The File Library on the phone is the same Files menu as the desk, with folders, secure file sharing that tracks whether a shared file was opened, and QR file share for handing a document to a customer standing in front of you. A brochure, a spec sheet, a blank credit application or the store's finance disclosure can go from the rep's phone to the customer's phone in one scan. Video Training is in the app too, so a new hire can watch the walkthrough for the texting inbox on their own phone during a slow hour rather than waiting for a seat at a desk. Live Training and Schedule Training from the desktop top bar are where a store books time with our team. The app is one of three. SecureWebX has its own app for secure credit applications, apply links and the compliance side of a deal, and Inventory Link has its own app, listed in the stores as MyInventory.Link, for the inventory and merchandising side. One login covers all of them and the My LeadLocate account portal, and the CRM app opens the others from the same account, so a rep who takes a credit application on the lot and desks the deal in the CRM app is the same signed in person in both. The all features page lists everything each product includes. #### Security on a phone that leaves the building A phone with the customer list on it walks out of the dealership every night, so the app is built around that fact. Login supports biometric unlock on the handset, and each user has their own Quick Access PIN set in User Management, so getting back into the app after a customer interruption takes a fingerprint or four digits rather than a password typed in a parking lot. Roles carry over from the desktop. User, Manager and Master Administrator see what their role allows, on the phone exactly as at the desk. The Customer Profile keeps personal information encrypted at rest. The DNC Blacklist, with its live do not call lookup on numbers and its two way inbound spam block, applies to every text and call placed from the app, so a rep on the lot is held to the same rules as a rep at the desk. Every call, text, picture, email and voicemail from the app is in the communications log with a timestamp, and call recording and transcription apply to app calls the same way. That is the record a manager needs when a customer disputes what was said, and it is the record a store loses entirely when reps work from personal phones. #### Built so your store keeps selling The app is built so your store keeps selling from wherever the rep happens to be standing. Each product is its own application under one login, and the phone is a window onto the same records the desk sees rather than a second copy of them, so a rep who opens the app with a Quick Access PIN or a fingerprint lands on the same Workspace, the same texting inbox and the same deal that were on the desktop a minute ago, with no re-sync step, no duplicate records and nothing to re-enter. Nothing a rep types is ever at risk either: the lead detail saves in realtime as they type instead of holding a draft until someone presses save, so there is no unsaved form to lose, and every text carries its delivery status right on the bubble, sent, delivered or failed, so a rep can tell at a glance which messages landed and which deserve a second attempt. Your own main number, your DMS, your website and your inventory feed stay the store's own, and the platform sits beside them and reads what it needs, which is exactly why it runs at stores that have no feed and no DMS access at all. #### How to start: the app is included with every plan The mobile app is part of the platform, not an app tier or an add-on. It comes with every plan: with CRM Only, with Inbound, with Marketplace Acquisitions and with the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan, all month to month with no long term contract. Current figures and what each plan includes are on the pricing page. Rollout is short. Install the app from the App Store or Google Play, sign in with the same login as the desktop CRM, set a Quick Access PIN, and turn on the notifications each user wants. Reps who already have the desktop CRM are working from the phone the same afternoon, because there is nothing new to learn beyond where the five dock buttons are. Two pieces of advice. Get the store's tracking numbers in place before day one, so the first text a rep sends from the app comes from a number the customer can reply to. And set up a few Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes before handing out the app, so the first experience in the composer is a fast, good message rather than a blank box. If you would rather see it before installing anything, the recorded demo walks the phone screens, and our team answers questions at contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: Is the LeadLocate mobile app an extra charge? A: No. The app is included with every plan, from CRM Only up through the Buyers and Sellers Hybrid Plan. Every user on the account can install it on iOS or Android and sign in with the same login as the desktop CRM. Q: Can a salesperson desk a deal from the phone? A: Yes. DealTracker desking runs in the app with the same engine as the desk: cash, finance and lease, the state tax matrix, semimonthly frequency, trade credit caps and the lease tax methods. The deal jacket, deal chat and the customer's deal page are all reachable from the same deal. Q: How do reps get back into the app quickly on the lot? A: With biometric login on the handset or a Quick Access PIN set per user in User Management. A customer interruption costs a fingerprint or four digits, not a password typed in a parking lot. Q: Do texts from the app come from the store's number? A: Yes. Texts and VoIP calls from the app use the store's tracking numbers, so the customer sees the dealership, the rep's personal number stays private, and every message and call is logged on the lead with its delivery status. Q: Does the app need an inventory feed or DMS access? A: No. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required to run the platform, which is why brokers and individual salespeople use the app as their entire office. If the store has a feed, Inventory Link brings the live units into the Inventory list and the vehicle insert in the composer. Q: What are the SecureWebX and Inventory Link apps? A: Companion apps for the other two products. SecureWebX handles secure credit applications, apply links and compliance; Inventory Link handles inventory and merchandising. One login covers the CRM app, both companions and the My LeadLocate account portal. ### My LeadLocate: Billing, Add-Ons, Files and Support URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/my-leadlocate-account My LeadLocate is the customer account portal included with every LeadLocate subscription. A dealer principal or office manager uses it to read invoices and receipts, pay online, add lead sets or zones to an active plan, use Skip A Month, control Automatic Renewal, view credits, keep files, open support tickets and decide which users can launch the CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX. #### What My LeadLocate is My LeadLocate is the customer account portal at my.leadlocate.com where a dealership manages its LeadLocate subscription: billing, add-ons, Skip A Month, Automatic Renewal, credits, files, support tickets, user access and the launcher into every app. That is the one sentence. The rest of this page explains what sits behind each word. Most software vendors keep the money side of the relationship in a different world from the product. An invoice arrives by email. Adding a product means calling a rep. A receipt for the controller means asking for one. Removing a user who left means filing a ticket and waiting. My LeadLocate folds all of that into one signed in place that the store controls. It is not the CRM and it is not a sales tool. It is the desk where the business relationship lives, and it is the front door to the whole LeadLocate platform. Two things make it worth a page of its own. First, it comes with every plan, so a CRM Only store gets the same portal as a Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan store. Second, it is where the month to month promise turns into switches you can see. Renewing, pausing, adding and cancelling are controls in your hands rather than requests you make and then wait on. #### Who uses My LeadLocate, and what the first week looks like Two kinds of people sign in. The dealer principal, general manager or office manager owns the account: they see the invoices, keep the payment methods current, decide whether to add a zone or skip a month, and read the support history when they want to know how a problem was handled. Then there is every other user at the store, because the portal is also the launch pad. A salesperson who has never looked at an invoice still signs in to My LeadLocate to open the CRM, Inventory Link or SecureWebX with one login. The first week is scripted so nobody has to guess. When an account is created, the portal produces a welcome guide, a printable PDF that walks the store through what was purchased, where each product lives and what to set up first. Alongside it runs an onboarding sequence, a short series of prompts that take the account owner through the early steps in order rather than dropping a manager into a dashboard and hoping. A store that follows the sequence has its users invited, its apps launching and its billing settled before the first lead arrives. The dashboard is the page you land on after that. It shows the state of the subscription, what is active, what is due and where to go next. It is deliberately plain. A manager who opens it between two deals should be able to answer the question they came with in a few seconds and get back to the floor. If a task takes longer than that, the help center has the step by step version. #### Billing you can read at a glance: invoices, receipts and paying online The billing area lists every invoice on the account with its status, and each one opens in a clean invoice view that you can print or save for the office. When a payment goes through, a transaction receipt is generated for it, so the controller who closes the books at month end has a receipt for every charge without asking anyone for one. Invoices and receipts stay on the account for as long as the account exists, which means the history is there in a year when someone asks what the store was paying for a given add-on. Payment methods are kept in the portal, and paying online is a single page. Open the invoice, choose the method and pay it. There is no phone call to make and no waiting for a rep to run something on their end. If a store prefers to pay each invoice by hand rather than on a schedule, that works too, and the receipt appears the same way. One boundary is worth stating plainly. My LeadLocate handles the dealership's LeadLocate invoices and nothing else. It is not a customer facing checkout and your customers never see it. The money that moves through it is between your store and us. For what those invoices look like across the plans, the dealership CRM pricing guide lays out how the common CRM pricing models compare, and the pricing page has the current plan list. #### Add-ons, Skip A Month and Automatic Renewal are switches you control The products and add-ons shelf is where an active subscriber grows the account without a sales call. A store that wants more lead volume adds an extra lead set. A store that wants to cover the next town over adds an extra zone. Features that sit outside the base plan are listed on the same shelf and switch on from there. Every add-on attaches to the subscription that is already running; it is never sold on its own and it is never a plan by itself. If the base subscription stops, the add-ons stop with it. Skip A Month is the pause button. When the market goes quiet or the store is reorganizing, a manager can switch to Skip A Month rather than canceling. The account, the data, the configuration and the numbers stay in place, and the full plan resumes when the store is ready. It is almost always the better choice over cancelling and rebuilding later, and it is a control in the portal, not a negotiation. Automatic Renewal is the other switch, and it deserves a careful explanation because it behaves exactly like a cancellation. Renewal is on by default, which is what keeps a month to month subscription running month to month. When you turn Automatic Renewal off, the portal shows the same cancellation terms it shows for Cancel Service, because the effect is the same: you tick a box confirming the 10 day notice, type the word cancel and press Yes, Cancel My Service, and the account is set to Cancels at the End of Agreement. Cancellations need at least 10 days notice before your next billing date, so a charge due sooner than that still processes as scheduled. The service stays active through the end of the period you have paid for and then stops. Nothing is cut off early. The reason the warning is thorough is that a manager who only meant to look at the setting should never discover a month later that the store lost its CRM. #### Service credits, referral credits and the file library Credits live in the portal too, in two forms. Service credits are the ones our team places on an account, for instance after a support case is resolved in the store's favour. Referral credits come from the Referral Program, the same one that appears in the CRM dock, when a store you sent our way becomes a customer. Both show up in My LeadLocate with a balance and a history, so the office manager can see what the store has and where it came from without emailing anyone. When a credit is used, it appears against the invoice it applied to, in the same billing view as everything else. The file library is the account's filing cabinet. Documents that belong to the business relationship rather than to a lead sit here: the welcome guide, paperwork we have exchanged with the store, files our team has shared for setup. It is separate from the file library inside the CRM, which is for the sales floor and for sharing with customers. Keeping the two apart means a salesperson looking for a brochure never trips over the account's agreements, and the owner looking for an agreement never wades through a thousand vehicle photos. Secure files are the documents that should never travel as an email attachment. They open only for a signed in user on the account, from inside the portal, which is the right way to handle anything with account details or signatures on it. If you have ever forwarded a PDF and then wondered who else it reached, this is the alternative. #### Support tickets with a printable history Support runs through tickets, and the tickets live in the portal. A manager opens a ticket from My LeadLocate, describes the problem, and every reply from our team lands in the same thread. The ticket view shows the whole conversation in order, with who said what and when, so a question does not have to be re-explained when a different person at the store picks it up. The part dealers ask about most is the printable history. Every ticket can be printed as a single document, and the support area lists every ticket the store has ever opened. That matters more than it sounds. When a dealer principal wants to know how many times a problem came up and how fast it was handled, the answer is on one page rather than scattered through three people's inboxes. When a store changes hands, the new owner inherits the record. And when a vendor tells you a problem never happened, having the thread with timestamps changes the conversation. Tickets are for problems and requests. If the question is how to do something, the help center usually answers it faster, and if you would rather talk it through, contact us and a person picks up. Anything the store needs that is not on the shelf is handled the same way as everything else: tell us in a ticket, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### One login launches the CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX The launcher is the reason every user at the store has a My LeadLocate login, not just the owner. Sign in once and you get a row of apps: the LeadLocate CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX. Pick one and you are inside it, already signed in, because the account portal is the single sign on for the whole ecosystem. Nobody keeps three passwords, and nobody signs in three times before the first customer walks in. Account access is where the owner decides who gets which app. The access page lists every user on the account and, for each one, which apps they can launch. A finance manager gets SecureWebX, a lot attendant who photographs cars gets Inventory Link, the sales floor gets the CRM, and the owner gets everything. When someone leaves, their access ends here in one place and every app follows. That single control is what most stores are missing when they discover a former employee still had a login to something months later. Signing in is passwordless. A user asks for a magic link and gets an email; clicking it signs them in. Or they ask for a code by text message and type it in. Either way there is no password to forget, reuse, write on a sticky note or hand to a coworker, and no reset queue for the office manager to babysit. Settings round out the account: the store's contact details, the account owner, notification preferences and the rest of what the portal needs to know about the business. It is the last thing most owners visit and it should be. Set it once, correctly, and the portal stays out of the way. #### Built so your store keeps selling My LeadLocate is built so your store keeps selling. Each product is its own application under one login, so the account desk stays the account desk while the CRM works leads, SecureWebX takes credit applications, Inventory Link publishes your units and the desking tool keeps desking. Every record the portal holds is safe: every invoice and receipt, every user you added, every add on you turned on, every referral credit you earned and every plan change you made, all of it stored and all of it still there the next time you sign in. A subscription only changes state when a person at your store changes it, so nothing on the account moves on its own. Your own phone system, your DMS and your website stay the store's own, and the leads the platform delivers can be routed into whatever CRM your store already runs. The portal is where an owner sets the business up and reads the numbers; the sales floor never has to open it to sell a car. #### How to start: every subscription includes it There is nothing to buy. My LeadLocate is part of every plan, from CRM Only to Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan, and it is the first thing a new account touches. Pick a plan on the pricing page, and the portal is waiting when the account is created, with the welcome guide and the onboarding sequence ready to run. Everything is month to month with no long term contract, and the portal is what makes that real rather than a line in a brochure. The renewal switch, the pause, the add-ons and the cancellation path are all yours to operate, with the consequences spelled out on the screen before anything happens. A vendor who has to earn the business every month should make leaving easy, and the account portal is where we do that. If you want to see the portal alongside the CRM before you decide anything, the recorded demo walks through the platform end to end, and contacting us gets a straight answer to a straight question. The broader tour of what the subscription includes is on the platform page, and the CRM itself has its own page at auto dealer software and CRM. #### Questions and answers Q: Is My LeadLocate included with every plan? A: Yes. Every subscription, from CRM Only up through the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan, includes the account portal. There is no separate charge for it and no plan that leaves it out. Every user on the account gets a login because it is also the launcher for the apps. Q: What happens when I turn off Automatic Renewal? A: It cancels the service, so the portal shows the full cancellation terms first. You tick a box confirming the 10 day notice, type the word cancel and press Yes, Cancel My Service, and the account is set to Cancels at the End of Agreement. Cancellations need at least 10 days notice before your next billing date, so a charge due sooner than that still processes as scheduled. You keep everything through the period you have paid for. Nothing is cut off early. Q: Can I buy an add-on without a subscription? A: No. Add-ons such as extra lead sets, extra zones and additional features attach to an active subscription and stop when that subscription stops. They are never a plan on their own. The plans themselves are listed on the pricing page. Q: Does the portal take payments from my dealership's customers? A: No. My LeadLocate handles your LeadLocate invoices only: invoices, receipts, payment methods and paying online. Your customers never see it. It is the account desk between your store and us, not a checkout for the showroom. Q: How does passwordless login work? A: Ask for a magic link and it arrives by email; click it and you are signed in. Or ask for a code by text message and enter it. Either way there is no password to remember or reset, and once you are in, the launcher opens the CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX without signing in again. Q: Where do I open a support ticket, and can I print the history? A: Open tickets from the support area of My LeadLocate. Every reply lands in the same thread, every ticket the store has ever opened is listed, and any ticket can be printed as one document with the full conversation and timestamps. ### SecureWebX: Secure Credit Applications for Car Dealers URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/securewebx SecureWebX is LeadLocate's secure credit application system for car dealers: a five step online application your store sends as a branded apply link, an application inbox and pipeline, Send to Lender secure sharing, stipulations, adverse action notices, worksheets with deal recap PDFs, and export to your lender or DMS in the format it expects. It is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription. #### SecureWebX is the secure credit application system inside the LeadLocate platform SecureWebX is a secure credit application system for car dealers that takes the application from the customer's phone, works it in a dealer console, and delivers it to the lender or DMS the store already uses. That is the one sentence version. The longer version is that it replaces the clipboard, the paper app that gets photographed and texted to the finance office, the shared email inbox where applications age, and the spreadsheet somebody built to keep track of which lender has which deal. It is built for the people who actually touch an application. F&I managers get an inbox, a pipeline, stipulations, adverse action notices and a worksheet that pencils cash, finance and lease with the same math as the desk. Special finance departments get co-applicant and ITIN support, supporting documents attached to the file rather than scattered across a text thread, and a Send to Lender share that puts a specific application in front of a specific lender without a fax cover sheet. Buy here pay here stores and auto brokers get a professional application path that runs without a DMS or an inventory feed, which is why they can start on it the same week they sign up. Franchise stores get two factor sign in, encryption at rest, a full audit log and export in the STAR XML format their DMS expects. SecureWebX runs alongside the LeadLocate CRM and is part of the platform subscription rather than a separate product you buy from a second vendor. The dealership CRM with credit application page covers the CRM side of that relationship. This page is the product itself, module by module, using the names you see in the console. #### Your customer finishes the application on their own phone, privately The applicant side is a five step online credit application: personal, residence, employment, income, review. Five short screens instead of one long form, each one savable, so a customer who gets interrupted picks up where they stopped rather than starting over. A co-applicant is added inside the same application. Identification accepts an ITIN as well as a social security number, which matters in markets where a good buyer would otherwise be turned away at the first field. Income, down payment and a trade-in section are part of the standard flow, so the finance office gets the numbers it needs to structure a deal on the first pass rather than on the third phone call. The application ends with an e-signature and consent capture against versioned terms. Versioned is the important word. When your disclosure language changes, SecureWebX keeps the exact version each customer agreed to and when, so a question about what a specific applicant consented to has a specific answer. Bot protection sits on the public form so the inbox holds applications from people, not scripts. Every store gets its own branded apply links, and each link is customizable from the console: extra sections, custom fields, document uploads and disclosures specific to that link. A store can run one link for the website, one for the special finance desk and one for a sales event, each collecting what that path needs. The link is sent by text from the CRM conversation the customer is already in, dropped on a landing page or printed on a card. The customer applies where they are comfortable, which is usually at home, and the store gets a completed application before the appointment instead of a walkout after it. If a customer starts and stops, the abandoned application flows back to the CRM for follow up, so an application left in progress becomes a task for a salesperson instead of a mystery. #### Every application lands in one inbox and moves through one pipeline The dealer console opens on a dashboard with live badges, then the application inbox. Each application carries a status, an assignee, an amount, notes and its email thread, so the pipeline view answers the finance manager's first question of the day: what came in, who owns it, where is it stuck. Nothing depends on a particular person's mailbox, which is the failure mode of every store that runs credit applications through email. Send to Lender is how an application leaves the store. It is a secure share that works with any lender you choose, and here is exactly how it works. The console produces a code gated, expiring, revocable, watermarked share of the application. You send it to any lender you choose, including the local credit union that has never been on anyone's portal. The lender opens a lender response portal, reviews the file and records a response, and that response comes back to the application. When the share expires or you revoke it, the lender's access ends. Your lender relationships stay yours; SecureWebX makes the handoff secure and documented. From there the application picks up the paperwork a real deal generates. Stipulations are tracked per application and fulfilled by upload, so proof of income or proof of residence arrives against the stip that asked for it. Supporting documents attach to the submission itself. Adverse action notices are generated from the application record when a deal is declined, rather than typed from memory. State disclosures are added, edited and removed per state, and a privacy notice and terms editor lets each company keep its own language current, with forced terms acceptance for every console user. OFAC screening runs against the application so the name check is done inside the file, not in a separate browser tab someone may or may not remember to open. #### Worksheets pencil cash, finance and lease with the desk's own math An application on its own is half a deal. The worksheet is the other half, and SecureWebX carries a full one. Cash, finance and lease pencils run at parity with the CRM desking engine, so the figures the finance office quotes are the same figures the salesperson showed on the floor. That is not a small point. A customer who sees two different payments from two different people in the same building stops trusting both. The desking tool page describes the engine in detail; here it is enough to say that a worksheet can be duplicated, given defaults, attached to an application or detached from it, and printed as a deal recap PDF the customer can take home. The deal vehicle section is where the worksheet learns what it is pricing. Decode a VIN, look up a stock number against the store's own inventory, or hold a wish list for a customer whose unit has not landed yet. A manager can confirm the build and options so the pencil reflects the car that is actually on the lot. The decode brings factory warranty and open recall data onto the deal with the build. Title, stolen vehicle, sales history, auction and warranty checks are set up for your dealership on request; our team puts them in production, so the finance manager knows what they are financing before the lender does. Kelley Blue Book QuickValues book-outs live inside the worksheet. A finance manager values the trade or books out the unit without leaving the deal, and the value lands in the pencil rather than on a sticky note. Worksheets can also be pushed from CRM desking, so a deal structured in the CRM arrives in SecureWebX with its numbers intact instead of being rekeyed. #### Mailbox, partners, reports, users and support tickets round out the console The Mailbox is dealer to lender and partner email with inbound handling, kept inside the console so the correspondence about a deal sits with the deal. A finance manager writing to a lender about a stip is not switching to a personal inbox and hoping to find the thread later. The partner list holds the lenders and vendors your store works with. Verified Partners is a directory by category, and a partner integrations catalog sits next to it with a custom integration request for anything else your store wants. Anything not listed is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Reports cover applications, pipeline and activity, with PDF export for the morning meeting or the owner who wants numbers on paper. Users are invited into the console with roles, so a salesperson sees what a salesperson should and a finance manager sees the rest. Credit bureau key storage lives under settings: the store's own bureau account credentials are stored there and pulls run through the store's account, with a referral request if the store needs one set up. Support tickets and feature requests are filed from inside the console with reference numbers, so a question about a specific application is tracked rather than lost in a phone call. #### Export an application to your lender or DMS in the format it expects Most stores have a system that needs to receive the application once it is worked, and that system is particular about format. SecureWebX exports in the format the receiving side expects rather than asking the receiving side to change. STAR XML, the DMS standard, is supported alongside fixed width, CSV and JSON. Transport matches the same range: SFTP, SOAP, a REST API, PGP encrypted email, structured email and a secure portal. Mapping templates line up your fields with theirs once, and every export after that follows the map. Every export is built for your store's specific destination. It delivers the application to your lender or DMS in the format that system expects, so the receiving side works with it the day it arrives. What it gives a store is the practical thing: the application leaves SecureWebX as a file the other side can ingest, without a finance manager retyping thirty fields into a second screen. eFax is included for the lenders and partners who still live on fax, and there are more of them than the software industry likes to admit. Fax numbers are assigned per company and per partner, and inbound fax status shows in the console, so the countersigned approval that arrives by fax is seen by the person waiting on it. #### Security and compliance are built into every sign in and every record A credit application is the most sensitive document a dealership handles, and the controls around it should not be optional settings someone has to remember to turn on. In SecureWebX they are the default. Two factor authentication runs on every sign in, with a code sent to the user's phone. Application data is encrypted at rest, and the keys and credentials the system depends on live in a secrets vault rather than in a configuration file someone can open. A full audit log records who viewed, edited, shared and exported each application, alongside a security log for the account as a whole, so the answer to who looked at this file is a report, not a guess. Every upload is virus scanned before it is stored. PDFs open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated, which means an application shared with a lender or opened by a user carries a watermark and cannot be quietly saved to a desktop. Then the retention rule: archive, never delete. When a company, a user or an application is archived, every record is retained for compliance. A store that has to answer a regulator, an auditor or a lawyer about an application from years back finds the file, the consent version, the disclosures shown, the adverse action notice and the audit trail together. Combined with the versioned consent capture on the applicant side, OFAC screening on the file and state disclosures per state, this is the record keeping layer that supports a store's own compliance program. It gives that program a complete record to stand on, from the first signature on the application to the last decision on the file. #### SecureWebX connects to the LeadLocate CRM with one login and one click SecureWebX is part of one platform, and the connection to the CRM is what makes it feel that way. When a dealership joins LeadLocate, company onboarding and user sync from the CRM create the SecureWebX company and its users, so nobody sets up the same people twice. Ecosystem single sign on means one login. From the CRM dock there is a SecureWebX button, and one click launches the console for the signed in user with no second password. Our support team can see your screen with you and fix it on the call, which shortens most support calls to the length of the question. The store's tracking phone numbers sync into SecureWebX, so the number a customer sees on an apply link, a disclosure or an outbound message is the same number the CRM is already tracking. Worksheets are pushed from CRM desking into SecureWebX, which is how a deal structured on the floor arrives at the finance desk with its numbers intact. And the abandoned application feed runs the other direction: a customer who opens an apply link and stops on the income step becomes a follow up in the CRM, so the salesperson who sent the link knows to make the call. The practical result is that texting a credit application link, working the application, structuring the deal and sending it to a lender happen inside one system with one login. The online credit application software page covers the buying question of application intake in general; the all features list shows where SecureWebX sits among everything else in the platform. #### What stays yours at the store, and how do you start? SecureWebX is built so your store keeps selling, and every record the console touches is archived rather than deleted, so the application a customer finished at midnight, the worksheet your desk structured, the stipulation your team uploaded and the file a lender already reviewed stay on file and stay yours. What leaves the console stays where you put it: the application you exported to your DMS is in your DMS, the deal recap PDF you printed is in the customer's hand, and the lender who received a Send to Lender share has the file in the lender response portal. Your bureau account, your lender relationships, your phone numbers and your dealership website remain the store's own, and nothing about how you take an application asks you to hand any of that over. When you want a person rather than a screen, the contact page reaches one, and our support team can see your screen with you and fix it on the call. Starting is simple because SecureWebX is part of the platform subscription rather than an add on with its own contract. Plans are month to month; the pricing page lists the Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and Buyers & Sellers Hybrid plans that include exclusive local leads, and CRM Only, for a store that wants the software without lead delivery, is chosen at sign up. When your account is created, the SecureWebX company and users are created with it, the SecureWebX button appears in the CRM dock, and the first apply link is ready to customize and send that day. If you want to see it before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows an apply link going out by text and coming back as a worked application. #### Questions and answers Q: How does SecureWebX send an application to a lender? A: Through Send to Lender, a secure share: a code gated, expiring, revocable, watermarked view of the application that you send to any lender you choose, with a lender response portal for their reply. Your lender relationships and your bureau account stay yours. Export to a lender or DMS is a file in the format that system expects. Q: Who pulls credit? A: Your store does, through its own credit bureau account. SecureWebX stores the bureau key under settings and offers a referral request if you need an account set up. LeadLocate runs the application system, and the bureau relationship stays yours. Q: Can a customer apply with an ITIN or add a co-applicant? A: Yes. The five step application accepts an ITIN as well as a social security number, and a co-applicant is added inside the same application. Income, down payment and trade-in are standard sections. Q: How is the customer's consent recorded? A: With an e-signature and consent capture against versioned terms. SecureWebX keeps the exact version each customer agreed to and when, so a question about a specific applicant's consent has a specific answer. Q: What formats can an application be exported in? A: STAR XML, fixed width, CSV and JSON, delivered over SFTP, SOAP, REST API, PGP encrypted email, structured email or a secure portal. Mapping templates line your fields up with the receiving system's fields once. Q: Is SecureWebX included with LeadLocate, or is it extra? A: It is part of the platform subscription. Your SecureWebX company and users are created with your account, and the console launches from the SecureWebX button in the CRM dock with one login. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### The LeadLocate Platform: Leads, CRM, Credit Apps, Inventory URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/platform LeadLocate is the automotive sales platform for dealerships, auto brokers and salespeople. One subscription brings exclusive local buyer and seller leads together with LeadLocate CRM, the LeadLocate mobile app, DealTracker desking, SecureWebX credit applications, Inventory Link merchandising, the Jax AI assistant and the My LeadLocate account portal, all under one login and billed month to month. #### What software do car dealerships use? A typical dealership runs a surprising number of systems to sell one car. There is a CRM for leads and follow up, a phone system, a texting tool, a desking worksheet, a credit application portal, an inventory manager, a website provider, an advertising vendor and a DMS for the accounting side. Each one has its own login, its own bill and its own copy of the customer, and the salesperson spends the day copying names and numbers from one screen to the next. LeadLocate brings the selling side of that list into one platform. The LeadLocate CRM is the center: every lead, text, call, email and appointment lives there. Desking, credit applications, inventory merchandising, the AI assistant, managed advertising and account billing are built around it and open from the same dock with the same login. Your DMS keeps doing the accounting, payroll, parts and title work it was built for, and LeadLocate runs right beside it from the first day. That is why a single salesperson, an auto broker with no lot and a franchise store with several rooftops all run the same software. The platform scales from one login to a full team with roles, round robin assignment, manager copies of every lead and reporting across the whole store. The feature directory lists every capability under the names you will see on screen. #### How the LeadLocate apps work together at a dealership The apps share more than a login. They share the customer. A tracking phone number bought in the CRM shows up in SecureWebX. A worksheet desked in DealTracker can be pushed straight to the credit application. A vehicle in Inventory Link can be dropped into any text or email from the composer, with photos and price attached. An appointment booked from the mobile app appears on the shared calendar the moment it is saved. Here is how a normal afternoon looks. A shopper in your zone asks about a pickup. The lead arrives in the CRM with its source attached, round robin assigns it, and the automated template for that source sends the first text right away. The salesperson answers from the LeadLocate app on the lot, sends two pictures of the truck, and books a test drive. When the customer asks about payments, a SecureWebX apply link goes out by text. By the time they arrive, the application is in the inbox and DealTracker already has three payment options waiting. Every step of that story is saved on one customer timeline: each call with its recording and transcript, each text, each email and each document. A manager can read the whole conversation in seconds, and the next salesperson who helps that customer starts with the full picture. #### Leads and software, built as one system Most lead vendors sell a list and leave the store to figure out the follow up. LeadLocate delivers leads into the software that works them, which is why leads always come with the platform subscription. Every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened with your own questions at capture, and backed by a replacement review if a lead turns out to be bad. - Inbound brings exclusive local buyer leads, with the full CRM included. - Marketplace Acquisitions brings seller leads from local owners who asked a dealership for an offer on their vehicle. - Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan brings both in one account, worked from one CRM. - CRM Only gives a store the full software with leads switched off, ready for its own lead sources. Stores that already run another CRM can have their leads routed into it at no change in price. Every plan is month to month, and the pricing page compares them side by side. #### Security and compliance built into every app A dealership handles some of the most sensitive information a consumer ever shares, so LeadLocate treats protection as part of the product. SecureWebX encrypts every credit application, requires two factor authentication on every sign in, scans uploaded documents and keeps a full audit log. Lender shares are code gated, watermarked, expiring and revocable, so the store decides exactly who sees an application and for how long. On the communication side, the CRM carries a do not call blacklist with a live do not call lookup, consent capture, state disclosures and adverse action notices. Customer information in the shared customer profile is encrypted. User roles decide who can see what, a Quick Access PIN protects the phone app, and My LeadLocate controls which users can launch which apps. The platform is built so your store keeps selling. Every lead, text, call recording, credit application and signed deal page is saved the moment it happens and stays in your account. Your phone lines still ring at the store, your DMS stays your DMS and your website stays your website, with LeadLocate working beside all of them. The SecureWebX page covers the credit application protections in detail. #### How to get started with LeadLocate Getting started takes one online sign up. Choose the plan that fits the customers you want to reach, pick your sales zone and create your account. Your welcome guide and onboarding sequence arrive right away, and your team can schedule live training from the top bar of the CRM on the very first day. - Pick a plan. Inbound for buyers, Marketplace Acquisitions for sellers, the Hybrid Plan for both, or CRM Only for the software on its own. - Sign up online. The sign up page walks you through the plan, your zone and your account details in a few minutes. - Connect what you already have. Add your users, forward your calls, connect your website forms and bring in your inventory, feed or no feed. - Start selling. Leads arrive in the CRM and on every phone, and every app is ready from the same dock. Prefer to see it first? The video demo walks through the CRM and the apps on a real account, and a lead specialist is one call or text away at 844-376-2274. #### The products, one login - LeadLocate CRM: Every Module in One LoginLeadLocate CRM puts leads, texting, calling, email, automation, desking, websites and reporting in one dealer login, month to month, no contract. - SecureWebX: Secure Credit Applications for Car DealersSecureWebX is LeadLocate's secure credit application system: apply links by text, an application inbox, worksheets and lender ready export. - Inventory Link: Dealer Inventory Software and MerchandisingInventory Link is LeadLocate's dealer inventory software: feed or no feed, VIN decode, inventory sites, widgets, OEM incentives and a CRM bridge. - LeadLocate Mobile App for iOS and AndroidThe LeadLocate mobile app for iOS and Android: text, call, desk a deal, scan a VIN and book appointments from the lot. Included with every plan. - My LeadLocate: Billing, Add-Ons, Files and SupportMy LeadLocate, the account portal in every LeadLocate plan: invoices, payments, add-ons, Skip A Month, credits, files, tickets and app launch. - webXintel Ads Network: Managed Advertising From Your CRMwebXintel Ads Network: managed advertising planned in Leads Manager inside the LeadLocate CRM. Our team runs the media, leads land in one inbox. - Jax: The Bilingual AI Assistant Inside LeadLocateJax is the bilingual AI assistant inside LeadLocate CRM. It drafts texts and emails, takes voice input and answers reps in English or Spanish. - DealTracker Desking and Deal PagesCash, finance and lease pencils, customer deal pages with e-signature, deal chat, print packets and deal jackets, inside the CRM. #### Where to go next - Every feature, explainedEvery LeadLocate feature on one page, grouped by product, each with its own explainer: texting, phone, automation, desking, credit apps, inventory. - Solutions by role and workflowLeadLocate solutions by role and by workflow: what a BDC manager, F&I manager, salesperson or auto broker does with the platform, step by step. - By dealer type and industryLeadLocate by dealer type: franchise, independent, buy here pay here, auto brokers, motorcycle, powersports, marine, RV, trucks, fleet and more. - Help CenterStep by step guides for every task in LeadLocate CRM, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and My LeadLocate, with the exact labels you see on screen. - GlossaryPlain definitions of car dealership sales, finance, compliance, inventory and software terms, each with how it works at a store and a worked example. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the LeadLocate platform? A: LeadLocate is an automotive sales platform that combines exclusive local leads with LeadLocate CRM, the LeadLocate mobile app, DealTracker desking, SecureWebX credit applications, Inventory Link merchandising, the Jax AI assistant, the webXintel Ads Network and the My LeadLocate account portal. Every app opens from one login. Q: Which apps come with a LeadLocate subscription? A: Every plan includes the whole platform: the CRM on desktop and phone, DealTracker desking and deal pages, SecureWebX, Inventory Link, Jax, the managed webXintel Ads Network and My LeadLocate. Plans differ only by the leads you want: buyers, sellers, both, or none with CRM Only. Q: Do I need a DMS integration or an inventory feed to start? A: No. A feed and DMS access are not required to start. Inventory Link can import your vehicles straight from your own website, and the CRM runs beside whatever DMS your store already uses. Q: Is LeadLocate a DMS? A: LeadLocate is the sales platform that runs beside your DMS. Accounting, payroll, parts, repair orders and title work stay in the DMS, while LeadLocate handles leads, texting, calls, email, desking, credit applications and inventory merchandising. Q: What plans does LeadLocate offer? A: Inbound brings buyer leads, Marketplace Acquisitions brings seller leads, the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan brings both and CRM Only runs the software. Every plan is month to month. The pricing page has the full comparison. Q: Is there a mobile app? A: Yes. The LeadLocate app for iPhone and Android is the full CRM in your pocket, with texting, a VoIP dialer, the calendar, inventory, desking, VIN and driver license scanning and Team Chat. SecureWebX and Inventory Link have their own apps too, and all of them share one login. Q: Can an individual salesperson or an auto broker use LeadLocate? A: Yes. The same platform serves a single salesperson, an auto broker with no lot and a dealer group with several rooftops. Brokers get brand offer pages connected right away, and every user gets the mobile app. Q: How fast can my team start using it? A: You sign up online in a few minutes. Your welcome guide arrives right away, live training can be scheduled from the CRM, and the video training library is open to every user from the first login. ### webXintel Ads Network: Managed Advertising From Your CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/webxintel-ads-network The webXintel Ads Network is the managed advertising path inside the LeadLocate CRM. A dealership plans a campaign in Leads Manager with the zone editor, zip stats, market scan and offers, and our team runs the media through the managed network or, on request, under the store's own ad accounts. Every lead lands in the same CRM inbox with its source attached, month to month. #### The webXintel Ads Network is managed advertising planned inside your CRM Here is the whole product in one sentence. A dealership plans a campaign in Leads Manager, our team runs the media through the managed network or through the store's own connected ad accounts, and every lead that comes back lands in the same LeadLocate CRM inbox with its source attached, month to month, with no long term contract. That sentence matters because of what it leaves out. There is no separate advertising login, no agency portal with its own password, no monthly deck that arrives three weeks after the money was spent. The campaign lives where the leads live. The salesperson who texts the customer back is looking at the same record that says which zone, which offer and which channel produced that customer. The webXintel Ads Network is the name a dealership sees in the CRM for the managed side of that arrangement. It is included with every plan, so a store that already subscribes has it, and a store with its own ad accounts, set up on request by our team, can run either way or both at once. The list of channels a store can pick from is published on the advertising channels hub, and the platform by platform connection status lives in the integrations directory. This page is the product side of that story: what is in the box, how the two paths differ, what our team does and what the store keeps control of. #### Who the webXintel Ads Network is built for Two kinds of buyer use this, and they use it differently. The first is the dealership itself: a franchise store, an independent lot, a broker, or a single salesperson building their own pipeline. None of them needs an inventory feed or access to the dealer management system to run a campaign, because Leads Manager plans around a zone and an offer rather than around a feed. An inventory feed is not required, which is exactly why a broker working out of a home office can run the same campaign a fifty car store runs. When a store does have inventory in Inventory Link, its actual vehicles can be advertised, and the leads those ads produce arrive with the VIN attached; other leads describe what the shopper wants in general terms, and both kinds are real. What to expect from car sales leads explains how shoppers actually behave once they arrive. The second is the small agency that buys media for a handful of dealerships. An agency can connect the accounts it already holds, plan each store's campaigns in that store's Leads Manager, and see every client in one system with one set of reports instead of one login per platform per client. The agency keeps its client relationship; the store keeps its leads in its own CRM. Agencies can also enroll in the referral program inside the CRM. The people who get the most out of it are internet sales directors and BDC managers who are tired of being the human integration between an ad vendor's spreadsheet and the CRM their team works in. If that is you, most of what follows will read as relief. #### What is included, module by module, under the names you will see on screen Everything below is a real screen in the CRM, named as the CRM names it. Leads Manager is where the store plans every campaign. It is where a campaign begins and where it is reviewed. A campaign is a zone, a set of offers, and a channel selection, in that order. Zone editor marks out the territory the campaign covers. A store sells to a geography, not to a demographic, and the zone editor makes that geography the first decision instead of an afterthought. Leads from a zone are delivered to the store that runs that zone, exclusively. Zip stats shows what the ZIP codes inside the zone look like, so a manager can widen or tighten the map with numbers in front of them rather than a hunch. Market scan looks at the market the zone sits in before money is committed. Together they answer the question every dealer principal asks before approving spend: is there anyone out there to reach. Offers is where the store decides what the campaign says. An offer is the thing a shopper responds to, and keeping it in the same builder as the zone means the two are never out of step. A campaign that promises a payment the store will not write is a campaign that produces arguments, so the offer is set by the store, in writing, before anything is built. Advertising Networks is the list inside Leads Manager of every channel the platform runs, each with a Request Connection button. A request goes to our team, which sets the channel up through the managed network or under an account in the dealership's own name. Every request is tracked by our team from the moment it arrives, so the channels a store asks for are the channels our team puts to work. Connections is where the dealership's own ad accounts sit for the bring your own accounts path, set up by our team on request and described in the next section. All of it sits inside the same CRM covered on the platform overview, behind the same login. #### Two ways to run the media: the managed network or your own connected accounts Every campaign planned in Leads Manager can be run one of two ways, and a store can use both. The managed path is the webXintel Ads Network. The store picks the zone, the offers and the channels, and our team handles the media under the managed network. The dealership needs no advertising account of its own, no billing relationship with any platform, and no one on staff who knows how a campaign manager works. This is the included path, and it is the one most subscribers start with. The channel list a store chooses from is the public list linked above, and the managed network runs as one managed network, so the store works from a single plan and a single inbox. The bring your own accounts path connects the ad accounts a dealership already holds. On request our team sets the account up inside the CRM, for the store or the agency working for it, and campaigns planned in Leads Manager run under that account instead of the managed network. Media bought under an account in your name is billed by that platform to you, with no markup on media from us. The store owns the account, the history and the relationship with the platform, which is what a store that has spent years building an ad account usually wants. Under both paths the store gets one consistent experience for every channel, from the plan in Leads Manager through launch, reporting and results in the inbox. Every channel is run the same careful way, so a store that adds one knows exactly what to expect from it. The integrations directory publishes a status per platform, each with a stated test, and that status tells a store at a glance whether a given connection is live today or available on request, set up for your store by our team. Either way, the campaign itself is our work. Our team launches and manages every campaign from the selections your store makes in Leads Manager, in the managed webXintel Ads Network or in your own ad accounts, so the store gets media built by people who build it every day and nothing goes live on a store's account because someone clicked the wrong button between ups on a Saturday. #### What our team does, and what the store controls Here is exactly how the work divides between the store and our team. The store controls the plan. The zone, the offers, the channels requested, the budget it is willing to commit, and the decision to start or stop a campaign are all the dealership's, made in Leads Manager and in conversation with our team. The store also controls its own accounts on the bring your own accounts path, including the decision to disconnect one. Our team launches and manages every campaign from those selections, on the managed network or in the store's own connected accounts. The store plans, our team builds and runs, and the leads come back into the CRM. The reason is simple: a campaign built from a store's selections by people who build them every day is cheaper to get right than one assembled by a sales manager between ups. When the store wants a change, it changes the plan or asks, and the change is made. When it wants to stop, it says so. What the store sees is the result: leads, in the inbox, with the channel and campaign attached, and the reporting the CRM already produces for every other lead source. Activity, company and management reporting treat an advertising lead exactly like a lead from the store's own website, which is the only way to compare a dollar of advertising with a dollar spent anywhere else. We keep this arrangement because it is the one that survives staff turnover. A store whose only person who understood the ad account just left still has campaigns planned in a builder the next manager can read, and a team on our side that already knows the store. #### How it connects to the rest of the platform Advertising is worth very little if the lead it produces goes somewhere the salesperson is not. Everything here is built so that it does not. A lead from any channel lands in the LeadLocate CRM inbox with its source attached. The same global lead distribution rules that route a website lead route an advertising lead, so it lands with a named owner and a response time expectation rather than in a shared queue. From there the follow up runs through the CRM's own texting, calling and email, the automations and drip campaigns the store already uses, and the appointment calendar. There is no separate advertising inbox to remember to check. Where a lead arrives from a network's own lead form, our team places it straight into the store's intake, so it lands beside every other lead with its channel and campaign attached and a named owner on it. For stores that keep their existing CRM, Instant Push forwards every lead by ADF the moment it is accepted, with the channel and campaign attached, at no change in the subscription price. One login covers the CRM, the campaign builder, DealTracker desking and the customer facing tools, so a salesperson who gets an advertising lead can text the customer, put together numbers in the desking tool and set the appointment without leaving the record. If the store also runs the outbound side, text, email and voicemail campaigns are covered on the campaign management page; paid advertising is the fourth channel in that same system. #### What the webXintel Ads Network replaces at a store Most stores that adopt it are not adding advertising. They are consolidating it. It replaces the stack of vendor logins, one per channel, each with its own report, its own invoice and its own account manager who calls on the first of the month. It replaces the agency arrangement where the store never quite knows what the media cost and what the fee was, because on the bring your own accounts path the platform bills the store directly and there is no markup on media from us. It replaces the spreadsheet a BDC manager keeps to reconcile which lead came from which campaign, because the source is on the lead when it arrives. And it replaces the standing argument between sales and marketing about whether advertising leads are any good, because those leads are now measured by the same reports, and worked by the same people, as every other lead. Judgment stays with the store. Which zone to run, what offer to make, how much to spend and when to stop are still the dealership's decisions, and the dealership makes better ones with zip stats and market scan in front of it than with a vendor's pitch deck. Two things to plan for. Advertising in retail automotive is hard to attribute, and every platform involved will claim the same sale; treat the numbers as directional and compare like with like over time. And no advertising system can guarantee a lead count or a close rate, because those depend on the store's inventory, pricing, market and people. What the system does is make the disciplined version of advertising the easy one, and give the store real numbers afterward. #### Compliance and security, built into the builder rather than bolted on Two things a dealer principal should ask any advertising vendor, and the answers here. Fair lending. Any campaign that touches financing runs under fair lending rules, which means the audience may not be narrowed by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP. In Leads Manager those controls are locked for a financing campaign. The campaign is planned around a zone and an offer, not around a profile of who the store would prefer to finance, and our team runs it that way. A vendor that offers to help a store target around those rules is selling liability and calling it precision. LeadLocate keeps every financing campaign inside those rules, and the builder holds that line for every user. Account security on the bring your own accounts path. When a dealership's own ad account is set up in the CRM, access to it is protected and held for that store alone. Every campaign run under the account stays on the store's record, so a store can see exactly what was run in its name and when. Each campaign stays clearly tied to the account it ran under, so the store always knows where its media is. Removing an account is the store's decision and takes effect on the same Connections screen. Consumer data. Leads are consumer records, and the CRM holds them the way it holds every other lead, with customer profile PII encrypted and access governed by user roles. The Privacy Policy describes what is held and why. Your own counsel should review your advertising and financing practice rather than a vendor page, ours included. #### Built so your store keeps selling, and how to start Your advertising is built to keep producing. Campaigns running under the dealership's own accounts are the store's: the account, the spend history, the billing relationship and the creative stay in the store's name and under the store's control, protected for that store alone. On the managed path the media is handled by our team rather than by a screen a manager has to learn, and that team is reachable by phone at 844-376-2274 for any change a store wants made. Every lead a campaign produces is held safe in the store's account with its channel and campaign attached, and the store's own phones, DMS and website stay the store's own. The platform is built so your store keeps selling and the advertising keeps feeding the inbox your salespeople already work. Starting is short. A current subscriber opens Leads Manager, maps a zone, sets offers, and requests the channels it wants; the webXintel Ads Network is already included, and our team sets up an existing ad account in Connections on request. A store that is not on LeadLocate yet picks a plan on the pricing page. CRM Only runs the whole platform, Inbound adds exclusive local buyer leads, Marketplace Acquisitions adds opt-in seller leads, and the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan brings both. Every plan is month to month with no long term contract, and Skip A Month is there for a store that needs to pause. If you would rather see it before deciding, the recorded demo walks through Leads Manager, or contact us and we will look at your market before recommending a zone. #### Questions and answers Q: Do we need our own ad accounts to use the webXintel Ads Network? A: No. The managed path is included with every plan and needs no advertising account of yours. If you already hold ad accounts, or an agency holds them for you, our team sets them up in the CRM on request, and campaigns planned in Leads Manager run under those accounts instead of, or alongside, the managed network. Q: Who runs the campaigns, and what does our store control? A: Our team launches and manages every campaign from the selections your store makes in Leads Manager, in the managed webXintel Ads Network or in your own ad accounts. You control the plan: the zone, the offers, the channels, the budget you commit, the decision to start or stop, and your own connected accounts. Changes are made by changing the plan or asking; results arrive as leads in your inbox with the source attached. Q: Which platforms does the managed network reach? A: The channels a store can request are listed on the advertising channels hub and inside Leads Manager under Advertising Networks. The managed network is run as the managed network; the platform by platform connection status for your own accounts is published in the integrations directory with a stated test for each. Q: Is there a markup on the media we buy? A: Media bought under an account in your own name is billed by that platform to you, with no markup on media from us. The platform subscription is priced on the pricing page and is month to month. Q: How are financing campaigns kept inside fair lending rules? A: A financing campaign is planned around a zone and an offer, never around a profile. Leads Manager locks the controls that would narrow an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP, and our team runs the campaign the same way. Your own counsel should still review your practice. Q: Can advertising leads go into the CRM we already use? A: Yes. Instant Push forwards every lead to your existing CRM by ADF the moment it is accepted, with the channel and campaign attached, at no change in the subscription price. Many stores work them in LeadLocate instead, because the texting, calling and desking are already there. ## Platform Features ### AI Writing Assistant for Texts and Emails URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/ai-writing-assistant The AI Writing Assistant is a button inside the text and email composers in LeadLocate CRM. Tap it, and the assistant drafts the message for the lead in front of you; AI merge fields fill in the customer, the vehicle and links like the credit application; a microphone button takes dictation. The rep edits and sends from the same composer. It is part of every plan. #### What the AI Writing Assistant does The AI Writing Assistant drafts a text or an email for the lead a salesperson is looking at, inside the composer he is already typing in, so the reply that would have taken four minutes of staring at a blank box takes twenty seconds of reading and one tap. That is the one sentence version. It is a button in the composer, labelled AI Writing Assistant, and while it works the box reads AI is writing your message, then the draft appears where the salesperson can change a word, add a detail or delete it and try again. Two companions ride with it. AI merge fields let a message reference the customer, the vehicle and the store's own links without anyone typing them; the composer shows the available merge fields, and one of them drops in the SecureWebX credit application link so a rep never has to hunt for it. And a microphone button, Dictate with microphone, takes a spoken message and puts it in the box, which is how a salesperson on the lot replies to a text with a car in front of him and a customer beside him. It is a writing tool for the rep, not a bot that answers customers on its own. That job belongs to the Texting Chatbots and the automations, and the texting chatbots page covers it. The full features list shows where the assistant sits among the rest of the communications tools, and the auto dealer software CRM page covers the wider picture. #### How a salesperson uses it on a normal day A lead comes in at 9:15: a shopper asking whether the store will take a trade with negative equity on a three year old crossover. The salesperson opens the lead, reads the inquiry and the notes, and opens the text composer. He has answered this question a hundred times and still does not want to type it a hundred and first. He taps AI Writing Assistant. The box reads AI is writing your message, and a draft appears: a warm, short reply that acknowledges the trade, says the store works with negative equity every week, and offers a quick appraisal. He changes one phrase to sound more like himself, adds the booking link, and sends. Elapsed time, under a minute, and the lead is answered while the shopper is still holding the phone. At noon he is walking a customer to a pre-owned truck when a different lead texts to ask about financing. He does not stop walking. He opens the thread in the mobile app, taps the microphone, says the store's answer out loud, and the words land in the box. He reads them once, adds the credit application merge field so the apply link goes with it, and sends. The customer beside him never noticed. At four, the BDC manager is writing the email for Thursday's aged inventory blast. She opens the email composer, taps the assistant, and gets a draft to work from instead of a blank page. She rewrites the opening, keeps the middle, and drops the merge fields for the customer's name and the vehicle they inquired about, so a blast to ninety people reads like ninety emails. The Bulk Email page covers where that send goes from there. #### Where the assistant lives in the CRM In every composer. On desktop, the SMS inbox under the Messaging menu has the AI Writing Assistant button in the reply box of an open thread and in the new message box, next to the attachment button and the vehicle insert button. The email composer under the Email menu has its own assistant button that drafts an email rather than a text, because a text and an email want different lengths and different openings. The dictation button sits in the same row. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app carries the same composer with the same buttons, which is where the dictation earns its keep. A rep on the lot or in the service drive talks instead of thumbs, and the message reads the way he would have typed it if he had a desk. The merge fields are listed inside the composer under Available merge fields, so a rep sees what he can drop in without memorizing codes. Jax, the AI assistant in the taskbar, is a different tool for a different job: a rep asks Jax a question about the CRM or the lead and gets an answer in English or Spanish, whichever he spoke. The Jax page covers that, and the two are built to be used together: ask Jax what to say, then let the writing assistant say it. #### Merge fields and dictation, the two quiet halves Merge fields are why the assistant's drafts do not read like a template. A field for the customer's name, a field for the vehicle, a field for the credit application link, and the message that goes out is about this customer and this car, with the store's own apply link in it, without the rep pasting anything. The credit application field is the one stores use most, because the apply link is long and a rep who has to find it will often skip it, while a rep who can type one short field never does. The apply links page covers what happens after the customer taps it. Dictation is why the assistant works away from a desk. The microphone button turns speech into text in the composer, and the rep edits the result by hand before sending, which matters: a dictated message is a draft, not a send, and the rep stays in control of what leaves. On a lot, in a service drive, or in a car on a test drive with a customer waiting for an answer to a text, speaking a reply is the difference between answering now and answering later. Together the three pieces cover the three reasons a reply does not go out: nothing to say, no time to type, and a link that is too much trouble to find. Take those away and the reply goes out, and a reply that goes out in a minute is worth more than a better reply that goes out in an hour. #### What it replaces and what a slow reply costs The direct replacement is a separate writing tool in another browser tab, where a rep would type the situation, copy the answer and paste it into the CRM, losing the customer's name and the car in the copy. Nobody does that from a phone, so the real replacement is the blank box and the delay it causes. Reps do not avoid replying because they are lazy. They avoid it because the first sentence is hard, and a lead that gets no first sentence for an hour has usually heard from another store by then. The cost shows up in the numbers a manager already watches: response time on new leads, reply rate on texts, and the share of leads that get a second touch at all. An assistant that removes the blank box moves all three, not by writing better than the rep but by writing first, so the rep is editing instead of starting. And a merge field that drops the apply link into every financing conversation moves the number of completed credit applications, which is the number the finance office watches. The AI Writing Assistant, merge fields and dictation are part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only to the lead plans, with no per message charge. The pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: the rep sends, the CRM records The assistant drafts; a person sends. That order is the whole compliance story, and it is deliberate. Every message that leaves the composer was read and approved by the rep whose name is on the lead, which means the store is never in the position of explaining a message nobody at the store wrote or saw. The draft can be edited, shortened or thrown away, and the merge fields only ever pull from the lead record and the store's own links. The record is the same as for any text or email from the CRM. The communications log on the lead records the message, the time and the user; delivery status shows on every text bubble; opt outs and the DNC Blacklist apply to the message the same way they apply to one typed by hand. A dictated message goes through the same path. When a customer later asks what they were told about a trade or a payment, the thread shows the exact words the rep sent. Texting consent has its own rules, covered on the do not call scrub and blacklist page. One habit is worth setting on day one: read the draft. The assistant writes a plausible reply from what is on the lead, and if the lead's notes are wrong, the draft will be wrong in the same way. The rep who reads before sending catches that; the rep who taps send blind does not. It is a tool for going faster, not for looking away. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on. The AI Writing Assistant button is in the text and email composers in LeadLocate CRM from the day the account is created, on desktop and in the mobile app, for every user. The merge fields are listed in the composer, and the dictation button uses the microphone the browser or the phone already has, so the first use is a tap. Managers who want the store's voice in the drafts usually spend an hour with the first few, editing until the tone is right, and reps pick it up from there. If a store wants to see it work before signing up, the pre-recorded live demo shows a lead coming in, the assistant drafting the reply and the text going out. And if a store has a specific way it wants drafts to read, our team puts it in production for your dealership on request. #### What to pair the writing assistant with Pair it with the vehicle insert button in the same composer, so the message the assistant drafts goes out with the unit's photo and price attached; the send vehicles by text page covers that button. Pair it with trackable short links, which shorten the apply link or the deal page the merge field dropped in and report back when the customer taps it. Pair it with the Follow Up Processes and Automated Templates when a manager is writing the steps of a drip, because a sequence drafted with help and edited by a person reads better than one typed from scratch at the end of a long day. Pair it with Jax for the moment before the draft, when a rep does not know what to say and needs a question answered first. Pair it with the mobile app, where dictation turns a walk across the lot into a reply. And pair it with the Reports dashboard on the dock, where response time and text activity by user show whether the blank box is gone. Everything here is part of the same subscription, which is why the assistant is a button in the composer and not a separate product. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the AI Writing Assistant reply to customers by itself? A: No. It drafts a message in the composer for the rep to read, edit and send. Automatic replies are a different tool: Texting Chatbots and the automations under Marketing Tools and Billing and Admin. Q: Does it work for email as well as text? A: Yes. The SMS composer has an assistant that drafts a text and the email composer has one that drafts an email, because the two channels want different lengths and openings. Both use the same merge fields. Q: What are AI merge fields? A: Placeholders listed in the composer that fill in from the lead record and the store's own links, such as the customer's name, the vehicle and the SecureWebX credit application link, so a draft is about this customer and this car without any pasting. Q: Can I dictate a message instead of typing it? A: Yes. The Dictate with microphone button in the composer turns speech into text in the box, on desktop and in the mobile app. The rep edits the result before sending. Q: Is the writing assistant the same thing as Jax? A: No. Jax is the AI assistant in the taskbar that answers a rep's questions in English or Spanish. The writing assistant drafts the message in the composer. They work well together: ask Jax, then let the assistant write it. Q: Is there a charge per message? A: No. The AI Writing Assistant, merge fields and dictation are part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only up. ### Adverse Action Notices From the Application Record URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/adverse-action-notices Adverse action notices in SecureWebX are generated from the credit application record itself. When a decision goes against the applicant, the finance office opens the notice on the application, records the decision, notes whether a credit report was used and which bureau supplied it, and sends the notice to the applicant. The notice stays on the file with the audit log. It is part of every LeadLocate platform plan. #### What is an adverse action notice, and why does a dealership send one? An adverse action notice is the written notice a consumer receives when credit is denied, or offered on terms less favorable than they asked for, because of information in their application or their credit report. Federal fair lending and credit reporting rules, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act with its Regulation B and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, place that obligation on creditors, and a dealership that takes and works credit applications is squarely in the conversation. The notice tells the applicant what was decided, on what basis, and, when a credit report was involved, which bureau supplied it and how to reach them. Dealerships have historically handled this badly, not from ill intent but from logistics. The decision happens at the desk, the notice is a form in a drawer, and the deadline passes while everyone is working the next deal. SecureWebX moves the notice onto the application record, where the decision already lives, so the notice is generated from facts the system already holds rather than typed from memory a week later. Applicants search for this too: why did I get a notice of adverse action after buying a car. In most cases the dealer sent the application to several lenders, one of them declined, and that lender or the dealer owes a notice. A store that sends its notices from the application record can answer that customer's call with the file in front of it. #### How a finance office issues a notice on a normal day A Thursday deal on a used SUV does not come together. The lender the store shared it with declined through the lender response portal, the application status moved, and the finance manager records the decision and outcome on the file. She opens the Notice section of the application. The applicant's details are already there from the application, so nothing is retyped. She marks that a credit report was used, picks the bureau from the list, or types a different bureau's name and address if the report came from elsewhere, and reviews the notice. The screen carries a reminder that the notice is required within thirty days of the decision, which is the kind of reminder a drawer form never gave anyone. She sends the notice to the applicant from the application. The notice, the date it went, the decision it reports and the bureau it names all stay on the file next to the audit log. Two months later the applicant's attorney writes asking for a copy of the notice and the basis for the decision. The finance manager opens the application, and the answer is there: the consent version the customer signed, the disclosures shown, the lender share and its response, the stipulations requested, and the notice itself. #### What the notice carries, and where it comes from The notice is built from the application record, which is the point of the feature. Applicant identity and contact details come from the application. The decision and outcome come from the decision the finance office recorded on the file. Whether a credit report was used, and the name and contact details of the bureau that supplied it, are captured on the notice screen with a bureau list and a free entry for any other bureau, because the credit reporting rules require the applicant to be told where the report came from and how to reach that bureau. The store's own language is the store's. What a notice must say, and which reasons it must state, is a question for the store's compliance counsel, and SecureWebX gives that counsel a consistent place to put the answer rather than a stack of forms with three different versions in circulation. The compliance disclosures and privacy notices page covers how a store manages its disclosure and notice language per state and per company inside the console. #### Where adverse action notices live On the application, in the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login. Open any application from the credit application inbox and the notice is part of the record alongside the decision, the lender shares, the stipulations, the supporting documents and the audit log. There is no separate notice log to reconcile with the deal file, because the notice is in the deal file. Users are invited into the console with roles, so a store decides who can issue a notice. On the CRM side, the salesperson sees the application's status, so a rep knows a deal was declined and a notice went out without asking the finance office, and can turn to the next unit or the next lender for that customer with the record intact. #### What does this replace, and what does it cost elsewhere? It replaces the form in the drawer, the template on someone's desktop with last year's address on it, the notice that was meant to go out and did not, and the spreadsheet a compliance minded office manager built to track which declines had been noticed. It replaces the retyping of a name and address that was already on the application, and the errors that retyping introduces into a legal document. It also replaces a separate purchase. Compliance vendors sell adverse action notice modules to dealerships as a line item, with their own login and their own invoice, disconnected from the application they are about. In SecureWebX the notice is part of the application system, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, on the pricing page. The dealership compliance document management page covers the wider problem of consent records and notices scattered across a store, and where a secure intake and record layer fits. #### The compliance angle: the notice, the timing and the retention Three things go wrong with adverse action notices at dealerships: they are not sent, they are sent late, or they are sent and then cannot be found. SecureWebX addresses each from the record. The notice is generated where the decision is recorded, so a declined application is a declined application with a notice screen attached rather than a memory of a conversation. The notice screen carries the reminder of the window after the decision. And the notice is retained on the application under the archive, never delete rule, with the audit log recording who issued it and when, and PDFs opening in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated. Those records sit with the rest of the file's compliance layer: the versioned consent the applicant signed, the state specific disclosures shown, the OFAC screening on the record and the lender shares with their decisions. Software supports a compliance program, it does not replace one. The reasons a notice states, the language it uses and the store's policy on when to send are for the store's counsel. What the feature provides is a notice built from the facts on the file, sent from the file, and kept on the file. #### How do I turn it on? It is already on. Adverse action notices are part of the SecureWebX console, which is created with your LeadLocate account. Invite the finance office into the console with roles, work the first declined application, and the notice screen is on that record. If your store's counsel wants notice language or a workflow step the console does not already offer, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. SecureWebX is its own application under one login, built so your finance office keeps moving and keeps its paperwork straight. A notice is safe the moment it is created, the application it was built from stays encrypted on the same record, and the archive is permanent, so a notice issued last quarter opens as quickly as one issued this morning. Records are archived, never deleted. Your store keeps selling on its own phones, its own DMS and its own website, all of which stay the store's own, while the notice history you build in the console sits on the record where your finance manager and your counsel can both find it. #### What to pair adverse action notices with Pair the notice with Send to Lender, because the lender's decline arrives on the application through the lender response portal and the notice follows from that decision on the same record. Pair it with the stipulations workflow, so a file that was declined for missing documentation shows what was requested and what arrived. Pair it with the disclosures and privacy notice editor so the language on every notice is the language your counsel approved. The online credit application software page covers what any application system should do around a decision, and the all features page lists everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What is an adverse action notice at a car dealership? A: The written notice an applicant receives when credit is denied or offered on less favorable terms because of their application or credit report. Fair lending and credit reporting rules place the obligation on creditors, and a store that works credit applications sends them. Q: Where does the notice get its information? A: From the credit application record: applicant details from the application, the decision and outcome recorded on the file, and whether a credit report was used plus the bureau's name and contact, captured on the notice screen. Q: Does SecureWebX decide what my notice says? A: No. The language, the stated reasons and the store's policy on when to send are for the store's compliance counsel. SecureWebX builds the notice from the record, sends it from the record and keeps it on the record. Q: How long is a notice kept? A: Records are archived, never deleted. The notice, the date it was sent, the decision it reports and the audit log entry for who issued it stay on the application for as long as the store needs them. Q: Does the notice go out automatically when a lender declines? A: The lender's decline lands on the application through the lender response portal, and the finance office issues the notice from that record. The notice screen carries a reminder of the window after the decision. Q: Is this included with LeadLocate? A: Yes. Adverse action notices are part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. Plans are listed on the pricing page. ### Apply Links: Shareable Credit Application URLs URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/apply-links Apply links are SecureWebX's branded, shareable credit application URLs. Each dealership gets its own links, each one customizable with extra sections, custom fields, document uploads and disclosures. A salesperson texts the link from the LeadLocate CRM, the customer completes the five step application on their phone, and the finished application lands in the store's SecureWebX inbox with consent captured. #### What is an apply link? An apply link is a branded URL that opens your dealership's online credit application. That is the whole idea, and the reason it matters is where the link can go: into a text message, an email, a landing page, a printed card on the sales desk, a QR code on the window sticker. Wherever a customer is when they decide they are serious, the application is one tap away instead of one visit away. Apply links belong to SecureWebX, the secure credit application system inside the LeadLocate platform. Every store gets its own links, and each link is customizable from the dealer console. The application behind the link is the same five step form every time: personal, residence, employment, income, review, with co-applicant support, ITIN as well as SSN, income, down payment and a trade-in section. What changes per link is what you add on top of that standard form. If you are comparing the category, the online credit application software page explains what a dealer should expect from any vendor. This page is the product side: what the link does, where it lives, and how a store actually uses it between opening and close. #### How a dealership uses apply links on a normal day Picture a Tuesday. A lead comes in from your website at 9:40 on a used crossover. The salesperson replies by text inside the CRM, answers two questions about mileage, and the customer says they would like to know what payment looks like before driving forty minutes. The salesperson drops the store's apply link into the same thread. The customer opens it on the phone they are already holding, works through the five screens at their own pace, signs, and submits. By the time the customer arrives at 4:30, the finance office has been holding a complete application for hours and the deal starts at the desk instead of at the clipboard. Same day, different desk. A special finance manager takes a call from a buyer who was turned down somewhere else last week. Rather than asking the buyer to come in and fill out paper, the manager texts the special finance apply link, the one customized with a document upload for proof of income. The application arrives with the pay stub attached. The manager works it that afternoon. Late in the day a walk-in wants to think about it overnight. They leave with the apply link printed on a card. Some of those customers apply from the couch that evening. The link made the decision easy to act on, which is the only thing a link can do; the customer still decides. #### Where apply links live: the console, the CRM dock and the customer's phone Apply links are managed in the SecureWebX dealer console, which opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login. Inside the console, Apply links lists every link your store has, each with its public application URL, a Copy link action and an option to open the apply page in a new tab so you can see exactly what the customer sees. Customize application is where a link gets its extra sections, custom fields, document uploads and disclosures. The customer never sees the console. They see a branded application page on their own phone or laptop, opened from the link you sent. The application is savable step by step, so a customer who is interrupted picks up where they left off rather than starting over. On the CRM side, the link is sent from the conversation the customer is already in: the two way texting inbox, an email from the composer, or a landing page built in the CRM. When a completed application arrives, it appears in the SecureWebX credit application inbox with a status, an assignee and notes, ready for the finance office. #### Can I customize each apply link? Yes, and this is the part most stores underuse at first. Each link can carry extra sections, custom fields, document uploads and its own disclosures. A section is a group of fields you add to a chosen step of the application, with a title such as trade-in details and a note under each field to guide the applicant. A custom field can be a text field, a dropdown with options you type in, or a document upload for the file you need on that path. Disclosures added to a link appear on that link's application, and you can require acknowledgment before the applicant continues. The practical result is one application system that behaves like several. A store might run one link on the website that keeps the standard form clean, one link for the special finance desk that asks for proof of income and residence up front, and one link for a weekend sales event that adds a field for the event code. All three feed the same inbox, and each application shows which apply link it came from. Customization is done in the console by the store itself, without a support ticket. If your store needs something the customizer does not already cover, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What does an apply link replace? It replaces the paper application, and everything that happens to a paper application after it is signed: the photo of it taken on a personal phone, the text of that photo to the finance office, the fax to a lender, the folder it lives in for years. It replaces the PDF application on the website that a customer prints, fills in by hand and brings in, which almost nobody does. It replaces the generic web form that captures a name and phone number and calls that a credit application. It also replaces a line item. Stores that want a professional online application typically buy one from a separate vendor, with its own login, its own contract and its own invoice. Apply links are part of SecureWebX, and SecureWebX is part of every LeadLocate plan, so the store is not paying a second vendor to do what its platform already does. The plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The dealership CRM with credit application page covers why keeping the application system and the CRM under one login matters for the people who work leads all day. The short version is that a salesperson should never leave the conversation to find the application. #### What happens when a customer starts an application and stops? Plenty of customers open an apply link, get through two screens and put the phone down. That is normal shopping behaviour, not a lost deal, and the system treats it that way. Abandoned applications feed back to the LeadLocate CRM for follow up, so a started application turns into a task for a salesperson rather than a mystery. The rep sees that this customer started applying, which is a strong signal of intent, and follows up with a person to person message rather than a blind check-in. Because the application is savable step by step, the follow up is easy on the customer too: the link reopens where they stopped. The abandoned credit application follow up page walks through a follow up process that gets these applications completed without nagging. The apply link is what makes that process possible, because there is a record of the start, not only of the finish. #### Is an apply link secure and compliant? A link that opens a credit application is a public door, and SecureWebX treats it as one. Bot protection sits on the public form so the inbox holds applications from people, not scripts. Application data is encrypted at rest once submitted. The application ends with an e-signature and consent capture against versioned terms, so the exact version of the disclosures each customer agreed to is kept with the record, along with when they agreed. Disclosures you add to a link, including state specific disclosures, appear on that link's application. On the console side, two factor authentication runs on every sign in, every upload is virus scanned, PDFs open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated, and a full audit log records who viewed, edited, shared and exported each application. Records are archived, never deleted. None of this is a setting a store has to remember to turn on; it is how the system works. One line of honesty that belongs on every page about credit: software supports a compliance program, it is not one. The disclosures on your apply links are yours to keep current, and the console gives you the editor to do it. #### How do I turn apply links on? There is nothing to install. When a LeadLocate account is created, the SecureWebX company and its users are created with it, the SecureWebX button appears in the CRM dock, and the store's first apply link is ready to customize the same day. Open the console, open Apply links, copy the public URL, and send it to a customer. Customize it when you want to; the standard five step application is complete without any changes. Users are invited into the console with roles, so salespeople can send links and finance managers can work the applications. Each product is its own application under one login, so an apply link you have already sent keeps taking applications, the console keeps working them, and an application a customer starts and finishes later lands on that customer's lead in the CRM with everything they entered. If you would rather see it before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows an apply link going out by text and coming back as a worked application. #### What to pair apply links with Pair apply links with the CRM's texting so the link goes out in the conversation where the buying decision is being made. Pair them with a landing page so a paid or organic visitor can apply without calling first. Pair them with the online credit application form page if you want to see exactly what the customer walks through, step by step. Inside SecureWebX, an application that arrived by apply link picks up everything the console offers: Send to Lender, stipulations with upload to fulfill, adverse action notices, worksheets with a deal recap PDF, and export to your lender or DMS in the format it expects. The link is the front door. The rest of the house is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: What is an apply link in SecureWebX? A: A branded URL that opens your dealership's five step online credit application. Every store gets its own apply links, each customizable with extra sections, custom fields, document uploads and disclosures, and each one feeds the same application inbox. Q: Can I send an apply link by text? A: Yes. Copy the link from the SecureWebX console and send it in the CRM text conversation, an email or a landing page. The customer opens it on their phone, completes the application at their own pace and signs. Q: Can I have more than one apply link? A: Yes. Stores commonly run one link for the website, one for special finance with a document upload, and one for an event. Each link is customized separately, and each application shows which link it came from. Q: What if the customer does not finish the application? A: Abandoned applications feed back to the LeadLocate CRM for follow up. The salesperson sees that the customer started applying and follows up, and the link reopens where the customer stopped because the application saves step by step. Q: Is the apply link secure? A: Bot protection sits on the public form, application data is encrypted at rest, consent is captured against versioned terms, uploads are virus scanned and a full audit log records who touched each application. Records are archived, never deleted. Q: Is there an extra charge for apply links? A: No. Apply links are part of SecureWebX, and SecureWebX is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Appointment Booking Links and Booking Hours URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/appointment-booking-links Appointment booking links are the public scheduling pages inside LeadLocate CRM. Each salesperson has a personal link with their name and photo, and each store has a team link with company branding. The Settings popup on the Calendar holds each link, its embed code and its booking hours, so the link people book through and the hours it offers are set in one place. #### What an appointment booking link does An appointment booking link is a page a customer opens, picks a day and a time from the hours you set, and books; the appointment lands on your LeadLocate CRM calendar with the customer attached. That is the one sentence version. There are two kinds. The personal link belongs to one salesperson and shows their name and photo, so a customer who has been texting with Maria books with Maria. The team link belongs to the store, shows only the company, and is the link a store puts on its website, its ads and its brand pages. The other half of the feature is the booking hours. A link is only as useful as the times it offers, and the hours a salesperson can take a visit are not the hours the store is open. Each link has its own weekly hours grid, and the personal grid and the team grid are edited in the same popup as the links themselves, which is why the CRM treats them as one feature rather than two. This is the product view. The buying question, what an appointment setting workflow should look like for a BDC, is on the BDC appointment setting software page. Here the subject is the link. #### A normal evening: the customer who books at 9:40 PM A salesperson has been texting with a customer about a used crossover since Tuesday. On Thursday evening the customer writes "can I come see it this weekend?" The salesperson is at dinner. Rather than negotiate times by text for the next twenty minutes, she sends her booking link from the phone app with one tap from Quick Schedule, which mirrors her public booking link, and goes back to dinner. The customer opens the link on their phone at 9:40 PM, sees the salesperson's name and photo, sees Saturday from 10 to 4 because that is what her personal hours grid offers, and picks 11:30. The appointment appears on her calendar in the CRM, the customer's lead record shows it, and the appointment confirmation text and email go out through Automated Templates. On Saturday morning the Workspace shows the 11:30 under Today's Appointments, and the reminder step of the store's Follow Up Process fires the hours before appointment text. Nobody at the store touched a calendar. The customer picked the time, the link offered only the hours the salesperson actually works, and the CRM did the writing. #### Where the links live: the Settings popup on the Calendar Open Calendar in the main menu and the page header carries two buttons: Add New for an appointment you set by hand, and Settings. Settings opens one popup with one tab per calendar. The My Calendar tab holds your personal booking link, its embed code and your booking hours. The Team Calendar tab holds the shared link, its embed code and the team hours. The links are copy only, with a Copy URL and Copy Embed Code button next to each, and the single save button says Save Hours because the hours are the part you edit. The hours grid is a week. Each day has an on or off switch and a start and end time, so a salesperson who is off Mondays and leaves early on Wednesdays sets exactly that. The team grid is independent of any one person's hours, and it is independent of the receptionist business hours the phone stack uses, so a store can take bookings on the team link for hours that differ from when the phone is answered. Opening Settings provisions both calendars, so there is nothing to request before the links exist. In the LeadLocate mobile app the personal link is one tap away under Quick Schedule, and the calendar view carries the Team Link. The mobile app page covers the rest of the phone side. #### Putting the link where customers are A booking link earns its keep by being everywhere a customer might want to book. The obvious place is the text conversation: the link goes into a message the same way a vehicle or a credit application link does, and the trackable short links in the composer show when it was clicked. The second place is email, where the personal link belongs in every salesperson's signature and the team link belongs in every automated email the store sends. The third place is the web. The embed code under Add this calendar to your website pastes into any page you control, so the booking calendar appears on the page rather than sending the customer away. A salesperson's personal website carries the personal link in its Menu Links tab; the store's brand pages and Lead Pages carry the team link. A printed business card or referral card from Design Studio carries it as a QR code. The fourth place is the phone. When a BDC agent is on a call and the customer says "let me check with my wife", the agent texts the link during the call and the appointment gets booked that night instead of never. #### Personal link or team link: which one to send The personal link is for a customer who already has a relationship with a salesperson. It shows the salesperson's name and photo, offers the salesperson's own hours, and books the appointment to that salesperson. Sending a customer who has been texting with Maria to a generic company page is a small betrayal, and the personal link avoids it. The team link is for everyone else: the website visitor, the ad click, the brand page, the customer who called the main line and hung up before booking. It shows only the store, offers the team hours, and does not block a time slot when one customer books it, so several customers can pick the same Saturday morning and the store staffs it. Bookings through the team link land on the shared calendar unassigned, ready for a BDC agent to hand to whoever is free. The shared team calendar page covers how that hand off runs and where round robin fits. Most stores use both: the team link on everything public, the personal link in every conversation a salesperson is already having. #### What it replaces, and what it costs elsewhere Most stores that book appointments by link are paying a separate scheduling service per user, with a calendar that knows nothing about the lead, the vehicle or the CRM. The appointment lands in the scheduling tool, someone copies it into the CRM by hand, and the confirmation comes from a vendor's domain rather than the store's. The alternative is worse: back and forth texts about times, appointments written on a desk pad, and a customer who shows up when nobody expected them. Booking links in LeadLocate CRM replace the scheduling subscription and the copying. The booking is a CRM appointment from the moment it is made, attached to the lead, visible on the Workspace and the calendar, and confirmed by the store's own templates. There is no per user scheduling fee. Every lead plan on the pricing page carries it, and so does CRM Only, picked at sign up by a store that wants the software without lead delivery. What the store keeps is what it should keep: the customer's appointment in the customer's record, and a link that is the store's, not a vendor's. #### The compliance angle: a customer who chose the time An appointment a customer booked themselves is the cleanest kind of contact a store can have. The customer chose to open the link, chose the day and the time, and entered their own details; the appointment record shows all of that with a timestamp. When the confirmation text and the reminder go out, they go to a person who asked for the visit, which is exactly the situation the rules for commercial messaging are written to protect. The hours grid is a compliance tool of a quieter kind. A booking link that offers only the hours a person actually works means nobody is booked for a slot the store then has to cancel, and a team grid set separately from the phone hours means the store is not promising visits when the showroom is dark. Every confirmation and reminder lands in the customer's communications log next to the calls and texts, so a question about what the customer was told about their visit has a written answer. None of this replaces the store's own consent practice; it gives the appointment a record that practice can point to. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Booking links are part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription. Open Calendar, click Settings, set your hours on the My Calendar tab and press Save Hours, then copy your link. A manager does the same on the Team Calendar tab for the store. Put the personal link in your text signature and your email signature today; put the team link on the website this week. Anything a store needs beyond the popup is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair the links with Google Calendar sync so a booking shows on the calendar you already carry, with the appointment confirmation templates in Automated Templates, and with In-Store Now so the floor knows when the 11:30 has arrived. The all features list shows the rest. If we are ever unavailable, the appointments already booked are on your calendar and in your customers' confirmations, and the customer who has your direct number reaches you regardless; what you would wait on is the booking page itself. The pre-recorded live demo shows a link going out by text and coming back as a booked appointment. #### Questions and answers Q: Does every salesperson get their own booking link? A: Yes. Each user has a personal link with their name and photo and their own booking hours, set on the My Calendar tab of the Settings popup on the Calendar page. Q: What is the difference between the personal link and the team link? A: The personal link books one salesperson and shows their name and photo. The team link shows only the store, uses the team hours, does not block slots, and lands bookings on the shared calendar unassigned for a BDC agent to route. Q: Where do I set the hours the link offers? A: In the same popup as the link. Calendar, Settings, then the hours grid on the My Calendar or Team Calendar tab, one on or off switch and a start and end time per day, saved with Save Hours. Q: Can I put the booking calendar on my website? A: Yes. Each tab has an embed code under Add this calendar to your website. Paste it into any page you control and the booking calendar appears on the page. Q: Can I send the link from my phone? A: Yes. Quick Schedule in the LeadLocate mobile app mirrors your public booking link with one tap, and the calendar view carries the Team Link. Q: Is the customer confirmed automatically? A: When the appointment confirmation templates are switched on in Automated Templates, the confirmation text and email go out on booking, and a Follow Up Process can send the reminder hours before the visit. ### Auto Broker Inventory Mode: Sell Without a Lot URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/auto-broker-inventory-mode Auto broker inventory mode is an Inventory Link setting for brokers who sell without a lot. Switch it on and the broker gets brand offer pages for the makes they sell, connected instantly, carrying the OEM incentives engine's programs for more than twenty makes, with lead forms and Schedule a Visit on each. Every request lands in the LeadLocate CRM. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. #### What auto broker inventory mode does Auto broker inventory mode gives a broker with no lot, no feed and no DMS a set of brand offer pages connected instantly, so the broker advertises what they can get rather than what they are holding. That is the feature. Every other inventory product treats an empty lot as a reason to say no, because everything they do starts with a feed. Inventory Link starts with the makes you sell, and for a broker that is the only inventory that matters. Switch the mode on and the platform builds a brand page and a brand hero page for each make, carrying the manufacturer's current programs from the OEM incentives engine, which covers more than twenty makes, with a lead form beside each offer in one of six card formats and a Schedule a Visit sheet on the page. A dealer page pulls it together under the broker's name. A shopper who wants that make sees a real offer and a real way to raise their hand, and the request lands in the CRM with the offer and the vehicle attached. It is part of the platform subscription rather than a broker package with its own price. The plans a broker starts on are the same month to month plans a franchise store uses, because the software is the same software. #### How a broker uses it on a normal day A broker works out of a home office, sells four makes, and has a phone full of clients who call when they are ready for the next car. She has no lot and never will. Her brand pages carry this month's lease and finance programs on all four makes, and her advertising points at the hero page for the make with the best program. She did not build the pages and does not update them; the mode built them when she switched it on and the engine carries the offers. Tuesday night a shopper lands on one of them from an ad, reads the lease card, and submits the form. Wednesday morning the lead is in her CRM with the offer and the vehicle attached. She texts back with the vehicle card, the program as the manufacturer wrote it, and a question about color and timing. He wants a specific configuration. She sources it the way brokers do, and when she has a unit, she adds it under Add a vehicle in the dealer portal, the VIN decode fills in the trim and specifications, stock imagery covers it until she has photos, and she sends it to him as a card from the composer. He wants to apply. She texts a SecureWebX apply link from the same conversation, he completes the credit application on his phone, and she works it from the console. When the unit needs to move from where it is to where he is, the directory of transport carriers and service providers in Inventory Link gives her a list to call. She sold a car she never parked. That is the day, and the only part of it that is different from a dealership is the lot. #### Where broker mode lives: the portal, the CRM and the phone Auto broker inventory mode is a setting in the Inventory Link dealer portal, and the pages it connects are the public brand pages, brand hero pages and dealer page the platform publishes for the account. The broker's identity, phone number and hours on those pages come from Profile in the portal. Units the broker sources are added under Add a vehicle and managed under Edit vehicle and photos, and the inventory list holds whatever is in hand at the moment. The portal opens from the My Inventory button in the dock at the bottom of the LeadLocate CRM, with single sign on, and the Inventory item in the CRM main menu shows the same units. Every lead from a brand page lands in the CRM lead inbox with the offer and vehicle attached, and the vehicle insert button in every text and email composer drops a sourced unit into a message as a card. The brand offer pages page describes the pages themselves in detail. On the phone, which is where most brokers actually work, the LeadLocate app carries the lead inbox, the SMS inbox and composer, the inventory list with a detail sheet, the VIN lookup, the driver license scanner, Quick Schedule and the deal tracker desking view. A broker can run the whole day from the app. The dealer portal is in the app stores under the listing name MyInventory.Link. #### What broker mode replaces, and what a broker pays elsewhere A broker looking for software usually finds two kinds. Dealer inventory tools that will not start without a feed, and generic CRMs that know nothing about vehicles, offers or credit applications. Most brokers end up with a website builder for a page with a contact form, a spreadsheet for clients, a marketplace link for anything they want to show a customer, and a fax number for the credit application. Each piece is a separate bill and none of them know about each other. Broker mode replaces the website page with brand offer pages that carry the manufacturer's programs, the spreadsheet with a CRM built for automotive, the marketplace link with a vehicle card that shows only the broker's unit, and the fax number with a SecureWebX apply link. How a broker finds clients in the first place, with exclusive local buyer inquiries, is on our auto broker lead generation page; this page is the product side of running the book once the clients are there. The cost is a plan. Broker mode is part of the platform subscription, month to month; a broker with their own client flow picks CRM Only at sign up, and the pricing page lists the plans that add exclusive local leads. #### The compliance angle: advertise the program, describe the car, log the contact A broker advertising a manufacturer's program has the same obligation a dealership has: quote it as written, with its terms, and do not let it go stale. Brand offer pages carry the programs from the incentives engine and present each in a card built for its type, so a lease special is never dressed up as a purchase price and last month's offer is not sitting on a page nobody maintains. When a unit is in hand, it is described from the VIN decode and the vehicle database, so the trim and equipment a client is told about are the ones the VIN encodes. Every lead is inbound and opt-in, a shopper who chose an offer and asked to be contacted, and the CRM keeps every call, text and email on that client in one communications log. The credit application runs through SecureWebX with e-signature and consent capture against versioned terms, and the broker's lender relationships and bureau account stay the broker's. What the broker is licensed to do, and how they source the unit, is the broker's business; the platform is the office it runs from. #### How to turn auto broker inventory mode on Sign up on a plan, tell us you are a broker, and switch on auto broker inventory mode in the Inventory Link dealer portal. The brand offer pages for the makes you sell are connected instantly. Fill in Profile so the pages carry your name, number and hours, and point your advertising at the hero page for the make you want to push. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required at any step; the mode exists precisely because a broker has neither. When you source a unit, add it under Add a vehicle and it is decoded, pictured and ready to send. If you sell a make outside the twenty plus the engine covers, or want a page built for a specific kind of client, that is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. To see it before you decide, the pre-recorded live demo shows a brand page, an offer lead landing in the CRM and an apply link going out by text, and the contact page reaches a person who will switch it on for your makes. #### What to pair broker mode with Broker mode gives you the pages; the rest of the platform gives you the office. Pair it with the OEM Incentives Showroom in the deal view, so the program on the page is the program in the pencil, and with the desking tool and the pencil recap sheets for the number you send the client. Pair it with SecureWebX apply links for the credit application, which runs without a DMS or a feed and comes back to a console you work from anywhere. Pair it with the vehicle insert button and stock photos for listings, so a sourced unit goes out as a proper card the same hour it is added, and with the shared team calendar and Schedule a Visit for the delivery appointment. Brokers who work a personal brand pair it with a salesperson website from the builder's template, under their own name. And when a unit has to move, the directory of transport carriers and service providers is in the portal. The all features page lists everything else. #### Built so your store keeps selling A broker's business is the phone and the relationships, and both stay the broker's. Auto broker inventory mode is built so you keep selling: every client you have added, every vehicle card you have sent, every apply link a client finished and every deal you have penciled is safe on its own record, exactly where you left it, and the archive behind it is permanent. Your tracking number is yours and keeps ringing the phones on your ring list, your own website and your own books stay yours, and each product you use, the CRM, the SecureWebX console and the brand pages, is its own application under one login. Nothing about how a broker sells a car depends on a lot, a feed or a DMS, which is the whole point of running in inventory mode, and it is why a one person brokerage can open on a Monday and take an order that afternoon. #### Questions and answers Q: I have no inventory feed and no lot. Can I really use inventory software? A: Yes. That is what auto broker inventory mode is for. Switch it on and you get brand offer pages for the makes you sell, connected instantly, with the manufacturer's programs and a lead form on each. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Q: What do my brand pages show if I hold no vehicles? A: The manufacturer's current programs for each make, from the OEM incentives engine that covers more than twenty makes, in six offer card formats with a lead form beside each and a Schedule a Visit sheet. You advertise what you can get, and a shopper raises their hand on the offer. Q: What happens when I source a specific unit for a client? A: Add it under Add a vehicle in the dealer portal. The VIN decode fills in the trim and specifications, stock imagery covers it until you have photos, and the vehicle insert button in the CRM composer sends it to the client as a card with the photo and price. Q: How does a broker take a credit application? A: Text a SecureWebX apply link from the CRM conversation. The client completes the five step application on their phone, and you work it from the SecureWebX console. Your lender relationships and bureau account stay yours. Q: Does the platform find me clients too? A: That is a separate part of the platform. The lead plans deliver exclusive local buyer inquiries in your zone; the auto broker lead generation page explains how that works. Broker mode is the software you run the book with, on any plan. Q: Is broker mode a separate price? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page lists the plans that add exclusive local leads, and CRM Only, for a broker with their own client flow, is selected at sign up. ### Automated Templates, Tasks and Reminders URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/automated-templates Automated Templates are the per feed first touch inside LeadLocate CRM: the automated text, email and first voicemail that go out on lead receipt, the appointment confirmation text and email, and the BDC Follow-Up Call task, each set per lead feed from a Company Default master set, with an account wide Automation switch and a separate template set for unassigned leads. #### What Automated Templates do the moment a lead arrives Automated Templates are the messages and tasks LeadLocate CRM fires on its own the moment a lead is received or an appointment is confirmed, set once per lead feed so every source gets the right first touch without a person typing it. That is the one sentence version. The page in the CRM is called Automated Templates, it sits in the Billing and Admin menu, and it is the first thing a new store should open after User Management. The template set covers the whole first contact. On lead receipt: Automated TEXT Messages (on Lead Receipt), Automated Email Messages (on Lead Receipt) and a First Automated Voicemail (on Lead Receipt) recorded in your own voice. On appointment: Automated TEXT (on Appointment Confirmation) and Automated Email (on Appointment Confirmation). And a task: the BDC Follow-Up Call, which puts a call on a person's list rather than hoping they notice the new lead. Each has its own on and off switch, so a store that wants a text and a call but no email simply leaves the email off. This page is the product view. The buying question, what a follow up cadence should say and when, is covered on car sales follow up templates; here the subject is the tool that sends it. #### A normal day: the lead that came in during the sales meeting It is 9:05 on a Saturday and the whole floor is in the sales meeting. A lead arrives from the store's website form for a used SUV. Nobody is at a desk. On a store without automation that lead waits until 9:40, and by then the customer has submitted the same form to two other dealers. On a store with Automated Templates set up, the lead is received, the feed it came through is matched, and the feed's templates run. The customer gets a text within the minute that names the salesperson, the store and the SUV, because the template uses merge fields for the vehicle of interest and the dealership name. An email follows with the salesperson's business card attached, since the store turned on Attach Business Card for that feed. A voicemail in the salesperson's own recorded voice lands on the customer's phone. And a BDC Follow-Up Call task appears on the salesperson's Workspace with the lead attached. When the meeting ends at 9:30, the salesperson opens the Workspace, sees the task at the top of Tasks & To-Dos, and calls a customer who has already heard from the store three times in twenty five minutes. The reply rate on that call is nothing like the reply rate on a cold call at 9:40. #### Per feed templates and the Company Default master set The design decision that makes Automated Templates work is that they are set per lead feed. A lead from a third party listing, a lead from the store's own website, a lead from an acquisitions campaign for a seller and a lead from a walk in typed by hand should not get the same first text, and in the CRM they do not have to. The page is split into Inbound Lead Automated Templates and Acquisitions Lead Automated Templates, and within each the store sees a row per feed. Above the feeds sits the Company Default (used to set up new feeds) row, the master set. When a new feed is created in the Lead Feeds Manager, it inherits the Company Default, so a store never has a feed with nothing behind it. A feed that needs its own wording overrides only what it needs; the rest keeps inheriting. That is why a store with fifteen feeds maintains one set of templates and a handful of exceptions rather than fifteen copies. Unassigned leads get their own treatment. A feed set to Unassigned (Up for Grabs) in the Lead Feeds Manager has no salesperson yet, so the unassigned lead templates speak for the store rather than for a person until someone claims the lead. The round robin lead assignment page covers the alternative, where every lead gets an owner on arrival. #### Merge fields, the first voicemail and the business card A template that reads like a template gets ignored. The merge fields are what keep the automated first text from sounding automated: the customer's name, the vehicle of interest, the original lead inquiry, the dealership name, the store's street address, the salesperson's name and phone. A store can add its own with Save Custom Merge Fields, and the AI merge fields described on the AI writing assistant page can write the variable sentence for each lead so no two customers get an identical message. The first voicemail is recorded in the browser under My Recording. It goes out as a voicemail, not a call, so the customer hears a real voice from the store without a phone ringing during dinner. The voicemail drop page covers the library and the drops to lists; the first automated voicemail is the same tool pointed at the moment of lead receipt. Attach Business Card puts the salesperson's card, designed in Design Studio, on the automated email. It is a small thing, and it is the difference between an email from a store and an email from a person. #### Tasks, reminders and to dos on the Workspace The templates handle the messages; the tasks handle the human. The BDC Follow-Up Call creates a task for the assigned user the moment the lead lands, and that task shows up on the Workspace, the first screen a rep sees on the desktop and in the LeadLocate mobile app. The Workspace shows Today's Appointments, Tasks Open and Tasks Overdue, plus the rep's own To-Dos, which are quick items added with Add To-Do. Reminders behave the way a rep needs them to. A task can be marked complete, snoozed with Snooze 1 Hour, or moved to tomorrow. A list that piles up can be cleared in bulk with Clear All rather than one row at a time. Overdue is a count, not a color someone might miss, so a manager glancing at a rep's Workspace knows in a second whether the follow up calls are being made. None of this needs a separate task app. The task is attached to the lead, the lead is attached to the customer, and the call the rep makes from the task is logged in the same communications log as the automated text that went out before it. #### What it replaces, and the account wide Automation switch The thing Automated Templates replace is not a piece of software; it is a person remembering. Most stores have a rule that new leads get a text within five minutes, and most stores miss it on Saturdays, at lunch, during the sales meeting, and whenever the one person who does it well is off. A template that fires on receipt makes the rule true every time, including at 11 PM when the form is submitted from a couch. What it also replaces is a stack of per store automations built in third party automation tools, each one a monthly bill and a point of failure. The Intake Process Automation page covers that side of the story; the templates on this page are what those automations used to try to trigger. Sometimes a store wants everything off. A dealer who decides to contact every lead by hand for a month should not have to flip forty switches. The Automation switch in the Automated Templates header turns the whole set off for the account in one move and greys the page so nobody re enables a template by accident; turning it back on restores the standard set. Every send path honors it, including the manual automate buttons and the appointment confirmations. #### The compliance angle: consistent wording, honored opt outs, one log Automation is where a store's messaging is either consistent or careless, and consistency is a compliance property. A text template written once, reviewed by a manager, and sent by the system carries the store's identification in every message, which is what the rules for commercial texting expect. A text typed at speed by a salesperson in a parking lot may or may not. The automated first touch respects the same opt out and blacklist handling as every other message in the CRM. A number on the DNC blacklist is not texted by a template any more than by a person, and the delivery status on every text bubble shows whether the automated message was sent, delivered or failed. Every automated text, email and voicemail lands in the customer's communications log next to the calls, so a manager or an auditor sees the whole sequence in order. None of this replaces the store's consent practice at capture; it makes sure the messages sent after capture follow it. #### How to set it up, and what to pair it with Automated Templates are part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription, and a new account starts with a standard set already on, so the first lead gets a first text before anyone has edited anything. The work is in making the words yours. Open Automated Templates under Billing and Admin, edit the Company Default row first, record the first voicemail under My Recording, then walk the feeds that deserve their own wording. Turn on Attach Business Card once your card is designed. Anything a store wants that is not on the page is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. Pair the templates with Follow Up Processes, which take over after the first touch with a multi step drip per lead type. Pair them with appointment booking links so the confirmation templates fire when a customer books themselves. Pair them with lead notifications and alerts so the rep hears about the lead at the same moment the customer hears from the store. The all features list shows the rest. If we are ever unavailable, the messages that already went out are in your customers' phones and inboxes, the tasks already on a rep's Workspace were already read, and the templates you wrote are kept for when the screen returns. The pre-recorded live demo shows a lead arriving and the first touch going out. #### Questions and answers Q: What goes out automatically when a lead arrives? A: Whatever the feed's templates have switched on: an automated text, an automated email with the business card attached if you choose, a first voicemail in your own recorded voice, and a BDC Follow-Up Call task for the assigned user. Each is its own switch. Q: Can different lead sources get different first messages? A: Yes. Templates are set per lead feed, split into Inbound and Acquisitions. New feeds inherit the Company Default master set, and any feed can override only the parts it needs. Q: What about leads that have no salesperson yet? A: A feed set to Unassigned (Up for Grabs) uses the unassigned lead templates, which speak for the store rather than a person until someone claims the lead. Q: Can I turn all automation off at once? A: Yes. The Automation switch in the Automated Templates header turns the whole set off for the account and greys the page. Turning it back on restores the standard set. Every send path honors the switch. Q: Where do the tasks and reminders show up? A: On the Workspace, on the desktop and in the LeadLocate mobile app: Today's Appointments, Tasks Open, Tasks Overdue and your own To-Dos, with Snooze 1 Hour, move to tomorrow, mark complete and Clear All. Q: Do automated messages respect opt outs? A: Yes. A number on the DNC blacklist is not texted by a template, and every automated text shows its delivery status and lands in the customer's communications log with the calls and emails. ### BDC Phone Service: Inbound Calls Answered and Logged URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/bdc-phone-service BDC Phone Service is the inbound call desk inside LeadLocate CRM. Every call to one of your store's tracking numbers is answered, logged with an unread badge until someone reviews it, kept in call history, and forwarded to the people who should pick up. It is part of the platform subscription, not a separate answering service contract. #### What BDC Phone Service does for a dealership BDC Phone Service answers, logs and routes every inbound call that reaches one of your store's tracking numbers, and it does that inside the same LeadLocate CRM that already holds the lead. That is the whole capability in one sentence. The rest of this page is what it looks like on a Tuesday morning, where you find it, what it replaces, and what to turn on next to it. The pieces are simple and they add up. Inbound calls are answered. Each call is logged with an unread badge, so a call that nobody has reviewed looks different from one that has been handled. Call history and call logs keep the record. Call forwarding sends the ring to the phones your team actually carries. An IVR with number and media management sits in front when you want a greeting and a menu before a person picks up. None of it depends on a salesperson remembering to write a name on a sticky note. This is the product side of the story. The buying side, what a service or sales BDC should expect from its phone software in general, lives on the service BDC software page and on what is a BDC. Here the subject is the tool itself. #### A normal morning: the 9:40 call nobody would have caught Picture a mid size store on a Tuesday. The BDC has two agents on the floor, one is on an outbound call and the other stepped away. A customer who saw the store's number on a used truck listing calls at 9:40. On most phone setups that call rings out, goes to a generic voicemail box, and the customer calls the next dealer on the list. On a store running BDC Phone Service the call is answered, the ring is forwarded to the phones on the store's ring list, and the moment it ends there is a new call log entry with an unread badge on it. The agent who stepped away comes back, sees the badge, opens the call log, and knows exactly who called, which number they dialed and when. Because the tracking number is tied to a source, the store also knows the call came from the truck listing rather than the website or a mailer. She returns the call within minutes, sets the appointment, and the record of the whole exchange sits in the customer's history in the CRM. The manager who checks the log at lunch sees zero unread calls, which is the number a BDC manager wants to see. Nothing about that scene needed a new habit. The badge did the reminding, the log did the writing, and the forwarding did the running. #### Where it lives in LeadLocate CRM On the desktop CRM the phone side of the platform sits under the Calls entry of the main menu, with the store level controls under Account Settings in the Billing and Admin group, where the BDC Service and IVR Settings entries live next to your notification preferences. The call history and the unread badge are what an agent works from; the forwarding and IVR settings are what a manager sets once and leaves alone. On the phone app the same calls show up under Call Logs, and the app carries an inbound call alert screen so a rep on the lot sees who is calling before answering. The LeadLocate mobile app page walks through the whole phone side of the app, including the VoIP dialer and the voicemail greeting recorder, so a salesperson never needs to hand out a personal cell number to be reachable. Because the tracking numbers are provisioned inside the platform and synced to the other products, the number a customer sees on a SecureWebX apply link is the same number your BDC answers. One set of numbers, one log. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere Most stores that come to us are paying for the phone in three places at once. There is an outside answering service billed by the minute or by the call, with a script that knows nothing about the store's inventory. There is a phone system with a call log that lives in a separate portal nobody opens. And there is the invisible cost: the personal cell phones salespeople use because the desk phone is too slow, which means the call history walks out the door when the salesperson does. BDC Phone Service folds the first two into the CRM subscription and removes the reason for the third. The log is in the CRM because the call was answered by the CRM's phone stack. The forwarding uses the store's own users, so a change on the ring list is a change in User Management, not a support ticket to a phone vendor. There is no per seat phone license and no separate contract to cancel. The pricing page lists the plans, and every one of them carries the phone features. What you keep is what you should keep: your tracking numbers, your call history, and the customer's record with every call attached to it. #### Call history, unread badges and what a BDC manager sees An unread badge is a small thing with a large effect. It turns "did anyone call that guy back" from a question into a number. Each inbound call lands in the log unread; when an agent opens it, the badge clears. At any moment the count of unread calls is the count of customers waiting on the store. A BDC manager who runs the floor by that number has a management tool that costs nothing to maintain. Call history keeps the longer record: which tracking number was dialed, when, and the caller. Because tracking numbers are assigned per source through the tracking phone numbers feature, the log doubles as source reporting. A store that runs one number on its website, one on a mailer and one on a third party listing learns which one rings without asking a single customer where they heard about the store. Pair the log with call recording and transcription and the manager can read the call instead of asking the agent how it went. Pair it with the caller ID name lookup on inbound calls and the log shows a name before the agent says hello. #### Forwarding, ring lists and the IVR in front of the desk Answering is only half the job; the other half is getting the call to a person who can help. Call forwarding sends an inbound call to a Forward Calls To ring list built from the dealership's own users, so the store decides who rings, in what order, and what happens when nobody picks up. The call forwarding and ring lists page covers the details, including the business hours routing that keeps a rep from being rung at home on a Sunday. In front of the forwarding sits the IVR. The IVR call flow builder manages the numbers, the uploaded greeting audio and the menu options, and it carries a hook so a menu choice can trigger something in the CRM rather than just ringing a phone. A caller who presses the option for a specific department reaches that department. A store that wants a live person on every call sets the flow to ring straight through. A store that wants call screening turns on the virtual receptionist, described on the virtual receptionist and call screening page, which also handles after hours coverage when the showroom is dark. All of it is set by the store, in the CRM, without a phone vendor on the line. #### The compliance angle: a written record of every call A phone log is a compliance document whether or not a store treats it like one. When a customer says they asked not to be called, the store needs to show what it knew and when. When a manager reviews a complaint about an agent, the store needs the call, not a memory of the call. BDC Phone Service writes the record automatically, every inbound call, with the number, the time and the person who handled it, in the same communications log that holds the store's texts, emails and voicemails. The do not call scrub and blacklist sits beside the phone stack, with a live do not call lookup on numbers and a two way inbound spam block, so a number that should never be dialed is flagged before anyone picks up the phone to return the call. Call recording, where the store turns it on, follows the store's own disclosure practice; the recording and its transcript then live with the customer record. None of this replaces the store's compliance program. It gives that program a record to stand on. #### How do I turn it on, and how does it keep my store selling? BDC Phone Service is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription, so there is nothing to buy separately. A new account gets a tracking number provisioned with it. From there the manager opens Account Settings, sets the ring list under call forwarding, decides whether the virtual receptionist is on or off, and optionally builds an IVR flow. Notification preferences, including the Notify me when I get a NEW CALL toggle, are set per user so the right people hear the ring. The lead notifications and alerts page covers those toggles. Anything a store needs that is not already in the flow is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. BDC Phone Service is built so your store keeps selling. Your tracking numbers belong to your store and stay yours. The people on your ring list carry real phones that ring on their own, and a customer who already has a salesperson's direct number reaches that salesperson directly. Every call is written to the customer's record the moment it ends, with the recording, the duration and the outcome on it, and that history is permanent, so the log your BDC builds this month is still there when a manager pulls it next year. Your main line, your DMS and your website stay the store's own, and each product you use is its own application under one login. If you ever want a person on the phone about any of it, the contact page reaches one. #### What to pair BDC Phone Service with The phone desk is strongest when it feeds the rest of the platform. Pair it with Automated Templates so a lead that comes in by form gets a BDC Follow-Up Call task and a first text without a manager assigning either. Pair it with the shared team calendar so the appointment the agent sets on the call lands where the whole floor can see it. Pair it with voicemail drop so the callback that reaches voicemail still leaves a recorded message in the agent's own voice. For a service department the same phone stack answers the service line; the AI voice agent for dealership service calls page describes the buying question there. And the all features list shows where the phone desk sits among everything else the platform does. If you want to hear it before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows an inbound call landing in the log and being returned. #### Questions and answers Q: Is BDC Phone Service a separate answering service I pay for? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription. Inbound calls to your tracking numbers are answered, logged and forwarded by the platform's own phone stack, and the plans on the pricing page all include it. Q: What does the unread badge do? A: Every inbound call lands in the call log marked unread. When an agent opens it, the badge clears. The count of unread calls is the count of customers still waiting on a callback, which is the number a BDC manager runs the floor by. Q: Who answers the call, a person or a recording? A: That is the store's choice. Forward straight to a ring list of your users for a live answer, put an IVR menu in front with your own recorded greeting, or turn on the virtual receptionist for call screening and after hours coverage. Q: Can I see which number the customer dialed? A: Yes. Tracking numbers are assigned per source, and the call log records which number was dialed. A store with one number on its website and another on a listing learns which one rings without asking the customer. Q: Does it work on the phone app? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app carries Call Logs, an inbound call alert screen and the VoIP dialer, so a salesperson on the lot sees who is calling and returns calls without a personal cell number. Q: How do I know every call is captured and kept? A: Your tracking numbers stay yours and the phones on your ring list are real phones that ring on their own. Every call is logged against the customer's record the moment it ends, with the recording on it, and that history is permanent, so nothing your BDC does in a shift has to be reconstructed later. ### Brand Offer Pages and Your Dealer Page URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/brand-offer-pages Brand offer pages are pages Inventory Link builds automatically for each make a dealership carries: a brand page and a brand hero page with the current manufacturer offers in six card formats, a lead form beside them, and a Schedule a Visit sheet. The dealer page gathers offers, inventory and forms under the store's name, and every submission lands in the LeadLocate CRM with the vehicle attached. #### What brand offer pages and the dealer page do Brand offer pages give every make you carry a page of its own, built automatically, with the manufacturer's current offers on it and a lead form beside each one, and the dealer page brings your offers, your inventory and your forms together under your store's name. That is the feature. It exists because the page a shopper wants when they are deciding on a make is not your home page and not a listing grid; it is a page about that brand at your store, with the offer they read about this morning and a way to raise their hand on it. There are two page types per make. The brand page carries the offers and the lead forms. The brand hero page is the version built to be the first thing a shopper sees, with the make front and center, for the traffic your advertising sends to it. Both are produced by Inventory Link from your store identity and the OEM incentives engine, which carries programs for more than twenty makes. The dealer page is the store level view. Offers across your makes, your inventory, your lead forms and the Schedule a Visit sheet on one page, so a shopper who is not sure which brand they want can still find the offer that gets them in the door. #### How a dealership uses brand offer pages on a normal day Your store sells two makes. On Monday the internet manager checks the brand page for each one and sees the current lease special, the finance offer and the customer cash for the month, each in its own card format so a lease reads as a lease and a rate reads as a rate. She did not build these pages and she did not update them; they were built when the account went live and they carry the offers the engine holds. She points this month's advertising at the brand hero page for the make with the stronger program and gets on with her day. Tuesday night a shopper arrives on that hero page from the ad. He reads the lease card, taps it, and the lead form is beside it. He fills it in, sees the shared confirmation screen, and is done in under a minute. His submission lands in the dealer portal and in the CRM with the offer and the vehicle attached. Wednesday morning a salesperson calls him about that lease, on that make, at the number he saw. Nobody asks what he was looking at. A different shopper, on the dealer page, is between the two makes. She browses the offers side by side, finds a unit in the inventory on the same page, and uses the Schedule a Visit sheet to pick a time. On her phone the sheet rises from the bottom of the screen, the way the apps she already uses behave, so it feels like something she has done before. That request lands under Requests in the portal and in the CRM, and the appointment is on the board before the store opens. #### Where the pages live, and where the leads arrive The brand pages, the brand hero pages and the dealer page are public pages Inventory Link publishes for your store; they are where your advertising and your inventory links point. They draw the store identity, the phone number and the hours from Profile in the dealer portal, so a change there flows to every page at once. The portal opens from the My Inventory button in the dock at the bottom of the LeadLocate CRM, with single sign on. Every submission from an offer form or the Schedule a Visit sheet arrives in the portal under Requests and in the inbox, and in the CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached. From there it is a normal lead: it can be assigned by round robin, it shows in the lead inbox, notifications fire, and the vehicle insert button in every composer drops the unit into the first text back. The Schedule a Visit requests page follows that path in detail. On the phone, the LeadLocate app carries the inventory list with a detail sheet, so a salesperson answering a brand page lead from the lot sees the unit the shopper chose. The website editor under Website in the CRM main menu, with its Business Info, Branding and Inventory tabs, holds the store details the platform's public pages draw on. #### What these pages replace, and what they cost elsewhere Most stores get brand pages from their website vendor as part of a package, and those pages are usually the manufacturer's template with the store's logo dropped in. Updating the offers means a ticket to the vendor or a login to a page editor nobody on the sales floor has. Event pages and per-make landing pages for advertising come from a landing page tool, at a monthly fee, and they go stale the week after the event because nobody goes back to take the offer down. Brand offer pages are built automatically, carry the offers the engine holds, and cost nothing beyond the plan. They are not a replacement for a search engine strategy on model research content, which is a different job; our vehicle model research page covers how to build pages that earn traffic before a shopper is in market. Brand offer pages are the product side: the page that turns a shopper who is already interested in a make into a lead with the offer and the vehicle attached. They are part of the platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page lists the plans and what each includes. #### The compliance angle: the offer as the manufacturer wrote it An offer page is an advertisement, and an advertisement of a manufacturer's program has to say what the program says. The most common failure is a page that was right on the first of the month and wrong on the tenth, because the offer changed and the page did not. Brand offer pages carry the offers from the incentives engine, so the page and the program stay together, and the six card formats keep a lease payment from being presented as if it were a purchase price. The lead side is inbound and opt-in. A shopper chose an offer, typed their own contact details and asked to hear from you, and the CRM logs the conversation from the first reply. When the offer and the vehicle arrive with the lead, the record shows what the shopper was responding to, which is a better place to stand than a screenshot of a page from last month. Everything downstream, the pencil, the credit application, the paperwork, stays in the desking tool and SecureWebX where it belongs. #### How to turn brand offer pages on They come on with your account. Once your inventory is in Inventory Link, from a feed, from an import of your own dealership website, or from auto broker inventory mode with no lot at all, the platform builds a page for each make you carry and a dealer page for the store. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Fill in Profile in the dealer portal so the pages carry the right phone number, hours and address, and point your advertising at the brand hero page for the make you want to push. If you want a page presented differently from the automatic build, an offer format the six cards do not cover, or a page for a make outside the twenty plus the engine covers, that is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. To see the pages before you decide, the pre-recorded live demo shows a brand page, an offer submission and the lead landing in the CRM, and the contact page reaches a person who will build one for your makes. #### What to pair brand offer pages with Brand pages carry the offers; the OEM Incentives Showroom is where a salesperson sees the same programs on the unit at the desk, so pair the two and the shopper and the salesperson are reading the same number. Pair the pages with the embeddable inventory widget when you want the same live inventory on the dealership website your web vendor runs, and with the vehicle finder when you want a shopper on the dealer page to describe the unit they want rather than browse for it. Brokers pair brand offer pages with auto broker inventory mode, which connects them instantly for a broker with no lot, so the broker advertises the manufacturer's offer on a car they can get. Stores running their own campaigns pair them with the lead pages builder in the CRM for event specific landing pages, and every store pairs them with the shared team calendar, so a Schedule a Visit request becomes an appointment the whole floor can see. The all features page lists what else surrounds them. #### Built so your store keeps selling Brand offer pages are additive, and that is what makes them easy to lean on. Your dealership website is still your website, your web vendor's pages keep serving, your feed keeps flowing to everyone else who consumes it, and your phones keep ringing on numbers your store already owns. Every lead a brand page has produced sits on its own record in the CRM for your team to work, every appointment it set is on the calendar, and both are archived permanently rather than deleted, so a shopper who filled out a make page in March is still there with the vehicle they asked about in September. The pages themselves carry the current program for the make and refresh with each import, and each product you use is its own application under one login, so a store can put a make's offers online in the morning and take a call on them that afternoon. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I have to build the brand pages myself? A: No. Inventory Link builds a brand page and a brand hero page for each make you carry, plus a dealer page for the store, automatically. You fill in Profile in the dealer portal so they carry the right store details, and point your advertising at them. Q: What is the difference between a brand page and a brand hero page? A: The brand page carries the current offers with a lead form beside each one. The brand hero page is built to be the first thing a shopper sees, with the make front and center, for the traffic your advertising sends to it. Both carry the same offers from the incentives engine. Q: What are the six offer card formats? A: Six layouts, one per offer type, so a lease special, a finance offer and a cash incentive each look like what they are rather than sharing one generic box. One shared confirmation screen follows every submission, whichever card the shopper chose. Q: Where does a lead from a brand page go? A: To the dealer portal under Requests and to the LeadLocate CRM as a lead with the offer and the vehicle attached. From there it is assigned, worked and answered like any other lead, and the first text back can carry the vehicle card. Q: Can a broker with no lot use brand offer pages? A: Yes. Auto broker inventory mode connects brand offer pages instantly for a broker with no inventory feed and no lot, with the manufacturer's programs on them, so the broker advertises what they can get. Q: Are brand offer pages an extra charge? A: No. They are part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page lists the current plans and what each includes. ### Bulk Email With Recipient Management for Dealers URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/bulk-email Bulk Email is the mass email tool inside LeadLocate CRM. Open Marketing Tools on the dock, choose Bulk Email, paste or pick a recipient list, set a subject, template and attachment, and send one blast to every address at once. Each send lands in Bulk Email History with who sent it, how many went out and its status. It is part of every plan. #### What Bulk Email does, in one sentence Bulk Email sends one message to an entire recipient list from inside LeadLocate CRM, with the subject, template, attachment and list managed on a single screen and every blast recorded in a history table. That is the whole feature, and it is worth being that plain about it because most stores have spent years bolting a separate mass email product onto the side of their CRM, exporting a spreadsheet of addresses every time they want to announce a sale, and then losing track of who was emailed about what. The dock tile that opens it carries the tagline One blast, every inbox, and that is the promise: a service special, a trade appraisal event, an end of month push, a new arrival announcement, or a simple thank you to everyone who bought last quarter goes out once, to everyone it should reach, from the same system that holds the lead, the texts, the calls and the deal. It is one of the eight tools under Marketing Tools on the dock, alongside Bulk Texting, Texting Chatbots, Text Automation, Voicemail Drops, Phone Validator, Email Automation and Email Validator, so the person who runs the store's outbound already knows where to find it. This page is the product side view. If you are still deciding whether email belongs in your follow up at all, the auto dealer software CRM page covers the wider communications picture, and the full features list shows where Bulk Email sits among everything else the platform does. #### How a dealership uses Bulk Email on a normal Tuesday Picture the internet director at a mid size store on a Tuesday morning. The used car manager has forty units that have aged past sixty days and wants them gone before the end of the month. The director opens the CRM, clicks Marketing Tools on the dock, then Bulk Email. The Bulk Email Messenger form is waiting: a Campaign selector, a Recipients box, Subject, Template, Attachment and Message. She picks the campaign list of everyone who inquired about a pre-owned SUV in the last ninety days and did not buy. She chooses the aged inventory template the store built last month, changes the subject line to something a human would open, and drops in the one sheet the used car manager made as the attachment. She reads the message once more, presses Send Bulk Email, and the screen tells her the blast is queued. Total elapsed time is shorter than the coffee run she is about to take. By lunch the replies are arriving in the CRM email inbox, threaded under the lead they belong to, because the send went out from the CRM rather than from a tool that knows nothing about the lead record. A salesperson who sees a reply from a customer he already talked to picks up the conversation from where it left off, with the original inquiry, the earlier texts and the call log right there. That is the difference between mass email that lives in the CRM and mass email that lives beside it, and the email inbox and composer page shows what that thread looks like once the replies start. #### Where Bulk Email lives in the CRM Bulk Email is a dock tool, not a buried settings page. The bottom taskbar in LeadLocate CRM carries My Office, Marketing Tools, Referral Program, Design Studio, My Inventory, SecureWebX, Reports, Feedback, More Options and Jax. Click Marketing Tools and the eight tiles appear; Bulk Email is the one that reads One blast, every inbox. Every user who can see the dock can find it, which matters at a store where the BDC manager, the internet director and a Master Administrator all send from the same account. The page itself has two halves. The top is the Bulk Email Messenger, the form described above. The bottom is Bulk Email History, a table with Date, Sent By, Subject, Total Sent, Status and a View action for each blast. That history is the answer to a question every manager eventually asks, which is who emailed those customers last week and what did they say. Instead of hunting through a shared mailbox, the manager reads the row. The Email item on the main menu is a different surface: the inbox, the composer, the single view and the archive, which is where replies to a blast land and where one to one email happens. Bulk Email is for the many; the Email menu is for the one. The two are built to hand off to each other, and the LeadLocate CRM product page walks through the whole menu if you want the map. #### Recipient management: lists, campaigns and one address per line The recipient side is where mass email usually goes wrong, so it gets its own screen logic. The Recipients box accepts one address per line, which means a manager who has a list from anywhere can paste it and send. The Campaign selector points the blast at a saved email campaign list instead, so the lists your store maintains for its buyers, its service customers, its unsold internet leads or its referral partners are one click away rather than rebuilt every time. Those lists come from the same contact records the rest of the CRM uses. Contact import brings a spreadsheet in once; the customer profile keeps one buyer record per person, co-buyer included; and email campaigns and campaign lists are maintained under the Email menu, so the list you send to on Tuesday is the same list the drip under Email Automation works from on Wednesday. Nobody exports a CSV to a second product and nobody has two versions of the truth about who is on which list. Template and Attachment do the rest of the work. A template holds the design and the body copy your store approved, so a new BDC hire cannot send an off brand blast by accident. The attachment field takes the flyer, the price sheet or the event invitation and carries it with every copy. Bulk sends draw on message credits that are topped up from My LeadLocate, and the Credits figure sits on the page so the sender knows before pressing the button whether the list will go out in full. #### What it replaces, and what a separate mass email tool costs a store The obvious thing Bulk Email replaces is a standalone mass email subscription. The less obvious things it replaces are the export, the import, the duplicate contact database and the monthly argument about whose list is current. A store that runs email from a separate product pays for that product, pays for the hours somebody spends moving addresses between systems, and pays a third time when a salesperson cannot see that the customer he is calling received a blast that morning and opened it. There is also the cost of replies going to the wrong place. When a blast goes out from a tool beside the CRM, the replies come back to a mailbox beside the CRM. Somebody has to read them, figure out which lead they belong to, and forward them to the right salesperson. When the blast goes out from inside LeadLocate CRM, the reply threads under the lead, the notification fires for the assigned user, and the communications log records it next to the texts and the calls. No forwarding, no lost reply, no customer who wrote back twice and gave up. Bulk Email is included in every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only to the lead plans, so it is not an add on with its own invoice. The pricing page lists the plans and what each includes. #### The compliance angle: clean lists, your own domain, and a record of every send Mass email gets a store in trouble in three ways: sending to addresses that are dead, sending from a domain that mail servers do not trust, and having no record of what went out. Bulk Email is built next to the tools that address all three. Run a list through the Email Validator before you send it. It is the neighbouring tile under Marketing Tools, it takes the same one address per line paste or a CSV file, and it reports which addresses are worth sending to. A list full of dead addresses hurts the reputation of the domain that sent it, and reputation is what decides whether next month's blast reaches the inbox or the junk folder. Sending from your own dealership domain, set up through email domain authentication, is the other half of that reputation, because mail servers treat a message from an authenticated store domain differently from one that arrives from a shared sending address. The record keeping is automatic. Bulk Email History keeps every blast with its date, sender, subject and count, and the communications log on each lead records that the customer received it. When a customer asks to stop hearing from the store, the request is honoured by removing them from the campaign list and noting it on their record, so the next blast does not reach them and the log shows why. Consent for texting has its own rules and its own tools, and the do not call scrub and blacklist page covers that side. #### How to turn Bulk Email on There is nothing to turn on. Bulk Email is part of LeadLocate CRM from the day the account is created, and it appears under Marketing Tools on the dock for every user with access to the dock. The first thing to do is build the lists: import your contacts, create the campaign lists you will send to most often, and save at least one approved template so the first blast looks like the store rather than like a test. If your account is new, the onboarding call is a good place to have our team set the lists up with you, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a blast going out before you ever log in. Message credits are managed from My LeadLocate, the account portal, where the Master Administrator tops them up as the store's volume grows. Sending from the store's own domain rather than a shared address is available on request; our team puts it in production for your dealership as part of setup. After that, sending is a form with six fields and a button, and the history table below it fills in on its own. #### What to pair Bulk Email with Bulk Email is strongest as the loud, occasional voice in a follow up plan that otherwise runs quietly. Pair it with Email Automation, the tile next to it, for the drip that keeps working on an unsold lead every few days without anyone pressing send. Pair it with Bulk Texting when the message is short and urgent and the list has opted in to texts, because a Saturday sale announcement reads better as a text at nine in the morning and as an email with the flyer attached the night before. Pair it with the Email Validator every time a list is older than a few months. For the content itself, the AI writing assistant in the email composer drafts the message and the Design Studio produces the print piece that becomes the attachment. For the reply side, the Email menu inbox and the lead notifications make sure the person who answers is the person who owns the lead. And for measuring whether the blast did anything, the Reports dashboard on the dock shows activity by user and by day, so the internet director can put a number next to the Tuesday morning send. Everything here is part of the same subscription, which is the point: one system, one list, one history. #### Questions and answers Q: Is Bulk Email a separate product or part of LeadLocate CRM? A: It is part of the CRM. Bulk Email is one of the eight tiles under Marketing Tools on the dock, included in every plan from CRM Only up, and it sends from the same contact records and campaign lists the rest of the CRM uses. Q: How do I manage recipients for a bulk email? A: Two ways. Paste addresses one per line into the Recipients box, or choose a saved campaign list from the Campaign selector. Campaign lists are maintained under the Email menu and built from imported contacts and lead records, so the same list serves blasts and drips. Q: Can I attach a flyer or price sheet to a bulk email? A: Yes. The Bulk Email Messenger has an Attachment field that carries a file with every copy, and a Template field that holds the approved design and body copy so every sender starts from the same layout. Q: Where do replies to a bulk email go? A: Into the CRM email inbox, threaded under the lead they belong to, with a notification to the assigned user and an entry in the lead's communications log. Nothing is forwarded from a separate mailbox. Q: How do I know who sent a blast and how many went out? A: Bulk Email History, on the same page as the messenger, lists every send with Date, Sent By, Subject, Total Sent, Status and a View action. Managers read the row instead of searching a shared mailbox. Q: Should I validate a list before a bulk send? A: Yes, especially an older list. The Email Validator is the neighbouring tile under Marketing Tools and takes the same one per line paste or a CSV file. Dead addresses hurt the reputation of the sending domain, and reputation decides whether the next blast reaches the inbox. ### Bulk Texting: Message Everyone at Once, Compliantly URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/bulk-texting Bulk Texting in LeadLocate CRM sends one text message to a list of recipients at once from the Marketing Tools menu in the dock. Paste numbers or choose a saved recipient list, pick a template, add an attachment, and send. Every message goes out on the store's tracking numbers, honors opt outs and the DNC Blacklist, and appears in Bulk Text History with sender and count. #### What Bulk Texting does, in one sentence Bulk Texting sends one message to many customers at once from inside LeadLocate CRM, on the store's own tracking numbers, with the store's opt out list applied before anything leaves and a history of every send kept afterward. It is the tool for the event weekend, the service special, the end of month push and the holiday hours notice, the messages that are the same for everyone and do not need a salesperson typing them one at a time. It is not a separate marketing platform with its own login and its own contact list. The recipients come from the CRM, the replies land in the two way texting inbox where the reps already work, and the customer who answers a store wide text at 6 p.m. is answered by a person from the thread that already holds their lead. The dealership SMS marketing automation page covers strategy, cadence and consent in depth; this page is the tool, control by control. #### How a BDC manager uses it on a normal day It is Thursday, and the store has a tent sale starting Saturday. The BDC manager opens the dock, clicks Marketing Tools, then Bulk Texting. The page is the Bulk TEXT Messenger. In the Campaign field she picks the saved recipient list she built last month of customers who asked about used trucks, so she is not pasting numbers by hand. In Template she picks the store's event text and edits one line for the dates. She attaches the flyer the Design Studio produced on Tuesday, reads the outgoing message once more, and clicks Send Bulk TEXT. The page answers TEXT Blast is Queued. By Thursday evening the replies are arriving in the texting inbox, each one on the thread of the customer who sent it, each one raising a Text Reply Alert on the phone of the rep who owns that lead. Two people reply with a stop word and are opted out automatically; nobody at the store has to do anything about them. On Friday morning the manager opens Bulk Text History on the same page and sees the send with its date, Sent By, Total Sent and Status. She did not export a list, upload a file to another vendor, or wonder whether the replies went anywhere. #### Recipients: paste a list, or use one you saved The Recipients field takes phone numbers one per line, which is the fast path for a short list a manager already has. For anything the store will message more than once, Bulk TEXT Recipients keeps named recipient lists: the used truck shoppers, the service customers due this quarter, the leads from the spring event. A list is chosen in the Campaign field at send time, so the second send to the same audience is a template and a click rather than a rebuild. Because the lists live in the CRM, they are lists of customers the store actually knows, with a lead record, a Customer Profile and a communications log behind each number. That is the difference between bulk texting from a CRM and bulk texting from a spreadsheet: the reply is not an orphan. It lands on a real thread, with the customer's history, in front of the rep who owns them. A pasted number with no contact record still sends, and the thread it starts is right there in the inbox when the customer answers. #### Templates, attachments and a vehicle in the message The Template field pulls from the store's saved texts, so the wording a manager approved is the wording that goes out, and a rep running a send does not have to compose from a blank box. The Attachment field sends a picture or a file as MMS to every recipient, which is how a flyer, a coupon or a photo of the incoming inventory reaches a customer's messaging app as an image rather than a link. When a message carries a link, a trackable short link with click stats tells the store afterward how many people opened it. Through the same texting stack, a bulk message goes out as RCS to phones that support it and as SMS to the rest, automatically, per handset; the RCS messaging with SMS fallback page explains the mechanism. The store writes one message and does not maintain two audiences. Sends draw on message credits, and the page shows the balance with an Add Credits button beside it, so a manager knows before clicking whether the blast will complete. #### Where it lives, and what it replaces Bulk Texting is the first item under Marketing Tools in the dock at the bottom of the CRM, next to Texting Chatbots, Text Automation, Voicemail Drops, Phone Validator, Bulk Email, Email Automation and Email Validator. The recipient lists are on their own page under the same tool, and the replies are in the Messaging menu's inbox. Nothing about it requires leaving the CRM or signing into anything else. It replaces the standalone mass texting service most stores have tried at least once: the one with the per seat price, the separate contact upload, the short code that customers do not recognize, and the reply inbox that no salesperson ever opened. Those tools cost money every month, and they cost more than money, because a customer who replied to a marketing text and heard nothing back has learned something about the store. Here the send is part of every plan on the pricing page, it goes out on the numbers customers already have saved, and the reply reaches a person. #### Compliantly is the important word Texting hundreds of consumers at once is exactly the activity texting law was written about, so the tool is built so the careful path is the default. A customer who replies with a stop word to any message, bulk or one to one, is opted out automatically, added to the two way blacklist and told so, and any campaign they were on is listed in the confirmation. A help word gets a reply that identifies the store and how to reach it. The DNC Blacklist page holds the numbers the store must never text, blocks inbound spam in both directions, and runs a live do not call lookup on numbers. The Phone Validator, two items down in the same Marketing Tools menu, shows validity dots on each lead so a list can be cleaned before it is sent rather than after the failures come back. Consent for every list is the store's own call, made before the send, and the TCPA compliance for dealership texting page lays out the rules plainly. What the CRM provides is the record: every bulk send in Bulk Text History with the sender and count, every message on the customer's thread with its delivery status, every opt out applied by the system rather than by memory. A store that is asked how it handles a stop request has a written answer. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on. Bulk Texting is in the dock under Marketing Tools from the first day, on the store's tracking numbers, for users whose role allows it. The first send is a list, a template and a click. If a store wants a specific sending schedule, a throttle for very large lists or a dedicated number for marketing sends, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Bulk Texting is built so your store keeps selling. Every message you send is on the customer's phone the moment it leaves, the numbers it sends from are your store's own, every reply lands in the inbox against the right customer record, and Bulk Text History keeps a permanent record of every send, so a manager can open last spring's service campaign and read exactly who got what. If you want to see a send before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo walks through one. #### What to pair it with Bulk Texting is the loud tool. It works best next to the quiet ones. Text Automation handles the messages that should go to one person at the right moment, the reply on lead receipt and the follow up steps by lead type, so the bulk send is reserved for what is genuinely store wide. Texting Chatbots turn a printed keyword into a growing recipient list, which is where the audience for the next bulk send comes from. Voicemail Drops, in the same menu, deliver a recorded message to a list for the customers who answer voicemail and ignore texts. On the email side, Bulk Email does the same job with the same recipient thinking, and the Email Validator cleans an address list the way the Phone Validator cleans a number list. All of it is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is Bulk Texting in the CRM? A: In the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM, under Marketing Tools, first item. The page is the Bulk TEXT Messenger, with Recipients, Campaign, Template, Attachment, the outgoing message, a Send Bulk TEXT button and Bulk Text History underneath. Saved lists are on the Bulk TEXT Recipients page. Q: Do I have to paste numbers every time? A: No. Paste numbers one per line for a quick send, or build a named recipient list once under Bulk TEXT Recipients and choose it in the Campaign field. The second send to the same audience is a template and a click. Q: What happens when someone replies STOP to a bulk text? A: They are opted out automatically, added to the two way blacklist, told which campaigns they were removed from, and no user or automation texts that number again. A help word gets a reply identifying the store. Q: Where do the replies go? A: To the two way texting inbox, on the thread of the customer who replied, with a Text Reply Alert to the rep who owns that lead. A bulk send from the CRM never creates a second inbox. Q: Can I send a picture or a flyer with a bulk text? A: Yes. The Attachment field sends a picture or file as MMS to every recipient. On phones that support RCS the message goes out in the richer format automatically, and as SMS everywhere else. Q: Is Bulk Texting an extra product? A: No. It is built into LeadLocate CRM and included on every plan, including CRM Only. Sends draw on message credits shown on the page beside an Add Credits button. Plans are on the pricing page. ### Call Alerts That Flag the Calls That Matter URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/call-alerts-and-keywords Call Alerts in LeadLocate CRM check every transcribed call for the words and phrases your store chooses, such as trade in, cancel or payment. When a transcript contains one, the call is flagged as an alert on Call Logs, and a manager switches the log between All Calls and Alert Calls Only to hear the conversations that need attention first. #### What do call alerts do? Call Alerts turn a store's phone conversations into a short list a manager can actually work. Calls in LeadLocate CRM are recorded and transcribed, and every transcript is read against a list of Alert Keywords that the store writes itself. When a customer says one of those words, or a salesperson does, the call is flagged as an alert on the Call Logs page. The manager no longer has to guess which of the day's calls deserve a listen. The calls raise their own hand. The keywords are whatever matters to your rooftop. A store worried about deals falling apart watches for cancel, lawyer and refund. A store chasing trades watches for trade in and payoff. A finance manager who wants to know when payments are being quoted on the phone adds payment and monthly. A general manager who wants to know when a competitor comes up adds the name of the store across the street. Keywords can be single words or short phrases, and the list can be as short or as long as the store likes. This page is the alerting layer. The recording and the transcript underneath it are covered on the call recording and transcription page, and the buying case for recorded calls in general is on the automotive CRM with call recording page. Call Alerts are what turn a pile of recordings into a to do list. #### How a dealership uses call keyword alerts on a normal day It is Tuesday morning and the used car manager sits down with a coffee and the Call Logs page. Yesterday the store handled a heavy day of calls across the showroom line, the tracking numbers on its ads and the reps' softphones. He opens the alert filter, chooses Alert Calls Only, and the list drops to a handful. Two of them flagged on cancel. One flagged on the name of the store down the road. One flagged on trade in from a customer nobody has followed up with. He starts with the two cancels. The first is a customer who wanted to cancel an appointment and rebook for Saturday, which the rep handled well; the manager reads the transcript in the lightbox, sees the appointment was moved, and moves on. The second is a customer who signed on Friday and is unhappy about a fee he says was never explained. That one gets a phone call from the manager before ten o'clock, with the transcript of the original conversation in front of him, and the deal stays put. The competitor call is a coaching moment. The customer said the other store quoted a lower price, and the rep answered by cutting the price instead of asking what the other quote included. The manager plays that stretch of the call for the rep at lunch. The trade in call becomes a text from the rep that afternoon, sent from the two way texting inbox, asking when the customer can bring the car by for an appraisal. Four calls read, four decisions made, in the time it used to take to listen to one call picked at random. #### Where call alerts live in the CRM The keyword list lives on its own page, Alert Settings, reached from Account Settings in the menu controls at the top of the CRM. On the My Account Settings page, the Call Alerts card explains the feature in one line and carries an Alert Settings button. The Alert Settings page shows the store's Alert Keywords as a table with the keyword, the date it was added and a delete control, with an Add a keyword field and an Add Keyword button beside the introduction. The list belongs to the store, so every rep's calls are read against the same words. The flags show up where managers already look at calls. Call Logs, under Calls in the main menu, lists every call with its date, call type, caller ID, status, duration, recording and transcript. A call that matched a keyword carries an alert marker in its row. The alert filter sits in the toolbar beside the call type and user filters, with two choices: All Calls, the default, and Alert Calls Only. Combine it with the user filter and a manager sees the flagged calls for one salesperson; combine it with the call type filter and he sees only the flagged inbound calls. From a flagged row, the recording opens in a compact player and the transcript opens in a lightbox over the log, so the manager reads the exact sentence that raised the flag without leaving the page. The same call also sits on the lead's own record, on the customer communication timeline, in order with the texts and emails around it. Call Logs is on the LeadLocate mobile app too, so the day's calls travel with the manager onto the lot. #### Which alert keywords should a dealership watch for? Start with the words that cost the store money when nobody hears them. Cancel, refund, lawyer, complaint and attorney catch the conversations that turn into chargebacks, reviews and letters. Words that signal a heated caller belong on the list too, because a frustrated customer rarely asks for a manager in so many words. These are the alerts that protect deals already made. Then add the words that make money when somebody acts on them. Trade in, payoff, cosigner, down payment and financing all mark a customer who is further along than the lead status says. Appointment and test drive mark a customer ready to come in. The name of a model the store has too many of, or a model the store is short on, tells the desk what customers are asking for this week. Last, add the words that make coaching easy. The names of competing stores show every time a customer is shopping the deal. Payment and monthly show when a rep is quoting numbers on the phone before the customer has been asked about a trade. A store's own promise, such as a price match or a free oil change offer, shows whether reps are using it. Review the list every month or so. The words that matter in tax season are different from the words that matter in the model year closeout, and changing the list takes seconds. #### What call alerts replace, and what they cost elsewhere Without alerts, call review at most stores looks the same. A manager listens to a few calls a week, picked by memory, by a rep's name or by whatever happened to be at the top of the list. The call where a customer threatened to cancel sits unheard between two hundred ordinary ones. Some stores hire an outside service to listen to calls and score them; others buy a speech analytics product that sits beside the phone system and bills per seat. Either way, the flag lives in one system and the customer lives in another, and the manager spends the saved time matching phone numbers to leads. In LeadLocate the recording, the transcript, the alert and the customer are the same record. The flagged call opens from Call Logs and from the lead, the transcript is one click away, and the rep who took the call is on the row. There is nothing to export and nothing to match up. The keyword list is written by the people who know the store, in the store's own language, and it changes the moment the store's priorities change. Call Alerts are part of LeadLocate CRM, alongside the recording and transcription they read. The pricing page lists what each plan includes, month to month, and a store comparing costs can set that against what it pays today for a phone system, a call tracking service and a call review product. #### The compliance angle: hear the complaint before it becomes one Most customer complaints start on the phone. A customer calls to say a fee was never explained, that a salesperson promised something that is not on the paperwork, or that he wants out of the deal. At a store without alerts, that call is heard by one rep, who may or may not mention it. At a store with alerts, the words the customer used put the call in front of a manager the same day, with a recording and a transcript attached. The store answers the complaint with the facts while it is still a phone call. The same record protects the rep. A customer who says he was quoted a number that was never quoted can be answered with the transcript, calmly and in full. A manager who wants to confirm that reps are describing products and fees the way the store trains them can add those words to the list and read how they are used. Alerts give the store a way to review conversations with purpose rather than by chance. Your store sets its own policy on announcing that calls are recorded, and the call recording and transcription page covers that side. A customer who asks the store to stop calling belongs on the Do Not Call Blacklist, which hides the contact from every view in the CRM, and stop call or take me off your list are good phrases to add as alert keywords so no such request slips past. #### How do I turn on call alerts? Open Account Settings from the menu controls at the top of the CRM, find the Call Alerts card and click Alert Settings. Type a word or phrase into Add a keyword and click Add Keyword. It appears in the Alert Keywords table with the date it was added, and every transcribed call from then on is checked for it. Delete removes a keyword just as quickly. The full walkthrough, with what you should see at each step, is in how to set call alert keywords. Then open Call Logs and set the alert filter to Alert Calls Only. That is the working view. A manager who opens it first thing every morning sees every flagged conversation from the day before, and one who opens it at the end of the day sees what needs a call back before the customer goes to bed. Reading a transcript is covered step by step in how to read a call transcript. Live Training sessions come with every plan, so bring your first keyword list to one, and the Help Center carries every guide for the phone side of the CRM. #### What to pair call alerts with Alerts tell a manager which calls matter. The rest of the CRM is what he does about them. The two way texting inbox is where the follow up text goes out, with a delivery status on the bubble. The unified inbox for dealership communications page describes why texts, calls and emails belong in one place, and the customer communication timeline is where the flagged call sits beside everything else the customer and the store have said to each other. Lead notifications handle the other kind of alert, the one that tells a rep a new lead or a reply has arrived. The reports dashboard counts calls by user, so a manager can see who is making the calls the alerts are reading. And call forwarding with ring lists makes sure the calls reach a person in the first place, so there is a conversation to read. #### Questions and answers Q: What are call alerts? A: Call alerts flag the phone calls that contain words your store cares about. LeadLocate CRM transcribes calls and checks every transcript against your Alert Keywords list. A match puts an alert on that call in Call Logs, where a manager filters to Alert Calls Only and reviews them first. Q: What is a call keyword alert? A: It is a word or phrase you add on the Alert Settings page, such as cancel, trade in or payment. When a customer or a salesperson says it on a transcribed call, the call is flagged, so a manager hears the conversations that matter without listening to all of them. Q: Can we choose our own alert keywords? A: Yes. The list is written by your store. Add a keyword with Add a keyword and Add Keyword on Alert Settings, and delete one from the same table. Single words and short phrases both work, and the whole store's calls are checked against the same list. Q: Where do flagged calls show up? A: On Call Logs, under Calls in the main menu. A flagged call carries an alert marker, and the alert filter in the toolbar switches between All Calls and Alert Calls Only. The recording and the transcript both open from the same row. Q: Do call alerts cover inbound and outbound calls? A: Yes. Recorded calls in either direction are transcribed, whether a customer called one of the store's tracking numbers or a rep called out from the softphone, and each transcript is checked against the store's Alert Keywords. Q: Do call alerts cost extra? A: Call Alerts are part of LeadLocate CRM, alongside the call recording and transcription they read. The pricing page lists what each plan includes, and every plan runs month to month. ### Call Forwarding and Ring Lists for Dealership Lines URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/call-forwarding-and-ring-lists Call forwarding in LeadLocate CRM sends every inbound call on a dealership tracking number to a Forward Calls To ring list built from the store's own users. The list rings the people who work leads, business hours routing decides what happens after close, and an optional press 5 confirmation stops a carrier voicemail box from swallowing the call. It is included in every LeadLocate plan. #### What call forwarding and a ring list do for a dealership line A tracking number is only useful if a person answers it. Call forwarding is the rule that says which people. In LeadLocate CRM that rule is a list called Forward Calls To, made up of the phone numbers of the dealership's own users, and every inbound call on the store's tracking number rings that list. The call is logged, recorded, and tied to the lead the caller belongs to, whether it is answered on a desk phone, a cell phone in the service drive or the LeadLocate mobile app. The ring list is built from the store's user records rather than typed in from scratch, which is the detail that keeps it accurate. When the store adds a salesperson in User Management, that person's mobile is a candidate for the list. When a salesperson leaves, they stop ringing. A store never discovers, six months after a rep quit, that the customer line still rings a phone in another state. The automotive phone system page frames forwarding as one piece of a store's whole phone setup. This page is the product side: how the ring list works in LeadLocate CRM, where it lives, and the two settings around it that decide what a caller hears after hours and before someone picks up. #### How a store's phone behaves on a normal Saturday It is eleven on a Saturday and the lot is busy. A shopper who saw a used SUV on the store's listing calls the number under the photo. That number is a LeadLocate tracking number, so the call goes straight to the people who sell. It rings the Forward Calls To list: the internet manager's desk, the two BDC reps and the used car manager's cell, all at once. The BDC rep who is not on a call picks up, presses 5 to accept, and the customer is talking to a person eight seconds after dialing. The rep sees the caller's name and the SUV they asked about on the inbound call alert in the app, because the caller ID matched a lead the store already had. At four, the used car manager is out on a test drive with his cell in his pocket. A call comes in and rings the list again. His phone answers itself and rolls to his carrier voicemail, which on an ordinary phone system would end the call right there with a customer leaving a message nobody at the store can hear. Instead, because nobody pressed 5, LeadLocate treats that leg as unanswered, keeps ringing the rest of the list, and when the BDC rep picks up two rings later the customer never knew anything happened. At seven the store closes. The next call runs into business hours routing, and the caller gets the store's after hours handling rather than four phones ringing in an empty showroom. The call is logged, a voicemail is taken, and it is waiting on the lead when the first rep signs in Sunday morning. #### Where the ring list lives Forwarding is managed on the IVR Settings page, reached from Account Settings under Billing and Admin. The Forward Calls To list is the first thing on it: the numbers that ring when a customer calls, drawn from the store's users. A store can add an office line beside the mobiles, or point a number at an extension, and the same list serves every tracking number the store owns. Under the list sits Announce Calls, which is the press 5 confirmation. When it is on, whoever answers presses 5 to accept the call, so a voicemail box on a personal phone is never mistaken for a person. The page is explicit that a store should turn it off if the number above is a phone tree, since a switchboard does not press buttons. Edit Hours and Open 24 hours decide business hours routing, and the Company Voicemail greeting is what a caller hears when nobody on the list picks up. The results show in two places. The Calls page in the main menu logs every forwarded call with who answered, how long it lasted and the recording. And the lead's own timeline carries the call in order with the texts and emails around it, because the communications log holds every channel. On the LeadLocate mobile app, Call Logs shows the same list, and the inbound call alert screen is how a rep sees who is calling before answering. #### What a store pays for this elsewhere Most phone systems can forward a number to another number. Few can ring a list of cell phones at once, confirm a human answered, fall through to the next person when one phone rolls to voicemail, and log the whole thing against a customer record. Stores that want that behavior buy it as a hunt group or ring group feature from their phone vendor, per line, and then pay a call tracking vendor separately so marketing knows which number rang. Their CRM never hears about the call unless a rep logs it by hand. In LeadLocate the ring list, the confirmation, the business hours routing, the voicemail and the log are one feature of the CRM. There is no per line charge for forwarding and no second vendor to reconcile. A store running ring groups on its phone system and a separate call tracking service can move both into the CRM: forwarding comes standard on each lead plan listed on the pricing page. Forwarding works right alongside the store's main switchboard, if it has one, so reception, service and parts keep their system. The ring list is for the numbers that appear on ads, listings and landing pages, where the caller is a shopper and the person who should answer is a salesperson. #### The compliance and customer experience angle Forwarding touches two things a dealer principal cares about beyond convenience. The first is the record. Every forwarded call is logged with its caller ID, the number dialed, who answered and the recording, so a dispute about what a customer was told on the phone has a recording behind it. Recording laws vary by state, and a store that forwards calls to personal cells should set its announcement policy and train reps on it; the call recording and transcription page covers that in detail. The second is the customer's experience of the store's number. A caller who reaches a personal voicemail that says hi, it's Dave, leave a message has just learned that the dealership's advertised line is somebody's cell. The press 5 confirmation exists to prevent exactly that: an unanswered leg is treated as unanswered, and the caller hears the store's greeting, not Dave's. Business hours routing does the same job after close, so a late caller hears the company voicemail and gets a callback in the morning rather than ringing an empty building. Both of those are also a data question. When the rep who answers is stamped on the call, a manager can see who actually picks up the store's line and who lets it ring, which is the kind of thing a floor never tells you on its own. #### How to turn it on A new dealership account answers its phone without setup. When the account is created, a tracking number is provisioned and the Forward Calls To list builds itself from the store's users, so the owner can call the number from another phone and hear their own cell ring before reading a single help page. The phone is open around the clock by default and the press 5 confirmation is off, so the first call simply rings through. Every one of those is a switch on IVR Settings when the store wants something different. From there, adjusting is a matter of editing the list: add a desk line, remove a rep who moved to service, point one entry at an extension, turn Announce Calls on once the list is all mobiles, and set Edit Hours to the store's real schedule so after hours routing takes over at close. The list keeps rebuilding from the user roster as long as it is made of the store's own users; the moment a store adds a number that is not one of its users, the list becomes the store's own and stops changing on its own. Anything beyond that, a ring order instead of all at once for example, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows an inbound call ringing a list and landing on a lead. #### What to pair it with Forwarding is the middle of the phone stack, between the number a customer dials and the person who answers. Pair it with tracking phone numbers so each lead source has its own line and the call arrives on the lead with its source attached. Pair it with the virtual receptionist when the store wants a greeting, a menu or a message taken before a phone rings, and with the IVR call flow builder when the store wants to decide, option by option, where a caller goes. On the other end, voicemail greetings are what a caller hears when the whole list is busy, and lead notifications are how a missed call becomes a text to the rep who should return it. The BDC phone service page covers a store that wants the calls answered by a BDC before they reach the floor. The all features page shows where forwarding sits among everything else in the platform. #### Built so your store keeps selling Call forwarding is the sturdiest part of a store's phone setup, and it is built so your store keeps selling. A customer who dials your tracking number rings the phones on the Forward Calls To list, your people answer on the handsets and cells they already carry, and those phones stay the store's own. Every call that comes in is written to the customer's record with its recording, its length and who took it, and that history is archived permanently rather than deleted, so a manager can pull a call from last quarter as easily as one from this morning. Your main published line, your DMS and your website stay yours as well, and each product you use is its own application under one login. If you ever want a person to build the ring list with you, the contact page reaches one. #### Questions and answers Q: Do all the phones on the ring list ring at the same time? A: Yes, the Forward Calls To list rings its numbers at once, and the first person to answer and accept takes the call. A ring order instead of all at once is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: What is press 5, and do I need it? A: Announce Calls asks whoever answers to press 5 to accept. It stops a personal phone's carrier voicemail from taking the call, since a voicemail box never presses 5 and the call keeps ringing the rest of the list. Turn it off if the number on the list is a phone tree or switchboard, since those do not press buttons either. Q: Can I forward to an extension? A: Yes. An entry on the list can be a number with an extension, and the extension is dialed for that entry after the line answers. That is how a store points its tracking number at a desk behind a switchboard. Q: What happens after hours? A: Business hours routing takes over. The store sets its hours with Edit Hours, or leaves Open 24 hours on, and a call outside those hours goes to the company voicemail or the store's after hours handling instead of ringing the list. The call is logged either way. Q: Does forwarding work with the LeadLocate mobile app? A: Yes. A user's mobile number on the ring list rings their phone as a normal call, and the app shows an inbound call alert with the caller's name from the CRM. Call Logs in the app shows the same call history as the desktop Calls page. Q: Which plan do I need? A: Forwarding, the ring list, business hours routing and the press 5 confirmation are part of every LeadLocate plan, including CRM Only. There is no per line forwarding charge. ### Call Recording and Transcription in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/call-recording-and-transcription Call recording and transcription in LeadLocate CRM captures inbound and outbound calls on the store's tracking numbers and the browser softphone, stores each recording on the Calls page and the lead's timeline, and opens a written transcript in a lightbox from the call row. Managers coach from real conversations, and a disputed quote has a recording behind it. It is included in every LeadLocate plan. #### What call recording and transcription does in the CRM Every call that runs through LeadLocate CRM can be recorded: an outbound call from the softphone, a triggered call to a rep's own phone, and an inbound call to one of the store's tracking numbers that rings through to a salesperson. The recording is stored with the call, the call is stored with the lead, and a written transcript is one click away from the call row. That is the feature in one sentence. A dealership's phone conversations stop disappearing into the air the moment they end. Transcription is what makes recording useful at scale. A recording is a thing you listen to, in real time, which means a manager with forty salespeople never gets to most of them. A transcript is a thing you read, search and skim, which means the same manager can review the morning's calls over lunch. The transcript opens in a lightbox from the Calls page so the audio and the text stay together. The dealership call transcription page covers why a store wants transcripts in general, and the automotive CRM with call recording page covers what to look for when a CRM claims recording. This page is the product itself, inside LeadLocate CRM. #### How a sales manager uses it on a normal day It is a Thursday, and the store's internet director has a rep who books plenty of appointments and closes almost none of them. He has heard the rep on the floor and nothing sounds wrong. So he opens the Calls page, filters to that rep, and starts reading transcripts instead of guessing. Twenty minutes later the pattern is obvious. The rep quotes a payment on the phone, every time, before the customer has been asked about a trade or a down payment. The customer arrives anchored to a number that was never real, and the deal dies at the desk. That is a coaching conversation, and it happens the same afternoon with the transcript on the screen between them. No accusation, no memory contest, just the words. Two weeks later the same page shows the rep asking about the trade before talking money. Nobody had to sit in on a call. The same page serves the other direction. A customer calls in furious that he was promised a price nobody will honor. The manager opens the lead, finds the call from last Saturday on the timeline, and plays it. Either the promise was made, in which case the store keeps its word, or it was not, in which case the manager knows what was actually said and can settle it in one calm call instead of a week of escalating ones. #### Where recordings and transcripts live On the desktop CRM, the Calls entry in the main menu opens the call log. Each row is one call with its direction, caller ID, the salesperson, the duration and the outcome, and any call with audio carries a play control and a transcript icon. Playback happens in place, and the transcript opens in a lightbox over the same page so the reader is never sent to a second tab. The same call also appears on the lead's own timeline, in order with the texts, pictures, emails and voicemails around it, because the communications log holds every channel in one list. Recording itself is controlled on the softphone. Record this call is a switch on the VoIP Phone, so a store can record everything or leave it off for a particular call. Calls forwarded from a tracking number to a rep's phone are recorded through the same call path, which means a customer who dials the number on the store's ad and reaches a salesperson's cell still produces a recording on the lead. On the LeadLocate mobile app, Call Logs is the phone version of the Calls page, so a manager waiting in a service lane can pull up a call from his phone. The mobile app page lists what else the phone version carries. #### What it replaces and what a store pays for it elsewhere Recording and transcription are usually sold as a layer on top of the phone system, billed per user, per month, by a vendor that has never heard of the store's CRM. The recording lives with that vendor. The lead lives with the CRM. To hear the call behind a lead, a manager opens a second system, searches by phone number and hopes the time stamps line up. Most managers stop doing that within a month, and the recordings pile up unheard. In LeadLocate the recording is a property of the call, and the call is a property of the lead, so there is nothing to line up. It is part of every plan rather than a per seat add on. A store paying today for a phone system, a call tracking vendor and a recording add on can replace all three with LeadLocate, and every lead plan on the pricing page includes recording and transcription with the softphone. It also replaces the ride along. A manager used to sit beside a new hire for an afternoon of calls to hear how they handle objections. Now the new hire makes the calls alone and the manager reads them that evening, which covers ten times the calls and takes a fraction of the time. #### The compliance angle: consent, retention and who can hear what Call recording is regulated at the state level, and the rules are not uniform. Some states allow recording when one party to the call consents, which a store satisfies by being that party. Others require every party to know. A dealership that sells across a state line, or that calls customers who live in a different state, should assume the stricter rule applies and announce recording at the start of the call. That is the store's policy and training to set; LeadLocate provides the switch and the storage, and a written announcement in the rep's opening line is the simplest way to cover it. Retention is the second angle. A recording is a business record, and the useful ones are the ones you can find a year later when a customer disputes a payment or a regulator asks about a disclosure. Because every recording is stored against a specific lead with a specific salesperson and a time stamp, finding the call is a search on the lead, not a request to a phone vendor's support desk. Access is the third. User roles in the CRM decide who sees what, so a salesperson sees their own calls and a manager sees the store's. The user roles and permissions page explains the User, Manager and Master Administrator levels. Recording is not a surveillance tool when it is used well; it is the reason a rep can say I told the customer that, and prove it. #### How to turn it on Recording is available the moment an account exists. On the softphone, Record this call is the switch, and a store that wants every call recorded simply leaves it on. Inbound calls to the store's tracking numbers that are forwarded to a salesperson run through the same recorded path, so nothing extra is required for the customer who calls in. Transcription is on demand from the call row. The first time somebody opens the transcript for a call, it is produced and then kept with the recording, so the second reader opens it instantly. There is no per transcript charge and no separate account to set up. Anything a store needs beyond the standard setup, a specific retention rule for instance, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows a recorded call and its transcript opening from the Calls page. #### What to pair it with Recording is only as good as the calls that reach it, so the first pairing is the VoIP softphone and click to call, which makes every outbound call a recorded, logged call by default. The second is tracking phone numbers, which is how inbound calls arrive with a lead source attached and land on the right lead, so the transcript of a call from the store's newspaper number and the transcript of a call from its website number can be compared side by side. Pair it with call forwarding and ring lists so inbound calls ring the right salesperson and get recorded on the way through, and with the reports dashboard, where activity by user counts the calls a transcript review then explains. And for the manager who wants a summary rather than a full read, Jax, the AI assistant in the CRM taskbar, is the place to ask a question about a lead's history. The all features page shows where recording and transcription sit among everything else in the platform. #### Built so your store keeps selling Call recording is built so your store keeps selling and so nothing a customer said ever goes missing. Every call on the store's tracking numbers and the browser softphone is captured the moment it ends, stored on the Calls page and on the lead's timeline, and kept permanently, because records are archived and never deleted. A call from last week opens as quickly as the one that just finished, and the written transcript sits beside it, so a manager can read a conversation in a minute instead of listening to twenty. Inbound calls ring the phones on your ring list, and those handsets and cells stay the store's own, as do your published line, your DMS and your website. Each product you use is its own application under one login. If you want a person to walk the Calls page with you, the contact page reaches one. #### Questions and answers Q: Is call recording and transcription an app I install on my phone? A: No. Recording happens on the call path itself, so an outbound call from the softphone, a triggered call to a rep's cell and an inbound call to a tracking number are all recorded without an app doing the recording. The LeadLocate mobile app shows the results under Call Logs. Q: Does it work on iPhone and Android? A: Yes. Because the recording is made on the line rather than by the handset, the rep's phone type does not matter. The LeadLocate mobile app is available for both, and Call Logs shows the recorded calls on either. Q: Do I have to record every call? A: No. Record this call is a switch on the softphone, so a store can leave it on for everything or turn it off for a specific call. Many stores record everything and announce it in the rep's opening line. Q: Is the transcript produced by AI? A: Yes. The transcript is generated from the recording the first time somebody opens it from the call row, then stored with the call. It reads as a plain conversation and opens in a lightbox next to the audio. Q: Who can listen to a recording? A: That follows the CRM's user roles. A salesperson sees their own calls; a Manager or Master Administrator sees the store's. Recordings are stored against the lead, so access to the lead is access to its calls. Q: Which plan do I need? A: Recording and transcription are part of every LeadLocate plan, including CRM Only, with no per transcript charge. The pricing page lists the plans. ### Caller ID Lookup and Contact Validation Dots URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/caller-id-and-contact-validation LeadLocate CRM looks up the caller's name on every inbound call, lets a salesperson verify their own office or cell number to show as outbound caller ID, and runs the Phone Validator and Email Validator whose results appear as validity dots on each lead. Reps know who is calling and whether a contact is reachable before dialing. All of it is part of every LeadLocate plan. #### Three small tools that decide whether a call is worth making This page covers three related features in LeadLocate CRM that share one job: knowing who is on the other end of the phone. Caller ID name lookup puts a name on an inbound call before anyone answers. Caller ID verification lets a salesperson prove they own a number and then show it as the outbound caller ID instead of the store's tracking number. And contact validation, the Phone Validator and the Email Validator, checks whether a phone number and an email address on a lead are real and reachable, with the answer shown as a dot beside each one on the lead itself. None of the three is glamorous, and every one of them saves a rep minutes a day. A rep who sees a name on the inbound screen answers with it. A rep whose regular customers recognize her office number gets her calls picked up. A rep who sees that a lead's phone is a disconnected line texts the email instead of dialing four times and logging four no answers. Small things, forty times a day, across a floor. The Phone Validator and Email Validator pages cover each validation tool on its own. This page is the view from the lead in LeadLocate CRM, where the three come together. #### How a BDC rep uses it on a normal shift A BDC rep opens a batch of forty overnight leads at eight. Before she dials a single one, she runs the batch through the Phone Validator from Marketing Tools on the dock. The results come back on each lead as a dot next to the phone number. Nine are flagged: a couple of disconnected lines, several landlines that will never receive the text she planned to send, and one number that already sits on the store's do not call list. She works the thirty one clean ones first, texts the landline leads' email addresses instead, and never wastes a dial on a dead line. At ten the store's tracking number rings her desk. The inbound alert already shows a name, looked up from the caller ID, and it matches a lead from last week who was waiting on a trade value. She answers with his name and the trade figure on her screen, and the call is thirty seconds shorter and considerably warmer than it would have been starting from hello, who is this. At two she calls back a repeat customer who has bought three cars from her and screens every unfamiliar number. Her outbound caller ID is her verified office line, the one he has saved in his phone, so he picks up. The call is still placed from the softphone, still recorded, still logged on the lead. The only thing that changed is the number he saw. #### Caller ID name lookup on every inbound call When a call arrives on one of the store's tracking numbers, the CRM looks up the name registered to the calling number and attaches it to the call. It shows on the inbound call alert screen in the LeadLocate mobile app and in the Caller ID column on the Calls page, so a manager scanning the log sees names rather than a column of area codes. If the number belongs to a lead the store already has, the call lands on that lead's timeline with the rest of the conversation; if it does not, the name gives the rep who answered a head start on creating the lead. The lookup runs on the call path, not in the rep's handset, which is why it works the same whether the call was answered on a desk phone, a cell on the ring list or the app. It is also why the log has a name on calls nobody answered: a missed call at nine at night shows who it was in the morning. #### Verified caller ID for outbound calls By default, a call placed from the softphone shows the store's tracking number as the caller ID, which is the right default: a callback comes to a tracked, recorded line that rings the store's forwarding list rather than a personal phone. But there are reps and stores that want a specific number shown. A finance manager whose customers have his direct office line saved. A store that wants the main published number on outbound calls so it matches the sign. A rep who works from her cell and wants callbacks there. Caller ID verification handles that without letting anyone spoof a number they do not control. The rep starts the verification for the number, proves they can answer it, and from then on it appears as a choice when placing a call: show the LeadLocate line, the office line or the verified cell. The call is still placed and bridged by the CRM, still recorded, and still logged on the lead. The only difference is what the customer's phone displays. The VoIP softphone and click to call page covers the calling side of that. #### Phone Validator and Email Validator, and the dots on the lead The Phone Validator and Email Validator are two separate tools under Marketing Tools on the dock, and they also appear in the Billing and Admin menu. The Phone Validator takes a list of numbers, or a single one, under Phone Number Lookup, and returns whether each is valid, the line type, the carrier and whether it appears on a do not call registry, with a Phone Lookup History of every batch the store has run. The Email Validator does the same for addresses, catching typos, dead domains and disposable inboxes before a campaign goes out to them. The results do not stay in the tool. Each lead carries a validity dot beside its phone number and another beside its email, so a rep opening the lead sees at a glance whether either has been checked and what came back. That is the difference between a validator a marketing manager runs once a quarter and one the floor actually uses. A rep with a lead whose phone dot says the number is bad chooses a different channel instead of discovering it on the fourth attempt. The dots also change how a store thinks about lead volume. Every lead in the store's zone is delivered, and the store's own validation shows, per lead, which contact methods are real, which is a far more useful thing to know than a vendor's opinion of lead quality. The what to expect from car sales leads page explains how leads arrive and why a lead with a typo in the email is still a lead worth working through the phone. #### What it replaces and what a store pays for it elsewhere Phone and email validation are normally bought from a data vendor, per lookup, uploaded as a spreadsheet and downloaded as another spreadsheet that never makes it back into the CRM. Caller ID name lookup is a per call charge from the phone vendor, if the phone vendor offers it. Verified outbound caller ID is a support ticket. Three features, three vendors, none of them visible on the lead. In LeadLocate all three are features of the CRM and part of every plan, and the results live on the lead where a rep will see them. There is no per lookup invoice to reconcile and no spreadsheet round trip. A store that uses a separate data vendor and phone vendor today can bring both jobs into the CRM, and validation and caller ID come built into each lead plan on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: validation is a do not call check too Validation is a cost saver first, but it is also the store's first line on outbound calling rules. The Phone Validator flags numbers on a do not call registry, and the CRM's DNC Blacklist holds the store's own list of numbers never to contact, with a live do not call lookup and a two way inbound spam block. A store that validates a list before a bulk text or a call campaign has a record of having checked it, and a number the store was told to stop calling stays stopped. The do not call scrub and blacklist page walks through the blacklist itself. Line type matters for the same reason. A landline receives no text messages, and a store that sends a bulk text to a list full of landlines has wasted the send and learned nothing. Knowing the line type before the campaign is the difference between a text that arrives and one that vanishes. Verified caller ID is a compliance feature in its own right. A customer should see a number that belongs to the store or the rep, that can be called back, and that reaches a person. The verification step is what makes that true: no number appears as caller ID unless someone at the store proved they control it. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Caller ID name lookup is on for every inbound call on a tracking number from the day the account is created; there is nothing to set. Verified caller ID starts from the softphone: choose the number to verify, complete the verification, and it becomes an option on every call afterward. The validators are on the dock under Marketing Tools, and a single lead's phone or email can be checked from the lead itself, with the dot updating when the result returns. Anything beyond that, a validation run on every new lead automatically for instance, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair the validators with bulk texting and bulk email, since a validated list is what makes a campaign land. Pair caller ID lookup with tracking phone numbers and call forwarding and ring lists, which are the lines the lookup runs on. And pair verified caller ID with the softphone, where the choice is made on every call. The all features page shows where these sit among everything else in the platform. #### Built so your store keeps selling Caller ID and contact validation are built so your store keeps selling. Inbound calls to your tracking numbers ring the store's phones with the caller's name attached, so whoever picks up knows who is on the line before they say hello, and a salesperson who verified their own office or cell shows that number on the way out. Validity dots are stored with the lead itself, so a number checked last month is still marked when a rep opens the record next quarter, and a new batch through the Phone Validator or the Email Validator updates them in place. Your handsets, your published line, your DMS and your website stay the store's own, and each product you use is its own application under one login. If you want a person to run the first validation pass with you, the contact page reaches one. #### Questions and answers Q: What do the validity dots on a lead mean? A: One dot sits beside the phone number and one beside the email on each lead. Each shows whether that contact method has been checked and what the Phone Validator or Email Validator found, so a rep knows before dialing whether the number is live and before sending whether the address is real. Q: Does the Phone Validator check the do not call registry? A: Yes. Results include a do not call flag alongside the line type and carrier, and the CRM's DNC Blacklist adds the store's own never contact list with a live lookup. Together they are the check a store runs before a call or text campaign. Q: Can a salesperson show their own number as caller ID? A: Yes, after verifying it. The rep proves they can answer the office or cell number, and it then appears as a choice on every outbound call beside the store's tracking number. Calls are still placed, recorded and logged by the CRM. Q: Where does the caller's name come from on an inbound call? A: From a lookup of the name registered to the calling number, attached to the call on the way in. It shows on the inbound alert screen in the mobile app and in the Caller ID column on the Calls page, whether or not the call was answered. Q: Is validation a per lookup charge? A: No. The Phone Validator, Email Validator, caller ID lookup and caller ID verification are part of every LeadLocate plan, including all of the lead plans on the pricing page. Q: Does validation filter or score my leads? A: No. Every lead in the store's zone is delivered. Validation tells the store, per lead, which contact methods are real, so the rep picks the right channel. A lead with a bad email and a good phone is a phone call, not a rejected lead. ### Compliance Disclosures and Privacy Notices per Store URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/compliance-disclosures-and-privacy-notices SecureWebX lets each dealership manage its own compliance language: state specific disclosures that are added, edited and deleted per state and shown on credit applications, a privacy notice and terms editor per company, disclosures per apply link with required acknowledgment, and forced terms acceptance for every console user. Applicant consent is captured against versioned terms. It is part of every LeadLocate platform plan. #### What are compliance disclosures and privacy notices in SecureWebX? Every credit application a dealership takes carries language the store is responsible for: the credit authorization, the state specific disclosures the store's counsel requires, the privacy notice that tells the applicant what the store does with their information, and the terms under which the application is submitted. In most stores that language lives in a folder of PDFs, a website footer and the memory of whoever set up the last vendor. In SecureWebX it lives in the console, under the store's own control, and it appears on every application the store's apply links produce. Four things make up the feature. State specific disclosures are added, edited and deleted per state, and shown on credit applications. A privacy notice and terms editor lets each company keep its own notice and its own terms current, with formatting. Disclosures can also be added to an individual apply link, with acknowledgment required before the applicant continues. And every user of the console is required to accept the terms before they work, so the store's own people are on the record too. Underneath all of it, the applicant's consent is captured against versioned terms, so the exact language each customer agreed to is kept with their application. This page is the product side. The dealership compliance document management page covers the wider problem of where a store's documents and consent records go wrong and how a secure intake layer fixes the trail. #### How a store manages its disclosures on a normal day The store's compliance counsel sends an updated paragraph for the disclosure the store shows applicants in one of the two states it sells into. The office manager opens the SecureWebX console, goes to Compliance Settings, finds that state's entry under State-specific disclosures, pastes the new language into the editor, tidies it with a heading and a bulleted list, and saves. From that moment the application shows the new language to applicants in that state. The old language is not gone: every applicant who signed under it has their consent recorded against that version. The same afternoon the special finance manager asks for an extra disclosure on the special finance apply link only, a short acknowledgment about the documents the store may request. The office manager opens that link's customizer, adds the disclosure, sets it to require acknowledgment, and saves. The website link is untouched. The following week a new finance manager joins; on first sign in to the console she is asked to read and accept the terms before she can open an application, and her acceptance is recorded with the date. None of that involved a support ticket, a vendor, or a wait. That is the difference between a compliance record a store owns and one it rents. #### State specific disclosures: add, edit, delete, show on applications Dealerships that sell across a state line, or that draw from a neighboring state's buyers, deal with disclosure requirements that differ by state. Under State-specific disclosures the store adds a disclosure, selects the state, gives it an optional title such as a state name followed by the word disclosure, writes the language in the editor and chooses whether to show it on credit applications. A disclosure is edited when counsel changes it and deleted when it no longer applies. The editor supports bold, italic, underline, headings, bulleted and numbered lists and links, so the language reads the way counsel wrote it rather than as a wall of text. Disclosures shown on credit applications are presented to the applicant on the review step, alongside the standard credit authorization and the e-signature. What the applicant sees and agrees to is recorded against the version in force at that moment. The online credit application form page walks the five steps the applicant works through, including where the disclosures appear. #### A privacy notice and terms editor for each company The store's privacy notice and terms are edited in the same console, per company. A dealer group with several rooftops keeps each store's notice separate; a single store keeps one. The editor is the same one used for disclosures, and the notice and terms it produces are what applicants and console users see. The store's own privacy policy and terms of service URLs can be recorded on the company as well, so the notice in the application and the policy on the website point to the same thing. The point of doing this in the console, rather than in a vendor's template, is ownership. A store's counsel decides what the privacy notice says. The console makes it possible to change the language the day counsel sends it, and to know exactly which version every applicant saw. Software supports a compliance program, it does not write one, and this editor is where the store's own program gets put in front of the customer. #### Disclosures per apply link, and the compliance library Some disclosures belong to a path rather than a state. A special finance link might carry an acknowledgment about documentation; an event link might carry the terms of the event. Each apply link is customized separately, and a disclosure added to a link appears only on that link's application. The customizer draws from a compliance library, so a disclosure written once is added to another link from the library rather than retyped. The drawn signatures and the credit authorization are always included on every link, whatever else the store adds. A disclosure on a link can be set to require acknowledgment. The applicant does not continue past it without acknowledging, and the acknowledgment is captured with the consent. The customizer also states the store's compliance responsibility plainly, because the language on a link is the store's language. The apply links page covers everything else a link can carry, from extra sections to document uploads. #### Forced terms acceptance for every user, and versioned consent underneath it all Two mechanisms hold the record together. The first is forced terms acceptance: every user of the console, from the dealer principal to a newly invited salesperson, is required to read and accept the terms before working in it. The acceptance is recorded, so the store's own people are on the record for the conditions under which they handle applicant data. When terms change, acceptance is required again. The second is versioned consent on the applicant side. Every application ends with an e-signature and consent capture against the terms and disclosures in force at that moment. When the store changes a disclosure, SecureWebX keeps the exact prior version each earlier applicant agreed to, and when. A question about what a specific applicant consented to, asked months or years later, has a specific answer. Combined with the archive, never delete rule, the full audit log and a watermarked PDF viewer with print and download gated, this is the record keeping layer a compliance program relies on. #### Where it lives, and what it replaces Everything on this page lives in the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login. State disclosures, the privacy notice and the terms are under Compliance Settings. Per link disclosures are in each link's Customize application screen. Terms acceptance meets each user at sign in. Users are invited with roles, so a store decides who may edit compliance language. It replaces the folder of disclosure PDFs with three versions of the same document, the paper application with a disclosure block that was last updated when the forms were printed, the website privacy page that says one thing while the application says another, and the vendor ticket to change a sentence. It also replaces a purchase: compliance vendors sell disclosure and consent management to dealerships as a separate module with its own invoice. Here it is part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, on the pricing page. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with There is nothing to install. The console is created with your LeadLocate account, the standard credit authorization and signature are already on every apply link, and the store adds its state disclosures, privacy notice and terms from Compliance Settings whenever counsel is ready. If your store needs a disclosure behaviour the console does not already offer, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. SecureWebX is its own application under one login, so every apply link a salesperson sends keeps showing the store's disclosures and keeps capturing consent exactly as counsel wrote them. Pair the disclosures with adverse action notices, so the language a declined applicant receives is the language counsel approved. Pair the privacy notice with the store's consent records on every application, which the online credit application software page puts in the wider context of what an application system should do. The all features page lists everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I add a disclosure for one state only? A: Yes. Under Compliance Settings, add a disclosure, select the state, write the language in the editor and choose to show it on credit applications. Edit it when counsel changes it and delete it when it no longer applies. Q: Who writes the disclosure and privacy language? A: Your store, on the advice of its compliance counsel. SecureWebX provides the editor, shows the language on every application, captures consent against it and keeps every version. It does not decide what the language must say. Q: What happens to consent records when I change a disclosure? A: Nothing is lost. Applicant consent is captured against versioned terms, so every earlier applicant's consent stays tied to the exact version they agreed to, with the date. New applicants see the new version. Q: Can a disclosure apply to one apply link and not another? A: Yes. Each apply link is customized separately, and a disclosure added to a link appears only on that link's application. It can require acknowledgment before the applicant continues, and it can be reused from the compliance library. Q: What is forced terms acceptance? A: Every console user is required to read and accept the terms before working in SecureWebX, and the acceptance is recorded. When the terms change, acceptance is required again, so the store's own people are on the record. Q: Is this an extra module? A: No. Disclosures, the privacy notice and terms editor, per link disclosures and terms acceptance are part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. Plans are listed on the pricing page. ### Connect Your Own Ad Accounts to the CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/connect-your-own-ad-accounts Connecting your own ad accounts is the second path in Leads Manager inside LeadLocate CRM. Instead of the managed webXintel Ads Network, a dealership connects ad accounts it already holds on the Connections screen, plans campaigns in Leads Manager as usual, and our team runs them through those accounts. The accounts, their history and their billing stay the store's, and the leads land in the LeadLocate CRM. #### What connecting your own ad accounts does, in one sentence It lets a dealership that already holds advertising accounts connect them to Leads Manager, so campaigns planned in LeadLocate CRM run through the store's own accounts rather than through the managed network, with the accounts, the history and the relationship with the network staying in the store's name. It is the bring your own accounts path, and it exists because not every store wants the same thing from advertising. Some want the media handled entirely for them, which is the webXintel Ads Network. Others already have accounts with years of history, an agency on retainer, a franchise co op arrangement, or a strong preference for one network, and want all of that to keep working while the plan and the leads move into the CRM. Under both paths sits the same advertising library inside the LeadLocate CRM: provider agnostic, with twenty networks registered against it and one adapter per network. The difference between the paths is only whose credentials a campaign uses. On the managed path, ours. On this one, yours, connected on the Connections screen in Leads Manager, stored encrypted, and used by our team to run the campaign you planned. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day A used car superstore has run its own social advertising for three years. The account has history the store does not want to lose and a business manager who knows it. What the store does not have is a way to get the leads into the CRM without an export, or a way for the sales manager to plan a campaign without learning an ad console. The marketing manager opens Leads Manager, goes to Connections, authorizes the store's account, and it appears as connected. The sales manager draws the zone and sets the offers in Leads Manager exactly as he would on the managed path. The campaign then goes to the connected account, where our team launches and manages it from the store's selections, ad set and offers included. The leads land in the CRM inbox with their source attached, round robin hands them out, and Automated Templates send the first text. The marketing manager still sees the campaign in the account she has always used; the sales manager sees it in the CRM he has always used; the general manager sees what it produced in Reports beside every other source. Nobody exported a spreadsheet. A solo salesperson with a small account of their own does the same thing at a smaller scale, which the car salesman CRM page covers: connect the account, plan in Leads Manager, work the leads in the same CRM. #### Where it lives: the Connections screen in Leads Manager Connections is a screen inside Leads Manager in the desktop CRM. It lists the networks the advertising library knows about, the status of each for your store, and the accounts you have connected. Connecting one is an authorization with the network, after which the store's token is stored encrypted at rest and the network shows as connected. Disconnecting is a click on the same screen, and campaigns already created keep the credentials that created them, so a later disconnect leaves nothing stranded. Which networks are live, which are being wired up and which are registered but waiting is not something to take on faith. The integrations directory on this site publishes a status per platform, each with the test behind it, derived from the live adapters rather than typed by hand, with a page per network such as Meta Ads and Google Ads. A network your store has not connected yet is available on request; the Connections screen records the demand per platform, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Two paths, one plan: what changes when the accounts are yours The plan is the same on either path. A campaign in Leads Manager is a zone drawn in the zone editor, a set of offers, and the channels the store wants, and the Leads Manager page covers that builder in detail. What changes is ownership of the media relationship. On the bring your own accounts path, the ad account is the store's, the billing relationship with the network is the store's, the account history stays with the store, and any agency or franchise arrangement built around that account keeps working. The CRM becomes the place where the plan is made and the leads are worked, not a replacement for the account. On the managed path, the webXintel Ads Network, the store makes the same selections and our team handles the media through the managed network, with no account for the store to hold. Many stores use both: the managed network for the zone campaigns that bring in new buyers and sellers, and a connected account for the event or brand campaigns the store has always run itself. Both land in the same inbox with a source attached, and both are measured by the same Reports dashboard, which is the argument for putting either one in the CRM at all. #### What happens on a push, and who does what When a campaign is pushed to a connected account, the library creates the campaign and its ad set in that account, paused. Our team then completes it, the creative, the form, the final checks, and brings it live from the selections the store made in Leads Manager. The store decides the zone, the offers, the channels and whether the campaign starts or stops, in Leads Manager and in conversation with us. Our team runs the media. That division is the same on both paths and is deliberate: a store gets a campaign that follows its plan without a manager learning a new console, and the store's account is never touched by anyone who has not read that plan. Leads from a connected account come into the CRM the same way every other lead does, as a lead in the inbox with its source attached, brought in by our team as part of running the campaign. From there the CRM does what it does with any lead: round robin or distribution rules assign it, Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes work it, and the communications log records every touch. The store is never asked to reconcile a lead export against its CRM, because there is no export. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere It replaces the lead export. A store running its own advertising typically downloads leads from the ad console, or has a third party automation tool move them, and then someone imports them into the CRM, hours or days after the shopper raised a hand, at which point half of them have bought elsewhere. Every step in that chain is a place a lead gets lost and a bill from a different vendor. It also replaces the agency login problem, where the agency holds the account and the store holds its breath, and the reverse, where the store shares its own credentials with whoever is running the campaign this quarter. With the account connected on the Connections screen, the store's credentials are stored encrypted, every action taken with them is written to an append only audit log, and the store can disconnect any time. Connecting an account is included with the plans that include leads on the pricing page, month to month; there is no per network fee for the connection itself. The media spend on a connected account is the store's own arrangement with that network, exactly as it was before. #### The compliance angle: your credentials, an audit trail, and fair lending A connected ad account is a credential, and a credential deserves to be treated like one. Dealer tokens are encrypted at rest. Every action the library takes with them is written to an append only audit log, so a store can see what was done with its account and when. Campaign objects keep the credentials that created them, so disconnecting an account later does not orphan a campaign that is running. And disconnecting is the store's decision, made on the same screen where the account was connected. Fair lending applies on this path exactly as on the managed one. A financing campaign is advertising for credit, and the rules forbid narrowing an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP. Those controls are locked for a financing campaign in Leads Manager whichever account it runs through, and our team runs it that way. A store connecting its own account does not get a way around that, and should be suspicious of any vendor promising one. There are no guarantees on lead counts or results either; what changes with a connected account is who owns the account, not what a consumer decides to do. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with A store on a plan that includes leads opens Leads Manager, goes to Connections, and authorizes the account it wants to connect. Once it shows as connected, campaigns planned in Leads Manager go to it, and our team launches and manages every one of them from the store's selections. A network your store has not switched on yet is available on request; the request is recorded and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The help center article shows the screen and the clicks. Pair it with Leads Manager itself, where the zone and the offers are decided; with Lead Feeds Manager, so the connected account's leads get their own feed and their own Automated Templates; and with the Reports dashboard, where a connected account and the managed network are judged by the same numbers. If you would rather see it before signing up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the CRM in use, and the contact page reaches a person who can look at the accounts your store already holds and tell you what connecting them would change. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I have to use the webXintel Ads Network, or can I use my own accounts? A: Either. The webXintel Ads Network is the managed path. Connecting your own ad accounts on the Connections screen in Leads Manager is the second path, and the campaign plan, the inbox and the reports are the same on both. Many stores use both. Q: Who owns the ad account after I connect it? A: You do. The account, its history and your billing relationship with the network stay in your store's name. Your token is stored encrypted, every action with it is written to an append only audit log, and you can disconnect on the same screen at any time. Q: What happens when a campaign is pushed to my account? A: It is built in your own account, ad set and all, and our team launches and manages it from the selections you made in Leads Manager. You decide the zone, the offers and the channels, and our team runs the media and keeps it working for the store. Q: How do the leads get into the CRM? A: As part of running the campaign, our team brings each lead into your CRM inbox with its source attached, where round robin, Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes take over. There is no lead export to download and import. Q: Which networks can I connect? A: The integrations directory on this site publishes a status per network, each with the test behind it. A network your store has not switched on yet is available on request; the Connections screen records the demand and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: Does connecting an account cost extra? A: No. It is included with the LeadLocate plans that include leads, month to month, listed on the pricing page. Your media spend on a connected account remains your own arrangement with that network. ### Contact Import: Bring Your Book of Business With You URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/contact-import Contact import in LeadLocate CRM is the Import Contacts page under Contacts: choose a CSV, name the list, and upload. Headers are detected automatically and columns can be in any order, so a spreadsheet from a previous CRM, a DMS export or an event sheet loads without reformatting. Lists can be assigned round robin, renamed, and used for bulk texting and bulk email. #### What contact import does Contact import is how a dealership, or a single salesperson, brings the people they already know into LeadLocate CRM. The Import Contacts page takes a CSV file, reads its headers, and creates a named contact list from it. There is no column mapping wizard to get through, because headers are auto detected and columns can be in any order. A file exported from a previous CRM, a customer export from the DMS, a sign up sheet from a tent sale typed into a spreadsheet, or a rep's personal book of business all load the same way: choose the file, name the list, upload. The list is the unit. Each import creates or adds to a list with a List Name, a record count and a date updated, and the Active Contact Lists table on the same page shows every list the account holds. Lists can be renamed by double clicking the name or using the pencil, and Add More appends a second file to an existing list. Because the contacts land in lists, the store can act on a list as a whole: text it, email it, or spread it across the sales team with the Round Robin assignment option at upload time. This is the product side of a subject the older pages cover from the buying angle: what a dealership CRM should do with the customers it already has. The auto dealer software and CRM page describes the whole system; this page is the door the book of business walks through. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day A store switches to LeadLocate at the start of a month. The internet director exports the active customers from the old CRM as a CSV, which comes out with the old system's column names in the old system's order. She opens Contacts, clicks Manage & Import Contacts, chooses the file, names the list after the old system, and uploads. The page reports the upload was successful and the list shows its record count. Nobody spent an afternoon renaming column headers to match a template. The same week, the used car manager brings a spreadsheet of every customer who bought a used vehicle from the store in the last three years, because he wants to run a trade up campaign. He imports it as a list named for the campaign and ticks Round Robin assignment, so the names spread evenly across the six reps in rotation rather than sitting in one queue. Each rep now has a share of past customers to call, and the manager can see who is calling theirs. A new salesperson starts on the 15th with a book of business from his last store, several hundred contacts on his phone exported to a CSV. He imports them as his own list. Then, before anyone sends a message, the store runs the Phone Validator and Email Validator over the new lists, so the validity dots on each contact show which numbers and addresses are worth the message, and runs the lists against the Do Not Call Blacklist so a customer who asked the store to stop is not on the first campaign. By the end of the month the store has its past customers, its campaign list and its new rep's book in the CRM, in lists that can be filtered, texted and reported on. #### Where it lives in the CRM Import lives under Contacts in the main menu. The Contacts view has a Manage & Import Contacts button, and the Import Contacts page it opens has two halves: the CSV Upload panel, where a file is chosen and a list is named or an existing list is picked, and the Active Contact Lists table, which shows every list with its record count and date updated and offers rename and Add More on each row. The page suggests a clear name for the list, along the lines of Spring Service Leads or April Internet Customers, because a list named Sheet1 is a list nobody uses. Imported contacts appear in the Contacts view like any other contact, and the same contact tools apply: a contact can be converted to a lead, merged with a duplicate through Merge Duplicate Records, blacklisted, or opened into a Customer Profile. On the phone app, reps see their contacts and can text, call or email them from the dock, so an imported book of business is reachable from the lot the day it is loaded. Lists are also the recipient lists for Bulk Texting and Bulk Email on the Marketing Tools dock, which is where most imported lists end up being used. #### What it replaces, and what a stranded book costs The alternative to importing is the situation most stores are in: the customers live in three places, none of which is the CRM. The DMS has everyone who bought, but the DMS is not where anyone sends a text. The old CRM has the leads that did not buy, and its export is a chore nobody finished. And each rep's phone has the customers who actually answer, which walk out the door with the rep. A store that wants to run a trade up campaign has to reconstruct its own customer list from all three, which is why most trade up campaigns never happen. Some CRMs charge for data migration as a professional service, quoted per record, and take weeks. Others accept an import only in their own template, which means an afternoon in a spreadsheet moving columns and fixing headers before the file is accepted, and a second afternoon when the first upload is rejected. Import Contacts detects headers and accepts columns in any order, so the file the old system produced is the file that loads. The cost of moving the book of business drops to the time it takes to export it. The quieter cost is the rep's personal book. A salesperson who keeps customers on a personal phone has no way to run a campaign, no history the store can see, and no backup. Importing that book as a list in the CRM gives the rep bulk texting, a communications log and a record that survives a lost phone, and gives the store continuity when the rep moves on. The car salesman personal websites page describes the rest of what a rep gets as an individual on the platform. #### What should a store do with a list once it is in? An imported list is raw material, and three tools turn it into something. First, validate it. The Phone Validator and Email Validator are separate tools in the CRM, and their results appear as validity dots on each contact, so a rep looking at a list knows which numbers are live before dialing and which addresses will bounce before sending. Second, clean it. Merge Duplicate Records catches the past customer who is already in the CRM from a lead last month, and the DNC Blacklist removes anyone who asked the store to stop. Third, use it. Bulk texting and bulk email both take a list as their recipient set, with trackable short links in the texts so the store can see who clicked. Round robin at upload is the fourth tool, and it is the one that turns a list into work. A list spread across the team is a list every rep has a stake in; a list sitting under one login is a list that gets called when that person has time. The round robin lead assignment page covers how the rotation is set per user, which is what decides who receives a share of an imported list. #### The compliance angle: imported does not mean consented A list on a spreadsheet carries no memory of how it was collected, and a store should treat it accordingly. Customers who bought from the store have a relationship with it; a purchased list or a list of unknown origin may not. Before a list is texted, the store should know that the people on it gave the store their number in connection with a purchase or an inquiry. Import Contacts makes the list usable; it does not make the list consented, and a vendor who says otherwise is not doing the store a favor. The CRM gives the store the tools to act responsibly with what it imports. The Do Not Call Blacklist accepts its own import, a CSV of name, phone and email, so a store's existing do not contact list loads alongside its customer list, and blacklisted contacts are hidden from every CRM view no matter which list they came in on. A live do not call lookup on a number checks it against the national registry before a call is placed. Every text and email sent to an imported contact is written to the communications log, so the store's record of what it sent, to whom and when, starts with the first message. And a customer who replies asking the store to stop is added to the blacklist from the contact, which removes them from every list at once. #### How to turn it on and run the first import Import Contacts is available from the first day of the account. Export a CSV from the system the contacts live in now, or save a spreadsheet as CSV. Open Contacts, click Manage & Import Contacts, click Choose CSV and select the file. Give the list a clear name, or pick an existing list to append to, and decide whether to tick Round Robin assignment. Click upload. The page confirms success, and the list appears in Active Contact Lists with its record count. Then validate, then clean, then use, in that order. If the file the old system produced is unusual, such as a fixed width export or a multi sheet workbook, or if the store wants an ongoing import from a system that exports on a schedule, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The contact page is the place to describe the source. For the store that is leaving another CRM, a description of what the old system exports is usually all our team needs. #### What to pair it with Import is the beginning; the features that follow it are what the book of business is for. The Phone Validator and Email Validator tell the store which contacts are reachable. Merge duplicate leads keeps one record per customer once the import meets the leads already in the CRM. Bulk texting is the campaign the list was imported for. And the Do Not Call Blacklist is the list that runs against every other list. Contact import is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only, which is the plan built for a store or a salesperson bringing their own customers without LeadLocate lead delivery. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where import sits among everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What file format does contact import accept? A: A CSV file. Headers are detected automatically and columns can be in any order, so an export from a previous CRM, a DMS or a spreadsheet loads without reformatting. Save a spreadsheet as CSV and upload it from the Import Contacts page. Q: Where is the Import Contacts page? A: Under Contacts in the main menu. Click Manage and Import Contacts, then Choose CSV, name the list or pick an existing one, and upload. The list appears in Active Contact Lists with its record count. Q: Can imported contacts be split across my salespeople? A: Yes. Tick Round Robin assignment at upload and the contacts are divided evenly across the users in the rotation, so a list of past customers becomes a call list for the whole team. Q: Can I add to a list later? A: Yes. Each list in Active Contact Lists has an Add More option that appends another CSV to it, and lists can be renamed at any time by double clicking the name or using the pencil. Q: How do I know which imported numbers and emails are good? A: Run the Phone Validator and Email Validator over the list. Results show as validity dots on each contact, so reps see which numbers are live and which addresses will bounce before sending anything. Q: Is contact import an extra cost? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Credit Application Inbox and Pipeline URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/credit-application-inbox The credit application inbox is where every application your dealership receives through SecureWebX lands and is worked. Each application carries a status, an assignee, an amount, notes and its email thread, and the pipeline view shows the whole finance office's work by stage. It opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock and is part of every plan. #### What is the credit application inbox? The credit application inbox is the working list of every application your store has received, and the pipeline is that same list arranged by stage. Both live in the SecureWebX dealer console. An application arrives from an apply link, appears in the inbox with a status, and from there it is assigned, worked, shared with a lender, decisioned and exported, with every one of those steps recorded on the application itself. The reason a store needs this, rather than a mailbox, is that a credit application is not a message. It is a file with a life cycle. It has an owner, an amount, a set of documents, a lender waiting on it, stipulations outstanding, a decision and a notice. Email can hold the first of those and none of the rest. The inbox holds all of them, and the pipeline shows the finance office where each file is in that cycle. The dealership CRM with credit application page explains the case for keeping the application system under the same login as the CRM. This page is about the inbox itself: what an application carries, how a finance office works it on a normal day, and what happens next. #### How a finance office works the inbox on a normal day The finance manager opens the console at 8:30. The Financing Dashboard shows live badges: how many applications are in, how many are unassigned, applications by status. Three came in overnight from the website apply link. She opens the first, reads the notes the salesperson left, sets the amount requested and assigns it to herself. The second is a co-applicant deal from the special finance link with a pay stub already uploaded; she assigns it to the special finance manager, who sees it appear in his list. The third is thin on income detail, so she adds a note and sends the customer an email from the application's own thread asking for what is missing. Mid morning a lender responds through the lender portal on an application she shared yesterday. The response lands on the application, the status moves, and she records a stipulation for proof of residence. At two o'clock the salesperson on that deal asks where it stands. She does not have to search anything. The application shows the stage, the assignee, the lender share, the outstanding stip and the last note, and the salesperson can see the same thing from the CRM by opening the application in SecureWebX. By close, the pipeline shows every application by stage and the dashboard badges are back where she wants them. Nothing depended on remembering a thread in a personal mailbox, which is the failure mode of every store that runs credit through email. #### What does each application in the inbox carry? Every application in the inbox has a status, an assignee, an amount, notes and an email thread. The status is the pipeline stage, changed with Change pipeline stage as the file moves. The assignee is set with Change assignee, and an application nobody has picked up shows as unassigned so it cannot quietly age. The amount requested is set on the application so the pipeline reads in dollars, not only in counts. Notes are a running log: a call, an update, next steps, whatever the person working the file wants the next person to know. The email thread is the correspondence with the customer, sent from the application itself through the console's Mailbox. Around those five things sit the rest of the record. The application shows which apply link it came from. Supporting documents attach to the submission. Stipulations are tracked on the application and fulfilled by upload. Send to Lender shares are listed with their access status. OFAC screening runs against the record. Worksheets attach and detach. An audit log on the application records who viewed, edited, shared and exported it. Searching the inbox by applicant, email or reference finds a file in seconds. #### Where does the inbox live: the console, the dashboard and the CRM dock The inbox lives in the SecureWebX dealer console, which opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login. The console opens on the dashboard with its live badges, then Applications for the inbox and Pipeline for the stage view. Users are invited into the console with roles, so a salesperson sees what a salesperson should and the finance office sees the rest. The CRM side sees the inbox too, in the way that matters to a salesperson. Completed applications and abandoned applications both flow back to the LeadLocate CRM, so the rep working the lead knows an application was started or finished without asking the finance office. A rep who wants the detail opens the application in SecureWebX from the CRM. The abandoned credit application follow up page covers what a rep does with a started and unfinished application. SecureWebX is its own application under one login, so the inbox is always there for the finance office and applications keep arriving from every apply link the store has sent. Anything worked in the console is retained; records are archived, never deleted. #### What does the inbox replace? It replaces the shared finance email inbox where applications arrive as attachments and age in whichever order the mail client sorts them. It replaces the spreadsheet somebody built to track which lender has which deal, the one that is accurate on the day it is updated and wrong every other day. It replaces the folder of paper applications on the corner of the desk, and the photographs of those applications on personal phones. It replaces the question, asked several times a day in most stores, of who has that deal. It also replaces a purchase. Stores that want a real application pipeline usually buy a separate finance tool with its own login and invoice. The inbox is part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, on the pricing page. The online credit application software page compares the category if you are weighing that separate purchase. #### The compliance angle: who touched the file, and when A credit application is the most sensitive document a dealership handles, and the inbox is built around that fact. Two factor authentication runs on every sign in. Application data is encrypted at rest. A full audit log on each application records who viewed, edited, shared and exported it, alongside a security log for the account. PDFs open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated, so an application opened from the inbox carries a watermark and cannot be quietly saved to a desktop. Every upload into the file is virus scanned. Then retention. Archive, never delete: when an application, a user or a company is archived, every record stays. When a regulator, an auditor or a lawyer asks about an application from years back, the store finds the file, the consent version the customer signed, the disclosures shown, the lender shares, the adverse action notice and the audit trail together, from one inbox. Software supports a compliance program rather than replacing one, and the inbox is the record keeping layer that program needs. #### What happens from the inbox: lender, stips, notices, worksheets, export The inbox is where the rest of SecureWebX starts. From an open application, Send to Lender creates a code gated, expiring, revocable, watermarked share for any lender of the store's choosing, with a lender response portal for the reply; the Send to Lender page covers it. Stipulations are added to the application and fulfilled by upload, described on the stipulations workflow page. When a deal is declined, an adverse action notice is generated from the application record rather than typed from memory. Worksheets pencil cash, finance and lease at parity with the CRM desking engine and produce a deal recap PDF. When the file is done, it exports to your lender or DMS in the format it expects: STAR XML, fixed width, CSV or JSON. Every one of those actions lands back on the same application in the same inbox, which is the point. The finance office has one place to look, and the answer to what happened with this deal is a record. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with There is nothing to set up. When a LeadLocate account is created, the SecureWebX company and users are created with it, the SecureWebX button appears in the CRM dock, and the inbox is waiting for its first application. Invite the finance office into the console with roles, send the first apply link, and the pipeline begins to fill. Pair the inbox with apply links so applications arrive complete and signed rather than photographed. Pair it with the CRM's texting so reps send the link inside the conversation and see the result. Pair it with the desking tool so the pencil the customer saw on the floor is the pencil the finance office works from. Everything else the platform includes is on the all features page, and the pre-recorded live demo shows an application arriving in the inbox and being worked to a decision. #### Questions and answers Q: What does an application in the SecureWebX inbox show? A: A status, an assignee, an amount, notes and its email thread, plus which apply link it came from, supporting documents, stipulations, Send to Lender shares, OFAC screening, attached worksheets and an audit log of who viewed, edited, shared and exported it. Q: What is the difference between the inbox and the pipeline? A: Same applications, two views. The inbox is the list of everything received, searchable by applicant, email or reference. The pipeline arranges those applications by stage so the finance office sees where each file sits and what is stuck. Q: Can a salesperson see the inbox? A: Users are invited into the console with roles, so a store decides what a salesperson sees. Completed and abandoned applications also flow back to the LeadLocate CRM, and a rep can open an application in SecureWebX from there. Q: What happens to an application after my team has worked it? A: It stays in the console on its own record, with its status, its notes, its stipulations and its documents attached. SecureWebX is its own application under one login, so the finance office always has the file and the rep always sees that it was started or finished. Records are archived, never deleted. Q: Who can see who opened an application? A: The audit log on each application records who viewed, edited, shared and exported it, and a security log covers the account as a whole. PDFs open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated. Q: Is the inbox included in every plan? A: Yes. The inbox and pipeline are part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. Plans are listed on the pricing page. ### Credit Application Security: 2FA, Audit Log, Encryption URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/credit-application-security Credit application security in SecureWebX means two factor authentication on every sign in, application data encrypted at rest with credentials held in a secrets vault, a full audit log and a security log, virus scanning on every upload, a watermarked PDF viewer with print and download gated, forced terms acceptance for every user, and records that are archived rather than deleted. All of it is the default. #### What does credit application security mean at a dealership? Credit application security means that the social security number, income, address and signature a customer handed your store are protected at every point they can be reached: at sign in, at rest on disk, on the way to a lender, in a PDF, in an upload, and years later when somebody asks who looked at the file. That is the one sentence version, and it is worth being that specific, because most stores think of security as a password policy and a locked filing cabinet. In SecureWebX the controls are not a checklist a manager works through after go live. Two factor authentication runs on every sign in. Application data is encrypted at rest. Every upload is virus scanned. Every PDF opens in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated. Every action lands in an audit log. Every record is archived rather than deleted. A store gets all of it on the day its account is created, and a user who tries to skip a step finds there is no step to skip. This page is the product side view of those controls. The online credit application software page covers the buying question of application intake in general, and the dealership CRM with credit application page covers how the application system connects to the CRM. #### How does it show up on a normal day? The finance manager arrives, opens the console, enters a password, and a verification code arrives by text. She types it and the dashboard opens. That took ten seconds and it is the last time she thinks about security until lunch, which is the point. In the inbox there is an application from last night. She opens it, attaches a worksheet, and shares it with a credit union through Send to Lender. The share has an access code, an expiry and a watermark. The credit union's analyst opens the lender response portal, enters the code, sees the file with the store's name across every page, and records a decision. When the share expires, the analyst's access ends without anyone remembering to revoke it. Mid morning the customer uploads a pay stub to satisfy a stipulation. The file is virus scanned before it is stored, and the console marks it as scanned. A salesperson asks whether he can see the application, and he can see what his role allows, which for a salesperson is less than what a finance manager sees. That afternoon the general manager asks who opened the file on a deal that went sideways last month. The audit log answers with names and timestamps, and nobody has to remember anything. #### Two factor authentication on every sign in Two factor means a password alone opens nothing. On each sign in SecureWebX sends a verification code to the user's phone, and the code is entered before the console loads. Every user, every time. A stolen or shared password is the most common way a dealership's data walks out the door, usually through a former employee whose login was never turned off, and a code sent to a phone that person no longer carries stops that cold. Users are invited with a role, so access is granted deliberately rather than by sharing a login, and the user roles and permissions page explains how roles limit what each person sees. Sign in also carries a lock out control, so a manager stepping away from a shared finance office computer can log out and lock the page in one action. When a user leaves the store, deactivating the account removes access while the audit trail of everything that user did stays with the records. #### Encryption at rest, a secrets vault, virus scanning and a gated PDF viewer Application data is encrypted at rest, which means the fields a customer typed are stored in encrypted form rather than in readable text that anyone with database access could scroll through. The keys and credentials the system itself depends on live in a secrets vault, separate from the application code and separate from configuration files, so a credential is not something a person can open in an editor. The bureau credentials a store keeps under settings for its own credit pulls are held there rather than in anyone's notes. Every file that enters the system, a pay stub, a driver license, a proof of residence, a supporting document, is virus scanned before it is stored, and the console shows it as scanned. Bot protection sits on the public application form so the inbox fills with applications from people rather than scripts. PDFs, including the deal recap, open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated. A user reading an application on screen sees a watermark on every page, and printing or saving the file is a controlled action rather than a right click. A lender who receives a share sees the same watermark, so a PDF that turns up somewhere it should not be carries the name of the store and the context it left. #### The audit log and the security log: who did what, and when The audit log records who viewed, edited, shared, exported and archived each application, with a timestamp. The security log records sign in activity and account level security events for the account as a whole, and it can be filtered when a manager is looking for one event. Between the two, the question every store dreads, who looked at this customer's file, is answered from a report rather than from memory. The audit log also records the ordinary work: which user attached a worksheet, when a stipulation was fulfilled, when an adverse action notice was generated. That turns out to be as useful for management as for compliance, because a finance director can see how long applications sit at each step and who is carrying the load. When a store calls in, our support team can see your screen with you and fix it on the call, which shortens most support calls to the length of the question. #### The compliance angle: archive never delete, versioned consent, forced terms Security keeps the wrong people out. Compliance is about being able to prove, later, what happened. SecureWebX handles the second part with three rules. Records are archived, never deleted: when an application, a user or a company is archived, every record is retained, so a request from a regulator, an auditor or an attorney about a deal from years back finds the application, the consent, the disclosures shown and the audit trail in one place. Consent is versioned: the customer's e-signature is captured against the exact version of the terms in force at that moment, so a change to your disclosure language later does not blur what a specific applicant agreed to. And every console user must accept the current terms before working, so the store's own staff are on the record too. Around those rules sit the compliance tools that use them, OFAC screening on the file, adverse action notices generated from the application record, and state disclosures and privacy notices the store edits per company. Together they give the store's own compliance program a record it can stand on, built into the software from the first screen rather than bolted on the week an auditor asks. #### Where it lives, and what it replaces All of this lives inside the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button on the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and in the SecureWebX app on iOS and Android. Settings hold the security and compliance controls a store can see, users and roles, the bureau credentials, the terms and privacy editors. The audit log and security log sit under the account. Nothing here requires a separate security product or a consultant to configure. What it replaces is the way credit applications actually get handled in most stores: a paper application photographed and texted to the finance office, a shared email inbox where applications age with attachments anyone can forward, a fax tray, a desktop folder of downloaded PDFs, and a spreadsheet nobody password protects. Each of those is a place a customer's data sits unprotected and unlogged. SecureWebX is part of every LeadLocate plan rather than an add on, and plans are month to month; the pricing page lists them. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with There is nothing to turn on. Two factor sign in, encryption at rest, virus scanning, the watermarked viewer, the audit log and archive never delete are the defaults for every SecureWebX company from the day the account is created with your LeadLocate subscription. What a store does configure is people: invite users with the right role, keep the list current when staff change, and set the terms and privacy notice text the store wants applicants and users to accept. If your store's compliance program calls for something beyond the defaults, a retention report in a particular layout, a security log export on a schedule, an additional gate on a specific action, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair it with Send to Lender, which is where the code gated, expiring, watermarked share earns its keep, with the stipulations workflow so documents arrive through the scanned upload path rather than by text, and with the CRM's user management so roles match across the platform. The all features list shows where these controls sit among everything else, and the pre-recorded live demo shows the console they protect. #### Questions and answers Q: Is the online credit application secure for my customers? A: Yes. The applicant completes it on the store's branded apply link with bot protection on the form, signs with an e-signature captured against versioned terms, and the data is stored encrypted at rest inside SecureWebX, where every sign in requires two factor authentication. Q: Who can see an application? A: Users your store invites, limited by role, after a two factor sign in. Lenders see only what you share through Send to Lender, behind an access code, until the share expires or you revoke it. Every view is written to the audit log. Q: Is two factor authentication optional? A: Two factor runs on every sign in for every user by design. A verification code goes to the user's phone each time, and the console opens only after it is entered. Q: What happens to old applications? A: They are archived, never deleted. Archiving retains every record, the application, its consent version, the disclosures shown, the notices generated and the audit trail, so a question years later has a documented answer. Q: Can someone download or print an application PDF? A: PDFs open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated, so saving or printing is a controlled action rather than a right click, and every page carries the store's watermark wherever it goes. Q: Does this make my store compliant? A: It gives your compliance program a defensible record: versioned consent, an audit log, retained records and controlled sharing. Compliance itself is the store's program, and a vendor claiming software alone delivers it is overstating what software can do. ### Custom Domains and DNS Without a Web Developer URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/custom-domains-and-dns Custom domains in LeadLocate CRM let a store search for and buy a domain, use it on lead pages, personal salesperson sites and email, and manage the records in a self-service DNS editor without a web developer. Domain Monitoring watches a domain the store owns elsewhere, and a domain bought here can be transferred out on request. It is part of every LeadLocate plan. #### What custom domains and DNS do inside the CRM In one sentence: LeadLocate CRM lets a dealership search for a domain, buy it, put it to work on the store's pages and email, and edit its DNS records from a plain editor, all from the same login the sales team already uses. The domain becomes a thing the store owns and controls, on the store's account, rather than something a web vendor registered in their own name years ago and nobody can find the password for. People search for custom domain DNS and custom DNS settings because the topic sounds technical, and vendors keep it that way on purpose. It is not. A domain is a name. DNS is the short list of records that tells the internet where that name points: which server shows the website, which service delivers the email. A dealership needs to be able to read that list and change a line on it without a ticket, and that is what the self-service DNS editor gives a store. The Lead Pages landing page builder and the personal salesperson websites are the two places the domain shows up most. #### How a store uses it on a normal month The general manager wants the store's used truck event on its own short address for the radio spot, something a listener can remember at sixty miles an hour. The marketing manager opens the domain tools in the CRM, types the name into Search for a domain, sees which versions are available, and buys the one that reads best. It appears under My Domains a few minutes later. She opens the event's lead page, goes to the URL settings, picks the new domain from Choose Domain, and the page is live on it. The radio spot runs Thursday. Two weeks later the store starts sending email campaigns from its own domain instead of a generic sender. Email domain authentication asks for a handful of records to be added to the domain so receiving mail servers trust the store as the sender. She opens the DNS editor, adds the records the email setup screen lists, saves, and the authentication check turns green. Nobody called a developer, and the store's email now carries the store's name. At the end of the month a salesperson who has been building his own following asks for a personal site on a name of his own. The store buys it, points it at his personal salesperson page, and keeps the domain on the dealership's account. He gets the address on his business card from Design Studio; the store keeps the asset. #### Where it lives: My Domains, Domain Monitoring and the DNS editor The domain tools sit with the website settings in LeadLocate CRM, reached from the Website menu. Domains is where a store searches and buys. My Domains lists what the store owns through the CRM, and each domain opens into the DNS editor, where records are added, changed and removed in a plain table with a save button. There is no separate control panel login, and no second bill from a second company for the privilege of editing a record. Domain Monitoring is for the domain the store already owns somewhere else. Enter the name, as the screen puts it, monitor a domain you own elsewhere, and the CRM keeps an eye on it so the store knows if it stops resolving or is about to lapse. Many dealerships have a main domain registered years ago at a company they still use, and there is no reason to move it to start; monitoring it from the CRM is enough. The domain also appears wherever a page needs an address: the Choose Domain selector in the Lead Page URL settings, the Forward URL Destination for a page that should send visitors elsewhere, and the current domain name field in the email domain setup. Every user with the right role can pick a domain for a page; buying and editing records belongs to the roles a store sets in User Management. #### What it replaces, and what a custom domain costs elsewhere The usual arrangement is that the store's website vendor owns the domain, or a former marketing manager registered it on a personal card, or an agency holds it hostage as a reason to keep paying. Any DNS change means a ticket, a wait, and a fee that has nothing to do with the two minutes the change takes. A store that wants a second domain for an event pays the agency to buy it and then pays again to point it. Inside the CRM the search, purchase, DNS editing and monitoring are included in the platform subscription; the domain itself is bought at its listed price when the store chooses it, and the pricing page lists the month to month plans that include the tools. There is no per-change fee, no developer hour, and no waiting for someone else's business hours. A store that wants to leave keeps its domain: transfer out is available on request, and our team handles it for your dealership. That is the test of whether you own a domain. If you can take it with you, you do. #### The compliance angle: the store owns the name, and the email it sends from it Two things about a domain matter to a dealership beyond marketing. The first is ownership. The domain is registered on the store's account, on the store's card, and shows under My Domains for the roles the store allows. When a marketing manager leaves, the domain does not leave with them, and when a vendor relationship ends, the domain is not a bargaining chip. Dealer principals who have lost a domain once tend to care about this more than any feature on the page. The second is sender reputation. Email sent from a domain that has not been authenticated is the email that lands in spam or is rejected outright, and every text message campaign has a cousin in the email inbox. The email domain authentication setup lists the records the domain needs, and the DNS editor is where the store adds them. Authenticated mail is easier to deliver and harder to spoof, which protects the customers who trust a message from the store's name. Keep the domain and its records in the store's hands, and both of those problems stay solved. #### How to turn it on The domain tools are live for every account. Open the Website menu in LeadLocate CRM and go to Domains. To buy, type the name you want into the search, choose an available version, and complete the purchase on the store's account; it appears under My Domains. To use it, open a lead page's URL settings and pick it under Choose Domain, or point it at a personal salesperson site. To edit records, open the domain from My Domains and use the DNS editor. To watch a domain you own elsewhere, add it under Domain Monitoring. If you would rather move an existing domain into the CRM, need a specialized record configuration set up for you, or want a domain transferred out to another account, that is available on request and our team puts it in production for your dealership. If DNS is unfamiliar territory, the contact page reaches a person who does this every week. #### What to pair it with A domain is only useful when something sits behind it. Pair it with Lead Pages so every event, model and offer has a short, memorable address that feeds leads into the CRM inbox. Pair it with the personal salesperson websites so each rep's following lands on a page the store owns. Pair it with the inventory website builder in Inventory Link, which publishes the store's live inventory on a site of its own. And pair it with email domain authentication so the store's Bulk Email and Email Automation go out under a name mail servers trust. Once the pages are on the domain, website visitor analytics on the Website menu show what those pages do, and trackable short links in texts show which message sent the visitor. The all features page lists everything else the domain connects to. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I buy a domain from inside the CRM? A: Yes. Under the Website menu, search for the name you want, choose an available version and purchase it on the store's account. It appears under My Domains and can be used on lead pages, personal salesperson sites and email right away. Q: What can I change in the DNS editor? A: The records that tell the internet where the domain points: the ones that show your pages and the ones your email authentication setup asks for. Add, change and remove them in a plain table and save. No developer and no ticket. Q: I already own my main domain elsewhere. Do I have to move it? A: No. Add it under Domain Monitoring and the CRM watches it for you. Buy any new domains through the CRM as you need them, and move the main one later on request if you decide to. Q: Who owns a domain bought through LeadLocate CRM? A: Your dealership. It is registered on your account, listed under My Domains, and transfer out is available on request so you can take it with you. Q: Can a salesperson have a domain of their own? A: Yes. The store buys the name, points it at the rep's personal salesperson website, and keeps the domain on the dealership's account. The rep gets the address; the store keeps the asset. Q: Is there a fee to change DNS records? A: No. Searching, buying, editing records and monitoring are part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. The domain itself is bought at its listed price when you choose it. ### Custom Lead Statuses, Tags and Row Colors URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/custom-lead-statuses-and-tags LeadLocate CRM lets each dealership add its own lead statuses with Add Custom Status in the Leads view, tag leads as they are worked, and color any lead row from a seven color palette that filters the list. Custom source feeds can drop new leads into a chosen default status, and a Mark Lead As Lost popup records why a deal died. All of it is included in every plan. #### What custom statuses, tags and row colors do Every CRM ships with a status list somebody else wrote. LeadLocate CRM ships with one too, and then lets your store add to it. Add Custom Status sits in the status dropdown of the Leads view, so a manager who wants a status called Waiting on Trade Payoff, Spouse Approval or Delivery Scheduled types it once and it is available on every lead for every user in the account. Statuses are per dealership, so a used car store's list looks nothing like a powersports store's, and neither has to live with the other's. Tags are the second layer. A status is where a lead is; a tag is something true about it that does not change the stage. First time buyer, has a trade, wants a lease, Spanish speaking, referred by service. A lead can carry several tags at once and still have one status. Row colors are the third layer, and the fastest one: a click on the color dot in the row opens a palette of Red, Orange, Amber, Green, Teal, Blue and Maroon, and the row takes that color in the list. The Filter by Color button above the list then shows only the rows painted that color. A manager who tells the floor that red means call today needs no other training. Underneath all three, keyword triggers let a store react to what a customer writes, and the Mark Lead As Lost popup gives a dead deal a reason rather than just a status. This page covers statuses, tags and colors; the lost reason feature has its own page. #### How a dealership uses them on a normal day A BDC manager at a franchise store runs her morning from the Leads view. She filters by color first: red rows are the leads she told the team to call before ten, and there are nine of them. Three are still red at 10:15, so she knows exactly which three reps to walk over to. She switches the filter to amber, which the store uses for customers who asked for a callback on a specific day, and confirms today's are on somebody's calendar. At the desk, a salesperson moves a lead from the store's custom Appointment Set status to another custom status, Showed, when the customer walks in, and the lead's row changes with it. He tags the lead Has Trade because the customer mentioned a lease return on the phone, and later that week the used car manager filters by that tag to see every appraisal coming his way. When the customer decides to wait for the new model year, the rep sets the lead to Lost, the Mark Lead As Lost popup asks for a reason, and the reason lands on the lead where the GM will see it in the monthly review. None of these people opened a settings page during the day. The statuses were added once by the manager, the colors mean what the store said they mean, and the tags accumulate as reps learn things about customers. That is the difference between a CRM the store configured and a CRM the store fights. #### Where they live in the CRM Custom statuses are managed from the Leads view itself. The status dropdown at the top of the list shows All Leads and every status the store has, and Add Custom Status is right there in the dropdown, so adding one is done where the statuses are used rather than three menus away. Each lead's status is set from its row or its detail view, and the list filters by status so a rep can work one stage at a time. Row colors are set from the color dot in each row's date cell, which opens the palette in place, and cleared by choosing the default. The Filter by Color button sits with the status dropdown and the search box above the list, so color, status and text search combine. The same row colors appear in the SMS inbox, so a conversation thread and its lead carry the same color and a rep moving between the two never loses the signal. Tags are added from the lead and shown on it. Custom source feeds in Lead Feeds Manager have a Default Status for New Leads setting, which is how a store makes leads from a particular source land in a particular status the moment they are parsed, custom statuses included. On the phone app, reps see the same statuses on the same leads, so a status set on the lot is the status the desk sees. #### What it replaces, and what a fixed status list costs The alternative to custom statuses is a workaround, and every store has one. The whiteboard by the tower with names in colored marker. The spreadsheet the BDC keeps because the old CRM's status list was written for someone else's process. The note field where reps type WAITING ON PAYOFF in capitals because there is no status for it, which works until someone needs to filter by it. Each workaround is a second system of record, and the moment two systems disagree, the store trusts neither. The cost shows up in three places. Managers spend their mornings reconciling the board with the CRM instead of coaching. Reports are wrong, because a lead that is really Delivery Scheduled is sitting in a generic Working status. And handoffs break: a rep covering for a colleague reads the old CRM, sees a status that means nothing specific, and either calls a customer who was already sold or leaves alone a customer who was waiting. A status list in the store's own words fixes the handoff, because the covering rep reads Spouse Approval and knows exactly what to say. Row colors replace the whiteboard for the thing a whiteboard is actually good at, which is being visible from across the room. A red row is a red name on the board, except it also filters, follows the lead into the inbox and is visible to the rep at home on the phone app. The reports dashboard covers what happens to the numbers once statuses mean what the store means. #### Can statuses drive automation, not just describe it? A status is more useful when something happens because of it. Follow Up Processes in LeadLocate are multi step drips built per lead type, and a lead moving through statuses is the natural trigger for a step: the appointment reminder sequence for a lead in Appointment Set, the trade appraisal sequence for a lead tagged Has Trade, the re-engagement sequence for a lead set to a custom Waiting status. The Follow Up Process itself can also stamp a Lost Reason on the lead when a sequence ends without a sale, so the reporting on why deals die is fed by automation as well as by reps. Keyword triggers add one more input. When a customer writes a word the store cares about, a trigger can act on it, which is how a store catches the customer who texts the word financing to a rep who is off that day. And Automated Templates sit at the front of all of this: the per feed first messages that go out under the assigned rep's name the moment a lead lands, before any status has changed. Statuses describe the pipeline; the automation around them is what makes the description worth keeping accurate. #### The compliance angle: labels that protect the customer Statuses and tags are also how a store keeps its promises to customers. A tag that says the customer asked for email only, or a custom status that says the customer asked to be contacted after the first of the month, is visible to every rep and every manager on the lead, which is what stops the well meaning rep from calling on the wrong day. A Lost status with a recorded reason ends the follow up sequence, so a customer who bought elsewhere is not still receiving appointment reminders. For customers who ask not to be contacted at all, the answer is not a tag; it is the Do Not Call Blacklist, which hides the contact from every CRM view rather than relying on a rep to read a label. The two work together. Tags and statuses carry the nuance of what a customer wants; the blacklist carries the hard stop. And because every call, text and email is written to one communications log on the lead, a manager reviewing a customer complaint sees the labels alongside the messages, which is the record a store wants when the question is whether it did what the customer asked. #### How to turn them on Statuses, tags and row colors are on from the first day of the account. To add a status, open the Leads view, open the status dropdown, choose Add Custom Status, type the name and save; it is available to everyone in the account immediately. To color a row, click the color dot in the row and pick from the palette; to filter, use Filter by Color. To tag a lead, open it and add the tag. To make a source land in a status, open the custom source feed in Lead Feeds Manager and set Default Status for New Leads. The one piece of advice worth giving is to decide what the colors mean before the floor starts using them, and to keep the custom status list short enough that reps use it. A store with forty statuses has a spreadsheet again. If your store wants something beyond the built in options, such as statuses with required fields or a color that changes automatically when a lead ages past a threshold, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The contact page is the place to describe it. #### What to pair them with Statuses are the pipeline; three other features give them consequences. Follow Up Processes put a drip behind each stage. Lost reason tracking turns the Lost status into a number the GM can act on. Lead notifications and alerts make sure the rep sees the lead whose row just turned red. And the In Store Now flag is the one status that matters most in the moment: who is physically on the lot right now. Custom statuses, tags and row colors are part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only for a store that wants the software without lead delivery. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where they sit among everything else, and the pre-recorded live demo shows the Leads view they live in. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I add my own lead statuses in LeadLocate CRM? A: Yes. Open the status dropdown in the Leads view and choose Add Custom Status. The new status is available on every lead for every user in your account, and the list filters by it like any built in status. Q: What colors can a lead row be? A: Red, Orange, Amber, Green, Teal, Blue and Maroon, plus the default uncolored row. Click the color dot in the row to pick one, and use Filter by Color above the list to show only rows of that color. The same colors appear on the conversation in the SMS inbox. Q: What is the difference between a status and a tag? A: A status is where the lead is in your process, and a lead has one at a time. A tag is something true about the lead, such as Has Trade or First Time Buyer, and a lead can carry several. Row color is a third, visual layer that filters the list. Q: Can leads from one source land in a specific status automatically? A: Yes. Each custom source feed in Lead Feeds Manager has a Default Status for New Leads setting, and custom statuses are available there, so a source can drop its leads straight into the stage your store uses for it. Q: Do statuses show on the phone app? A: Yes. The LeadLocate app shows the same leads with the same statuses, so a status changed on the lot is the status the desk sees, and the reverse. Q: Are custom statuses an extra cost? A: No. Statuses, tags and row colors are part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Customer Deal Pages With E-Signature URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/deal-pages-with-e-signature Customer deal pages are the customer side of DealTracker in LeadLocate CRM. Each desked deal gets a private, store branded page with a short link, unlocked by a one time passcode texted to the buyer, where the customer reviews the vehicle, trade, numbers and documents, chats with the salesperson and signs. The store shares, revises, revokes and voids links from the deal view. Included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. #### What a customer deal page is, in one sentence A customer deal page is the desked deal, presented to the buyer on a private page under the store's own branding, that the buyer opens on a phone with a texted passcode, works through step by step, and signs. It is the answer to the question every salesperson gets after a customer leaves the store: can you send me the numbers. Instead of a photo of a worksheet in a text thread, the customer gets a page that shows the vehicle they picked, the trade they offered, the structure the desk built, the documents still needed and a chat card to ask a question, all tied back to the deal the manager is looking at in the CRM. The page and the CRM deal are one record. When the desk changes a number, the page reflects it. When the customer checks off a step, uploads a document or types a message, the deal view in the CRM shows it. The dealership desking software page explains why payment conversations belong in the CRM; this page is about what the customer actually sees and what the store controls. #### How a salesperson uses it on a normal Tuesday A customer visited Saturday, drove the truck, liked the payment and said she needed to talk to her husband. Tuesday morning the salesperson opens the deal in the Desking menu, confirms the structure the manager built, and clicks Text on the deal to send the deal link to the customer's phone on file. The link is short enough to read next to a dollar figure in a text, and it opens on the store's branded page rather than a generic vendor screen. The customer taps it, enters her mobile number, gets a one time passcode by text, and the page unlocks. She sees the truck with its photos and description, the trade line with her allowance and payoff, the payment options, and a list of what the store still needs from her: a photo of her license and her insurance card. Her husband reads it over her shoulder, asks about the payoff, and she types the question into the chat card on the page. The salesperson gets the message in the CRM, answers from the deal view with the same composer he uses for texting, and the answer shows up on her page. That evening she uploads both documents from her phone and marks the step done. Wednesday she signs, and the salesperson sees the signature on the deal before she calls to confirm. #### Where it lives: the deal view, the customer link and the mobile app On the CRM side the customer page is controlled from the digital deal view under Desking. The Customer View print versions, the Share menu, the Customer Chat panel, the document review slots and the Revoke All Links action all sit on that one page next to the worksheet. The customer-facing deal id is displayed on the deal so a store can quote it to the customer, and the salesperson assigned to the deal can be sent an SMS alert when the customer acts. The customer side is a short link on the store's deal page domain, skinned with the store's logo and colors from the website editor's branding tab. Access is protected with SMS verification on every deal: the customer enters the buyer or co-buyer mobile number that is on the deal, receives a one time passcode, and is in. A separate keypad PIN page exists for stores that prefer a four character PIN, styled like the CRM's own quick access keypad. In the LeadLocate mobile app, Deal Chats is its own inbox, so a salesperson on the lot sees a customer's question from the deal page the moment it arrives and replies from the phone. #### What the customer can do on the page The page is built as a road to the sale the customer walks in order: vehicle, trade, credit, payment, documents, delivery and follow up. Each step can be checked off by the customer, and that progress is saved to the deal. The vehicle step shows the unit with its listing preview and history link. The trade step shows the trade vehicle, offer, payoff and notes, and lets the customer add photos of the car if the store has asked for them. The credit step is where an apply link from SecureWebX is placed when the deal is financed. The payment step shows the structure the desk built. The documents step lists the exact items the store needs, with named slots for the driver license, insurance card, payoff letter, proof of income, proof of residence, trade title, co-buyer ID and any custom stipulation, and the customer uploads each one from the phone camera. Uploads go straight to the deal for review. In the CRM the salesperson marks each document needed, uploaded, approved, rejected or requests it again, and the customer sees the status change on their page. A digital retail build, document review, deal review and shipping quote sit on the same page for stores that use them; that is a review flow on the deal, not a place where the customer pays. Delivery mode, pickup or home delivery, is chosen on the page with a delivery address and notes, and the store can print a customer reservation confirmation from the deal. #### E-signature, revisions, share, revoke and void A deal page can require a signature. When Require a signature is set on the deal, the customer signs on the page and the signature lands on the deal record in the CRM with the sheet it was applied to. The same signing ability exists on shared pencil recap sheets, where the customer signs a specific worksheet snapshot and that snapshot is frozen from further changes. Signed means the store has a copy of what was signed, not a copy of whatever the worksheet says today. Deals change, so the page keeps revisions. Each customer sheet version the store shares is stored as its own snapshot with a stable link, and re-sharing the same version refreshes the numbers the link shows. A revision view lets the store look at what was sent. When a deal is done, or a link went to the wrong person, Revoke All Links voids every link shared for that deal at once; old links stop opening while the stored snapshots survive for the record. Resetting the customer link withdraws every earlier link to that deal, including any that had been sent before. A deal can also be voided outright, archived, or duplicated to start a fresh structure for the same customer. #### What it replaces and what that costs elsewhere The alternative most stores run today is a photo of the worksheet, texted from a personal phone, followed by a signature collected on paper at delivery. That costs the store a record. Nobody can prove which numbers the customer saw, the signature is on a sheet in a folder, and the conversation about it lives on a phone the store does not own. Separate digital retail products fix that for a monthly fee per rooftop, and then the customer's page and the CRM deal are two different records maintained by two different vendors. Customer deal pages are part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription. The page is generated from the deal, the chat is the CRM's chat, the documents are the deal's documents and the signature is on the deal. There is no inventory feed or DMS requirement, which is why an auto broker or an independent lot can send a branded deal page the same day the account is opened. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: who saw what, and what they agreed to A deal page is a disclosure surface, and it is built like one. Access is gated by a passcode texted to a number on the deal, so the person reading the numbers is the buyer or co-buyer, not whoever forwarded the link. Every customer sheet carries a single consistent disclaimer that opens by saying it is not a contract and that figures are estimates until final lender approval. Odometer figures on customer sheets carry a footnote marker. Shared sheet snapshots mask buyer and co-buyer name, phone, email and address before they are stored, so a forwarded recap link does not carry personal information, while the figures and the salesperson stay readable. Signatures are applied to a frozen snapshot, and the deal keeps a history with a verification trail of what was shared and when. Revoking links is a store action with a confirmation, and revoked links show an expired notice rather than a blank page. The customer side has its own event log separate from the dealer side. None of this replaces a store's own compliance program or its final contract paperwork, which stays in the finance office and the DMS; it gives the store a clean record of the presentation that led there. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with Customer deal pages are on for every deal in every LeadLocate CRM account. Set the store's logo and colors once in the website editor's Branding tab and the pages carry them. Then desk a deal, click Text or Email on the deal to send the link, and set Require a signature when the deal reaches the point where you want one. The pre-recorded live demo shows a deal going out and coming back signed. Pair it with the EZ Desking worksheets that produce the numbers, the deal chat that keeps the conversation on the deal, the Road to Sale checklist that tracks the steps on the CRM side, and the deal jacket and QR intake for the documents the customer sends. The rest of the platform is listed on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: How does the customer open the deal page? A: From a short link the salesperson texts or emails from the deal. The customer enters the buyer or co-buyer mobile number on the deal, receives a one time passcode by text, and the page unlocks. Stores that prefer a keypad PIN can use that instead. Q: Is the e-signature legally usable? A: The customer signs a frozen snapshot of the sheet, the signature is stored on the deal with what was signed, and the deal keeps a history of what was shared and when. Whether a given document needs a wet signature in your state is a question for your compliance counsel; the tool gives you the record either way. Q: What happens when the numbers change after I send the page? A: The page reflects the deal. Re-sharing a customer sheet version refreshes the numbers behind the same link, a signed snapshot stays frozen, and a superseded shared sheet tells the reader it is no longer current. Q: Can I take a link back? A: Yes. Revoke All Links on the deal voids every link shared for that deal at once. Revoked links show an expired notice, the stored snapshots survive for your record, and a fresh link can be sent. Q: Does the customer pay on the deal page? A: No. The digital retail section is a build, document review, deal review and shipping quote flow. Payment happens through your store and your finance office, not through the page. Q: Does the page look like my store or like LeadLocate? A: Like your store. The page carries the logo and colors from your website editor branding tab, and the customer-facing deal id is yours to quote. LeadLocate stays in the background. ### Deal Chat: Customer and Salesperson on One Thread URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/deal-chat Deal chat is the conversation thread attached to every deal in LeadLocate CRM. The customer writes from the chat card on their deal page, the salesperson answers from the deal view on the desktop or from the Deal Chats inbox in the mobile app, and the thread carries link previews, photos and files. Every message stays on the deal record, and it is included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. #### What deal chat does in one sentence Deal chat is a two way thread between the customer and the salesperson that lives on the deal itself, so the questions about a specific vehicle, trade and payment are answered next to the numbers they are about. The customer writes from the chat card on their deal page. The salesperson reads and replies from the digital deal view in the CRM, where the same screen shows the worksheet, the offer cards the customer is looking at, and the documents still outstanding. Nobody has to ask which deal a message refers to, because the message is on the deal. That distinction matters more than it sounds. A text inbox is organized by phone number. A deal is organized by vehicle, structure and stage. When a customer has two deals in play, or a household has a buyer and a co-buyer, or the same customer comes back six months later, the deal thread keeps the conversation with the transaction it belongs to. The two way texting inbox is the right place for everything else; deal chat is the right place for this. #### How a salesperson uses it on a normal day A salesperson sent a deal page last night. At 7:40 this morning, before the store opens, the customer opens the page on her phone and types into the chat card: is the payment with or without the extended warranty, and can I get a picture of the back seat. In the LeadLocate mobile app the salesperson sees a new item in Deal Chats, taps into it, and the screen shows a read only summary of the deal above the conversation, so he can see the structure before he answers. He taps Reply to customer, dictates the answer instead of typing it, picks a message template for the warranty explanation the store uses, and attaches two photos of the back seat from his camera roll with Add photo or file from device. The customer gets a text that there is a reply, opens her deal page and reads it next to the payment options. She replies with a photo of her registration for the trade. The salesperson taps View Lead Details from the chat to open the lead, and the whole exchange is already on the deal's history when the manager looks at it at 9. Nothing happened on a personal phone, nothing has to be forwarded to anyone, and when the customer arrives Saturday the desk knows exactly what was promised. #### Where it lives: the deal view, the Deal Chats inbox and the customer page On the desktop CRM the thread is the Customer Chat panel in the digital deal view under Desking. It sits in a right hand column next to the customer style offer cards, the Offer to Sell and Offer to Purchase cards that mirror what the customer sees on their deal page, so the salesperson answers while looking at the same presentation the customer is looking at. The composer is the same one used for texting in the CRM: attachment button, clear, microphone for dictation, the AI writing assistant, and a Send Message action. A vehicle can be dropped in from inventory with its photos and price. On the phone, Deal Chats is its own inbox in the mobile app with a search box, alongside the SMS inbox and the email inbox, and each chat opens with the deal summary on top and the conversation below. On the customer side, the thread is the chat card on the deal page, which on a phone stacks under the deal details and on a desktop sits beside them. When the salesperson replies, the customer is texted, so the answer is not sitting unread on a page nobody reopened. #### What can travel on the thread Deal chat carries more than text. Photos and files drop into the thread from either side: the customer's trade photos, a picture of an odometer, a payoff letter, and from the store side, photos of the unit, a walk around, a scanned document. Links unfurl with a preview, so a listing URL shows as a card with the vehicle's image and title rather than a bare address, and the salesperson's preview card in the CRM shows the same chip the customer sees. Message templates give the salesperson the store's standard answers to the standard questions, and the AI writing assistant drafts a reply in the salesperson's voice that can be edited before it goes out. Voice dictation turns a spoken answer into text on the phone or the desktop. Files the customer sends can be attached to the deal, and documents that belong in the deal jacket go there. Because the thread and the deal share one record, a customer's question about the trade and the manager's change to the trade allowance are visible in the same place, and the deal history keeps both. The deal jacket and QR intake page covers where documents end up. #### What it replaces and what that costs elsewhere Most deal conversations today happen in one of three places: a salesperson's personal text thread, a shared store inbox where a customer's question about deal numbers sits between an oil change reminder and a parts inquiry, or a messaging product bolted onto a digital retail tool that the store pays for separately and that the store's CRM never sees. Each one loses something. The personal thread leaves with the salesperson. The shared inbox loses the context of which deal and which numbers. The bolt on product keeps a second copy of the conversation, out of sight of the manager reviewing the deal. Deal chat is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription and lives on the deal record with the worksheet, the customer page, the documents and the signature. The manager who opens the deal sees the conversation. The salesperson who inherits an orphaned deal sees what was said. The compliance question of what the customer was told about the payment has a thread to point at. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: what was said about the deal, on the deal The record is the point. Every message, photo and file on the thread is stored against the deal and its customer, and the CRM's communications log keeps every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail on the same customer in one place, so the deal chat is one part of a complete history rather than a separate island. A customer only reaches the thread from the deal page, which is gated by a one time passcode texted to the buyer or co-buyer number on the deal, so the person in the conversation is the person on the deal. Nothing on the thread is a contract. The deal page and every customer sheet carry the same disclaimer that the figures are estimates until final lender approval, and the chat is where a salesperson explains a number, not where one is agreed. If a customer asks for something in writing, the right answer is a revised sheet or a signed snapshot, and the thread is where the salesperson says so and sends the link. That discipline is easier when the tools are on the same screen. #### Built so your store keeps selling Deal Chat is built so the conversation that sells the car is never lost. Every message a salesperson sends and every reply the customer types is written to the deal record the moment it happens, with the time and the name beside it, so the thread is still there next week when a manager asks what was promised. The customer's deal page lives at its own address and opens from the link she already has, on her phone, at work or at the kitchen table, so she can read what was sent without calling the store. Deal Chats and the texting inbox travel in the mobile app, which means a salesperson standing on the lot sees the customer's number, the deal summary and the last messages without walking back to a desk. Each product is its own application under one login, and the store's own phones, DMS and website stay the store's own. When you want a person, the contact page reaches our team, and our support team can see your screen with you and walk through it on the call. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with Deal chat is on for every deal in every LeadLocate CRM account. The thread appears the first time a customer writes from the deal page or a salesperson writes from the deal view, and the mobile Deal Chats inbox is in the app for every user. Per user notification preferences decide whether a new deal message arrives as a toast, a sound, a text or an email. The pre-recorded live demo shows a customer question arriving and being answered from the deal. Pair it with the customer deal pages the thread lives on, the EZ Desking worksheets whose numbers the customer is asking about, and the Road to Sale checklist that tells the salesperson which step the customer is stuck on. The dealership desking software page covers how the money conversation fits the CRM as a whole, and the all features page lists everything else. #### Questions and answers Q: How does the customer get into deal chat? A: From the chat card on their deal page. The page opens from a link the salesperson texts or emails, unlocked with a one time passcode sent to the buyer or co-buyer number on the deal. The customer never installs anything. Q: Where does the salesperson answer from? A: From the Customer Chat panel in the deal view on the desktop CRM, or from the Deal Chats inbox in the LeadLocate mobile app, which shows the deal summary above the conversation and a Reply to customer action. Q: Can we send photos and documents through it? A: Yes, in both directions. The customer can send trade photos and documents from the phone, the store can send unit photos, a walk around or files, and links unfurl as previews with the vehicle image and title. Q: Does the customer know when we reply? A: The customer is texted that there is a reply on the deal page, so the answer does not sit unread. On the store side, per user notification preferences decide whether a new customer message arrives as a toast, sound, text or email. Q: Is deal chat the same as the texting inbox? A: No. The texting inbox is organized by phone number and covers every conversation. Deal chat is attached to one deal, so the thread about a specific vehicle, trade and payment stays with that transaction, and the manager reviewing the deal can read it. Q: Is it included or an add on? A: Included with every LeadLocate CRM plan, with the desking worksheet, the customer deal pages and the mobile app. Plans are month to month. ### Deal Jacket Uploads and QR Document Intake URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/deal-jacket-and-qr-intake The deal jacket is the document folder on every lead, contact, appointment and deal in LeadLocate CRM. Files are uploaded from the computer or through a QR code shown on screen; a phone scans it, opens a private single use page, and the photos land on the record within seconds, where they can be previewed, renamed, rotated and deleted. Included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. #### What the deal jacket does in one sentence The deal jacket is the folder that travels with a customer record: every document the store collects or creates for that lead, contact, appointment or deal, stored privately, previewed in place and listed in the record's timeline. It is the software version of the manila jacket that used to sit in a rack behind the desk, except it cannot be misfiled, cannot be walked out of the building, and does not need a copier to get a document from a customer's hand into it. The intake half is the part stores have not seen before. Instead of asking the customer to email a photo of a license, or texting it to a salesperson's personal phone and hoping it gets uploaded later, the CRM shows a QR code on the screen. The customer or the salesperson scans it with any phone, a private page opens, the photo is taken or picked, and it is in the jacket before the phone goes back in a pocket. The file library page covers the store wide document library; this page is the folder on the customer. #### How a salesperson uses it on a normal day A customer sits down and the salesperson expands her lead card. Under the appointment controls is the Internal Deal Jacket panel, empty so far. He clicks Scan To Upload Documents and a QR code appears in a modal with a note that it expires in 60 seconds. He turns the screen toward her. She points her phone camera at it, taps the link, and a private upload page opens with a lock badge and a short explanation that it is single use. The modal on his screen closes on its own the moment her phone connects. She photographs the front of her license, crops it on her phone, adds the back, then a photo of her insurance card, and taps upload. A receipt page confirms it and then goes dead, so the link cannot be reused. Back on his screen the file list has refreshed itself and shows three new files with a New pill. He clicks one, the preview lightbox opens with zoom and drag, he rotates the one she shot sideways, renames it from the phone's file name to something a finance manager will recognize, and moves on. The lead timeline now has a Deal Jacket Upload event with a paperclip. When the deal is desked that afternoon, the documents are already on the record, and the finance office opens the jacket instead of asking for the license again. #### Where it lives: lead cards, the deal view, the trash bin and the phone The Internal Deal Jacket panel appears on the expanded lead, contact and appointment cards under Leads, Contacts and Calendar, and on the digital deal view under Desking. The panel has two actions, Add Deal Jacket Files for uploads from the computer and Scan To Upload Documents for the QR flow, plus the file list with preview, rename, rotate and delete on each row. The panel label says what it is: private files for your team, which the customer never sees. Documents the store wants from the customer are collected through the review slots on the customer's deal page, which is the other half of the story and is covered on the customer deal pages page. Deleted files go to the CRM's trash bin under Deal Jacket Files with restore, so a wrong click is not a lost document. The LeadLocate mobile app carries the deal jacket inside Deal Tracker, so a salesperson on the lot can open a customer's documents from the phone, and mobile uploads from the scanners show up in the same list as view only rows. #### The three scanners that feed it The generic QR upload is one of three phone intake flows on the same panel, and they share one design: a QR on the desktop, a private single use phone page, a claimed session with time to shoot and crop, and files that appear on the record without a refresh. The Driver License and Insurance Scanner reads a license and an insurance card, extracts the fields and offers to apply them to the customer record, so a name, address and date of birth are typed by nobody. The Acquisition/Trade Info scanner takes registration front and back, title front and back, payoff letter front and back and as many vehicle photos as the customer wants to add, reads the vehicle and payoff facts, and applies them to the trade with one click. Both produce a printable packet. Photo first intake goes one step further. From the New Lead or Add Contact popup, a photo of a license, an insurance card, a payoff letter, a registration or a handwritten worksheet is read and sorted into the right place automatically: identity documents to the identity scanner, vehicle and payoff documents to the trade info, everything else into the deal jacket, and the extracted name, phone, email and vehicle land on the new record. The driver license scanner and trade in capture pages describe the two specialized flows. #### What it replaces and what that costs elsewhere The usual alternatives are a copier and a folder, a shared email inbox full of photos of licenses, a salesperson's camera roll, or a document product licensed per user that stores files somewhere apart from the customer record. The copier version is slow and the folder gets lost. The email and camera roll versions put customer identity documents on devices and mailboxes the store does not control, which is a data problem before it is a convenience problem. The separate product version means the finance office has a login the sales floor does not, and the sales floor keeps texting photos anyway. The deal jacket is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription for every user, with no per document or per scan fee. Files sit on the customer record where the salesperson, the desk and the finance office already are, and the QR flow works with whatever phone is in the room, the customer's included, with nothing to install. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: private storage, single use links and a trail A deal jacket holds the most sensitive documents a store collects, so the design starts from the assumption that a link will be forwarded and a screen will be photographed. Files are stored privately for the store alone and are never exposed at a public address; every preview opens only after the CRM confirms the file belongs to the signed in user's company. The QR link is single use. It is valid for 60 seconds until a phone opens it, at which point that phone's session is the only one that can upload, for a limited window; a second scan from another phone gets a not found page. The link is never kept in readable form, and the upload receipt expires on its own. Every upload, from the desktop or from a phone, writes a Deal Jacket Upload note to the record timeline, and every file records when it was first opened, which is what drives the New pill. Deleted files go to a trash bin with restore rather than vanishing. The customer facing phone page shows the terms of service and privacy policy links and a plain disclosure that documents are processed automatically. The store's safeguards program stays its own, and this is the storage and access layer that program can point to. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with There is nothing to turn on. The Internal Deal Jacket panel is on every lead, contact, appointment and deal in every LeadLocate CRM account, and the QR flow works the first time a salesperson clicks Scan To Upload Documents. Master administrators can set default file folders per user in User Management for the store wide file library. The pre-recorded live demo shows a QR upload landing on a lead. Pair it with the Road to Sale checklist, whose final documents and stipulations steps are where the jacket gets used, the customer deal pages where the customer uploads the documents the store asks for, and SecureWebX for the credit application and the stipulations that go to a lender. The all features page lists the rest of the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the customer need an app to scan the QR code? A: No. Any phone camera opens the link. A private single use upload page opens in the phone browser, the customer takes or picks photos, crops if needed, and uploads. Nothing is installed. Q: How long is the QR code good for? A: Sixty seconds until a phone opens it. The desktop modal closes on its own when the phone connects, and that phone then has a limited window to shoot, crop and upload. A second scan from another phone is refused. Q: What file types can go in the jacket? A: Photos and documents from the computer or the phone. Common image formats preview in the zoom lightbox, PDFs preview in a framed viewer, and other stored files are available as secure downloads. Q: Can the customer see the deal jacket? A: No. The Internal Deal Jacket is private to your team. Documents you want from the customer are requested through the review slots on their deal page, and those uploads are reviewed and approved on the deal. Q: What happens if someone deletes a file by mistake? A: It goes to the trash bin under Deal Jacket Files with a restore action, and the record timeline still shows the original upload event. Q: Is the deal jacket on the mobile app? A: Yes. Deal Tracker in the LeadLocate mobile app carries the deal jacket, so a salesperson can open a customer's documents from the lot, and phone scanner uploads appear in the same list. ### Design Studio: Business Cards and Print Pieces URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/design-studio-business-cards Design Studio is the design tool on the dock of LeadLocate CRM. Each user builds business cards, referral cards, NFC cards, a vCard customers save to their phone, and floating buttons for web pages, using a stock media library, stickers and text tools, then exports print-ready output to take to any printer. It is included in every LeadLocate plan. #### What Design Studio does, in one sentence Design Studio is the per-user design tool inside LeadLocate CRM where a salesperson or manager designs a business card, a referral card, an NFC card, a vCard and a set of floating buttons, pulls images from a stock library, and exports a print-ready file, without leaving the CRM or paying a designer. That is the whole feature. It is a design studio in the plain sense of the words, not a print shop and not an agency, sitting one click away on the dock next to the Referral Program it feeds. The pieces it makes are the ones a dealership actually hands to people. The business card is still the most used sales tool in the building. The referral card is the physical reminder that a reward exists. The NFC card and the vCard put the salesperson's contact details on a customer's phone with a tap or a save, which is where the next purchase is decided. Floating buttons are the tap to call and tap to text buttons on a page. Design Studio makes all of them from the same place, with the same logo and the same phone number the CRM already knows. #### How a store uses it on a normal week A new salesperson starts on Monday. By Monday afternoon she has a business card: she opened Design Studio from the dock, started a project, opened the store's saved card layout, typed her name and title, and added the dealership's logo and the tracking number the CRM assigned her. She adjusted the text style, put a truck from the Stock Library across the back, and exported the print-ready file. The office sent it to the local printer the store already uses. Cards were on her desk Wednesday. No vendor portal, no proof by email, no three week wait. Wednesday the sales manager builds a referral card for the month's push. Same studio, a folder called Referral Push, a landscape layout with the reward in large type and the shared team referral link on the back. He sets it up as a sheet of cards, rows and columns on one page, and prints fifty on the office printer for the delivery desk. Every car delivered that month leaves with one on the passenger seat. Friday a customer who bought a minivan asks how to reach her salesperson later. He taps his NFC card against her phone; her phone opens his vCard, built in the studio, and she saves it. When her sister needs a car in the spring, his name is in her contacts with the store's number, not a personal cell. #### Where it lives: the dock, projects, folders and the stock library Design Studio has its own button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM, between the Referral Program and My Inventory. It opens a canvas with projects and folders, so a store keeps its card layouts in one folder, its event pieces in another, and each user keeps their own work. A project has a name, a size and orientation, Portrait, Landscape, Square or a custom width and height, and a background color or a transparent background for a piece that will sit on a web page. Inside a project the tools are the ones a card needs: text with style, color, size and spacing; upload your own images or pick from the Stock Library; Stickers for icons and badges; rotate, flip, scale and position; and a sheet mode with Rows and Columns and an Apply to All Cells button for printing many cards on one page. The output is print-ready, which means a file at the size you set that any printer, from the one in the office to a commercial shop, accepts as is. The finished card has a home in the CRM too. Under User Management, each user's profile has a Business Card slot where the exported card is uploaded and kept on file for that rep. Salesperson pages built in Lead Pages and the personal salesperson websites are where the floating buttons go to work. #### What it replaces, and what design work costs elsewhere Most dealerships get business cards one of three ways. The OEM program, which produces a compliant card in about a month at a price per box that makes managers ration them. A local print shop with a designer, which is faster but bills design time every time a name changes. Or a free online design tool, where the logo is the wrong version, the phone number is a personal cell, and the file the rep downloads is the wrong size for the printer. Referral cards and NFC cards usually do not get made at all, because nobody owns the job. Design Studio is part of the platform subscription. The design tool, the stock library, the sheet layouts and the print-ready export come with every plan, and each lead plan on the pricing page has the full set. The store pays its printer for paper and ink, and nothing else. The bigger saving is the one nobody invoices: the card exists on day one, the referral card exists at all, and every piece carries the store's number and logo because they came from the store's CRM. #### The compliance angle: the store's number, the store's brand, on every piece The quiet problem with business cards is what is printed on them. A card with a personal cell number moves the customer relationship off the store's phone system and onto a device the store does not own, which means the texts that follow are not logged, the opt outs are not honored, and the customer leaves when the salesperson does. A card designed in Design Studio carries the salesperson's tracking number from the CRM instead, so the calls and texts it produces land in the store's system with recording, logging and the do not call controls already in place. The same holds for the referral card. The link on it is the one from the Referral Program, so a referral that comes in through it is a lead with a source, and the reward that follows is recorded in Payout History. And because the pieces are built from the store's own logo and layouts saved in the studio, they look like the dealership rather than like whatever the rep found online. Roles in User Management decide who can build store-wide pieces; every user builds their own. #### How to turn it on Nothing to enable. Open Design Studio from the dock in LeadLocate CRM, start a project, choose a size and orientation, and build. For a business card, add your name, title, the store's logo and your tracking number, pick a stock image or upload your own, and export. For a sheet of referral cards, set rows and columns and use Apply to All Cells so the whole page matches. Save the project so the next rep starts from the store's layout rather than from a blank canvas. A store that wants a locked template every rep must use, a piece the studio does not offer, or its print pieces produced and shipped rather than exported to a file can ask for it; that is available on request and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows a card built from a fresh user profile in a few minutes. #### What to pair it with Design Studio makes the physical pieces; the rest of the CRM makes them worth handing out. Pair it with the Referral Program, so the referral card carries a link that turns into a lead and a payout. Pair it with tracking phone numbers, so the number on the card rings the store's system and shows up in Reports by source. Pair it with Lead Pages and the personal salesperson websites, where the floating buttons and the vCard live online, and with the file library, where the exported files sit in the store's folders for the next print run. For the deal-side paperwork, DealTracker's print packets, envelopes and postage handle what goes in the mail. Design Studio handles what goes in a customer's hand. The all features page lists everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What can I design in Design Studio? A: Business cards, referral cards, NFC cards, a vCard customers save to their phone, and floating buttons for web pages, with text tools, stickers, uploaded images and a stock media library. Output is print-ready at the size you set. Q: Does LeadLocate print and ship the cards? A: The studio exports a print-ready file you take to any printer, from the office printer to a commercial shop. Produced and shipped pieces are available on request; our team puts that in production for your dealership. Q: Can I print a whole sheet of cards on one page? A: Yes. Set rows and columns in a project, design one cell, and use Apply to All Cells so the sheet matches. That is how a store prints fifty referral cards for the delivery desk in an afternoon. Q: Does every user get Design Studio? A: Yes. It is on the dock for every user, and each user keeps their own projects and folders. Roles in User Management decide who builds store-wide pieces. Q: Where do the logo and phone number on a card come from? A: You add them once: the store's logo file and the tracking number the CRM assigned to you, saved in the project so the next card starts from it. A card built here carries the store's number, so the calls and texts it produces land in the store's system. Q: Is Design Studio extra? A: No. It is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, including CRM Only. You pay your printer for paper and ink and nothing else. ### Digital Retail Checkout on Your Deal Pages URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/digital-retail-checkout Digital retail checkout is the customer side of a DealTracker deal page. A shopper opens the store's branded deal page from a text, builds the deal, uploads documents for review, reviews the deal terms and requests a shipping quote, while the salesperson watches every step from the CRM and answers in Deal Chat. It is part of the LeadLocate platform, with e-signature and the SecureWebX credit application one tap away. #### What digital retail checkout does on a deal page Digital retail checkout lets a customer work through a deal on the store's own deal page: build the deal around the selected vehicle, review the documents the store asks for and upload them, review the deal itself, and request a shipping quote if the car is coming to them. Every step happens on a page that is skinned to the store, reached from a link the salesperson sent, and protected by the PIN the customer was given. That is the one sentence version. It is the checkout experience shoppers expect from every other purchase, attached to a real deal in DealTracker instead of a marketing widget that emails a form somewhere. It is worth being exact about what it is not. It is a review flow, not a payment rail. The customer reviews the numbers and tells the store how they intend to pay; money changes hands the way your store already handles it. Anyone selling you a deal page that quietly turns into a card processor is selling you a second business to run. This one keeps the deal where the deal belongs, on the customer deal page with e-signature, with the checkout steps layered on top. #### How a deal moves through checkout on a normal Tuesday A customer texted about a used SUV on Monday. The salesperson desked it in EZ Desking, shared the deal page by text, and the customer opened it that night on the couch. On the page they see the selected vehicle with year, make, model, trim, miles and VIN, the sale price and the payment structure the salesperson set. They build the deal from there: choose between the finance term options the store exposed, add the trade the salesperson already entered, and leave a comment asking whether the second key was found. Tuesday morning the salesperson sees the comment in Deal Chat inside the CRM and answers. The customer uploads proof of income and proof of residence from their phone into the document review step, and those files land on the deal in the CRM, not in a personal inbox. They review the deal, sign where the page asks, and because they live two hours away, request a shipping quote with their address. The manager sees the completed page from the deal view, the finance office sees the uploads, and the customer taps Open secure credit application to finish the application on SecureWebX before they ever drive to the store. Nothing in that day required a phone call to relay a document or a number. The salesperson stayed on the thread, the customer worked at their own pace, and the store held the record of every step. That is what checkout on a deal page changes: the customer does real work on the deal, and it all lands in one place. #### Where it lives: Digital Retail Controls in the deal view Digital retail checkout is switched on per deal from the Desking menu in LeadLocate CRM. Open a deal and look for Digital Retail Controls in the deal view. That panel decides which checkout steps the customer sees on their page: the build step, document review, deal review and the shipping quote. A store that only wants documents collected on the page turns on document review and leaves the rest off. A store that ships cars turns on the shipping quote. The salesperson does not need a web developer or a vendor ticket to change what a customer sees; it is a set of controls on the deal. The customer's side is the deal page itself, hosted on the store's branded deal page domain and reached from the share link with PIN access. The page shows their selected vehicle, their salesperson, notes from the salesperson and the checkout steps in order. On mobile the salesperson follows the same deal through the Deal Chats inbox in the LeadLocate mobile app, so a question asked at nine at night gets answered from a phone rather than waiting for the desk. Uploaded documents sit with the deal. A document a customer replaces goes to the trash bin, where it can be restored, so a wrong upload is not a lost one. #### What it replaces, and what digital retail costs elsewhere Digital retail is sold to dealerships as a separate product with its own monthly fee, its own website plugin, its own login and its own lead form that emails the store a PDF nobody can edit. The customer builds a deal in the vendor's tool and then the salesperson rebuilds it in the store's system, because the two never agreed on the numbers. The first thing the customer hears when they arrive is that the payment on the website was an estimate. On a DealTracker deal page, the numbers the customer sees are the numbers the salesperson desked, from the same engine that runs the desking tool. There is no second system to reconcile. The checkout steps are part of the platform subscription rather than a separate line on the bill, so they replace a standalone digital retail contract, and DealTracker comes with every LeadLocate plan, each lead plan on the pricing page included. It also replaces the relay work. Documents arrive on the deal instead of by text to a personal phone. Questions arrive in Deal Chat instead of in a voicemail. The shipping request arrives with an address instead of as a note that says "ask about delivery." #### The compliance angle: one record of what the customer saw, signed and sent A deal page keeps a record. The customer opens it with a PIN, so access is controlled and the store can revoke a share or void a deal page when circumstances change. Revisions are kept, so if the numbers changed between Monday and Tuesday, the revision view shows what the customer saw each time. The signature is captured on the page against the deal as it stood when they signed, and the documents they uploaded in document review attach to that same deal. This matters because the alternative is a chain of texts and screenshots where nobody can say which version of the payment the customer agreed to. When a customer later disputes what was offered, or a manager audits a deal, the deal page and its history answer the question. Personal information the customer provides, from the documents to the profile details, lands in the Customer Profile where it is stored encrypted, not in a salesperson's photo library. And because the page is a review flow, the store's own payment handling, disclosures and contracting steps happen where they always have, under the store's existing process and counsel. #### How to turn it on Open any deal from the Desking menu in LeadLocate CRM, find Digital Retail Controls in the deal view, and switch on the checkout steps you want the customer to see. Share the deal page by text or email from the same view, and the customer's page shows those steps in order. Centralized deal defaults set the structures and terms a customer can choose from when they build the deal, so the store decides the menu once and every deal page follows it. A store that wants a specific document list per deal type, a custom section on the checkout page, or a particular hand-off to the finance office when a customer finishes the review step can ask for it; our team puts it in production for your dealership. Everything described on this page is live in every plan, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a deal page going out by text and coming back with documents and a signature. #### What to pair it with Digital retail checkout is a layer on the deal page, so it works best with the tools on either side of it. Before checkout, EZ Desking worksheets structure the deal the customer will build from, and the multi-pencil grid lets the salesperson expose sensible options rather than one take-it-or-leave-it number. During checkout, Deal Chat keeps the salesperson on the thread with link previews and photo drops, and the trade-in form with photos and VIN scan captures the customer's vehicle when they add it. After checkout, the customer taps into SecureWebX for the credit application on their own phone, the finance office works it from the application inbox, and the Road to Sale checklist on the deal shows the manager what is done and what is left. For a customer who wants a printed recap, print packets with payment ranges come off the same deal. The all features list shows how the pieces line up, and the platform page explains why they share one login and one customer record. #### Questions and answers Q: Does digital retail checkout take payments or deposits from my customers? A: No. It is a review flow on the deal page. The customer reviews the deal and indicates how they intend to pay; the money is handled through your store's existing process. Payment review on the page is a review step, not a payment rail. Q: Which steps can a customer complete on the deal page? A: Build the deal around the selected vehicle, upload documents for review, review and sign the deal, and request a shipping quote. Digital Retail Controls in the deal view decide which of those steps appear on a given deal. Q: Are the payments on the deal page the same as what the salesperson desked? A: Yes. The deal page reads from the same DealTracker engine as EZ Desking, with the store's centralized deal defaults, so the customer sees the structures the salesperson set rather than a separate estimate. Q: Where do the documents a customer uploads end up? A: On the deal in LeadLocate CRM, next to the Deal Jacket, visible to the salesperson and the finance office. A replaced upload goes to the trash bin and can be restored. Q: Can the customer start the credit application from the checkout page? A: Yes. The deal page carries an Open secure credit application link into SecureWebX, so a customer who has reviewed the deal completes the five step application on their own phone and the finance office works it from the application inbox. Q: Is digital retail checkout a separate product or fee? A: It is part of DealTracker, which is included in every LeadLocate plan, month to month. CRM Only includes it too; the pricing page lists the plans that add exclusive local leads. ### Do Not Call Scrub and Blacklist Built Into the CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/do-not-call-scrub-and-blacklist The Do Not Call Blacklist in LeadLocate CRM is a page under Billing and Admin where a dealership blocks a contact by name, phone or email, imports an existing do not call list by CSV, and runs a live do not call lookup on any number. Blocked contacts disappear from Leads, Contacts and the Inbox, and the block works both ways, counting inbound spam it stopped. #### What the Do Not Call Blacklist does The Do Not Call Blacklist is the one list in LeadLocate CRM that every other list obeys. A contact added to it, by name, phone or email, is hidden from every CRM view: the Leads list, the Contacts list, the SMS and email inboxes, the recipient lists for bulk texting and bulk email. A rep does not have to remember that a customer asked to be left alone, because the rep never sees the customer again. That is what a blacklist should mean, and it is the difference between a policy and a control. The page does three more things. It imports an existing do not call list from a CSV of name, phone and email, so a store's accumulated opt outs from a previous system load in one upload. It blocks in both directions, so a number on the list that texts or calls in is stopped at the door and the page counts how many times it was stopped, which is how the blacklist doubles as a spam filter for the store's tracking numbers. And it runs a live do not call lookup on a number, checking it against the national registry and reporting the line type, so a rep can confirm a number's status before a call rather than after a complaint. The buying side of this subject is on the counterpart pages: what a dealership CRM with built in lead generation owes a store in consent handling, and what an automotive CRM with call recording gives a store as a record. This page is the control itself. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day A customer replies to a follow up text on a Monday morning with two words that mean stop. The rep who gets the reply opens the lead and clicks Blacklist from the row actions, next to In Store Now, Print and Delete. The CRM warns that the contact will be hidden from all CRM views, the rep confirms, and the customer is gone from the rep's screen, from the BDC's queue, from the manager's list and from the bulk text scheduled for Thursday. Nobody has to send an email to the team asking them not to contact this person. The system already did. That afternoon the BDC manager is preparing an equity mining campaign to a list of past customers imported last week. Before building the recipient list she opens Billing and Admin, then DNC Blacklist, and uses the lookup on the handful of numbers she is unsure about. Two come back on the national registry; she adds them with Add to Blacklist, and the Pull Name button fills in the name from the number so she does not have to type it. When the campaign goes out, the blacklisted contacts are not on it, because they are not on anything. On Wednesday the store's main tracking number gets a run of junk texts from a number that is clearly a robot. The manager adds it to the blacklist and the two way block takes over; the next twenty attempts never reach an inbox, and the Spam Blocked count on the entry shows twenty when he checks Friday. The reps never saw the noise, which is the point of a blacklist that works in both directions. #### Where it lives in the CRM The page is under Billing and Admin in the main menu as DNC Blacklist, next to Lead Feeds Manager, Automated Templates, Follow Up Processes and User Management. Its title is Do Not Call Blacklist, and it is a table of every blocked contact with the contact, who added it, an activity column, a blocked marker and the spam count for entries that have stopped inbound traffic. Above the table are Add New, which opens the Add to Blacklist form with Contact Name, Contact Phone and Contact Email fields and the Pull Name button, and Import, which opens Import DNC Blacklist. The import accepts a CSV with columns for Name, Phone and Email in that order, dragged onto the page or chosen with Browse Files. The live lookup runs from the phone field: enter a number with its country code and the page reports the line type and the national registry status beneath the field. Removing a contact from the list asks for confirmation and warns that the contact will reappear in Leads, Contacts and Inbox views, because un-blocking is a decision, not a click. The other place the blacklist appears is everywhere a contact is. The Blacklist action sits on the lead row and on the contact, so a rep blocks a customer from the record where the request arrived rather than walking to an admin page. On the phone app, a blacklisted contact is simply absent from the Leads view and the SMS inbox, the same as on the desktop. #### What it replaces, and what an honored request is worth Without a blacklist a store honors opt outs with memory and good intentions. A rep writes DO NOT CALL in a note field, which the next rep does not read. The BDC keeps a spreadsheet of numbers to avoid, which the bulk texting tool never consults. The manager sends an email to the floor about a customer who complained, which is forgotten by the following week. Each of these fails in the same way: the request lives in one place and the contact attempts come from five. Some stores pay a separate service to scrub lists against the national registry before each campaign, which works for campaigns and does nothing for the individual text a rep sends on Tuesday. Others buy a compliance add on for their CRM that flags contacts but does not hide them, which leaves the decision with the rep at the moment the rep is least likely to check. The LeadLocate blacklist hides the contact from every view and every list, checks numbers live against the registry, and imports the store's existing opt out list in one upload, all inside the CRM the reps already use, at no additional cost. The value of an honored request is hard to see until it is not honored. A customer who asked to be left alone and got a text anyway is a complaint at best. A blacklist that removes them from every screen turns that risk into a non event, and the record of when they were added and by whom is the store's answer if the question is ever asked. #### How does the live do not call lookup work? The lookup is built into the phone field on the Add to Blacklist form. A rep or manager enters a number with its country code, and the page reports two things beneath the field: the line type, so a landline is distinguished from a mobile, and whether the number appears on the national do not call registry. The check runs on demand, against a current source, rather than against a copy the store downloaded months ago. What a store does with the result follows the store's own policy, and the store stays in charge of that call. A number on the registry that belongs to a customer with an existing relationship to the store is a different case from a number on the registry that came in on a purchased list, and the store's own policy decides which calls are appropriate. The lookup gives the rep the fact before the call; the blacklist gives the store a way to act on it with one click. The caller ID and contact validation page describes the related tools that tell a rep who is calling and whether a number is live, and the Phone Validator is the tool for checking a whole list's numbers rather than one. #### The compliance angle: a control the store can show Texting and calling customers are regulated, and a store's defense is its process. The blacklist is the part of that process a store can point to. A contact added to it carries who added it and when, and the activity on the entry shows what was stopped. The import means the store's history of opt outs did not reset when it changed CRMs. The live lookup means a number's registry status was checked at the moment it mattered. And because every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail is written to one communications log on the lead, the store can show what was sent to a customer before the request, and that nothing was sent after. The two way block matters for the store's own numbers as well. Tracking numbers that receive junk texts and robocalls clog inboxes and, worse, tempt reps to ignore the inbox. Blocking a source at the blacklist keeps the inbox honest, and the spam count on the entry shows the store what it is being protected from. The wider record keeping that supports a compliance program, call recording, transcripts and the communications log, is covered on the call recording and transcription page. The blacklist gives a store what a strong compliance program is built on: a control that works, and a record that it worked, kept on every entry. #### How to turn it on The blacklist is on from the first day of the account and empty until the store fills it. The first task is the import: export the do not contact list from the previous CRM or the BDC's spreadsheet as a CSV with Name, Phone and Email columns, open DNC Blacklist under Billing and Admin, click Import, and drop the file on the Import DNC Blacklist panel. The contacts disappear from every view as soon as the import completes. Then tell the floor where the Blacklist button is on the lead row, and make it the store's rule that a stop request is handled by that button and nothing else. Add the lookup to the BDC's habit before any campaign to a list of uncertain origin. A stop word reply already opts a customer out automatically. For a store that wants more, such as a scheduled scrub of every list against the registry, or a blacklist shared across a group of rooftops, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The contact page is the place to describe it. #### What to pair it with The blacklist is the hard stop; three other features are what it protects. Contact import brings the book of business in, and the blacklist import should run alongside it so the store's opt outs arrive with its customers. Bulk texting is the campaign the blacklist quietly scrubs. Merge duplicate leads keeps one record per customer, so a stop request on one record is not undone by a duplicate on another. And tracking phone numbers are the lines the two way block keeps clean. The Do Not Call Blacklist is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where it sits among everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What happens to a contact on the Do Not Call Blacklist? A: The contact is hidden from every CRM view: Leads, Contacts, the SMS and email inboxes and the recipient lists for bulk texting and bulk email. Inbound messages and calls from a blacklisted number are blocked as well, and the entry counts how many were stopped. Q: How do I add a customer who asked to stop? A: Click Blacklist on the lead row or the contact, confirm the warning that the contact will be hidden from all CRM views, and it is done. You can also open DNC Blacklist under Billing and Admin, click Add New, and enter a name, phone or email; Pull Name fills the name from the number. Q: Can I import my existing do not call list? A: Yes. Open DNC Blacklist, click Import, and drop a CSV with Name, Phone and Email columns in that order onto the Import DNC Blacklist panel. The contacts disappear from every view when the import completes. Q: Does the CRM check numbers against the national DNC registry? A: Yes. The phone field on the Add to Blacklist form runs a live do not call lookup on the number you enter, reporting its line type and whether it appears on the national registry. What the store does with that result is the store's own policy decision. Q: Can a blacklisted contact be restored? A: Yes. Remove the entry from the Do Not Call Blacklist page. The CRM asks you to confirm and warns that the contact will reappear in Leads, Contacts and Inbox views. Q: Is the blacklist an extra cost? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Driver License Scanner for Faster Customer Intake URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/driver-license-scanner The driver license scanner in LeadLocate CRM reads a customer's driver license or insurance card with a phone camera and writes the name, address, date of birth and license details into the customer record. It runs from the deal view on desktop and from the LeadLocate mobile app, feeds the Customer Profile and the Deal Jacket, and stores the images with the deal. It is part of every LeadLocate plan. #### What the driver license scanner actually does The driver license scanner in LeadLocate CRM turns a photo of a customer's license into a filled customer record. Point a phone camera at the front and back of the card, and the scanner reads the printed side and the barcode on the back, then writes the name, address, date of birth, license number and expiration into the record the salesperson is already working. The same tool reads an insurance card, so the policy details a finance manager asks for later are captured at the same moment. That is the whole feature in one sentence: intake without typing. It lives inside the LeadLocate CRM rather than as a separate app that produces a file somebody has to move. The scan lands in the deal, the deal belongs to the customer, and the customer is the same record the texting, calling, desking and credit application tools all read. When people search for a driver license scanner app or driver license scanner software, this is the distinction that matters most: where the data goes after the scan. Here it goes where the deal is. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal Saturday A couple walks in at eleven on a Saturday for a test drive. The salesperson opens the lead on the phone, taps the scan option, and photographs the driver's license before the keys come out. The record now has a legal name spelled the way the state spells it, the address as printed, and the date of birth without a transposed digit. The license image sits with the deal as proof the store checked it before the drive. The co-buyer's license is scanned into the same profile, because the Customer Profile holds both buyers on one record rather than two half records that will need merging later. Back at the desk after the drive, the manager opens the deal on the desktop. The name and address are already on the worksheet, so the pencil is printed with the correct spelling the first time. When the customer decides to buy, the insurance card gets scanned from the same button, and the finance office opens a deal that already carries identification and insurance instead of a sticky note reading "get DL and ins." Nobody has retyped anything. Nobody has photographed a license and texted it to a personal phone, which is the habit this feature exists to end. The scene is ordinary on purpose. The value of a scanner is not a dramatic moment, it is forty small moments a month where a record is right instead of nearly right, and a document is where it belongs instead of in someone's camera roll. #### Where it lives: the deal view on desktop and the phone in your pocket On the desktop CRM, open any deal from the Desking menu and you will find Scan ID and insurance cards in the deal view, which opens the Driver License and Insurance Scanner. The scanned documents assemble into a packet attached to the deal, alongside the Deal Jacket where the rest of the paperwork lives. Scanned images that are removed go to the trash bin under Identity Scanner Documents, where they can be restored, so an accidental delete is not a lost document. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app puts the driver license scan next to the VIN lookup, because those are the two things a salesperson captures standing beside a car. The phone camera is the scanner. There is no dedicated hardware, no card reader plugged into a desktop, and no separate login. A rep who has never used the feature finds it where the deal is and uses it on the first try, which is the test any tool on a sales floor has to pass. The scanner also connects to the trade side. The trade-in capture with VIN scan uses the same camera-first approach for the vehicle the customer arrived in, so one phone captures the person, the trade and the paperwork in the same few minutes. #### What it replaces, and what a license scanner costs elsewhere Most stores handle licenses one of three ways. They photocopy the card and file the paper, which means the data is never in a system at all. They buy a dedicated license scanner for the desk, a piece of hardware with its own software, its own driver, and a monthly fee for the privilege of exporting to a file that still has to be imported somewhere. Or a salesperson photographs the license with a personal phone and texts it to the finance office, which is fast, common, and the worst of the three for the store. Inside LeadLocate CRM the scanner is part of the platform subscription. There is no hardware to buy and no per-scan charge. The same document reading that powers it also handles VIN scanning and document capture across the deal, so it is one capability used in several places rather than a separate product bolted to the side. The pricing page lists the lead plans, and every LeadLocate plan includes the scanner along with desking, texting and calling, so there is no separate scanner to buy. The cost that matters more is the one that never shows on an invoice. A misspelled name on a contract, a wrong address on a title application, or a missing insurance card at delivery each cost a store an hour and a customer some patience. A scanner that writes the printed truth into the record removes that class of error at the source. #### The compliance angle: identification captured, stored and kept where it belongs A driver license is personal information, and how a store handles it says something about the store. Three things the scanner does are worth naming. First, the data goes into the Customer Profile, where personally identifiable information is stored encrypted rather than in a spreadsheet or a shared photo album. Second, the images attach to the deal, so a question about whether identification was checked before a test drive has an answer with a timestamp. Third, capture happens inside the store's system on the store's account, which keeps license photos off personal phones, where they outlive the deal and the employee. Deleted scans go to the trash bin with restore, so a document removed by mistake is recoverable, and user roles in User Management decide who can open a deal and its packet in the first place. This is record keeping that supports a store's own compliance program. It is not identity verification, age verification or a law enforcement tool, and the page will not pretend otherwise. It reads what the card says and puts it where the deal is. Verifying that the person is who the card says is still the salesperson's job, exactly as it was before. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to enable. The scanner is live for every LeadLocate CRM account from the first login. On the desktop, open a deal from the Desking menu and use Scan ID and insurance cards. On the phone, sign in to the LeadLocate app and use the license scan from the lead or the deal. The first time a rep uses the phone camera the device asks for camera permission, and that is the entire setup. If a store wants the scanner to trigger something specific, such as a task for the finance office when both a license and an insurance card are on file, that is the kind of workflow our team puts in production for your dealership on request. Training takes about as long as reading this paragraph. Most stores show it once in a sales meeting, and the reps who spend their day on the lot adopt it first because it saves them the walk back to a desk. #### What to pair it with The scanner is most useful when the record it fills is the record everything else reads. Pair it with the Deal Jacket and QR intake, which collects the rest of the paperwork on the same deal and lets a customer photograph documents from their own phone. Pair it with the desking tool, where the scanned name and address flow onto the worksheet and the printed pencil. And pair it with SecureWebX, where the customer who has already been identified at the store completes the secure credit application on their own phone and the finance office works it from one inbox. For the broader picture of how intake, desking and the credit application connect, the all features page lists every capability in the platform, and the auto dealer software CRM page explains the CRM the scanner lives inside. If you would rather see it than read about it, the pre-recorded live demo walks through a deal from the first scan to the signed page. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a hardware driver license scanner? A: No. The phone camera is the scanner. It reads the front and the barcode on the back of the license and writes the details into the customer record inside LeadLocate CRM. On the desktop the same tool opens from the deal view. Q: Does the scanner read insurance cards too? A: Yes. The same button, Scan ID and insurance cards, reads the insurance card and stores it with the deal, so the finance office has identification and insurance on file before delivery. Q: Where do the scanned images go? A: They attach to the deal as a scanner packet next to the Deal Jacket, and the extracted details fill the Customer Profile, where personal information is stored encrypted. Removed scans sit in the trash bin and can be restored. Q: Is the driver license scanner an age verification or identity check tool? A: No. It reads what is printed on the card and puts it in the record. Confirming that the person matches the card, and any verification your store requires, remains a step your people perform. Q: Can a co-buyer's license be scanned into the same deal? A: Yes. The Customer Profile holds the buyer and co-buyer on one record, so both licenses are scanned into the same profile and both names carry through to the worksheet and the credit application. Q: Is the scanner extra, or part of the plan? A: It is part of every LeadLocate CRM plan, including CRM Only, with no per-scan charge. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### EZ Desking Worksheets: Cash, Finance and Lease Pencils URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/ez-desking-worksheets EZ Desking is the desking worksheet inside LeadLocate CRM. It pencils a deal as cash, finance or lease from one screen, runs a multi pencil grid and a goal seek solver, applies a 50 state tax matrix, honors trade credit caps and three lease tax methods, and prints or shares customer sheets that match the screen to the penny. It is included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. #### What EZ Desking does in one sentence EZ Desking turns the lead you are already working in LeadLocate CRM into a structured deal: cash, finance or lease, with the taxes, fees, trade and payment worked out on one screen and carried onto a customer sheet that reads exactly the same. That is the whole job, and it is worth being plain about it, because desking is the point where most stores still leave the CRM, open a spreadsheet or a separate desking product, retype the customer and the unit, and lose the thread between the conversation and the numbers. The worksheet lives on the deal itself. Every deal in the Desking menu opens with the same tabs: Cash, Finance, Lease and Acquisition for the days you are buying the customer's car rather than selling one. The field set is universal, so a car store, an RV lot, a powersports dealer, a marine dealer, a buy here pay here operation and a fleet desk all work the same worksheet with the fields their unit needs. The dealership desking software page covers why desking belongs next to the CRM in general; this page is about the tool itself, using the labels you see on screen. #### How a desk manager uses it on a normal Saturday Picture the busiest hour of the week. A salesperson has a couple at the desk who like a crossover and are talking about a payment, not a price. The manager opens the lead, clicks Start New Deal, and the customer, co-buyer and unit are already on the worksheet because they came off the lead record. He types the VIN into the top bar, clicks Decode, and year, make, model and trim fill in. He adds the trade with its allowance and payoff, picks the term, and the Finance Deal Summary on the right updates as he types. The couple want to see options, not one number. He expands the Multi-Pencil Grid, which lays out three down payments across three terms by default, each cell a real payment with its own rate row, and turns the screen toward them. They point at the middle cell and say the payment is close but not there. He opens Goal-Seek Desking, enters the payment they want to hit, and the solver tells him what down payment or selling price gets there. Two minutes later he prints a customer sheet, they initial it, and the salesperson walks it to finance. No spreadsheet, no calculator app, no second system, and the deal is saved against the lead with a status the whole store can see. #### Where it lives in the CRM: Desking menu, deal view and the phone On the desktop CRM, Desking is a main menu item alongside Leads, Contacts, Inventory and Messaging. It opens the deal list, and each deal opens the digital deal view with the worksheet, the customer chat panel, the Road to Sale checklist and the deal jacket on one page. A deal can also be started from a lead card or from the Unit field on a lead, which is how most deals begin: the customer asked about a specific vehicle, so the deal starts with that vehicle already on it. The Dealership Profile page holds the defaults for the whole store, and it is where a manager sets the store up once. The mobile app carries Deal Tracker as its own screen, with the deal list, deal statuses like Negotiating, In Financing, Deal Sent and SOLD, the deal jacket and the customer chat, so a manager who is off the lot can still see where a deal stands and answer a question. The LeadLocate mobile app page describes the rest of the phone experience. #### What is underneath the grid: taxes, frequency, trade caps and lease methods Desking software is judged by the edge cases, so here are the ones EZ Desking is built for. Sales tax comes from a 50 state tax matrix rather than one flat rate you remember to change, with a State Tax Setup Helper in the profile for stores that sell across a state line. Trade credit is applied by the method your state uses: credit on the full trade allowance, credit on net trade equity only, or no trade tax credit, and a Trade Credit Cap can be set on the deal for states that limit it. Negative equity is taxed where it should be. Payment frequency covers monthly, weekly, biweekly and semimonthly, which matters to buy here pay here desks and to any store whose customers are paid twice a month. Leases carry their own tab with residual as a percent of MSRP, money factor, annual mileage allowance, excess mileage rate, disposition and purchase option fees, security deposit and a choice of three Lease Tax Method treatments, including tax on the monthly payment and upfront methods for the states that require them. Finance deals carry an External Financing option for the customer bringing their own bank or credit union, a Finance Reserve / Rate Spread line, a Good-Through Date, and a Deal Profit & Loss worksheet a manager can print on one page. Factory and dealer cash incentives sit on the worksheet, and the incentives showroom inside the deal view shows the current OEM programs for the make so the manager is not looking them up in another tab. #### Set the store defaults once and every pencil starts right The reason a desk feels slow is usually that every worksheet starts blank. EZ Desking centralizes deal defaults in the Dealership Profile: default sales tax rate, dealer fees and DMV fees with their taxable flags, loan defaults such as APR, buy rate, days to first payment and down payment, lease program defaults such as lease type, residual percent, money factor, mileage and the fee schedule, the Default Pay Frequency, the default active tab, and the Pencil Grid Defaults for how many down payment columns and term rows the grid opens with. There is a separate set of Acquisition Workflow Defaults for stores that buy cars from the public. Vehicle defaults apply to every sale pane, so a marine dealer and a car dealer each see the defaults that fit their unit. A manager changes a fee once and every new worksheet in the store carries it. When a state changes a rate, one edit fixes every pencil written after it. This is the difference between a worksheet and a calculator: a calculator is right when the person using it remembers everything, and a worksheet is right because the store already told it what to remember. #### What it replaces and what that costs elsewhere Most stores desk in one of three ways: a spreadsheet somebody built years ago, a standalone desking product billed per rooftop, or the desking screen inside a DMS that only the finance office can reach. Each one leaves the same gap. The salesperson's conversation happens in the CRM and the numbers happen somewhere else, so the worksheet never knows who the customer is, the CRM never knows what was quoted, and the manager rebuilds context every time a customer comes back. EZ Desking is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription, not a separate line item. The deal is attached to the lead, the quoted numbers are on the deal history, and the customer sheet, the deal page, the chat and the deal jacket all hang off the same record. For the stores that already have a DMS, the DMS keeps doing what a DMS does; EZ Desking is where the deal is structured and presented before it gets there. Plans run month to month. A store that wants the software without lead delivery selects CRM Only during sign up, and the lead plans are on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: estimates, disclaimers and a record of what was shown A worksheet is a selling document, and selling documents get read by people other than the customer later. EZ Desking prints every customer sheet with one consistent disclaimer that opens by saying it is not a contract and that all figures are estimates until final lender approval, followed by the liability text and the name of the person who prepared it. Displayed odometer values on customer sheets carry a footnote marker so a printed mileage is never mistaken for a certified one. The payment range sheets deliberately show a band rather than a single committed rate for conversations that happen before the credit tier is known. The store-level Worksheet disclaimer is editable, so your own language goes on your sheets. Each worksheet carries a Worksheet ID, the deal keeps a history with a verification trail, and a shared sheet that has been superseded tells the reader it is no longer current. None of that makes a store compliant on its own; it gives the store a record of exactly what was shown, when and by whom, which is what a compliance program actually needs from a desking tool. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with There is nothing to turn on. EZ Desking is live in every LeadLocate CRM account from the first login. The practical first step is the Dealership Profile: enter the store's tax rate, fees and defaults, choose the default tab, and set the pencil grid the way your desk likes to present. After that, a deal starts from any lead with Start New Deal. If you want to see it worked before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows a lead becoming a desked deal. Pair it with the rest of the deal tools it was built beside. The pencil recap sheets share any of the customer print versions as a link the customer can open, mark up and sign. The customer deal pages put the structured deal on a branded page the customer unlocks with a texted passcode. The Road to Sale checklist tracks the deal from vehicle selection through delivery, and a worksheet can be pushed into SecureWebX so the finance office works the credit application with the same numbers. The full list is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: Does EZ Desking handle leases as well as cash and finance deals? A: Yes. The worksheet has Cash, Finance, Lease and Acquisition tabs. The lease tab carries residual, money factor, mileage allowance, excess mileage rate, fees, security deposit and a choice of three lease tax methods, and lease defaults are set once in the Dealership Profile. Q: What is the Multi-Pencil Grid? A: A grid of real payments across several down payments and terms, three by three by default, with a rate row per term and optional per cell rate ranges. It is the screen you turn toward the customer when they want options instead of one number. Q: What does Goal-Seek Desking do? A: It works backwards from the payment the customer wants. Enter the target and the solver tells you what selling price or down payment reaches it under the current structure, so the manager can answer the payment question with a number instead of a guess. Q: Does it know my state sales tax and trade credit rules? A: It uses a 50 state tax matrix, applies trade credit on the full allowance, on net equity only, or not at all depending on the state, supports a trade credit cap on the deal, and taxes negative equity where required. A State Tax Setup Helper in the profile handles the details. Q: Can a salesperson desk from a phone? A: The LeadLocate mobile app carries Deal Tracker with the deal list, statuses, deal jacket and customer chat, so a deal can be checked and worked from the lot. The full worksheet with the pencil grid and goal seek is built for the desktop screen. Q: Is desking an add on or part of the CRM? A: It is part of every LeadLocate CRM plan, including CRM Only. No inventory feed or DMS is required to use it, which is why auto brokers and independent stores can desk deals the first day. ### Email Domain Authentication for Dealership Senders URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/email-domain-authentication Email domain authentication in LeadLocate CRM lets your dealership send every CRM email, from a one to one reply to a bulk blast to an automated drip, from your own store domain instead of a shared address. Receiving mail servers check the domain's records, see that the store authorized the send, and treat the message as the store's. Our team puts it in production for your dealership on request, as part of every plan. #### What email domain authentication does for a dealership Email domain authentication makes every message LeadLocate CRM sends on your behalf leave as mail from your dealership's own domain, with the records in place that let the receiving server confirm you authorized it. That is the one sentence version. The longer version starts with how inbox providers decide what to do with a message. They look at the domain the message claims to be from, they check whether that domain has published records naming the servers allowed to send for it, and they look at the sending history of that domain. A message that passes those checks from a domain with a clean history goes to the inbox. A message that fails them, or that comes from a shared address thousands of unrelated senders also use, is on much thinner ice. For a store that sends a handful of emails a week from a personal mailbox, none of this matters much. For a store running email drips, bulk blasts and automated first replies to every lead, it is the whole game. Volume from an unauthenticated or shared address is exactly the pattern receiving servers are built to distrust. Authenticating the store's domain turns the CRM into a sender the inbox providers can vouch for, and it does it once, for every user and every tool in the account. This is a deliverability feature, and most dealers do not know a CRM can do it in house. The full features list shows where it sits among the communications tools, and the auto dealer software CRM page covers the broader email picture. #### How it shows up on a normal day at the store On a normal day nobody at the store notices it, which is exactly the point. The BDC agent replies to a lead from the CRM email composer and the reply arrives from the store's domain. The internet director queues Thursday's aged inventory blast under Marketing Tools and the ninety copies arrive from the store's domain. The Automated Templates set answers a Sunday night lead within the minute and that reply arrives from the store's domain. The customer sees the dealership's name where the sender goes, hits reply, and the reply threads back into the CRM inbox under the lead. What the store does notice is the absence of the old problems. Fewer customers saying they never got the email. Fewer replies bouncing off a shared address and vanishing. Fewer salespeople giving up on email and texting from their personal phones because the CRM email did not seem to land. And when a customer forwards the store's email to a spouse, the spouse sees the dealership's domain, not a string of characters from a sending service. The day it does get noticed is the day a store switches over. A manager who has been watching open activity on a drip usually sees the change without being told, because the messages that were going to the junk folder start being read. That is the scene most stores describe, and it is the reason this page exists. #### Where it lives in the CRM, and who touches it Domain authentication is account level, not per user. It is set once for the dealership, by the Master Administrator working with our team, and from that point every send from every user in the account carries the store's domain. The CRM's user roles, User, Manager and Master Administrator, keep it out of reach of a new salesperson, which is right: a sending domain is a store asset, like the phone number on the sign. The domain itself can be one the store already owns or one purchased through the CRM. The Website menu includes domain search, purchase, transfer out and a self service DNS editor, so a store that manages its own domain inside LeadLocate can publish the records the authentication needs without leaving the platform. A store whose domain is managed elsewhere gets the records from our team and adds them where its domain lives. The custom domains and DNS page covers the domain tools in detail. Once authenticated, the domain is used by every email tool in the account: the composer under the Email menu, Bulk Email and Email Automation under Marketing Tools on the dock, Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes under Billing and Admin, and the email composer in the LeadLocate mobile app. There is no second setting to remember in each tool. #### What the records actually do Two kinds of records carry the weight. The first names the servers allowed to send mail for the domain, so when a message arrives claiming to be from the store, the receiving server can check whether it came from a server on that list. The second attaches a signature to each outgoing message that the receiving server can verify against a public key published on the domain, so the message is provably unaltered and provably authorized. The industry names for these are SPF and DKIM, and a third record, DMARC, tells receiving servers what to do with a message that fails and where to send reports. None of this is dealership specific, which is why it is easy to skip and expensive to skip. What is dealership specific is the volume and the pattern: a store sends a burst of nearly identical emails to a list, then a steady trickle of one to one replies, then another burst. That pattern from an authenticated domain with a clean history reads as a business doing business. The same pattern from an unauthenticated address reads as something to be cautious about. Authentication is not a reputation by itself. A store that authenticates its domain and then blasts a list full of dead addresses will still hurt its standing, which is why the Email Validator sits next to the sending tools. Authentication plus clean lists plus messages people actually asked for is the combination that keeps a store's domain in good standing. #### What it replaces and what an unauthenticated domain costs The direct replacement is a deliverability add on from a separate email platform, or the consultant a store hires when its emails stop arriving. The indirect replacement is the workaround that most stores fall into without naming it: salespeople who stop trusting CRM email and send from personal mailboxes, where nothing is logged, nothing threads under the lead and nothing survives the salesperson leaving. The cost of an unauthenticated domain is mostly invisible, which is why it persists. The blast that reached forty percent of the list instead of all of it does not send a report saying so. The drip step that landed in junk does not tell the manager. The customer who replied to a shared address and got no answer does not call to complain. What the store sees is email that seems not to work, and the usual response is to send less of it, which is backwards. Email domain authentication is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only to the lead plans, with no deliverability surcharge. The pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: the store is the sender, on the record Authentication settles a question that comes up whenever a customer disputes an email: who sent it. With the store's domain authenticated, the answer is the store, verifiably, and the CRM's communications log records the send under the lead with the date and the user. That pairing, a provable sender and a logged send, is what a manager wants in hand when a customer says they never agreed to be emailed or asks what they were told about a price. It also protects the store from the opposite problem, someone else sending as the store. A domain with authentication records published tells receiving servers to reject or quarantine mail that claims to be from the dealership but did not come from an authorized server. That is a real protection for a business whose name is on a sign and whose customers will open anything that looks like it came from there. Consent is still the store's responsibility. Authentication makes a message trustworthy; it does not make it wanted. Sending to customers who gave the store their address, honouring requests to stop by removing the contact from the campaign lists and processes, and keeping the record are the practices that go with it. Texting consent has its own rules, covered on the do not call scrub and blacklist page. #### How to turn it on Ask. Email domain authentication is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The Master Administrator opens a support ticket from More Options on the dock or raises it on the onboarding call, tells us which domain the store wants to send from, and our team supplies the records. If the domain is managed inside the CRM, the records are published through the self service DNS editor under the Website menu. If the domain is managed elsewhere, whoever handles the store's website adds them there, which takes a few minutes. Once the records are live, every email tool in the account sends from the store's domain without any per user change. The one decision to make beforehand is which domain. Most stores use the same domain as their website so that the email address a customer sees matches the site they visited. A group with several rooftops can authenticate a domain per rooftop, so each store's email arrives as that store. If you want to see the result before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows email leaving the CRM and arriving in a customer's inbox. #### What to pair domain authentication with Pair it with the Email Validator so the authenticated domain only ever sends to addresses that exist. Pair it with Email Automation and Follow Up Processes, which are the tools that generate the volume that makes authentication matter. Pair it with the email inbox and composer for the one to one replies that carry the same domain and thread under the lead. And pair it with the Reports dashboard on the dock, where email activity by user and by day shows whether the messages are earning replies once they are landing. For a store that also runs personal salesperson websites or Lead Pages landing pages on a custom domain, the domain tools under the Website menu are the natural companion, because the domain a customer sees on the page and the domain they see on the email should be the same one. And when the email does its job and the customer answers, the vehicle insert button, the appointment booking link and the desking tool are all one click from the same thread. #### Questions and answers Q: What is email domain authentication? A: Records published on your dealership's domain that let receiving mail servers confirm a message claiming to be from your store was actually authorized by your store. In LeadLocate CRM it means every email the CRM sends leaves from your own domain rather than a shared sending address. Q: How do I check whether my domain is authenticated? A: Ask our team through a support ticket from More Options on the dock, or on your onboarding call. We confirm which records are live for your domain and supply any that are missing. If your domain is managed inside the CRM, the self service DNS editor under the Website menu shows the records directly. Q: Which methods does LeadLocate use to authenticate a domain? A: The standard ones inbox providers expect: a record naming the servers allowed to send for the domain, a signature on each message verified against a key published on the domain, and a policy record telling receivers what to do with mail that fails. The industry names are SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Q: Does authentication apply to every user and every tool? A: Yes. It is set once at the account level and covers the composer, Bulk Email, Email Automation, Automated Templates, Follow Up Processes and the mobile app composer for every user in the account. Q: Does my store have to buy its domain through LeadLocate? A: No. A domain you already own works; our team supplies the records and whoever manages your domain adds them. Domains bought through the CRM's Website menu can publish the records through the built in DNS editor. Q: Is there a charge for domain authentication? A: No. It is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only up, and our team puts it in production for your dealership on request. ### Email Drips That Never Sleep URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/email-drip-automation Email drip automation in LeadLocate CRM sends a scheduled sequence of emails to a lead or a list without anyone pressing send. The Email Automation tool under Marketing Tools schedules a message to a campaign list for a delivery time, Follow Up Processes run multi step drips per lead type, and Automated Templates answer new leads by feed. Replies land in the CRM inbox under the lead. Included in every plan. #### What email drip automation does in LeadLocate CRM Email drip automation writes the follow up once and sends it many times, on a schedule, to every lead that qualifies for it, and it keeps doing that on the days when nobody at the store has time to think about the third email to an internet lead from two weeks ago. That is the one sentence version. In LeadLocate CRM it is three tools that share one contact database: Email Automation, the dock tile that reads Drips that never sleep; Follow Up Processes, the multi step sequences per lead type under Billing and Admin; and Automated Templates, the per feed responses that answer a new lead the moment it arrives. The reason it is three tools rather than one is that a dealership runs three different kinds of automated email. The first is the instant reply: a lead comes in from a feed at 11 p.m. and gets a response that sounds like the store within the minute. The second is the long sequence: an unsold lead gets a planned series over days and weeks, with the wording changing as the lead ages. The third is the scheduled send to a list: the whole pre-owned inquiry list gets the aged inventory email on Thursday at 9 a.m. Each one has its own screen because each one is set up by a different person for a different reason. This page is the product side view of those three screens. The category page, dealership CRM with email automation, explains why a store wants automated email in the CRM at all, and the full features list puts these tools next to the texting, calling and desking features they work with. #### How a store uses it on a normal day Say a lead arrives Sunday night from the store's website, a shopper asking about a certified crossover. Nobody is in the building. The Automated Templates set for that feed sends a reply within the minute, in the store's voice, thanking the shopper, confirming the unit and offering two appointment times. Monday morning the round robin has assigned the lead to a salesperson, who opens the lead detail and sees the reply already sent, so his first touch is a call, not a delayed apology. The shopper does not answer the call. The salesperson sets the lead's status, and the Follow Up Process for internet leads takes over: a second email on day two with the vehicle's photos, a short check in on day four, a message on day seven about the store's trade appraisal, a final note on day fourteen. Each step is written once by the BDC manager and edited when the store's offer changes. The salesperson does nothing except watch the lead's communications log fill in, and when the shopper finally replies to the day seven email, the reply threads under the lead in the CRM inbox, the notification fires, and the salesperson picks up the conversation with the whole history in front of him. Meanwhile the internet director has a list of ninety unsold pre-owned inquiries from last month. She opens Email Automation, picks the campaign list under Send to Campaign, chooses the subject and the template, drops in the flyer as the attachment, sets the Schedule Time for Thursday at 9 a.m. and saves. The row appears under Scheduled Delivery with its status, and on Thursday it goes out while she is in the sales meeting. Three tools, one contact database, one inbox for the replies. #### Where the drip tools live in the CRM Email Automation is on the dock. Click Marketing Tools on the bottom taskbar and it is one of eight tiles, beside Bulk Email, Text Automation, Bulk Texting, Texting Chatbots, Voicemail Drops, Phone Validator and Email Validator. The page has a scheduling form, with Send to Campaign, Subject, Template, Attachment, Message and Schedule Time, and a Scheduled Delivery table beneath it showing each queued send with its Status and View and Edit actions. Text Automation is the same idea for SMS, and the two are built to run side by side so a sequence can alternate between an email and a text. Follow Up Processes and Automated Templates live under Billing and Admin on the main menu, next to DNC Blacklist, Voicemail Drop Files, Lead Feeds Manager, User Management and Account Settings. That placement is deliberate: these are the store's policy, set by a manager, not a per user preference. Follow Up Processes holds the multi step drips per lead type with a restore defaults option, so a manager who over edits a sequence can put the original back. Automated Templates holds the per feed inbound templates, a master set, and the unassigned lead automation that covers a lead nobody has claimed yet. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app shows the result rather than the setup: the email inbox, the lead's communications log, and the notification when a reply arrives. A salesperson builds drips at the desk, and from the phone he sees every email the drip sent and every reply it earned. #### What each of the three tools is for Automated Templates is the first touch. Every lead feed in the Lead Feeds Manager can carry its own template set, so the reply to a website lead reads differently from the reply to a third party lead or an inbound seller offer request, and the master set covers any feed without its own. The unassigned lead automation is the safety net: a lead that has not been picked up by a person still gets a response, so the customer never learns that the store's Sunday coverage was thin. Follow Up Processes is the long game. A process is a series of steps with a delay between them, defined per lead type, so a finance lead, a trade lead and a new vehicle inquiry each get a sequence that fits what the customer asked for. Steps are written in the store's voice, and the process pauses the customer out of the sequence when the conversation turns live, because nothing reads worse than an automated day seven email arriving the morning after the customer bought the car. Email Automation is the scheduled send. It answers a different question from Bulk Email: not send this now, but send this then. A manager queues a send to a campaign list for a date and time, sees it in the Scheduled Delivery table, and can edit or delete it up until it goes. Alongside it, Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes each have their own page if you want the setup detail for one of them. #### What it replaces, and what falling behind costs The direct replacement is a separate email marketing platform with its own contact list and its own monthly invoice. The indirect replacement is the salesperson's memory. Most follow up at most stores stops after the second touch because the third one has to be remembered, written and sent by a person who has eleven other leads and a customer on the lot. A drip does not have eleven other leads. It sends the third, fourth and fifth touch on schedule, and the store finds out that a meaningful share of buyers were simply not ready on day one. There is also the cost of the disconnected tool. When the drip runs in a separate product, the lead record never hears that the email went out, the reply lands in a mailbox nobody owns, and the salesperson calls a customer who has been receiving emails from the store all week without knowing it. When the drip runs inside LeadLocate CRM, every send is a line in the lead's communications log next to the calls and texts, every reply threads under the lead, and the notification goes to the assigned user. The what to expect from car sales leads page explains why a customer who goes quiet for two weeks is still a real buyer, which is exactly the customer a drip is built for. All three tools are part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only up through the lead plans, with no separate automation tier. The pricing page has the details. #### The compliance angle: send to people who asked, from a domain you own Automated email earns trust or loses it at scale, so the rules are simple and worth stating. Drips go to leads and contacts who gave the store their address by asking about a vehicle, submitting an offer request, buying a car or opting in on a form. When a customer asks to stop, a manager removes them from the process and the campaign list and notes it on the record, and the communications log shows the last message they received. Texting has its own consent rules, and the do not call scrub and blacklist page covers that channel. Deliverability is the other half. A drip that sends thousands of emails a month from a shared address will eventually be treated as bulk by the receiving servers. Email domain authentication puts the store's own domain on every automated send, so the messages carry the store's reputation rather than a stranger's. Running a list through the Email Validator before it enters a sequence keeps dead addresses from dragging that reputation down. Both are neighbouring tools, not separate purchases. #### How to turn it on Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes ship with a default set when the account is created, so a new store has a working first reply and a working sequence on day one and edits them into its own voice from there. The BDC manager or Master Administrator opens Billing and Admin, reviews the templates for each feed in the Lead Feeds Manager, adjusts the delays and wording in Follow Up Processes, and uses restore defaults if an edit goes wrong. Email Automation needs a campaign list to send to, so the first step there is building the lists under the Email menu or importing contacts. Our team walks through the setup on the onboarding call and puts the store's own wording in place if a manager sends it over. Sending from the dealership's own domain rather than a shared address is set up on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. If you want to see a sequence run before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows a lead arriving, the automated reply going out and the drip taking over. #### What to pair email drips with Pair the email drip with Text Automation so the sequence alternates channels; a customer who ignores three emails often answers the first text, and the reverse is just as common. Pair it with Voicemail Drops for the step where a human voice does more than a paragraph. Pair it with the AI writing assistant when a manager is drafting the steps, because a sequence written in ten minutes with help reads better than one written in an hour without it. On the setup side, pair it with the Lead Feeds Manager so every feed has the right template, and with the round robin so the lead the drip is warming has a person attached to it when the reply comes in. On the measurement side, the Reports dashboard on the dock shows email activity by user and by day, so a manager can see which step of which process earns the replies and rewrite the ones that do not. And when the drip does its job and the customer answers, the vehicle insert button in the composer, the appointment booking link and the desking tool are all one click from the same thread, which is the whole reason the drip lives in the CRM. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the difference between Email Automation, Follow Up Processes and Automated Templates? A: Automated Templates is the instant first reply to a new lead, set per feed with a master set and an unassigned lead fallback. Follow Up Processes is the multi step drip per lead type with delays between steps. Email Automation schedules a send to a campaign list for a chosen delivery time. All three share the CRM's contact records. Q: Does the drip stop when the customer replies? A: The reply lands in the CRM email inbox under the lead and notifies the assigned user, and the process is paused for that customer so the conversation is handled by a person rather than by the next scheduled step. Q: Can I schedule an email to a whole list for a specific time? A: Yes. Email Automation, under Marketing Tools on the dock, takes a campaign list, subject, template, attachment and message, and a Schedule Time. The queued send appears in the Scheduled Delivery table where it can be edited or deleted until it goes. Q: Where do I edit the wording of a drip? A: Follow Up Processes and Automated Templates are under Billing and Admin on the main menu. Each has a restore defaults option so an over edited sequence can be put back to the shipped version. Q: Is email drip automation an add on? A: No. It is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only up, with no separate automation tier. The pricing page lists the plans. Q: Can the drip alternate between email and text? A: Yes. Text Automation is the SMS counterpart under the same Marketing Tools menu, and sequences are built to alternate so a customer who ignores email can still be reached by text and the other way around. ### Email Inbox and Composer Inside the CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/email-inbox-and-composer The email inbox and composer in LeadLocate CRM keep every customer email on the lead it belongs to: an inbox with one thread per customer, a composer with templates, an AI writing assistant, files from the file library and a vehicle button that drops a unit with photos into the message, sent from the store's own authenticated domain and logged with every call and text. #### What the email inbox and composer do, in one sentence The email inbox and composer are the part of LeadLocate CRM where a customer's emails are read and answered on the lead they belong to, from the store's own domain, with templates, attachments from the file library, a vehicle from inventory and an AI writing assistant in the composer, and every message written to the same communications log as the store's calls, texts and voicemails. Under the Email menu on the desktop, under Email in the dock of the LeadLocate mobile app, and behind the Send an Email button in the top bar. It is a working inbox, not a send only tool. Replies come back into the thread, the thread is attached to the lead, and a manager reading the lead sees the emails between the texts and the calls in the order they happened. The dealership CRM with email automation page covers deliverability, drips and campaigns as a whole; this page is the inbox and the composer themselves. #### How a rep uses it on a normal day A customer emails at 9:15 asking for out the door pricing on two SUVs and whether the store will take a trade with a lien. The Email Sound chimes, the toast shows the subject, and the thread opens in the inbox with the lead's name, status and owner above it. The rep clicks reply, picks the store's pricing reply from Select a Template, and clicks the vehicle button twice to drop both SUVs into the email with photos and prices. She uses the AI Writing Assistant to draft the paragraph about the lien in plain language, reads it, changes one sentence, and attaches the trade appraisal checklist from the file library's Docs folder. Send. At 1:40 the customer replies with the payoff letter as a PDF. It sits in the thread with a View PDF button, so she reads it without downloading anything, adds a tag to the lead, and clicks Auto Follow-up Scheduling so a follow up goes out if the customer goes quiet. At 4:00 the desk manager opens the lead to structure the deal and reads the whole exchange, emails and texts together, without asking her to forward anything. The email was never in a personal mailbox, and the PDF is on the lead where the finance office will find it. #### The inbox: one thread per customer, on the lead The inbox lists conversations by customer, searchable by name, phone, email or company, with row colors and a color filter so a rep marks threads the way they mark leads. Opening a thread shows every message between the store and that customer, with who at the store sent each one, and the lead's details, notes and assignment beside it. Assign To moves a conversation to another user. Blacklist adds the address to the store's block list from the thread. Contact Lookup and Search Leads connect an email from a new address to the customer it belongs to, and Add a new Contact creates the record when there is none. Attachments a customer sends are kept on the thread and can be viewed in place or saved to a folder in the file library, so the insurance card, the payoff letter and the signed form live with the lead instead of in a download folder. Read email can be archived to keep the inbox short without losing anything; the single view opens any message in full. Everything in the thread is also in the lead's communications log, which is where the emails meet the texts and the calls. #### The composer: templates, a vehicle, files and an assistant The composer opens from a thread, from New email message in the inbox, from the Email Composer page with its Send New Email Messages form and Email Messages History, or from the Send an Email button on any page. It writes plain or HTML email, and the toolbar holds the controls a rep reaches for. Select a Template drops in one of the store's saved emails. Insert a vehicle from your inventory puts a unit into the email with its photos and price; when inventory is fed by Inventory Link, that is the unit on the lot today. Attach file opens the file library with its Docs, PDFs, Photos, Videos and Audio, plus Upload from Computer and Upload from Mobile Device, up to 20 files in a batch and 50 MB per file. The AI Writing Assistant drafts an email from a short instruction and offers a set of approaches by name, from a warm recap and appointment setting to a price and payment framing to a breakup and permission close, so a rep picks the intent and edits the words. Clean Up My Text tidies a draft typed in a hurry, and Voice input dictates one. The AI writing assistant page covers the assistant in depth. A link in the email can be a trackable short link with click stats. Send is one click or the keyboard shortcut, and the sent message appears on the thread immediately. #### Sent from your domain, to addresses that exist An email the customer never receives is not a follow up, so two features sit underneath the composer. Email domain authentication lets the store send from its own domain, so the message arrives as the dealership rather than as a generic sender, and the reply goes back into the CRM thread. The Email Validator, in the dock under Marketing Tools, checks addresses and shows validity dots on the lead, so a rep sees before writing whether the address on the lead is worth the effort and a bad address is fixed by a phone call instead of discovered by a bounce. Neither of these is visible in the composer, and that is the point. A rep writes an email; the store's domain and the validity check were handled once, by a Master Administrator, when the account was set up. #### What it replaces, and what a personal mailbox costs Most dealership email lives in personal mailboxes, which means the quote a customer received in March is in the mailbox of a rep who left in April. The alternatives stores buy are an email marketing tool bolted onto their CRM that sends and never receives, or a shared mailbox everyone can see and nobody owns. In both cases the manager structuring a deal cannot read what the customer was told without asking somebody to forward it. Inside the CRM, the email is on the lead from the first message, whoever sent it, whenever they leave. There is no second login, no per user email tool and no export; the inbox and composer come with every lead plan on the pricing page, mobile inbox included. The cost of the personal mailbox is the customer who has to explain to the third salesperson what the first one promised. #### The compliance angle: one record, one opt out list Email to a consumer carries its own rules, and keeping it inside the CRM makes the store's record complete. Every email sent and received is stored on the lead with its timestamp and sender, so a question about what the store told a customer has a written answer from the store's own system. The customer's contact information lives in the encrypted Customer Profile, not in a rep's contacts. Blacklist, one click from any thread, adds an address to the store's block list, and a blocked address is blocked for every user and for Email Automation and Bulk Email alike, because they all read the same list. Email domain authentication is a compliance feature as much as a deliverability one: mail that is authenticated as coming from the store's domain is mail the store can stand behind. And because the inbox, the texting inbox and the call log share the lead, a customer who opted out of texts and asked for email instead is handled by looking at the record, not by remembering a conversation. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with The inbox and composer are live from the first day under the Email menu. A Master Administrator sets up email domain authentication once so mail sends from the store's domain, and our team does that with the store on request. Templates come with the account and can be edited; the file library starts with default folders per user. Every message a rep sends and every reply a customer writes is held on the lead the moment it moves, so a thread stays whole for whoever opens it next, and the store's own domain and mailboxes stay the store's own. The contact page reaches a person for anything else. Pair the inbox with the texting inbox, since most customers move between the two and the lead holds both, and with lead notifications, so an Email Alert reaches the rep's phone when a customer writes back. Bulk Email and Email Automation in the Marketing Tools menu send the store wide message and the drip through the same domain and the same block list, and the Email Validator keeps the addresses clean. The full set is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: Do customer replies come back into the CRM? A: Yes. The inbox is two way. A customer's reply lands on their thread in the Email menu, attached to the lead, raises the Email Sound and toast at the desk and an Email Alert on the rep's phone if that toggle is on, and is written to the lead's communications log. Q: Can I send a vehicle in an email? A: Yes. The Insert a vehicle from your inventory button in the composer puts a unit into the email with its photos and price. With Inventory Link feeding the CRM, that is the unit on the lot today. Q: Where do attachments come from? A: Attach file opens the file library with Docs, PDFs, Photos, Videos and Audio folders, plus Upload from Computer and Upload from Mobile Device, up to 20 files per batch and 50 MB per file. Files a customer sends can be viewed in place or saved to a folder. Q: Does email send from my dealership's domain? A: Yes, once email domain authentication is set up for the account, which a Master Administrator does with our team's help on request. Mail then arrives as the dealership and replies return to the CRM thread. Q: Is there an email inbox in the mobile app? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app has an Email inbox under Email in its dock, so a reply can be read and answered from the lot, on the same thread the desktop shows. Q: Is the email inbox an extra charge? A: No. The inbox, the composer, templates, the file library and the mobile inbox are part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are on the pricing page. ### Email Validator: Weed Out Dead Addresses Before You Send URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/email-validator The Email Validator is a tool inside LeadLocate CRM, under Marketing Tools on the dock, that checks a list of email addresses before your store sends to them. Paste addresses one per line or upload a CSV, name the list, and the results come back with a report link and a row in the lookup history. Validity also shows as a dot on the lead record. It is part of every plan. #### What the Email Validator does The Email Validator checks whether the addresses on a list can actually receive mail, before your dealership sends to them, and records the result where the rest of the CRM can see it. That is the one sentence version. The dock tile that opens it reads Catch bad emails early, and early is the operative word: a dead address caught before a blast costs nothing, while a dead address discovered by a bounce has already told the receiving servers something about your store's sending habits. Inside the tool, the page is titled Email Verification Tool. There is a List Name field, a box that takes one address per line, and a CSV File upload for a list that came from a spreadsheet. Below that is Email Lookup History, a table with Date, List Name, Pulled By, Total Number and a Report Link for each run, so the internet director can see that the pre-owned inquiry list was checked last Tuesday by the BDC manager and open the report without running it again. It is a separate, purpose built tool, not a checkbox on the composer, and it has a sibling: the Phone Validator does the same job for numbers. Both live under Marketing Tools with Bulk Email, Email Automation, Bulk Texting, Text Automation, Texting Chatbots and Voicemail Drops, and the full features list shows where they sit among everything else. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day A store's used car manager hands the BDC manager a spreadsheet of eight hundred customers who bought pre-owned units over the past three years and asks for a trade appraisal event email. Half of those addresses were typed at a desk by a salesperson in a hurry, and some of the customers have changed jobs, changed providers or stopped using the address they gave. Sending to all eight hundred blind means a wave of bounces on the store's sending domain right before the event. So the BDC manager opens the CRM, clicks Marketing Tools on the dock, then Email Validator. She names the list, uploads the CSV, and runs it. The results come back as a report she can open from the Report Link in the history table, and the addresses that are not going to deliver are plain to see. She builds the campaign list from the good addresses, opens Bulk Email, and sends the event invitation to a list that will actually arrive. The addresses that failed go back to the salespeople as a to do: call the customer, confirm the address, fix the record. The same scene plays out in miniature every day on individual leads. A lead detail page carries a validity dot for the email address, so a salesperson who is about to send a vehicle by email sees at a glance whether the address has been checked and what it came back as. If the dot says the address is bad, he asks for a better one on the phone rather than sending into a void and waiting for a reply that will never come. #### Where the Email Validator lives in the CRM The tool is on the dock. The bottom taskbar in LeadLocate CRM carries My Office, Marketing Tools, Referral Program, Design Studio, My Inventory, SecureWebX, Reports, Feedback, More Options and Jax. Click Marketing Tools and the Email Validator is one of eight tiles, the one that reads Catch bad emails early, two tiles from the Phone Validator that reads Weed out dead numbers. The results also live on the lead. Validation results are shown as validity dots on the lead record, next to the email address and the phone number, so the person working the lead sees the outcome of a check that a manager ran on a list without opening the tool. That is the part most dealers do not expect: the list tool and the lead view share one result, which is what makes a validation useful for the salesperson as well as the marketer. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app shows the lead record with the same information, so a salesperson on the lot knows whether an address is worth using before he taps the email composer. The list tool itself is a desktop job, which fits how it is used: a manager with a spreadsheet, not a salesperson between customers. #### What comes back, and what to do with it A run produces a report, reachable from the Report Link in the Email Lookup History, that tells the store which addresses on the list are deliverable and which are not. The value is in the second group. An address that fails is a record to fix, and the fix is usually a phone call, which is a reason to talk to a customer that a salesperson can use. An address that passes goes onto the campaign list with confidence. The history table is the audit. Date, List Name, Pulled By and Total Number answer the questions a manager asks a month later: was this list checked, when, by whom, how big was it. Lists drift. A list that was clean at the start of the year has dead addresses in it by the end, and the history shows how long it has been since the last run so the manager knows when to run it again. Validation draws on lookup credits, shown as a Credits figure on the page and topped up from My LeadLocate, the account portal, so a manager knows before a large run whether the whole list will be checked. The tool checks addresses; it does not touch leads. Every lead delivered to your store is delivered whether or not its email address validates, and a lead with a bad address is still a lead with a phone number, which the what to expect from car sales leads page explains is often the better channel anyway. #### What it replaces and what a dead list costs The direct replacement is a standalone email verification service: a separate account, a separate login, an export from the CRM, an upload to the service, a download of the results, and an import back. Every one of those steps is a place where a list gets stale or a column gets misaligned, and every one of them is a reason the check does not get done. Having the validator two clicks from the send button, sharing the contact records, is what makes the check routine rather than occasional. The cost of a dead list is paid in reputation, and reputation is paid back slowly. Receiving servers watch how much of a sender's mail bounces. A store that blasts eight hundred addresses and bounces two hundred has told those servers something, and the next blast, the drip step, and even the one to one reply from a salesperson carry that history. Email domain authentication gives a store its own domain to build a reputation on; the validator keeps that reputation from being spent on addresses that were never going to deliver. The Email Validator is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only to the lead plans, with lookup credits managed from the account portal. The pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: a checked list is a defensible list Email compliance for a dealership comes down to sending to people who asked and being able to show it. A validated list supports that in two ways. First, a bad address is a signal that the record is wrong, and a wrong record is how a store ends up emailing someone who never asked. Fixing the address with the customer on the phone is also the moment to confirm they want to hear from the store, and to note it. Second, the lookup history is a record that the store checked its list before sending, with a date and a name attached, which is the kind of ordinary diligence that reads well when a question is asked later. The validator is about hygiene, not consent. It says whether an address can receive mail, not whether the customer wants it. Consent lives in the lead record, in the communications log that shows what the customer asked for and when, and in the campaign lists a manager maintains by removing anyone who asks to stop. For texting, the rules are stricter and the tools are different, covered on the do not call scrub and blacklist page. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on. The Email Validator is part of LeadLocate CRM from the day the account is created and appears under Marketing Tools for every user with access to the dock. The first run takes a list and a name. If the store's contacts are not in the CRM yet, contact import brings the spreadsheet in first, and the validator can be run on the imported list before any campaign list is built from it. Lookup credits are managed by the Master Administrator from My LeadLocate, and the Credits figure on the validator page shows the balance before a run. Our team walks through the tool on the onboarding call, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a list going in and a report coming out if you want to see it before you sign up. #### What to pair the Email Validator with Pair it with Bulk Email every time a list is older than a few months, and with Email Automation before a list enters a drip, because a drip sends to the same bad address five times instead of once. Pair it with the Phone Validator so a list is checked on both channels in the same sitting. Pair it with email domain authentication, which is the other half of keeping the store's sending reputation clean. Pair it with contact import for any list arriving from outside the CRM, and with the lead detail view, where the validity dot turns a manager's list run into information a salesperson uses on the next call. And pair it with the Reports dashboard on the dock, where email activity by user and by day shows whether cleaner lists are earning more replies, which is the number the internet director actually wants. #### Questions and answers Q: Is the Email Validator free with LeadLocate? A: The tool is part of every plan, from CRM Only up. Lookups draw on credits that the Master Administrator tops up from My LeadLocate, and the Credits figure on the validator page shows the balance before a run. Q: How do I check a list of email addresses? A: Open Marketing Tools on the dock, choose Email Validator, give the list a name, then paste addresses one per line or upload a CSV file. The results are reachable from the Report Link in the Email Lookup History table below the form. Q: Do validation results show on the lead? A: Yes. Validity dots on the lead record show the outcome for the email address and the phone number, so a salesperson sees whether an address has been checked without opening the tool. Q: Does validating change which leads I receive? A: No. Every lead delivered to your store is delivered regardless of whether its address validates. The validator is a list hygiene tool for your outbound email, not a filter on your leads. Q: How often should a list be validated? A: Before any bulk send or drip on a list that has not been checked in a few months. The Email Lookup History shows the date of the last run for each list name, so a manager can see how long it has been. Q: Is there a matching tool for phone numbers? A: Yes. The Phone Validator is a separate tile under Marketing Tools that takes the same one per line paste or CSV and keeps its own lookup history. ### Embeddable Inventory Widget for Any Website URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/embeddable-inventory-widget The embeddable inventory widget is an Inventory Link feature that renders a dealership's live inventory inside any website with one script tag. Each widget has its own key, pulls from the same decoded inventory the dealer portal holds, and gives shoppers a request sheet under every vehicle that lands in the LeadLocate CRM with the unit attached. #### What the embeddable inventory widget does The embeddable inventory widget renders your live inventory inside any web page that accepts a line of HTML, with a request sheet under every vehicle that delivers the shopper to your CRM with the unit attached. That is the whole feature in one sentence, and the reason it exists is that most dealerships already have a website they are not going to replace this quarter. The widget does not ask them to. It takes the inventory that Inventory Link already holds, decoded and photographed, and puts it wherever the store wants it seen. Each widget has its own key. That key is what the script tag carries, so the same store can run one widget on the main dealership site, another on a salesperson's personal page, and a third on a landing page built for a sales event, each showing the inventory the way that page needs it. Because every widget reads from the one inventory store in the dealer portal, a price change or a sold unit shows up everywhere at once. Nobody updates three websites by hand on a Saturday afternoon. The widget is part of the platform subscription rather than a separate product. If you are paying a web vendor a monthly fee for an inventory plugin, or a landing page tool for a hosted inventory block, this is the feature that lets that line item go. #### How a dealership uses the widget on a normal day Picture a Tuesday. The used car manager takes in two trades before lunch and the detail department turns one of them around by three. He adds both in the dealer portal, the VIN decode fills in the trim and the specifications, the first one gets his own photos and the second one gets stock imagery until the photographer comes Thursday. He does nothing else. By the time the internet manager looks at the dealership website that afternoon, both units are in the widget on the used inventory page, and the one with the better photos is already getting clicks. A shopper on that page finds the truck she has been looking for, taps it, and the request sheet slides up. On a phone every panel rises from the bottom of the screen, the way the apps she uses every day behave, so she fills it in without fighting the keyboard. She asks whether it is still available and whether she can see it Saturday. That request lands in the portal under Requests and in the LeadLocate CRM with the truck attached, so the salesperson who picks it up answers with the stock number, the price and a Saturday time instead of asking what she was looking at. Meanwhile a salesperson who runs his own personal website has the same widget on his page. His customers see the same inventory, the same photos and the same prices, and his requests land in his own queue. The store manages one inventory; every page that shows it stays current. That is the day. Nothing about it requires anyone to remember to update anything. #### Where the widget lives in the CRM, the portal and on the phone The widget is built and managed in the Inventory Link dealer portal, under Builder, alongside the inventory website builder. You create a widget, the portal issues its key, and you copy the script tag. Paste it into your website's page editor where you want the inventory to appear and the vehicles render there. The page it lives on stays yours, in your web vendor's editor, with your design around it. From the CRM side, the portal opens from the My Inventory button in the dock at the bottom of the LeadLocate CRM, with single sign on, so nobody keeps a second password. The Inventory item in the main menu shows the same vehicles the widget renders, and the vehicle insert button in every text and email composer drops any of them into a message. The request a shopper sends through the widget arrives with the unit attached, and the reply can carry that same unit back as a formatted vehicle card, which is what the send vehicles by text page covers. On the phone, the LeadLocate app carries the inventory list with a detail sheet and an inventory picker, so a salesperson answering a widget request from the lot sees exactly what the shopper saw. The dealer portal itself is in the app stores under the listing name MyInventory.Link for the managers who prefer to add and edit units from a phone. #### What the widget replaces, and what it costs elsewhere Most stores are paying for inventory display in at least two places. The website vendor charges for the inventory module on the dealership site. A landing page tool, if the store runs event pages or per salesperson pages, charges again for a hosted inventory block, and often that block shows a stale export because nobody re-uploads the feed. Salespeople who build their own pages usually end up linking to a third party marketplace, where the customer sees three competitors' cars next to the one they were sent. The widget collapses all of that into one inventory and one script tag. The inventory is the one Inventory Link holds, decoded through VIN decode and the vehicle database, with promo photos and stock imagery where your own photos are missing, and it is the same inventory the CRM and the phone app show. There is no export to re-upload and no second inventory to reconcile. When the widget is the only inventory display a page needs, the module the web vendor charges for becomes optional. With LeadLocate, that line item simply goes away. The widget is part of the platform subscription, month to month; the pricing page lists the plans that bring exclusive local leads, and a store that wants the software with its own lead flow picks CRM Only at sign up. #### The compliance angle: one price, one description, everywhere Inventory advertising problems usually come from having more than one copy of the truth. A price gets changed on the lot, updated in the feed, and left alone on the landing page a salesperson built in March. A shopper screenshots the old price and the store spends a morning explaining it. The widget removes the extra copies. Every widget reads the same inventory record, so the price, the mileage, the trim and the stock number a shopper sees on any page are the ones your portal holds. The description side works the same way. The trim and equipment come from the VIN decode, and the fuel economy and safety figures come from the government data in the vehicle database, so the listing says what the vehicle is rather than what somebody typed at intake. When you apply a stock number override so the number on the windshield matches the number in the system, that override shows in the widget too. Every request that comes through the widget is a shopper who chose a specific vehicle, typed their own contact details and asked to hear from you. That is the kind of contact a sales team can follow up with confidence, and the CRM logs the conversation from the first reply. #### How to turn the widget on The widget needs inventory to show, so the first step is getting your vehicles into Inventory Link. If you have a feed, connect it under Feeds in the dealer portal. If you do not, point the importer at your dealership website and Inventory Link imports the vehicles from it, with twenty eight website platforms recognised; the import inventory from your website page explains that path. A broker with no lot at all switches on auto broker inventory mode instead. In every case, an inventory feed and DMS access are not required. With vehicles in the portal, open Builder, create a widget, and copy the script tag with its key. Paste it into the page where you want the inventory to appear. That is the setup. When you want a second widget for a second page, create another; each carries its own key and reads the same inventory. If your website builder blocks script tags, or your page needs the widget presented in a way the standard version does not cover, that is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. If you would rather see it working before you touch anything, the pre-recorded live demo shows inventory going into the portal and out onto a page, and the contact page reaches a person who can put your own vehicles in a widget for you. #### What to pair the widget with The widget shows inventory; the rest of the platform turns the shopper who saw it into an appointment. Pair it with the vehicle finder, so a shopper who does not see the unit they want can describe it and have it located, and with Schedule a Visit requests, so the request sheet under each vehicle leads to a time on your calendar rather than a vague callback. Salespeople who want their own presence pair it with the salesperson websites the builder produces from a template, each one showing the store's real inventory under that person's name. Stores that run offers pair the widget with brand offer pages and the OEM incentives engine, so a shopper who finds the unit in the widget can also see what the manufacturer is offering on it. And every store pairs it with the vehicle insert button in the CRM, because the shopper who asked about a vehicle on your website should get a text back with that vehicle in it, photo and price included. The widget is one feature among many on the all features page. On its own it is a tidy way to put live inventory on any page. Connected to the CRM, it is the front door to a conversation your team can actually finish. #### Built so your store keeps selling The widget is built so your store keeps selling. Your website stays your website: the cards render inside the page you already own, in your own theme, under your own navigation, and your web vendor keeps doing everything it has always done. Your inventory stays your inventory, held safely in Inventory Link with every photo, price change and status your store has ever set, so a shopper is looking at the cars sitting on your lot this morning. Your feed keeps flowing to everyone else who consumes it, and your phones stay your phones. Every request a shopper raises from a card is written to a lead in the CRM the moment it is sent, with the vehicle attached, waiting for whoever picks it up. One line of HTML buys your website the best merchandising it has ever carried, and everything about the way your store sells a car stays yours. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the widget work on a website built by another vendor? A: Yes. It is one script tag, pasted into any page editor that accepts HTML. The page stays in your web vendor's system with your design around it; the widget only renders the inventory inside the space you give it. If a builder blocks script tags, our team puts a working setup in production for your dealership on request. Q: Can I run more than one widget? A: Yes. Each widget has its own key, so the dealership site, a salesperson's personal page and an event landing page can each carry one. They all read the same inventory in the dealer portal, so a price change or a sold unit updates everywhere at once. Q: Where do requests from the widget go? A: To the dealer portal under Requests and to the LeadLocate CRM, with the vehicle attached. The salesperson who picks it up sees the exact unit the shopper chose and can reply by text with that vehicle's card, photo and price included. Q: Do I need an inventory feed to use the widget? A: No. A feed is one way to get vehicles into Inventory Link. Without one, Inventory Link imports the vehicles from your own dealership website, and a broker with no lot uses auto broker inventory mode. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Q: What do the vehicles look like inside the widget? A: The same as everywhere else in the platform: decoded trim and specifications, your own photos when you have them, promo photos and stock imagery when you do not, the price and stock number from your inventory record, and a request sheet under each unit. Q: Is the widget an extra charge? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page carries the current plans and what each includes. ### Every Call, Text and Email on One Customer Timeline URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/customer-communication-timeline The customer communication timeline in LeadLocate CRM puts every call (with its recording and transcript), text, picture message, email and voicemail for a customer on one timeline on the lead record. Every channel writes to it automatically, so any salesperson or manager who opens the lead reads the full customer communication history in order, without asking who talked to the customer last. #### What the customer communication timeline does The communication timeline is the running record of everything your store and a customer have said to each other. It sits on the lead record in LeadLocate CRM, and it fills itself. A call to or from the customer lands on it with the recording and the transcript attached. A text lands on it, and so does a picture message with the photo in it. An email lands on it. A voicemail lands on it. Nobody types a note to say it happened, because the CRM logged it as it happened. That changes what a lead record is. At most stores the lead holds a name, a phone number, a vehicle and a status, and the actual conversation is scattered across a phone system, a texting app, an email account and whatever a rep remembered to write down. On LeadLocate the conversation is the record. A rep picking up a customer for the first time reads the last three weeks in two minutes and starts the next message where the last one ended. The category view, why a dealership wants one place for calls, texts and email at all, is on the unified inbox for dealership communications page. This page is the timeline itself, inside the CRM. #### How a dealership uses the timeline on a normal day Saturday, a little after eleven. A customer walks in and asks for Mike, who is off today. The rep who greets her opens the lead on the desk computer. The timeline shows a web lead from Tuesday, an automated text that went out a minute later, a reply asking whether the SUV had a third row, a text back from Mike with the vehicle and its photos attached, a twelve minute phone call on Wednesday whose transcript mentions a trade with a payoff around eleven thousand, and an email Thursday confirming the appointment. The rep reads it standing up. He greets her by name, asks whether she brought the trade, and walks her to the SUV Mike texted her. She never has to start over, and she notices. Monday morning the sales manager reviews a deal that fell apart on Sunday. He opens the lead and reads down the timeline instead of asking three people what happened. The customer had texted twice on Friday evening asking about the monthly payment, and the second text sat until Saturday afternoon. The call on Saturday is there with its transcript, and the customer says it plainly: he had already been to another store. That is a coaching conversation about response time, backed by the record, and it takes five minutes. Later that day a customer calls, upset that he was promised free floor mats. The manager opens the lead, finds the Wednesday call on the timeline, reads the transcript and plays the passage. The promise is there, so the store keeps it, and the customer leaves happy. If it had not been there, the manager would have known exactly what was said and could settle it calmly on one call. #### Where the timeline lives in the CRM Open any lead from Leads in the main menu and the Timeline section on the lead record lists the customer's communication in order. Each entry is marked with its channel and time, so a text reads as the text and a call carries its recording and transcript. The timeline follows the customer rather than the salesperson, so when a lead is reassigned the new owner inherits the whole history. The channels have their own screens too, and the timeline agrees with all of them. Messaging opens the two way texting inbox, with a thread per customer and a delivery status on every outbound bubble. Email opens the email inbox and composer. Calls opens Call Logs, where each call has its recording and a transcript that opens in a lightbox, covered on the call recording and transcription page. Whatever screen a rep works from, the message lands on the lead as well. The LeadLocate mobile app carries the SMS inbox and composer, the email inbox, Call Logs and the VoIP dialer, so a text sent from the lot or a call made from the phone app is logged to the same lead as one made from a desk. The bottom dock puts Text, Call and Email one tap away. #### What goes on the customer communication history Every channel the store uses to reach a customer through LeadLocate writes to the timeline. Calls, inbound and outbound, with the recording and the transcript. Texts, both directions. Picture messages, with the photos a customer sent of a trade or a damaged panel, and the photos and price of a vehicle a rep dropped into a message with the vehicle button. Emails, both directions. Voicemails, including the Voicemail Drops a rep leaves from the library. The history reads as one conversation, because to the customer it was one conversation. Automated messages are part of it too. The text that goes out the moment a lead arrives, the steps of a follow up process, a message a rep scheduled for Thursday morning and an appointment confirmation all land on the timeline beside the messages a person typed. A manager reading the lead sees everything the customer received from the store and what the customer did next. That completeness is what makes the timeline useful for decisions. A lead that went quiet shows exactly what the store sent and when. A lead that booked shows which message did it. A lead that was lost shows where the conversation turned. #### What the timeline replaces, and what it costs elsewhere Without a shared timeline, a store's customer history lives in five places. Calls are in the phone system or on a rep's cell. Texts are in a separate texting app, or worse, on personal phones that leave when the rep does. Emails are in individual inboxes. Voicemails are in a phone menu nobody checks. The CRM holds a status and a note that says called, left message. Reconstructing a single customer means opening each system, searching by phone number and matching the times by hand, so in practice nobody does it. Stores that want it all in one place usually pay for a CRM, a phone system with call tracking, a recording add on, a texting platform and an email tool, then pay again for an integration that copies activity between them. Each link is another login and another thing to reconnect when a password changes. In LeadLocate the calls, texts, emails and voicemails are sent from the CRM in the first place, so the record is complete by default. There is nothing to sync. The timeline is part of LeadLocate CRM rather than a separate product. The pricing page lists what each plan includes, month to month, so a store can set it against what it spends today on the separate tools. #### The compliance angle: a complete record of every contact When a customer disputes what was said, the timeline answers with the record. The call is there with its recording and transcript. The text is there exactly as it was sent, with its delivery status. The email is there as it was sent. A manager answers a complaint with facts, calmly, and the salesperson who did the job right is protected by the same record. The timeline also shows how often and by which channel the store contacted a customer, in one place, which is how a manager confirms that follow up is happening at the pace the store intends. A customer who asks the store to stop belongs on the Do Not Call Blacklist, which hides the contact from every view in the CRM, and the timeline shows the request that led to it. Because the history lives on the lead rather than on a rep's personal phone, it stays with the store. A salesperson who moves on leaves the full record behind for the next rep and for the manager, and the customer relationship carries on without a gap. #### How to turn on the communication timeline There is nothing to switch on. Every call, text, picture message, email and voicemail sent or received through LeadLocate CRM is logged to the customer's lead automatically, from the first day the account is live. The work is simply using the CRM's own channels: text from Messaging or the lead, email from the Email menu or the lead, and call from Make a Call in the top bar or the softphone. Messages sent from a personal phone never reach the store's record, which is why stores put their texting and calling on their LeadLocate tracking numbers. Two habits make the timeline even more valuable. Record calls, so the call entries carry audio and a transcript. And set up Call Alerts, so the calls that contain words your store cares about are flagged for a manager instead of waiting to be found on the timeline. Scheduling a message for later is covered in how to schedule a text or email for later, and the scheduled message joins the timeline when it goes out. #### What to pair the timeline with The timeline records the conversation. The tools that shape it sit around it. Car sales follow up templates for call, text and email give reps the words for each step, and the Follow Up Processes page shows how those steps run by lead type. The missed call text back page covers what a store does in the minute after a call goes unanswered, and every text that follows lands on the same timeline. Text Automation and email drip automation keep messages going out while reps are with other customers. Voicemail Drop leaves a recorded message in seconds. Lead notifications tell the rep the moment a customer replies, so the next entry on the timeline is the store's answer, fast. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a customer communication timeline? A: It is the full record of every contact between your store and one customer, in order, on the lead. In LeadLocate CRM that means calls with their recordings and transcripts, texts, picture messages, emails and voicemails, logged automatically as they happen. Q: Where do I see a customer's communication history? A: Open the lead from Leads in the main menu. The Timeline section on the lead record lists every call, text, picture, email and voicemail in order. The same messages also appear in Messaging, Email and Call Logs. Q: Do automated texts and emails show on the timeline? A: Yes. Messages sent by Automated Templates, Follow Up Processes and scheduled sends land on the timeline beside the messages reps type, so a manager sees everything the customer received from the store. Q: What happens to the history when a lead is reassigned? A: It goes with the lead. The timeline belongs to the customer record, so the new salesperson inherits every call, text and email and picks up the conversation where it left off. Q: Are texts sent from the mobile app on the timeline? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app sends through the same CRM, so a text, email or call from the phone app is logged to the same lead as one sent from the desktop. Q: Does the communication timeline cost extra? A: The timeline is part of LeadLocate CRM, along with the texting, email, calling and recording that fill it. The pricing page lists what each plan includes, and every plan runs month to month. ### Every LeadLocate Feature, Explained URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/all-features This directory lists every named feature of the LeadLocate platform, grouped by the product it lives in. Each entry opens a page that explains what the feature does, how a dealership uses it on a normal day, where it sits in the menus, what it replaces and how to turn it on. If a capability is not on this page, ask us; anything not listed is available on request. #### How to read this directory Dealership software is usually sold as a list of nouns on a brochure. This page is the opposite: every noun below is a link to a page that says, in plain prose, what the thing does when a salesperson clicks it. The groups follow the products. LeadLocate CRM holds the lead handling, texting, email, phone, automation and team tools. SecureWebX holds the credit application features. Inventory Link holds the inventory and merchandising features. DealTracker holds desking and the customer deal pages. Every feature page names the counterpart page from the older part of the site where one exists, so a reader who arrived from a search for a category, say call recording software, can move to the product view and back. The Help Center is the third layer: step by step instructions for each task, with the exact labels you will see on screen. Two products sit across the groups rather than inside one: Jax, the bilingual AI assistant that drafts and answers inside the CRM, and the webXintel Ads Network, the managed advertising path planned in Leads Manager. Both have their own product pages. #### What earns a place on this page Every entry earns its place two ways. First, it runs on live accounts today. The platform ships improvements continuously, and a feature appears here the day it is live on production accounts. Second, it serves the sales side of the store. Accounting, payroll, parts and repair orders stay in the DMS your store already runs its books on, and the CRM works right beside it. If you are comparing vendors, the platform overview explains how the four products fit together, and the pricing page shows that every plan includes all of them. #### What you will find in each group The CRM group is the largest because most of the day happens there: the lead inbox and the rules that route into it, the texting inbox with pictures and delivery status, RCS with SMS fallback, bulk texting and texting chatbots, the email inbox and drips, the phone and email validators, the softphone, call recording and transcription, call forwarding and the virtual receptionist, the IVR builder, tracking numbers, voicemail drop, Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes, the calendar with booking links and Google Calendar sync, and the team tools such as Team Chat, Design Studio, My Office, the file library, reports and user roles. The desking group covers what happens once there is a unit and a number: EZ Desking worksheets, customer deal pages with e-signature, deal chat, PencilRecap sheets, print packets with envelopes and postage, the deal jacket with QR intake, the road to sale checklist, trade capture with VIN scan and the driver license scanner. The SecureWebX group covers apply links, the application form, the inbox and pipeline, Send to Lender, stipulations, adverse action notices, disclosures, OFAC screening, worksheets, eFax, security and export formats. The Inventory Link group covers feeds, importing from your website, the site builder, the widget, the vehicle finder, incentives, brand pages, stock photos, VIN decode and auto broker mode. #### How a feature page is written Every feature page follows the same order so a manager can skim it in a minute. What it does, in a sentence a person could quote. How a dealership uses it on a normal day, told as a short scene rather than a list. Where it lives, with the menu or dock label. What it replaces, because most stores are paying a separate vendor for at least one of these today. The compliance angle, because texting, calling, credit and consent each carry rules, and the feature is built around them. How to turn it on, and what to pair it with. The questions at the end are the ones dealers ask on demo calls, answered the same way we answer them there. If a page leaves you with a question, the contact page reaches a person who can answer it on a live account. #### LeadLocate CRM - AI Writing Assistant for Texts and EmailsThe AI Writing Assistant in LeadLocate CRM drafts a text or email inside the composer, fills merge fields and takes dictation, so replies go out. - Appointment Booking Links and Booking HoursAppointment booking links in LeadLocate CRM: personal and team links, each with its own booking hours and embed code, from one Settings popup. - Automated Templates, Tasks and RemindersAutomated Templates in LeadLocate CRM send the first text, email and voicemail on lead receipt per feed, confirm appointments and create call tasks. - Bulk Email With Recipient Management for DealersBulk Email in LeadLocate CRM: pick or paste a recipient list, choose a template and attachment, send one blast to every inbox, with history. - Bulk Texting: Message Everyone at Once, CompliantlyBulk Texting in LeadLocate CRM: paste a recipient list or pick a campaign, add a template and an attachment, send once, and read the history. - Call Alerts That Flag the Calls That MatterCall Alerts in LeadLocate CRM check every transcribed call for the words your store picks, like cancel or trade in, and flag it on Call Logs. - Call Forwarding and Ring Lists for Dealership LinesCall forwarding in LeadLocate CRM rings a Forward Calls To list built from your own users, with business hours routing and press 5 confirmation. - Call Recording and Transcription in LeadLocateCall recording and transcription in LeadLocate CRM: every dealership call recorded, playable from the lead, and readable as a transcript. - Caller ID Lookup and Contact Validation DotsCaller ID name lookup on inbound calls, verified outbound caller ID, and phone and email validity dots on every lead in LeadLocate CRM. - Contact Import: Bring Your Book of Business With YouContact import in LeadLocate CRM: upload a CSV, headers detected in any order, into a named contact list with optional round robin assignment. - Custom Domains and DNS Without a Web DeveloperSearch, buy and point a custom domain inside LeadLocate CRM, with a self-service DNS editor, domain monitoring and transfer out. No developer. - Custom Lead Statuses, Tags and Row ColorsCustom lead statuses, tags and row colors in LeadLocate CRM let a store label its pipeline in its own words and filter the Leads view by each. - Design Studio: Business Cards and Print PiecesDesign Studio in LeadLocate CRM builds business cards, referral cards, NFC cards, vCards and floating buttons, with print-ready files. - Do Not Call Scrub and Blacklist Built Into the CRMThe Do Not Call Blacklist in LeadLocate CRM hides blocked contacts from every view, imports a DNC list by CSV and checks numbers live. - Driver License Scanner for Faster Customer IntakeThe driver license scanner in LeadLocate CRM reads a license or insurance card from a phone camera into the customer record, no retyping. - Email Domain Authentication for Dealership SendersEmail domain authentication in LeadLocate CRM puts your dealership's own domain on every email the CRM sends, so inbox providers trust it. - Email Drips That Never SleepEmail drips in LeadLocate CRM: scheduled list sends, multi step Follow Up Processes per lead type and instant replies by feed, under each lead. - Email Inbox and Composer Inside the CRMThe email inbox and composer in LeadLocate CRM: one thread per customer, templates, files from the library, a vehicle in the email, your own domain. - Email Validator: Weed Out Dead Addresses Before You SendThe Email Validator in LeadLocate CRM checks a pasted list or CSV of addresses, keeps a lookup history and shows validity dots on the lead. - Every Call, Text and Email on One Customer TimelineLeadLocate CRM keeps every call with its recording and transcript, text, picture, email and voicemail for a customer on one timeline on the lead. - File Library and Secure File SharingThe Files menu in LeadLocate CRM: a file library with folders, secure file sharing with tracking and QR file share, at the desk and on the phone. - Follow Up Processes: Multi Step Drips per Lead TypeFollow Up Processes in LeadLocate CRM: multi step drips per lead type, started by a status change or appointment event, with tasks and texts. - Google Calendar Sync for Dealership AppointmentsGoogle Calendar sync in LeadLocate CRM: connect your Google Calendar from the Calendar page, CRM appointments appear on it, disconnect any time. - In Store Now: Know Who Is on the LotIn-Store Now in LeadLocate CRM flags the lead who is physically on your lot, so the desk, BDC and managers know who showed up and who has them. - Intake Process Automation Replaces Per Dealer ZapsIntake Process Automation in LeadLocate CRM: in house intake automations on one intake layer that replaced per dealer zaps in third party tools. - IVR Call Flow Builder With RevisionsBuild your dealership phone menu in LeadLocate CRM: greeting, options, ring groups and voicemail, with uploaded audio and saved revisions. - Lead Feeds Manager: Every Lead Source in One InboxLead Feeds Manager is the LeadLocate CRM page where every lead source gets its own feed, intake method, assignment rule and first message. - Lead Notifications by Text, Email and SoundLead notifications in LeadLocate CRM: a text to the assigned rep, an email to notify addresses, a browser sound and a toast, per-user toggles. - Lead Pages: The Landing Page Builder Inside the CRMLead Pages is the landing page builder inside LeadLocate CRM: build offer pages with lead forms, pick a domain, route every lead to the inbox. - Lead Replacement Review: What Happens to a Bad LeadLead replacement review in LeadLocate CRM: report a bad lead from the lead record, the Quality Control team approves or rejects, replacement follows. - Lost Reason Tracking for Every Dead DealLost reason tracking in LeadLocate CRM: a Mark Lead As Lost popup records why each dead deal died, so a GM sees patterns instead of a Lost count. - Manager Lead Copies: See Every Lead Your Team ReceivesManager Lead Copies in LeadLocate CRM give a sales manager a copy of every lead by email and in the CRM, beside the rep who owns it, per feed. - Merge Duplicate Leads Without Losing HistoryMerge duplicate leads in LeadLocate CRM: find matches by name, phone and email, pick the keeper, and fold the rest into one record with a note. - My Office: A Personal Desk Inside the CRMMy Office is the personal desk inside LeadLocate CRM: a canvas of widgets with text to speech, AI images, VIN decode, link previews and saved spaces. - One Customer Profile, Co-Buyer IncludedThe Customer Profile in LeadLocate CRM is one shared buyer record, co-buyer included, with encrypted personal data, opened from lead or deal. - Phone Validator: Weed Out Dead Numbers Before You DialPhone Validator in LeadLocate CRM: check a pasted list or CSV of numbers, flag Do Not Call, keep a lookup history, see validity dots on the lead. - RCS Messaging With SMS Fallback for DealershipsRCS messaging in LeadLocate CRM sends the richer format to phones that support it and falls back to SMS automatically, in the same thread. - Referral Program With Real PayoutsThe Referral Program in LeadLocate CRM: personal and team referral links, a public referral form, campaigns and real gift card style payouts. - Reports Dashboard: Activity, Company and ManagementReports in LeadLocate CRM: activity, company and management reporting on one dashboard from the dock, built on what the CRM already logs. - Round Robin Lead Assignment in LeadLocate CRMRound robin lead assignment in LeadLocate CRM hands each new lead to the next salesperson in rotation, per feed, with no manager in the loop. - Send Every Website Form Straight to Your CRMConnect your website forms to LeadLocate CRM: every dealer site, landing page or WordPress form becomes an assigned lead with a first text ready. - Shared Team Calendar With Round Robin AppointmentsShared team calendar in LeadLocate CRM: one team booking link, its own team hours, bookings landing unassigned for the BDC to route round robin. - Single Sign On, Quick Access PIN and Biometric LoginOne LeadLocate login opens the CRM, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and My LeadLocate, plus Quick Access PIN, biometric login and passwordless entry. - Team Chat for Dealership StaffTeam Chat in LeadLocate CRM: channels, direct messages, reactions, polls, file upload, presence and read receipts, for every user on every plan. - Text Automation Triggered by Lead ActivityText Automation in LeadLocate CRM: an automated text on lead receipt, follow up steps by lead type, scheduled texts and keyword replies. - Texting Chatbots That Text Back for Car DealersTexting Chatbots in LeadLocate CRM: a customer texts your keyword, the bot replies at once, the subscriber becomes a lead, the rep gets a text. - Trackable Short Links With Click Stats in Every TextShort links in LeadLocate CRM: every URL in a text is shortened as it is sent, and the thread shows click stats so you know who opened what. - Tracking Phone Numbers for Every Lead SourceTracking phone numbers in LeadLocate CRM give each lead source its own line, so every call lands on the lead with its source and recording. - Two Way Texting Inbox With Pictures and Delivery StatusThe two way texting inbox in LeadLocate CRM: one thread per customer, pictures by MMS, a delivery status on every bubble, the lead one click away. - User Roles and Permissions for Dealership TeamsUser Management in LeadLocate CRM: User, Manager and Master Administrator roles, with notification toggles, Quick Access PIN and default folders. - Virtual Receptionist and Press 5 Call ScreeningLeadLocate's virtual receptionist answers your dealership line, transfers or takes a message, and press 5 screening confirms a human answered. - Voicemail Drop and Voicemail Greetings for DealersVoicemail drop in LeadLocate CRM: saved recordings dropped from the softphone or to a list, plus company and per user greetings in the browser. - VoIP Softphone and Click to Call for DealershipsLeadLocate CRM's VoIP softphone lets a salesperson click to call any lead from the browser or app, with recording and a shared call log. - Website Visitor Analytics for Dealer SitesWebsite visitor analytics inside LeadLocate CRM: overview, realtime, sessions, sources, geo, devices, top pages and session detail. - Workspace: Your Whole Day on One ScreenThe LeadLocate Workspace is the CRM dashboard for car salesmen: today's appointments, reminders, to-dos, snooze and bulk clear on one screen. #### Phone and mail - BDC Phone Service: Inbound Calls Answered and LoggedBDC Phone Service in LeadLocate CRM: inbound calls to your tracking numbers answered, logged with an unread badge, kept in history and forwarded. - Mail Center: Inbound Mail Handling for Dealer BrandsMail Center in LeadLocate CRM handles the inbound email your brand pages generate: one inbox per brand, scheduled emails, templates and sent logs. #### DealTracker desking and deals - Customer Deal Pages With E-SignatureCustomer deal pages in LeadLocate CRM: a branded page per deal with texted passcode access, e-signature, revisions, share and revoke controls. - Deal Chat: Customer and Salesperson on One ThreadDeal chat in LeadLocate CRM puts the customer and salesperson on one thread attached to the deal, with link previews, photos and a mobile inbox. - Deal Jacket Uploads and QR Document IntakeDeal jacket in LeadLocate CRM: every file on a lead or deal, with upload, rename, rotate and preview, and a QR code any phone scans to add files. - Digital Retail Checkout on Your Deal PagesDigital retail checkout on DealTracker deal pages: the customer builds the deal, uploads documents, reviews terms and requests a shipping quote. - EZ Desking Worksheets: Cash, Finance and Lease PencilsEZ Desking in LeadLocate CRM pencils cash, finance and lease deals with a multi pencil grid, goal seek, 50 state tax rules and printable sheets. - Pencil Recap Sheets Customers Can SharePencil recap sheets in LeadLocate CRM share any customer print version as a private link the buyer can open, mark up and sign, with revoke. - Print Packets, Envelopes and First Class PostagePrint customer deal sheets, dealer copies and packets from LeadLocate CRM, fold them into #10 window envelopes and mail with printed postage. - Road to Sale Checklist on Every DealThe Road to Sale checklist on every LeadLocate CRM deal tracks vehicle, trade, credit, approval, documents, stipulations, delivery and follow up. - Trade In Capture With VIN Scan and PhotosCapture a trade in LeadLocate CRM: scan the VIN by phone, record the odometer, collect photos, title and payoff by QR, and desk it with the deal. #### SecureWebX credit applications - Adverse Action Notices From the Application RecordSecureWebX generates adverse action notices from the credit application record, with the decision, the bureau used and the notice kept on file. - Apply Links: Shareable Credit Application URLsApply links are SecureWebX branded, shareable credit application URLs: text one from the CRM, customize each link, get the application back. - Compliance Disclosures and Privacy Notices per StoreSecureWebX keeps state specific disclosures, a privacy notice and terms editor per store, and forced terms acceptance for every user, versioned. - Credit Application Inbox and PipelineThe SecureWebX credit application inbox and pipeline: every application with a status, assignee, amount, notes and email thread, in one console. - Credit Application Security: 2FA, Audit Log, EncryptionHow SecureWebX protects credit applications: two factor sign in, encryption at rest, a full audit log, virus scanned uploads, retained records. - eFax for Dealers: Fax Numbers per Store and PartnereFax inside SecureWebX gives a dealership fax numbers per store and per lender or partner, with inbound fax status shown in the console. - Lender and DMS Export Formats for ApplicationsExport a SecureWebX credit application to a lender or DMS in the format it expects: STAR XML, fixed width, CSV or JSON over SFTP, API or email. - OFAC Screening on Every Credit ApplicationOFAC screening runs inside SecureWebX on the credit application record, so the sanctions check is done on the file and kept with the audit log. - Send to Lender: Secure, Expiring Application SharesSend to Lender shares a credit application with any lender as a code gated, expiring, revocable, watermarked view, with a lender response portal. - Stipulations Workflow With Upload to FulfillThe SecureWebX stipulations workflow tracks every stip on the credit application and fulfills it by upload, each document against its request. - The Online Credit Application Form, Step by StepWalk the SecureWebX five step online credit application form: personal, residence, employment, income, review, with co-applicant and e-signature. - Title, Stolen Vehicle and Warranty Checks in the Deal WorksheetRun VIN title, stolen vehicle and warranty checks inside the SecureWebX deal worksheet, saved on the deal and shown to the lender with it. - Verified Partners Directory for Lenders and VendorsSecureWebX's Verified Partners directory lists lenders and vendors by category, notes what was verified, and builds your store's partner list. - Worksheets Attached to Credit ApplicationsAttach cash, finance and lease worksheets to a credit application in SecureWebX, with store deal defaults, book-outs and a lender deal recap PDF. #### Inventory Link - Auto Broker Inventory Mode: Sell Without a LotAuto broker inventory mode in Inventory Link gives a broker with no lot brand offer pages connected instantly, with OEM programs and lead forms. - Brand Offer Pages and Your Dealer PageBrand offer pages built by Inventory Link for every make you carry, plus a dealer page, with current offers, lead forms and Schedule a Visit. - Embeddable Inventory Widget for Any WebsiteInventory Link's embeddable inventory widget puts your live vehicles on any website with one script tag, and sends every request to the CRM. - Import Inventory From Your Own WebsiteInventory Link imports inventory from your own website, recognizing twenty eight dealer website platforms, so no feed or DMS access is needed. - Inventory Feeds: Connect Any Feed, or None at AllInventory Link takes your inventory feed in whatever form it comes, imports from your website when there is no feed, and needs no DMS access. - Inventory Website Builder With Publish and RegenerateBuild an inventory website from Inventory Link, publish it, regenerate it as the lot changes, and give each salesperson a site from the template. - OEM Incentives Showroom for Twenty MakesThe OEM incentives engine in Inventory Link carries manufacturer programs for more than twenty makes and shows them in the Incentives Showroom. - Schedule a Visit Requests From Inventory PagesSchedule a Visit puts a request sheet under every vehicle on your inventory and brand pages; it rises from the phone and lands in the CRM. - Send Vehicles by Text: Inventory Insert in Every MessageSend vehicles by text from LeadLocate CRM: the car button in every composer picks a unit from Inventory Link and sends photo, price and details. - Stock Photos for Listings Without a PhotographerInventory Link adds promo photos and stock imagery to vehicle listings that arrive without pictures, so no unit is advertised as a blank box. - Vehicle Finder: Locate the Unit a Shopper WantsThe Inventory Link vehicle finder, called Locate, lets a shopper describe the unit they want in plain words and finds it in your inventory. - Vehicle Transport Quotes From Carriers on One PageCar transport quotes for dealers: send one request to the carriers you pick from the Inventory Link directory and compare all quotes on one page. - VIN Decode and Vehicle DatabaseInventory Link decodes every VIN and enriches it from a vehicle database with government safety and efficiency data for honest listings. #### Advertising and campaigns - Connect Your Own Ad Accounts to the CRMConnect the ad accounts your store already holds to Leads Manager in LeadLocate CRM; accounts stay yours, our team runs campaigns through them. - Leads Manager: Lead Campaigns by Zone, Built and Run for YouLeads Manager is where a store plans lead campaigns in LeadLocate CRM: draw a zone, read zip stats and market scan, set offers, we run it. #### Questions and answers Q: Does every plan include every feature? A: Yes. Plans differ by who the store wants leads from, not by features. CRM Only is the same platform without leads. Q: How do I know a feature is real and not a roadmap item? A: A feature gets a page here only when it is live on production accounts. The page names the menu or dock item where it lives. Q: Where are the step by step instructions? A: In the Help Center. Each feature page links to the tasks that use it. Q: What if the feature I need is missing? A: Ask. Anything not listed is available on request and our team puts it in production for your dealership. ### File Library and Secure File Sharing URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/file-library-and-secure-sharing The file library in LeadLocate CRM is the Files menu: a per-store library with folders where a dealership keeps the documents its sales team sends every day, plus secure file sharing with tracking and a QR file share for handing a document to a customer standing at the desk. It is included with the LeadLocate CRM on every plan, at the desk and in the phone app. #### What the file library does in one sentence The file library is the Files menu in LeadLocate CRM, a library with folders where your store keeps its working documents, and from which any user can send a file to a customer through a secure, tracked share or a QR code instead of an email attachment. That is the whole capability. It sounds small until you count the documents a sales floor touches in a day: the we owe form, the spec sheet for the unit that just landed, the financing checklist, the service menu, the map to the delivery bay, the credit application instructions, the referral flyer, the blank buyer's order a manager wants every rep to use. Those files live somewhere today. Usually the answer is several somewheres: a shared drive that half the team can reach, a folder on the F&I manager's desktop, a text thread where somebody once sent the right PDF, and a personal cloud account that left with the last salesperson. The Files menu is one place, inside the same LeadLocate CRM the team already has open, organized in folders the store names, reachable by every user on the account. When a rep needs the file, it is there. When a manager updates it, everyone gets the new version because there is only one copy. #### How a store uses it on a normal Tuesday A customer is at a desk looking at a used truck. She wants to take the numbers home to her husband, and she wants the trade appraisal sheet and the vehicle spec sheet with them. The old move is to print three pages, or to ask for her email, promise to send it, and forget. The new move takes less time than the printer warms up. The rep opens Files, picks the spec sheet the manager keeps in the Inventory folder, and creates a share. The customer holds up her phone, scans the QR code on the rep's screen, and the file is on her phone before she has stood up. The deal sheet itself goes out from the desking tool as a customer deal page, and the general paperwork goes out from Files. Across the showroom, a BDC agent is confirming an appointment for the afternoon and wants to send directions and a what to bring list. She sends the store's standard appointment prep document as a secure share from the lead's conversation. Later the share shows it was opened, so she knows the customer read it before deciding whether to call again. Upstairs, the sales manager drops the revised weekend spiff sheet into the Team folder so nobody is working from last week's numbers, and the finance manager keeps the lender stipulation checklist in a folder the whole desk can reach. None of them emailed an attachment. None of them asked where the current version is. #### Where it lives: the Files menu, the phone app and My LeadLocate On the desktop CRM the library is the Files item in the main menu, alongside Workspace, Leads, Contacts, Desking, Inventory, Messaging, Calendar, Email, Calls and Website. Inside it you see folders and the files in them, with the share controls on each file. In User Management, each user can be given default file folders, so a new salesperson starts with the folders the store wants them working from rather than an empty screen. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app carries the same File Library, so a rep on the lot can pull a document and share it from a phone without walking back to a desk. The QR share works especially well there: the rep's phone shows the code, the customer's phone reads it, and the file changes hands in the driveway. There is a second, separate library on the account side. My LeadLocate, the account portal, has its own file library and secure files for documents that belong to the business relationship, such as the welcome guide and paperwork exchanged with our team. The Files menu in the CRM is for the store's own working documents; the portal library is for the account's. Keeping them apart means a salesperson never wades through billing paperwork looking for a spec sheet. #### What secure file sharing with tracking actually means An email attachment is a copy you lose control of the moment you press send. You never learn whether it arrived, whether it was opened, or whether it was forwarded. A secure share from the Files menu is different in kind. The file stays in your library; the customer receives a link to it, and the CRM tracks that share, so you can see that the document was opened rather than guessing. For a sales team that lives on follow up, that one signal changes the next call. A customer who has opened the trade appraisal is ready for a different conversation than one who has not. Tracking also settles arguments. When a customer says nobody sent the disclosure, the share record says when it went out and whether it was opened. When a manager wants to know whether the new pricing sheet is actually being used, the shares tell the story. And because the share is generated from the CRM, it is attached to the work rather than floating in a personal outbox. The dealership compliance document management page covers the wider question of which documents a store should be keeping and for how long; this page is about the tool that does the sending. #### QR file share: the fastest handoff on the showroom floor Most secure sharing tools assume the customer is somewhere else. A dealership's best customers are standing three feet away, and asking for an email address, spelling it back, and waiting for the message to land is a strange ritual to perform in front of someone who is holding a phone. The QR file share exists for that moment. The rep creates the code for a file in Files, the customer scans it with the phone camera, and the document opens. No typing, no address, no attachment size limit, no spam folder. It works for anything in the library: brochures, a service special, the store's financing checklist, the what to bring list for delivery day, a printable map to the parts counter. Pair it with the print pieces from Design Studio and a store can keep its printed cards short and let the QR code carry the detail. Because the share is generated by the CRM, it is tracked the same way as any other share, so even a handoff on the lot leaves a record. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere Ask a store to list the tools it pays for or tolerates to move documents around and the list gets long: a cloud storage subscription with per user seats, a secure file transfer service the finance office signed up for, a shared drive on a server somebody in the parts department maintains, and the informal system where reps text each other PDFs. Each is a separate login, a separate bill or a separate risk, and none of them knows which customer a document went to. The Files menu folds those into the CRM subscription. It is included with every plan, including each plan on the pricing page that brings exclusive local leads, with no separate storage seat to buy. More importantly, the file library sits next to the lead, the conversation and the deal. A share sent from a lead's conversation belongs to that lead. The communications log for a customer shows the calls, texts, emails and voicemails in one place, and the documents that went out sit beside them rather than in a system that has never heard of the customer. #### The compliance angle: fewer copies, clearer records Documents at a dealership carry personal information more often than people admit: a trade appraisal has a name and a VIN, an appointment prep sheet has an address, a stipulation checklist names the lender and the customer. Every extra copy of that document, in every personal inbox and personal cloud account, is a copy the store is responsible for and cannot see. A single library with shares that are tracked reduces the number of copies to one, keeps the send record inside the CRM, and means a departing employee takes nothing with them because nothing lived on their personal accounts to begin with. The roles in User Management, User, Manager and Master Administrator, decide who sets up the store's folders and defaults, and the default file folders per user keep new hires inside the structure the store intends. Documents that belong to a specific deal, the license copy, the signed buyer's order, the insurance card, belong in the Deal Jacket on that deal, which has its own QR intake from a phone camera. The credit application and its supporting documents belong in SecureWebX. Files is for the store's reusable library. Knowing which document goes where is most of a document policy, and the CRM makes the three homes obvious. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with There is nothing to turn on. The Files menu is part of LeadLocate CRM from the first login on every plan. The useful first hour is spent on structure rather than settings: a Master Administrator creates the folders the store actually uses, Inventory, Finance, Service, Team, Customer Handouts, uploads the current version of each standard document, and sets default file folders for each user in User Management so reps land in the right place. Then the team stops emailing attachments, which happens naturally once the QR share has been used in front of a customer once. The help center article walks through the clicks. Pair it with three neighbors. The Deal Jacket keeps deal specific paperwork on the deal. Design Studio produces the printed cards and flyers whose QR codes can point at library files. And the texting inbox is where most shares actually get sent, because the customer is already in a conversation there. If you want to see the share and the QR handoff before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the CRM in use, and the contact page reaches a person who can answer a specific question about your store's documents. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the file library in LeadLocate CRM? A: It is the Files item in the main menu on the desktop CRM, next to Workspace, Leads, Contacts and the rest, and the File Library in the LeadLocate phone app. My LeadLocate, the account portal, has a separate file library for account documents. Q: What does tracking mean on a secure file share? A: The file stays in your library and the customer receives a link to it. The CRM tracks that share, so you can see that the document was opened instead of wondering whether an attachment ever arrived. Q: How does the QR file share work? A: Pick a file in Files, create the QR code, and the customer scans it with a phone camera. The document opens on their phone with no email address typed and no attachment sent, and the share is tracked like any other. Q: Can each salesperson have their own folders? A: User Management lets a Master Administrator set default file folders per user, so a new salesperson starts inside the folders the store wants them working from. The library itself is shared by the store. Q: Is the file library the right place for deal paperwork? A: Deal specific documents such as a license copy or a signed buyer's order belong in the Deal Jacket on that deal, which has its own QR intake. Credit application documents belong in SecureWebX. Files is for the store's reusable library. Q: Does the file library cost extra? A: No. It is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, including CRM Only, with no separate storage seat. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Follow Up Processes: Multi Step Drips per Lead Type URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/follow-up-processes Follow Up Processes are the multi step drips inside LeadLocate CRM. A process starts when a lead status changes or an appointment event happens, then runs a timeline of steps, each with an offset, a task for the salesperson, and an optional text or email template that can auto send. When the last step ends, the process sets a final status or moves the lead to lost with a reason. #### What a Follow Up Process is A Follow Up Process is a timeline of follow up steps that LeadLocate CRM runs for a lead once a trigger fires: a status change or an appointment event. Each step lands at an offset from the trigger, creates a task with instructions for the salesperson, and can carry a text or email template that sends on its own. That is the whole capability in one sentence, and the reason it exists is that every dealership already has a follow up process; it is written on a whiteboard, and it is followed on the days the manager is watching. The Follow Up Processes page sits in the Billing and Admin menu next to Automated Templates. The two are different jobs. Automated Templates handle the first touch the moment a lead is received. Follow Up Processes handle everything after: the customer who said "call me next month", the appointment that was missed, the deal that went to a competitor, the trade that was never finished. Each of those is a lead type with its own timeline, which is what the page lets you build. The buying side of this subject, what a dealer should expect from each lead type and why some go quiet, lives on car dealer leads and what to expect from car sales leads. This page is the tool. #### A normal week: the missed appointment that got rescheduled anyway A customer books a Thursday evening appointment for a certified sedan and does not show. On most floors that is the end of the story; the salesperson is annoyed, marks the lead dead, and moves on. On a store with a Follow Up Process attached to the missed appointment event, the process starts the moment the appointment is marked missed. Step one lands two hours later: a task titled "Reschedule call" with the instruction to ask, not accuse, and an optional text template set to auto send, so the customer gets a friendly "we held the car for you, want to pick another evening?" while the salesperson is still with another customer. Step two lands the next day at noon: an email with the vehicle inserted, since the salesperson attached the unit from inventory. Step three lands three days later: a call task with instructions to offer a Saturday slot. The customer answers the second text, books Saturday through the salesperson's booking link, and the appointment confirmation goes out through Automated Templates. The salesperson did two things by hand: read the task and make one call. The process did the remembering. And because a process can end with Move to Lost with reason, the customer who never answers is moved to lost with a real reason instead of sitting in the pipeline forever. #### How the Process Builder is laid out Open a process and you are in the Process Builder. At the top is the Process Name and the Starts When trigger, which is one of two kinds. Lead status changes to a status you pick, using the store's own custom statuses from the custom lead statuses and tags feature. Or Appointment event happens, where the event is Appointment completed, Missed appointment, or a number of Hours before appointment, which is how a store builds a reminder sequence that runs down to the visit. Below the trigger are the Timeline Steps. Add Step creates one, and each step carries an Offset with a Unit of hours, days, weeks or months, the Channels it uses, a Task Title, Salesperson Instructions that appear on the task, an Optional Text Template and an Optional Email Template, and an Auto Send switch that decides whether the message goes on its own or waits for the salesperson to send it from the task. At the bottom is After Last Step: Change to status with a Final Status, Move to Lost with reason with a Lost Reason, or No status change. Manager Notes hold the why for the next manager. Save Follow Up Process and Delete Process do what they say, and a store that has edited itself into a corner can restore the defaults. #### One process per lead type, not one process for everyone The reason the page is called Processes, plural, is that a store never has one follow up. A fresh internet lead, a customer who visited and left, a missed appointment, a lost deal, an abandoned trade in, a seller who requested an offer and went quiet: each is a lead type, each deserves a different pace and a different tone, and each gets its own process. The trigger ties the process to the lead type. Status changes to "Visited, no purchase" starts the visited process. Missed appointment starts the reschedule process. Status changes to "Lost" starts the six month check in. Merge fields keep the messages personal at scale: the dealership name, the company street address, the vehicle of interest and the original lead inquiry drop into the text and email templates, so a customer twelve steps into a process still reads a message about the car they asked about. The AI writing assistant and AI merge fields can vary the wording per lead so a sequence never reads as a sequence. The abandoned trade in lead follow up page walks one lead type end to end and is the clearest example of why a type deserves its own timeline. The how much dealerships pay per lead page is the arithmetic that makes the twelfth touch worth sending. #### Where the process shows up for the salesperson A salesperson never opens the Process Builder. What they see is the result: a task on the Workspace with a title, the instructions the manager wrote, the lead attached and the template ready to send. On the desktop that is the Workspace and the lead detail. In the LeadLocate mobile app it is the same Workspace, so the rep on the lot gets the day three call task on the phone in their pocket. A message set to Auto Send has already gone by the time the rep sees the task; a message not set to auto send waits in the task for the rep to read, edit and send. On an appointment the salesperson or a manager can Assign process or Reassign Process, which is how a store puts a specific timeline behind a specific visit without waiting for a status to change. The whole sequence, the automated texts, the emails, the calls the rep made from the tasks, sits in the customer's communications log in order, so a manager reviewing a lead reads the story rather than reconstructing it. Managers get their view through reports and the Workspace counts of tasks open and overdue, which is how a process that is being ignored becomes visible before the month ends. #### What it replaces, and what it costs elsewhere The thing Follow Up Processes replace is the whiteboard cadence and the manager who enforces it. Every store has a rule about day three and day seven; few stores follow it after the first week of the month. The cost of that is not a software bill, it is the lead the store already paid for that went to the competitor who happened to call on day five. What it also replaces is the separate drip tool. Many stores bolt a general purpose email drip product onto their CRM, pay for it per contact, and accept that it knows nothing about lead status, appointments, or the vehicle. A process in LeadLocate CRM is triggered by the CRM's own status and appointment events, sends through the CRM's own texting and email, and creates the CRM's own tasks. There is nothing to connect and no second bill. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. Where a store wants a pure message drip with no tasks, the email drip automation and text automation pages cover those tools; Follow Up Processes are for the sequences a person should be part of. #### The compliance angle: a written cadence with an end A follow up process is safer than ad hoc follow up for a simple reason: it has an end. Every process ends with a status change, a move to lost with a reason, or an explicit no change, which means a customer who has stopped responding is not texted indefinitely by a salesperson who forgot to stop. The lost reason itself is recorded, and the lost reason tracking page describes what a store learns from that. Every automated text or email a process sends carries the same opt out and blacklist handling as any other message in the CRM. A customer who replied STOP, or a number on the DNC blacklist, is not messaged by a step. Every step's message shows its delivery status and is logged in the customer's communications log alongside the calls, so a question about what a customer was sent and when has a written answer. The Manager Notes on each process record why the cadence is what it is, which is the kind of documentation a store is glad to have when a process is questioned. None of this replaces the store's own consent practice; it makes the follow up that runs after consent consistent and finite. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Follow Up Processes are part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription. A new account starts with default processes already built, so a missed appointment has a timeline behind it on day one; the work is editing the wording and the pace to match your floor. Open Follow Up Processes under Billing and Admin, walk the defaults, change what a step says, add the steps your best salesperson does by hand, and write the Manager Notes for whoever runs the desk after you. If you edit yourself into a corner, restore the defaults and start again. Anything a store needs that the builder does not carry is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair processes with Automated Templates for the first touch, with appointment booking links so the reschedule step has a link the customer can act on, and with send vehicles by text so a step carries the unit with photos and price. The all features list shows the rest of the platform. If we are ever unavailable, the messages already sent are in your customers' hands, the tasks already on a rep's Workspace were already read, and your processes are kept for when the screen returns. The pre-recorded live demo shows a process running from trigger to final status. #### Questions and answers Q: What starts a Follow Up Process? A: One of two triggers: a lead status changing to a status you choose, or an appointment event, which is appointment completed, missed appointment, or a set number of hours before the appointment. Q: What is in a step? A: An offset in hours, days, weeks or months from the trigger, the channels it uses, a task title and salesperson instructions, an optional text template, an optional email template, and an Auto Send switch that decides whether the message goes on its own or waits in the task. Q: What happens when the process ends? A: Whatever After Last Step says: change the lead to a final status, move it to lost with a lost reason, or leave the status alone. That is how a customer who never answers stops being followed up. Q: Can different lead types have different processes? A: Yes. That is the point. A fresh lead, a visit without a purchase, a missed appointment, a lost deal and an abandoned trade in each get their own process with its own pace and wording, tied to their own trigger. Q: Can I put a process on one specific appointment? A: Yes. On the appointment, Assign process or Reassign Process attaches the timeline you choose to that visit without waiting for a status change. Q: What if I break the default processes while editing? A: Restore the defaults from the Follow Up Processes page and start over. Your custom processes are separate and stay as you built them. ### Google Calendar Sync for Dealership Appointments URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/google-calendar-sync Google Calendar sync connects a user's Google Calendar to their LeadLocate CRM calendar. From the Calendar page, Connect Google Calendar opens the permission screen; once connected, appointments set in the CRM appear on the Google Calendar, changes and cancellations follow, and existing appointments are synced. Disconnect or Reconnect from the same place. Each user connects their own calendar. #### What Google Calendar sync does Google Calendar sync takes the appointments on a user's LeadLocate CRM calendar and keeps them on that user's Google Calendar, so a visit booked in the CRM shows up wherever the salesperson already looks. That is the one sentence version. The connection is per user: a salesperson connects their own Google account from the Calendar page, and only their CRM appointments flow to it. The store does not have to run a single company calendar for it to work. What flows is the appointment as the CRM knows it, with the customer and the time, created when the appointment is set, updated when it moves, and removed when it is cancelled. When a user connects for the first time, the appointments already on their CRM calendar are flagged to sync, so the calendar is not empty until the next booking. When they disconnect, the connection ends and nothing further is sent. This page is the product view of one connection. The calendar it feeds, with its booking links and hours, is described on the appointment booking links and shared team calendar pages. #### A normal morning: the appointment seen at breakfast A customer books an 11:30 Saturday visit on Thursday night through a salesperson's booking link. The appointment lands on her CRM calendar, the confirmation goes out through Automated Templates, and because her Google Calendar is connected, the same 11:30 appears on the calendar on her phone within minutes, with the customer's name on it. Saturday at 7:15 she looks at her phone over coffee, the way she looks at it every morning, and sees the 11:30 next to her daughter's soccer game at 9. She has not opened the CRM yet. She knows her day. At 10 the customer texts to push to noon; she moves the appointment in the CRM from the mobile app, and the Google Calendar entry moves with it. Her husband, who shares her family calendar, sees noon too, which is the difference between a smooth Saturday and a phone call at 11:15. Nothing was typed twice. The CRM is the record, the Google Calendar is where she looks, and the sync is why those are the same thing. #### Where it lives: the Google Calendar Sync controls on the Calendar page Open Calendar in the main menu. Alongside the Add New and Settings buttons the page carries a Google Calendar Sync control with the plain instruction to sync appointments with your Google Calendar. Connect Google Calendar opens the Google permission screen in the browser; the user signs in to their own Google account and clicks Allow. Back on the Calendar page the control shows the connection is live, with Disconnect beside it. If a connection lapses, the same spot shows Reconnect. If the permission is denied or something fails, the page says so in a Google Calendar Error notice with what to do next, which is usually to try again and click Allow. There is no settings file to edit and nothing to paste. The connection belongs to the signed in user, and it is made and broken from the same place. The mobile side follows on its own: the LeadLocate mobile app shows the CRM calendar, and the phone's own calendar app shows the Google Calendar, so a salesperson has both without any further setup. The mobile app page covers the calendar view there. #### What syncs, and what stays in the CRM The appointment syncs. When one is created in the CRM, by a customer through a booking link, by a salesperson from a lead, or by a manager with Add New, it is created on the connected Google Calendar. When it is moved, the Google event is updated. When it is cancelled, the Google event is removed. Appointments that already existed when the user connected are flagged and synced, so history is not lost. The lead stays in the CRM. The customer's record, the conversation, the vehicle, the deal and the follow up process are CRM things, and the Google event carries what a calendar entry needs to be useful to the salesperson at a glance. That division is deliberate. A calendar app is where a person checks their day; the CRM is where they work the customer. A salesperson who taps the appointment in the CRM opens the lead; the same appointment in Google tells them where to be and when. Because each user connects their own account, a manager's Google Calendar shows the manager's appointments, not the whole floor. The whole floor lives on the shared team calendar in the CRM, where assignment is a field and every appointment has a name on it. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere The thing the sync replaces is double entry, and double entry is where appointments die. A salesperson who sets the visit in the CRM and then retypes it into the phone calendar does that for a week, then stops, and from then on the phone calendar is wrong. Or they set it only on the phone, and the CRM never knows a visit happened, which means no confirmation, no reminder, no In-Store Now, no record on the lead. Either way the store loses. The other thing it replaces is a paid scheduling tool bought for the sole reason that it syncs to Google. Booking links, hours and confirmations are already in the CRM, and the sync is part of the same subscription. There is no per user fee for it. The plans on the pricing page all carry it. The store keeps the CRM as the record and gives the salesperson the calendar they already use. Nobody is asked to change where they look. #### The compliance angle: one record, not two When a customer and a store disagree about when a visit was booked, the store needs one record it trusts. With the sync, the CRM appointment is that record: it shows when the booking was made, who it is assigned to, and every confirmation and reminder that went out, in the customer's communications log. The Google Calendar entry is a mirror of that appointment for the salesperson's convenience, not a second source of truth that might drift. The connection itself is granted by the user on the Google permission screen, in their own account, and can be ended by the same user with Disconnect. A salesperson who leaves the store ends the connection or has their CRM user disabled, and either way the flow of appointments to their personal calendar stops. The store's customer data lives in the CRM, encrypted at rest on the customer profile, and the appointment entry on a personal calendar is the appointment, not the file. None of this replaces the store's own policy on personal devices; it gives that policy a clean way to grant and revoke. #### When the sync shows an error People search for "google calendar sync error" more than for the feature itself, so it is worth saying what happens. The two common cases are a denied permission and a lapsed connection. If the user closes the Google screen or clicks Deny, the Calendar page shows a Google Calendar Error notice explaining that access was denied and asking them to try again and click Allow. If a connection that used to work stops, the control shows Reconnect, and one click through the permission screen restores it. Existing appointments are flagged to sync again on reconnect. If neither fixes it, the notice says to contact support, and the Support entry in the top bar or the Feedback button on the dock files the request with a screenshot. Our team can see what the user sees through a support session, which shortens most calendar questions to the length of the question. Anything a store needs beyond the current sync is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Google Calendar sync is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription and takes each user about a minute. Open Calendar, find Google Calendar Sync, click Connect Google Calendar, sign in to your own Google account and click Allow. Your existing appointments are synced, and every new one follows. That is the whole setup. A manager rolling it out to a floor tells each salesperson to do the same on their own login. Pair it with appointment booking links so customers book the appointments that then appear on the phone, with the appointment confirmation and reminder steps in Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes, and with In-Store Now so the arrival is recorded on the lead. The all features list shows the rest of the platform. If we are ever unavailable, the appointments already synced are on your Google Calendar and stay there, your customers already have their confirmations, and you know your day; what you would wait on is the next sync and the CRM screen. The pre-recorded live demo shows an appointment being booked in the CRM and appearing on a phone calendar. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I connect my Google Calendar? A: Open Calendar in the CRM, find Google Calendar Sync, click Connect Google Calendar, sign in to your own Google account and click Allow. Your existing appointments are synced and every new one follows. Q: Do I connect one calendar for the whole store? A: No. Each user connects their own Google account from their own login, and only their CRM appointments flow to it. The whole floor is visible on the shared team calendar inside the CRM. Q: Will CRM appointments show on my phone? A: Yes, wherever your Google Calendar already shows, including the calendar app on your phone. The LeadLocate mobile app also shows the CRM calendar itself. Q: What happens when I move or cancel an appointment in the CRM? A: The Google Calendar event is updated when the appointment moves and removed when it is cancelled, so the calendar on your phone stays right without retyping. Q: What does a Google Calendar Error mean? A: Usually that permission was denied on the Google screen or a connection lapsed. Try again and click Allow, or click Reconnect. If it persists, the notice says to contact support, and the Feedback button on the dock files it with a screenshot. Q: How do I stop syncing? A: Click Disconnect in the Google Calendar Sync control on the Calendar page. The connection ends and nothing further is sent. Reconnect any time from the same place. ### IVR Call Flow Builder With Revisions URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/ivr-call-flow-builder The IVR call flow builder in LeadLocate CRM lets a dealership design what a caller hears: a greeting, a menu of options, and for each option a step such as ringing a group of phones, taking a voicemail or branching on business hours. Every save is kept as a revision, an incomplete flow falls back to standard handling, and it is included in every LeadLocate plan. #### What the IVR call flow builder does An IVR is the phone menu: the recorded voice that greets a caller and offers options, and the logic behind each option that decides which phones ring, which message plays and where a caller ends up if nobody answers. Most dealerships have one because their phone vendor built it, years ago, and changing it means a support ticket and a week. The IVR call flow builder in LeadLocate CRM puts that menu on a page the store controls, for the tracking numbers the store uses on its ads, listings and landing pages. A flow is a set of steps. The first is usually a greeting. Then a menu with options, each mapped to a key the caller presses. Each option leads to another step: ring a group of phones, take a voicemail, play a recorded message, check whether the store is open and branch on the answer, pause, or end the call. Steps chain, so sales can ring three phones and then fall to a voicemail while service plays a message and then transfers. The greeting and every spoken step can be typed as text and spoken by the system, or uploaded as an audio file the store recorded itself. The automotive phone system page frames the menu as part of a store's whole phone setup. This page is the product side: how the builder in LeadLocate CRM works, where it lives, and the one design rule that keeps a store from ever hanging up on a customer by mistake. #### How a store uses it on a normal week A general manager notices that service callers keep reaching salespeople, because the store's tracking number rings the sales ring list and the number is printed on the service coupon too. Monday morning she opens the builder, adds a greeting that says thank you for calling, press 1 for sales and 2 for service, and points option 1 at the sales ring group and option 2 at the service desk's line. She types the greeting as text, listens to it, decides it sounds fine, and saves. The change is live on the next call. No ticket, no week. Wednesday she wants the after hours behavior fixed too. She adds a business hours step in front of the menu: during hours the menu plays, after hours a short recorded message says the store's hours and takes a voicemail. She records that message herself on her phone, because she wants it in her own voice, and uploads it as the audio for the step. Friday the sales manager complains that the ring group step rings his cell during his lunch. She opens Earlier versions, looks at Monday's revision, and instead of restoring it she edits the ring group to leave his cell off. Every version is kept, so the argument about what the menu used to do is settled by reading it rather than remembering it. #### Where the builder lives, and what it is built from The builder is the Call Flow section of the IVR Settings page, reached through Account Settings under Billing and Admin. It sits on the same page as the Forward Calls To ring list, the Virtual Receptionist switch, the Announce Calls screening switch and the store's hours, because those are the pieces a flow is made from. A ring step in the flow uses the same dialing, the same press 5 screening and the same recording as a plain forwarded call, so a call that reaches a salesperson through the menu is logged and recorded exactly like one that reached them directly. Audio comes from two places. A step can hold text that the system speaks, which is fastest to write and change. Or a step can carry an uploaded recording, with Upload Greeting for the greeting itself, when a store wants its own voice on the line. A voicemail step lands on the store's voicemail, with the company greeting or the greeting of the user the call was meant for. The results land where every other call does. The Calls page in the main menu logs the call with its recording and the option the caller chose along the way, and the lead's timeline carries it in order with the texts and emails around it. On the LeadLocate mobile app, Call Logs shows the same history. #### Revisions, and the rule that an unfinished flow is never live Two design rules matter more than any individual step. The first is revisions. Every save is kept under Earlier versions, so a store can see what its menu said last month, compare it to today, and go back. A menu is the first thing a customer hears from the dealership, and a change that sounded clever on Tuesday and cost calls by Friday should be reversible without rebuilding it from memory. The second is the fallback. A flow is only live when it is saved, switched on and complete. A menu with no options, an option that points at a deleted step, or a flow that was half built and abandoned is not live; the store's standard call handling, the plain Forward Calls To list and the voicemail behind it, runs instead. The builder says so with Back to standard handling and Use Standard. That means a store can build a flow over several sittings, and a caller only ever hears the version the store finished and switched on. The same rule covers loose ends inside a live flow. A step with nothing after it, a menu whose caller pressed a wrong key too many times, and a ring group where nobody answered all land on the store's voicemail. The only way a flow ends a call without a message is a deliberate Hang Up step the store put there on purpose. A customer who calls a LeadLocate number and does what the menu asks is never left listening to silence. #### What it replaces and what a store pays for it elsewhere A dealership's phone menu is usually a professional services line item: the phone vendor builds it at install, charges for changes, and the store learns to live with a menu it would never have designed. Stores that want a menu on their tracking numbers specifically, the numbers on ads and listings, often find that their call tracking vendor offers a menu as a paid add on and their phone vendor offers one on the main line, and the two never match. In LeadLocate the menu lives with the tracking numbers, the ring list, the receptionist and the log, in the CRM the store already pays for. Changes take minutes and cost nothing. A store that has waited on a phone vendor for menu changes can make them itself: the builder ships with every lead plan on the pricing page. What the builder does not replace is the main switchboard's menu, if the store has one and likes it. The builder governs the numbers a shopper dials from an ad; reception, parts and the main published number can keep whatever system they have. Many stores run the two side by side, with the LeadLocate menu built for shoppers and the main line built for everybody else. #### The compliance and customer experience angle A phone menu is where a store makes its first impression on a caller, and a bad one costs calls in a way no report shows. Options that go nowhere, a greeting that runs forty seconds, a service caller sent to a sales cell, a hang up when nobody answers: each one is a shopper who dials the next dealership on the list. The builder's fallback rule and its revisions exist so those mistakes are hard to make and easy to undo. On the record keeping side, a call that passes through the menu is logged and recorded like any other, with the caller ID, the path it took, the person who answered and the recording, so a claim about what a caller was told has a recording behind it. Recording laws vary by state, and a store should set its announcement policy accordingly; a greeting step is a natural place for a recorded line disclosure, and the call recording and transcription page covers the rest. Business hours steps are the other protection. A menu that transfers to a salesperson's cell at ten at night annoys the salesperson and strands the caller on a phone nobody will answer. A flow that checks hours first and takes a message after close treats late callers well and returns the call in the morning from the lead where it was logged. #### How to turn it on A new LeadLocate account starts without a menu: the tracking number rings the store's own users through plain forwarding, and the builder is empty. To add a flow, open IVR Settings, go to Call Flow, add a greeting, add a menu with the options the store wants, and point each option at a step. Type the audio as text or upload a recording. Save, switch it on, and the next call hears it. An incomplete flow simply stays on standard handling until it is finished. A store that would rather describe the menu it wants and have it built can ask; our team puts it in production for your dealership. The same is true of anything the standard steps do not cover, such as a menu that differs by tracking number: available on request, and our team puts it in production. The pre-recorded live demo shows a call passing through a menu and landing on a lead. #### What to pair it with The builder decides where a caller goes; the pieces it sends them to are their own features. Pair it with call forwarding and ring lists, which is what a ring step uses, and with tracking phone numbers, so the menu answers the number on each ad and the call arrives on the lead with its source attached. Pair it with the virtual receptionist when the store wants a caller greeted and asked what they need rather than offered a numbered menu, and with voicemail greetings for what a caller hears when a ring step comes up empty. A store that wants a BDC in the loop should read the BDC phone service page, since a menu option can ring the BDC's phones as its own group. The all features page shows where the builder sits among everything else in the platform. #### Built so your store keeps selling The phones are the part of a dealership that can never have a bad day, so the call flow is built that way. A customer who dials your number hears the greeting you recorded, presses the option you published and rings through to the salesperson you sent them to, hour after hour, on a Saturday morning and at nine at night. Every call, every recording and every transcript is safe on the customer's record the second the call ends, and the flow you published stays exactly as you published it until you decide to change it. Your tracking numbers and your Forward Calls To list keep ringing your own phones, your main store line stays your line, and your DMS and your website stay your own as well. Build a flow when it suits you, publish it when it is right, and let it answer the phone the same way every time. If you want a person to walk your first flow through with you, the contact page reaches one. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a call flow, in plain terms? A: It is the path a caller takes: the greeting they hear, the options they are offered, and what happens after each choice, such as ringing a group of phones, taking a voicemail, playing a message or checking whether the store is open. The builder lets the store draw that path itself. Q: Can I use my own recorded voice? A: Yes. Any spoken step can carry an uploaded audio file, and Upload Greeting covers the greeting itself. A step can also hold text the system speaks, which is faster to write and change. Q: What happens if I save a flow that is not finished? A: Nothing changes for callers. A flow is only live when it is saved, switched on and complete; an incomplete one leaves standard call handling in place. Inside a live flow, any loose end lands on the store's voicemail rather than hanging up. Q: Can I go back to an earlier menu? A: Yes. Every save is kept under Earlier versions, so a store can read what the menu said before a change and restore it or edit from it. Q: Does a call through the menu get recorded and logged? A: Yes. A ring step uses the same dialing, screening and recording as a plain forwarded call, so the call lands on the Calls page and the lead's timeline with its recording, the same as any other. Q: Which plan do I need? A: The builder is part of the full CRM inside every lead plan on the pricing page. There is no charge for changes, revisions or uploaded audio. ### Import Inventory From Your Own Website URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/import-inventory-from-your-website Import inventory from your website is how Inventory Link brings a dealership's vehicles into the LeadLocate platform when there is no inventory feed. With your permission it reads the vehicles published on your own website, recognizing twenty eight dealer website platforms, decodes each VIN and makes the units available in the CRM, the phone app and every text and email composer. No feed and no DMS access required. #### What does importing inventory from your website mean? Importing inventory from your website means Inventory Link reads the vehicles you have already published on your own dealership website, with your permission, and makes them the vehicles in the platform, so a store with no inventory feed starts with its full lot on day one. That is the one sentence version. It exists because the feed is where most dealer software quietly excludes people. A small independent whose website vendor charges extra for a feed, a store between inventory providers, a broker who lists a few units on a simple site, all of them have inventory online and none of them have a feed. Inventory Link treats the website as a perfectly good source. The import recognizes the platform your website is built on, across twenty eight common dealer website platforms, and reads the inventory the way that platform publishes it. Each vehicle then goes through the same treatment as a vehicle from a feed: VIN decode, enrichment from an automotive database, text parsing on the description, stock number overrides and stock imagery where a photo is missing. From there it appears in the LeadLocate CRM, on the phone app, in the vehicle insert button inside every text and email composer, on the inventory website builder and widget, and in the vehicle finder. This page is the product side view of one source. The inventory feeds page covers all three ways a vehicle gets in, and the dealer inventory feed management page covers feed management as a buying question. #### How does a dealership use it on a normal day? An independent store with forty units has a website from one of the common dealer website vendors, updated by the office manager every morning from the DMS printout. There is no feed, and the last quote for one was more than the store wanted to spend. At signup the store gives us the website address. Our team confirms the platform and runs the first import, and by the afternoon all forty units are in the platform with their VINs decoded, their descriptions parsed and their photos pulled from the site. The next morning the office manager adds two arrivals to the website and removes a unit that delivered Saturday. The next import picks up the two and drops the one, and the Feeds page in the Inventory Link portal shows the last refresh. At eleven a salesperson texting a customer taps the vehicle button in the composer, picks one of the arrivals, and the text goes out with the photos and the price that are on the website, because they came from the website. At three, a shopper on the store's inventory site uses the vehicle finder to describe a truck, and the finder shows the unit that came in that morning. Nobody at the store did anything they were not already doing. The website was the source of truth before; now the platform reads from it. #### Twenty eight website platforms, recognized on sight Dealer websites are built on a fairly small number of platforms, and each one publishes inventory in its own way: a search results page here, a vehicle detail page there, photos in one structure, prices in another. Inventory Link carries platform detection that recognizes twenty eight of the common ones and reads inventory the way each one publishes it, so the import works the first time rather than after a week of tuning. A store does not need to know which platform it is on; the detection figures that out from the site. If your website is on a platform the import has not met, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The same goes for a site with an unusual layout, a group site that carries several rooftops, or a store that wants only part of its published inventory imported. The feed editor that handles provider feeds handles the mapping for a website source as well, so an adjustment is a setting rather than a project. #### What the import captures, and what Inventory Link adds to it The import captures what the website shows: year, make, model and trim, VIN, stock number, price, mileage, the description and the photos. Then the platform improves on it. The VIN is decoded so the vehicle's identity is exact even where the website's text was loose. An automotive database attaches government safety and efficiency data. Vehicle text parsing reads the description and pulls out the details a shopper filters on. The VIN decode and vehicle database page covers that layer. Where the website has a unit with no photo, promo photos and stock imagery stand in until a real photo is added on the site or in the portal. Where the store's stock number differs from what the website shows, a stock number override makes the store's number the one the platform uses. And a unit the website has never had, a fresh trade a salesperson wants to text about right now, can be added by hand on the portal's Add vehicle page and edited with its photos, so the website import is the foundation rather than a ceiling. #### Where does it live in the portal, the CRM and on the phone? A website import is a source on the Feeds page of the Inventory Link portal, next to any provider feed the store adds later, with its last refresh shown and the request change form for asking our team to adjust it. The portal dashboard, inventory list, Add vehicle and edit pages sit alongside, and the portal opens from the LeadLocate CRM with one login. Team invites and roles decide who can touch inventory. In the CRM the imported units appear under the Inventory menu, and on the phone app as the inventory list with a detail sheet and an inventory picker. The vehicle insert button in every text and email composer reads from them, which is what makes sending a vehicle by text a tap. In-Store Now flags the unit a customer is standing beside. The imported inventory is the store's inventory everywhere in the platform, indistinguishable from inventory that arrived by feed. #### What does it replace, and what does it cost elsewhere? It replaces the feed contract a store was told it needed before it could use inventory software: the setup fee, the monthly charge, and the weeks of waiting while a website vendor and a software vendor decide whose job the feed is. It also replaces the alternative most small stores actually use, which is retyping inventory into a second system and letting the two drift apart within a week. For a broker or a solo salesperson it replaces exclusion. Inventory Link is built so that an inventory feed and DMS access are not required, and the website import is the clearest example of why: if your cars are online, they can be in the platform. The auto broker inventory mode covers the broker with no inventory at all. Inventory Link is part of every LeadLocate plan rather than an add on, plans are month to month, and the pricing page lists them. #### The permission and compliance angle: your site, your prices, your say The import reads one source, the dealership's own website, with the dealership's permission. The vehicles that come in are vehicles the store has already decided to publish, at prices the store has already decided to show, so the inventory in the platform is the store's public position and nothing else. There is no second price to reconcile and no description somebody wrote for another system. When the store changes a price on the website, the next import carries the change into the CRM, the composers, the inventory site and the finder together. That consistency is the practical compliance benefit. A price texted by a salesperson that matches the price on the website is a conversation rather than a complaint. Stock imagery is used only where the site has no photo, and a real photo replaces it as soon as one exists. Nothing here makes a store's advertising compliant by itself; it removes the copies of a price that tend to drift. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Give us your website address at signup, or from the request change form on the Feeds page if you are already on the platform. Our team confirms the platform, runs the first import, and the Feeds page shows the refresh. If the store later adds a provider feed, the feed and the website import sit side by side as sources, and switching from one to the other is a conversation rather than a migration. A website on a platform we have not met is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair the import with the inventory website builder and the embeddable widget, so the units read from your site are merchandised on a site of your own and on any page you already have, with the vehicle finder so a shopper's description finds the unit, and with the CRM composers so a salesperson sends the actual car with its photos. The all features list shows where the import sits among everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a unit going from a website to a text message. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need an inventory feed if my cars are on my website? A: No. Inventory Link imports inventory from your own website, with your permission, and the platform works the same as it would from a feed. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Q: Which website platforms does the import recognize? A: Twenty eight common dealer website platforms are recognized on sight, and the import reads inventory the way each one publishes it. A platform beyond those is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: What happens when I add or remove a car on my website? A: The next import picks up the new unit and drops the removed one, and the Feeds page in the Inventory Link portal shows the last refresh. Price and description changes carry across the same way. Q: What if a unit on my website has no photo? A: Promo photos and stock imagery stand in until a real photo is added on the site or in the portal, so the listing is never blank in a text or on the inventory site. Q: Can I add a vehicle that is not on my website yet? A: Yes. The portal's Add vehicle page takes a unit by hand, with photos, and it joins the imported inventory everywhere in the platform. A stock number override lets the store's number win if it differs from the site. Q: Is the website import an extra charge? A: No. It is part of Inventory Link, which is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### In Store Now: Know Who Is on the Lot URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/in-store-now In-Store Now is a flag in LeadLocate CRM that marks a lead as physically on the lot right now. A salesperson or manager sets it on the lead record when the customer arrives, so the desk, the BDC and the managers see who is in the building and who is working them, and the visit becomes part of the lead's record in the LeadLocate CRM rather than a name on a whiteboard. #### What In-Store Now does, in one sentence In-Store Now is the flag on a lead in LeadLocate CRM that says this person is physically here, on the lot, at this moment. That is all it is, and it is one of the more useful small things in the CRM, because a dealership's day is organized around exactly that fact. Who is in the building decides which manager walks the floor, which desk gets the next number, whether the BDC keeps calling a customer who is standing at a desk, and whether the appointment the BDC booked at ten actually showed. Most stores track it on a whiteboard or not at all. The whiteboard knows a name and maybe a rep; it does not know that the name is a lead that came in on Tuesday from a specific source, texted twice, and asked about a specific unit. The LeadLocate CRM knows all of that, and In-Store Now attaches the visit to it. The result is that the store's record of a customer, from the first text to the delivery, includes the day they walked in, and everybody working that customer saw it happen. #### How a store uses it on a Saturday At ten fifteen a couple walks in and says they have an appointment. The receptionist finds the lead, the one the BDC booked yesterday, and flags it In-Store Now. On the floor, the assigned rep already knows they are here because the lead is his and it is now marked as in the building; he stops what he was doing and meets them. In the BDC, the agent who booked the appointment sees the flag and stops the reminder call she was about to make, and counts the appointment as shown. At the desk, the sales manager sees that a customer who asked about a specific used truck is on the lot and pulls that unit's numbers before the rep asks. At noon a walk in wanders the front line with no lead in the system. The rep who takes him creates the lead from the phone app with a driver license scan, flags him In-Store Now, and the store now knows one more thing than it did: there is a live customer on the lot, who has him, and what he is looking at. When the couple from ten fifteen leaves without buying, the flag comes off, the visit is in the record, and the unsold showroom follow up starts from a lead that says exactly when they were here and what they saw. Nobody asked who had the guy in the blue shirt, because the CRM already said. #### Where it lives: on the lead, in the Leads menu In-Store Now is set on the lead record itself, in the Leads menu of the desktop CRM, where the lead's conversation, status, tags, appointments and notes already live. It is a control on the lead rather than a separate screen, which is the point: the person flagging a customer is looking at that customer's record, and the people who see the flag are the people who work that record. A Manager looking at the team's leads sees who is in the building across the floor; a User sees it on the leads they are working. It sits alongside the rest of the lead's identity. Custom lead statuses say where a lead is in the process; tags say what kind of lead it is; row colors make both visible at a glance in the inbox; In-Store Now says whether the lead is standing in the showroom right now. Inventory Link shows on the CRM side too, in the Inventory menu and on the phone app, so a rep with an in store customer can pull the unit the customer came to see and send it into the conversation with the vehicle insert button without leaving the lead. The what is a walk in page covers the customer who arrives with no lead; In-Store Now is what turns that arrival into a record. #### Why a flag on the lead beats a name on a whiteboard A whiteboard answers one question, who is here, and it answers it only for the people standing in front of it. The flag answers several. Who is here, because the lead is marked. Who has them, because the lead is assigned. Where they came from, because every lead carries its source from Lead Feeds Manager. What they want, because the conversation is on the lead: the texts, the calls, the unit they asked about. Whether the appointment showed, because the appointment on the calendar and the flag on the lead are the same customer. That last one matters more than it looks. A BDC is judged on appointments that show, and an appointment that shows is exactly a lead that was booked and then flagged In-Store Now. When the flag is the habit, the store has a record of shown appointments that came from the work rather than from a BDC manager's memory, and the argument between the BDC and the floor about whether the customer ever came in has an answer. The in store customer check in page walks through the whole arrival, from the flag to the license scan; this page is the flag itself. #### From the flag to the deal: the tools that follow a customer on the lot Once a customer is flagged in store, the rest of the CRM is waiting. The identity scanner reads a driver license and an insurance card into the customer record, so the name, address and date of birth on the deal are what the license says. The Customer Profile is the one shared buyer record, co-buyer included, with personal information encrypted, that the desk and the deal both read from. Start New Deal from the lead opens EZ Desking with the customer already in it, and the deal carries a Road to Sale checklist so nothing between the demo and the delivery is forgotten. The deal's visit log records the visit against the deal. If the customer wants to apply for financing, the rep texts a SecureWebX apply link and the application comes back to the finance office while the customer is still in the chair. If the customer wants to take the numbers home, the deal goes out as a customer deal page with e-signature and a PIN, and the conversation continues in Deal Chat. Every one of those tools starts from the same lead the flag was set on, which is why setting the flag is the first thing a rep does when a customer arrives and not an afterthought. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere It replaces the up board, the shout across the showroom, and the text to the manager that says the ten fifteen is here. None of those cost money and all of them cost something: the appointment that showed and was never counted, the customer two reps both thought was theirs, the walk in who left before anyone knew he had arrived, the BDC reminder call that reached a customer who was sitting at a desk twenty feet from the caller. Some stores buy a separate showroom traffic tool to fix that, with its own tablet at the door, its own login and its own monthly bill, and then find that it and the CRM disagree about who came in. In-Store Now is part of LeadLocate CRM, so it rides along with every lead plan on the pricing page, with no separate tool to buy and, more usefully, no separate record to reconcile. The visit is on the lead, and the lead is where the store already keeps everything else about that customer, so reports that read the CRM read the visit too. The unsold showroom follow up page explains what a store does with the customers who came in and left; In-Store Now is how the CRM knows who those customers were. #### The compliance angle: a record instead of a sticky note A customer on the lot hands over more personal information in an hour than a lead does in a week: a driver license, an insurance card, a trade title, a phone number written on a worksheet. When that information lands on sticky notes and in photos on personal phones, the store has copies it cannot see and cannot delete. When the customer is flagged In-Store Now on a lead, and the license is scanned into the Customer Profile where personal information is encrypted, and the trade goes into the trade in form with its photos and VIN scan, the store has one record, in one place, that the roles in User Management control. The flag also creates the exact timeline that follow up depends on. A store that texts a customer three days after a visit is in a different position from one that texts a stranger, and the record of the visit, the conversation and the customer's consent all sit on the same lead. The DNC Blacklist with its live do not call lookup applies before any of that follow up goes out. And the flag comes off when the customer leaves, so nobody is marked as in the building who is not; it describes the present, and the lead's history describes the past. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with There is nothing to turn on. In-Store Now is on the lead record in LeadLocate CRM from the first login on every plan. The setup is a habit rather than a setting: whoever greets a customer, the receptionist, the rep or the manager on the floor, finds the lead and sets the flag, and takes it off when the customer leaves. Stores that make the flag the first act of an arrival find that the appointment show count fixes itself, because showing up and being flagged become the same event. The help center article shows where the control is on the lead. Pair it with the driver license scanner, so the customer who is here becomes a customer record in one scan. Pair it with the shared calendar and its appointments, so a booked appointment and a flagged arrival tell the BDC the appointment showed. Pair it with Team Chat, where the floor hears that the customer with the trade just pulled in, and with the desking tool, where the manager pulls numbers for the unit the customer came to see. If you want to see an arrival handled end to end before signing up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the CRM in use, and the contact page reaches a person who can talk through how a store your size runs its showroom. #### Questions and answers Q: What does In-Store Now actually do? A: It marks a lead in LeadLocate CRM as physically on the lot right now. Anyone working the lead, and any Manager looking at the team's leads, sees the flag, and the visit becomes part of the lead's record. Q: Where do I set it? A: On the lead record in the Leads menu of the desktop CRM, alongside the lead's status, tags, conversation and appointments. Take it off when the customer leaves so it always describes who is in the building now. Q: Does it work for a walk in with no lead? A: Yes. Create the lead first, from the desk or from the phone app with a driver license scan, then flag it. The walk in becomes a record with a source, a conversation and a visit instead of a name nobody wrote down. Q: How does it help the BDC? A: A booked appointment plus an In-Store Now flag on the same lead is a shown appointment. The BDC sees the customer arrived, stops reminder calls, and the show count comes from the record rather than from memory. Q: Is In-Store Now a showroom traffic system with a tablet at the door? A: It is a flag on the lead inside the CRM, not a separate system. The value is that the visit lives with the lead's source, conversation, deal and follow up, so nothing has to be reconciled between two tools. Q: Does it cost extra? A: No. In-Store Now is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Intake Process Automation Replaces Per Dealer Zaps URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/intake-process-automation Intake Process Automation is the in house intake layer inside LeadLocate CRM. From the Lead Feeds page a store creates a named process that watches a mailbox, accepts any data at its own intake address, takes a phone call, or reacts to a completed or abandoned credit application, and delivers the lead into a target feed. It replaced the per dealer zaps stores used to run in third party automation tools. #### What Intake Process Automation does Intake Process Automation turns any source that can send an email, post data to an address, or ring a phone into a lead in LeadLocate CRM, delivered to the feed you choose, with a run history you can read. That is the one sentence version. It lives behind the Intake Process Automation button on the Lead Feeds page, next to the Lead Feeds Manager, because intake and feeds are two halves of the same job: a feed is where a lead lands, an intake process is how it gets there. The processes are built in house, inside the platform, and they replaced the per dealer zaps that stores used to run in third party automation tools. That history matters because it explains the design. A zap was one store's private wiring between a lead source and the CRM, built by whoever knew the tool, billed monthly, and silently broken the day the source changed its email format. An intake process is the same wiring as a first class feature of the CRM, with a Test button, a run log, and a shared intake layer the rest of the platform uses too. The buying side of the routing question, what a BDC should expect from lead routing software in general, is covered on BDC lead routing software. This page is the tool. #### A normal week: the lead source with no feed A store signs a deal with a regional marketplace that sends leads by email, one per lead, to whatever address the dealer gives it. There is no feed format, no integration, just an email with the customer's name, phone and the vehicle in the body. On most CRMs that email goes to the internet manager's inbox and gets typed into the CRM by hand, on the days someone remembers. On a store with Intake Process Automation the internet manager opens the Lead Feeds page, clicks New Process, gives it a Process name, picks the type Email Intake, sets the Mailbox to watch to the address the marketplace sends to, and picks the Target Feed, which is a feed she created for that marketplace so its leads get their own automated templates and their own round robin. She presses Test with a sample email, sees a lead land in the target feed with the right name and phone, and saves. From then on every email from the marketplace becomes a lead in that feed the moment it arrives. The first text goes out through Automated Templates, the lead is assigned by the feed's rule, and the manager checks Runs on Friday to see how many came through and whether any failed. The marketplace never knew it was integrated. #### The intake types on the New Process screen Each process has a Type, and the types cover the ways a lead source can reach a store. Email Intake watches a mailbox and turns each message into a lead, which handles every provider that sends leads by email. A data intake process gets its own Endpoint address; anything that can post data to a URL, a website form, a chat tool, a landing page builder, sends there and the process maps it into a lead. Phone Call Intake turns an inbound call into a lead so a caller who never filled out a form still exists in the CRM. Two types come from SecureWebX: SWX Credit (Complete) fires when a customer finishes a credit application, and SWX Credit (Abandoned) fires when a customer opens an apply link and stops partway. The second is the more valuable of the two. A customer who got to the income step and quit is a customer who wanted to buy, and the abandoned process makes that person a lead with a follow up task rather than a row nobody sees. The apply links page covers the application side. Every process carries a Target Feed, Notes for the next person who has to understand it, and Copy, Edit and Delete controls, so a process that works for one source is duplicated for the next in a minute. #### Runs, Activity and the Report: seeing what came in The difference between a zap and an intake process is visible on the process list. Each process shows its Runs, and opening the run history shows each lead that came through, when, from which Source, and with what result. Activity is the live view of what the processes are doing right now. The Report summarizes intake over a period, so a manager comparing lead sources can see which one actually produced leads rather than which one sent the most invoices. That visibility is what stores lost with third party automations. A zap that stopped working stopped silently; the first sign was a salesperson asking why the marketplace had gone quiet. An intake process shows every run in its history, and the store's notification preferences carry the alert the moment a run needs attention. The lead notifications and alerts page describes those toggles. Because every process delivers into a feed, the downstream is the same as for any lead: the feed's automated templates, its assignment rule, its follow up processes. A lead from a website form post and a lead from a standard feed are indistinguishable once they are in the CRM, which is the point. #### What it replaces, and what that cost The cost of per dealer zaps was never just the subscription. It was the hour a manager spent building one, the day nobody noticed it had broken, and the fact that the wiring lived in a tool the store did not control, under a login one person knew. Multiply that by every lead source that was not a standard feed and by every rooftop in a group, and the number of small private integrations a group was quietly maintaining was in the dozens. Intake Process Automation removes all of them. The processes live in the CRM, under the store's own account, visible to every manager with the right role, with a run log and a test button. There is no third party automation subscription to keep paying and no vendor login to lose when the internet manager leaves. It is part of the platform, and the plans on the pricing page all carry it. For the standard cases, a lead provider that already sends a recognized feed, the Lead Feeds Manager with instant push to the CRM handles intake without a process at all. Intake Process Automation is for everything else, which at most stores is more than half of the sources. #### The intake hook and the rest of the platform An intake process is not only for outside sources. The same intake layer creates leads from inside the platform, exactly the way an external source would. The two SecureWebX credit application types are the visible example: the credit application system on one side of the platform creates a lead on the other side through the same intake layer a marketplace email uses. The Phone Call Intake type is another: the phone system described on the BDC Phone Service page hands an inbound caller to intake so the caller becomes a lead. The practical result for a store is one place to look. Whether a lead came from an email, a form post, a phone call or a credit application, it entered through a process with a name, a target feed and a run history. A manager asking "where did this lead come from" opens the lead, reads the feed, and if needed opens the process and reads the run. Nobody is reconstructing an integration from memory. Anything a store needs that the current types do not carry is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership; the process list is designed to grow a type at a time. #### The compliance angle: a record of how every lead entered Where a lead came from is a compliance question as often as a marketing one. When a customer asks how the store got their number, the store needs an answer that is a record, not a guess. An intake process gives every lead a documented entry: the process that created it, the source it came through, the time, and the feed it landed in. A lead typed by hand from a forwarded email has none of that. Consent handling starts at the source and continues in the CRM. The pre screening questions and consent language a store puts on its own forms travel with the data into the process; once in the CRM, the lead is subject to the same DNC blacklist, opt out handling and communications log as any other. The do not call scrub and blacklist page covers the number side. The run history and Notes on each process are the documentation a store is glad to have when a source is questioned. Working alongside the store's own consent practice, it records how each lead entered so that practice can be shown. #### How to set it up, and what to pair it with Intake Process Automation is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription. To set up a source, create its feed in the Lead Feeds Manager first, so it has its own automated templates and assignment rule, then click Intake Process Automation, New Process, pick the type, point it at the mailbox or hand the endpoint to the source, choose the target feed, press Test with a real sample, and save. Write the Notes. Check Runs after the first day. Plans are month to month, listed on the pricing page. Pair it with round robin lead assignment on the target feed so every intake lead gets an owner on arrival, with merge duplicate leads for the customer who reaches the store through two sources, and with Follow Up Processes so the abandoned credit application lead gets a timeline, not just a row. The all features list shows the rest. Every lead in your feeds keeps its run history, every source keeps sending to the same place, and an email intake mailbox keeps every message it receives. The pre-recorded live demo shows a source becoming a feed before you sign up, and the contact page reaches a person if you want the first process built with you. #### Questions and answers Q: What is an intake process? A: A named rule in LeadLocate CRM that turns a source into leads: it watches a mailbox, accepts data at its own intake address, takes a phone call, or reacts to a completed or abandoned credit application, and delivers each lead into the target feed you choose. Q: Do I still need a third party automation tool for lead intake? A: No. Intake Process Automation replaced the per dealer zaps stores used to run in those tools. The processes live in the CRM under your account, with a Test button and a run history. Q: What if my lead provider only sends email? A: Create an Email Intake process, set the Mailbox to watch to the address the provider sends to, pick the target feed, and test it with a sample. Every email after that becomes a lead in the feed. Q: Can a website form or another tool send leads directly? A: Yes. A data intake process gives you its own endpoint address. Anything that can post data to a URL sends there and the process maps it into a lead. Q: How do I know a process is working? A: Each process shows its Runs, with every lead that came through, its source and result. Activity is the live view and the Report summarizes intake over a period. A run that needs attention is flagged in the history, never hidden. Q: What happens to an abandoned credit application? A: The SWX Credit (Abandoned) type turns it into a lead in the target feed, so a customer who stopped partway through an apply link gets a follow up instead of being lost. ### Inventory Feeds: Connect Any Feed, or None at All URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/inventory-feeds Inventory feeds in Inventory Link are the way a dealership's vehicles reach the LeadLocate platform. Connect the feed your inventory provider produces, import inventory from your own website when there is no feed, or add vehicles by hand in the portal. Every unit is VIN decoded and available in the CRM, the phone app and every text and email composer. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. #### What is an inventory feed in Inventory Link? An inventory feed is the path your vehicles take into Inventory Link, and the platform accepts whatever path your store already has: the feed your inventory provider produces, an import from your own website when there is no feed, or vehicles added by hand in the portal. That is the one sentence version, and the second half of it matters more than the first. Plenty of dealer software makes the feed the price of admission, so a broker with no lot, a solo salesperson, or a store between inventory vendors is locked out. Inventory Link is built the other way around. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required, and the platform works from day one with whatever you have. Once a vehicle is in, it is the same vehicle everywhere. Inventory Link keeps a per dealer inventory store, decodes every VIN, fills in the record from an automotive database, and hands the unit to the LeadLocate CRM, the phone app, the inventory website builder, the embeddable widget and the vehicle finder. Inventory Link is also what lets LeadLocate advertise your actual vehicles rather than a generic offer, and a lead sourced from a specific unit arrives with the VIN attached. This page is the product side view of the feed itself. The dealer inventory feed management page covers the buying question of feed management in general; here it is about what Inventory Link does with a feed, and without one. #### How does a dealership use it on a normal day? Overnight the feed refreshes. A used car manager walks in and opens the Feeds page in the Inventory Link portal, where each of the store's feeds shows its last refresh, so the first question of the day, did the feed run, is answered without a phone call. Three units that were delivered yesterday are gone from the list. Four that landed from auction are in it, decoded from their VINs, with the year, make, model and trim right and the government safety and efficiency data attached. The photographer has not been by yet, so those four carry stock imagery until real photos replace it. At ten a salesperson is texting a customer who wants a mid size SUV under a certain payment. In the composer she taps the vehicle button, picks one of the new arrivals from the store's inventory, and the text goes out with photos and price attached. At noon a manager flags a unit as In-Store Now because the customer is on the lot looking at it. At two the provider's feed has a wrong stock number on one unit and the store's own stock number is the one everybody uses, so the manager sets a stock number override in the portal and the platform shows the store's number from then on. At four, the manager notices the feed is sending a field the store wants mapped differently, opens the request change form on the Feeds page, names the feed and what needs to change, and sends it to our team. Nobody exported a spreadsheet, nobody emailed a photo, and the inventory the salesperson quoted at ten is the inventory on the lot at ten. #### Three ways in: your provider's feed, your website, or by hand The first way is the feed you already pay for. Most stores have an inventory provider, a website vendor or a DMS vendor that produces a feed, and Inventory Link ingests it through its feed ingestion and feed editor. Our team connects the feed at setup, and the feed editor is where the mapping from the provider's fields to the platform's fields is adjusted when a provider does something unusual. A store with more than one source, new from one system and used from another, runs more than one feed, and each shows on the Feeds page with its own refresh. The second way is your own website. When there is no feed, Inventory Link imports inventory from your website, with your permission, recognizing the platform your site is built on across twenty eight common dealer website platforms. The vehicles you already merchandise online become the vehicles in the platform, without a feed contract and without waiting on a vendor. The third way is by hand. The portal has an Add vehicle page and an edit page for the vehicle and its photos, which is how a broker with no lot, a wholesaler with a handful of units, or a store that wants one special unit merchandised right now gets it in. The auto broker inventory mode goes further for a broker, connecting brand offer pages with no inventory at all. All three ways land in the same per dealer inventory store, so a store can start by hand today, add a website import next week and connect a feed next month without redoing anything. #### What Inventory Link does with a vehicle once it arrives A feed row is a thin thing: a VIN, a stock number, a price, a mileage, some photo links, a description somebody typed. Inventory Link makes it a record. Every VIN is decoded so the year, make, model, trim and body are right even when the feed's text is not. An automotive database adds government safety and efficiency data to the record. Vehicle text parsing reads the free text descriptions feeds are full of and pulls out the structured details a shopper searches on. The VIN decode and vehicle database page covers that layer in detail. Stock number overrides let the store's own number win when a provider's number is wrong or the store changes numbering. Promo photos and stock imagery cover the units a photographer has not reached, so a listing is never a grey box. The result is that the record a salesperson inserts into a text, the record on the inventory website and the record in the vehicle finder are the same record, and it is fuller than what the feed delivered. #### Where does it live in the portal, the CRM and on the phone? Feeds live on the Feeds page of the Inventory Link portal, which opens from the LeadLocate CRM with one login. The page lists your feeds, shows the last refresh for each, and carries the request change form for asking our team to adjust a feed, with a note for requests that are not specific to one feed. The portal dashboard, inventory list, Add vehicle and edit pages sit alongside, with team invites and roles for who can touch inventory. In the CRM the same inventory appears under the Inventory menu, and on the phone app as the inventory list with a detail sheet and an inventory picker. The vehicle insert button in every text and email composer reads from it, so sending a vehicle by text is a tap rather than a hunt for photos. In-Store Now flags the unit a customer is standing next to. A store never opens a second system to see its own cars; the feed populates the places where the selling happens. #### What does it replace, and what does it cost elsewhere? Feed management is often sold as its own product, priced per destination, with a setup fee for each new place the feed goes and a monthly charge for keeping it flowing. A store ends up paying one vendor to produce the feed and a second to route it. Inventory Link takes the feed the first vendor already produces and puts it to work across the platform without a per destination charge, because the CRM, the phone app, the website builder, the widget and the finder are all one platform reading one inventory store. For the stores and sellers that have no feed at all, it replaces the thing that kept them out. A broker, a solo salesperson or a small independent lot runs on a website import or hand entered units and gets the same merchandising. Inventory Link is part of every LeadLocate plan rather than an add on, plans are month to month, and the pricing page lists the ones that include exclusive local leads. #### The compliance angle: one source of truth for price and mileage Advertising a vehicle at one price on the website, another in a text and a third on a landing page is how a store ends up explaining itself to a customer or a regulator. When every surface reads from one inventory store fed by your own feed, the price and mileage a salesperson texts are the price and mileage on the site, and a change in the feed changes both. Stock number overrides mean the number on the paperwork is the number on the listing. Stock imagery is used only where the store has no photo of its own, and the store's real photos replace it the moment they exist, so a customer is not shown a photograph of a car that is not the car. The website import path reads only the dealership's own website, with the dealership's permission, so the inventory in the platform is inventory the store has already chosen to publish. Nothing here makes advertising compliant on its own; what it does is remove the second and third copies of a price that drift from the first. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with At signup, tell us how your vehicles should arrive: the feed your provider produces and who to contact for it, the address of your website, or that you will add units by hand. Our team connects the feed or the website import, and the Feeds page shows the first refresh. From then on the request change form is the way to ask for an adjustment, and a feed in a format we have not seen before is available on request; our team puts it in production for your dealership. Adding a second feed later, or switching from a website import to a provider feed, is the same conversation. Pair the feed with the inventory website builder and the embeddable inventory widget so the same units are merchandised on a site of your own and on any page you already have, with the vehicle finder so a shopper who describes a unit finds it, and with the CRM composers so a salesperson sends the actual car. The all features list shows where inventory feeds sit among everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a unit going from the feed to a text message. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need an inventory feed to use LeadLocate? A: No. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Inventory Link can import inventory from your own website, or you can add vehicles by hand in the portal, and the platform works the same either way. Q: Which feeds can Inventory Link connect? A: The feed your inventory provider, website vendor or DMS vendor already produces. Our team connects it at setup through the feed ingestion and feed editor, and a store can run more than one feed, each with its own refresh. Q: What if my feed has a wrong stock number or a bad description? A: Set a stock number override in the portal so the store's number wins, and rely on VIN decode and vehicle text parsing to correct the year, make, model and trim. For a feed level change, use the request change form on the Feeds page. Q: Where do I see whether the feed ran? A: On the Feeds page of the Inventory Link portal, which lists your feeds and the last refresh for each. Q: Where does the inventory show up once it is in? A: In the CRM Inventory menu, on the phone app, in the vehicle insert button inside every text and email composer, on the inventory website builder and widget, and in the vehicle finder. One inventory store feeds all of them. Q: Is Inventory Link an extra charge? A: No. Inventory Link is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Inventory Website Builder With Publish and Regenerate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/inventory-website-builder The inventory website builder in Inventory Link builds a vehicle website from your dealership's inventory, publishes it when you are ready, and regenerates it as units arrive and sell. It offers AI assisted copy, per salesperson inventory sites from one template, a vehicle finder, and Schedule a Visit and request sheets that land in the portal's Requests inbox. It lives in the Inventory Link portal under Builder. #### What is the inventory website builder? The inventory website builder turns the inventory already in Inventory Link into a website, publishes that website when you choose, and regenerates it as the lot changes, so the site is never a snapshot of last week's cars. That is the one sentence version. It is not a general purpose page editor with an inventory plugin bolted on. It starts from the vehicles, because a dealer's site is its inventory with a front door, and everything else on the page exists to get a shopper from a listing to a conversation. The builder lives in the Inventory Link portal under Builder, and it reads from the same per dealer inventory store the LeadLocate CRM, the phone app and the text and email composers read from. That store is filled by whatever source the dealership has, a provider feed, an import from the store's own website, or units added by hand, as the inventory feeds page explains. A unit that arrives by feed at night is on the site after the next regenerate, with its VIN decoded, its description parsed and its photos in place. The template is the other half of the idea. A store builds one site from it, and every salesperson can have an inventory site of their own from the same template, carrying the store's inventory under the salesperson's name and contact details. The car salesman personal websites page covers the personal site as a selling tool; this page is about the builder that produces them. #### How does a dealership use it on a normal day? A used car manager at an independent store opens Builder on a Monday. The store's inventory is already in the platform from the website import our team set up at signup. He picks the template, gives the site a headline and an About section, lets the AI assisted copy draft the rest, reads it and changes two sentences, and looks at how it looks on a phone and a desktop. He publishes. By lunch the store has an inventory site with every unit on the lot, a vehicle finder on the front, and a Schedule a Visit sheet on every vehicle page. Tuesday a shopper on her phone opens a truck, taps Schedule a Visit, and a sheet rises from the bottom of the screen. She picks Thursday at five. The request lands in the portal's Requests inbox and goes to the email the store chose, and the salesperson picks it up. Wednesday three units sell and two arrive, so the manager regenerates the site and the pages follow the lot. Friday a new salesperson starts, and the manager builds her a personal inventory site from the same template in the time it takes to type her name and phone number. She texts the link to the customers she brought with her. Nobody wrote a page by hand after Monday, nobody updated a listing on two systems, and the site a shopper sees on Friday is the lot on Friday. #### Build, publish, regenerate: what each step does Build assembles the site from the template and the inventory: a front page with the vehicle finder and the headline and About copy the store wrote or accepted, an inventory listing, and a page per vehicle with photos, price, mileage, decoded specifications and the safety and efficiency data the automotive database attached. AI assisted copy drafts the text a store would otherwise stare at a blank field for, and the store edits or replaces it before anything goes live. Publish makes the built site live. Nothing a shopper can reach changes until the store publishes, which means a manager can build, look, adjust and build again, and a customer only ever sees the finished page. Regenerate rebuilds every page from the current inventory, so units that sold drop off, units that arrived appear, and price changes carry through, without anyone touching a page. A store regenerates after the feed refreshes, after a batch of arrivals, or whenever the lot has moved enough to matter. The three steps are separate on purpose: building is drafting, publishing is deciding, regenerating is maintaining. #### Per salesperson inventory sites from one template Every salesperson in the store can have an inventory site built from the store's template, with the store's inventory and the salesperson's own name, photo and contact details. The point is the link. A salesperson who texts a customer a link to their own inventory site is sending the customer to a page that says call me, not a page that says call the store and hope you get me. When the customer picks a vehicle and taps Schedule a Visit or sends a request, it arrives with the salesperson's name on it. Because the sites come from one template, the store controls how they look and what they say, and a change to the template is a regenerate away from being on every site. Because they read from one inventory store, a salesperson's site never shows a car the store sold last week. The personal site is built in the same Builder, by a manager or by the salesperson with the right role, from the team page's invites and roles. A store with twelve salespeople has twelve sites that all look like the store and none that look like a personal project. #### What is on the pages: vehicle finder, Schedule a Visit, requests and incentives The vehicle finder sits on the front of the site. A shopper describes what they want in plain words, budget, body, how they plan to pay, what it has to have, and the finder locates the unit in the store's inventory. Every vehicle page carries a Schedule a Visit sheet and a request sheet, and on a phone every one of those panels rises from the bottom of the screen rather than a form that scrolls the page away. A Schedule a Visit request lands in the portal's Requests inbox. The same inventory store powers the brand pages and brand hero pages, the OEM incentives showroom for more than twenty makes, and the brand offer pages with their offer card formats and one shared confirmation. A store that wants its inventory on a site it already has instead of, or as well as, a built site uses the embeddable inventory widget, which drops the same live inventory into any page with one embed code. #### Where does it live, and what does it replace? Builder is a section of the Inventory Link portal, which opens from the LeadLocate CRM with one login. Next to it sit the dashboard, the inventory list, Add vehicle, the edit page for a vehicle and its photos, the inbox, the Requests page where visit and information requests arrive, and the team page. The built sites are public pages a shopper reaches from a link a salesperson sends, from a business card, from a text, or from wherever the store points them. The widget covers the store's existing website. What it replaces is the second website contract. Many stores pay a website vendor for the main site and then discover they want a lighter inventory site for a campaign, a personal site for each salesperson, or a page that actually reflects today's lot, and each of those is another quote. It also replaces the salesperson's own attempt, the free page builder with photos copied from the main site that are three weeks stale by the time a customer sees them. Inventory Link is part of every LeadLocate plan rather than an add on, plans are month to month, and the pricing page lists them. #### The compliance angle: one inventory, one price, published on purpose The most common advertising problem a dealership has online is a price that differs from page to page: one on the main site, one on a salesperson's page, one in a text. A site built from the same inventory store as the CRM and the composers shows the price that is on the record, and a regenerate carries a change everywhere at once. A salesperson's personal site is the same inventory as the store's site, so there is no second set of numbers to reconcile. The publish step is a control as much as a convenience. AI assisted copy is a draft the store reads and edits, and nothing reaches a shopper until a person publishes it. Stock imagery is used only where a unit has no photo, and a real photo replaces it the moment one exists. A store's advertising program is still the store's, and nothing here stands in for it; what the builder does is remove the stale copies of a listing that are where most of the trouble starts. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Once your inventory is in Inventory Link, from a feed, a website import or hand entered units, open Builder in the portal, pick the template, write or accept the copy, build, look, and publish. Build a personal site for each salesperson from the same template the same way. If your store wants a template beyond the one provided, a layout for a specific campaign, or a site for a second rooftop, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair the builder with the embeddable inventory widget for the site you already have, with the website import or a provider feed so regenerate always has fresh inventory to work from, and with the CRM composers so a salesperson sends the actual car and the link to their own site in the same text. The all features list shows where the builder sits among everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a site being built from a live lot. #### Questions and answers Q: Where does the builder get its inventory? A: From the same per dealer inventory store as the LeadLocate CRM, filled by your provider feed, an import from your own website, or units added by hand. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Q: What does Regenerate do? A: It rebuilds every page from the current inventory, so sold units drop off, arrivals appear and price changes carry through without anyone editing a page. Publish is separate, so nothing a shopper sees changes until you decide. Q: Can each salesperson have their own inventory site? A: Yes. Personal inventory sites are built from the store's template with the store's inventory and the salesperson's own name and contact details, so a request from a customer arrives with that salesperson's name on it. Q: What happens when a shopper taps Schedule a Visit? A: A sheet rises from the bottom of the phone screen where the shopper picks a time. The request lands in the portal's Requests inbox and goes to the email the store chose, and the salesperson picks it up. Q: Does the AI write the site for me? A: AI assisted copy drafts the headline, About text and page copy from your inventory and store details. You read it, edit it and publish it; nothing goes live until you do. Q: Is the website builder an extra charge? A: No. The builder is part of Inventory Link, which is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Lead Feeds Manager: Every Lead Source in One Inbox URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/lead-feeds-manager Lead Feeds Manager is the page in LeadLocate CRM where a dealership defines each lead source as a feed: a label, an intake method (lead email address, lead form, form intake link, CSV upload), an assignment rule, notification settings and an optional first message. Every lead then arrives in one Leads view carrying its source, so lead source attribution is built in rather than bolted on. #### What Lead Feeds Manager does Lead Feeds Manager is the control panel for where leads come from. A dealership does not have one lead source; it has a website with three forms, two or three third party providers that send leads by email, a chat widget, a few landing pages, the occasional purchased list and, if it is a LeadLocate subscriber, exclusive local buyer and seller leads delivered by LeadLocate itself. Each of those is a feed. A feed has a Feed Label, an intake method, a rule for who gets the lead, and settings for what happens the moment it arrives. The point of putting all of that on one page is that the Leads view then becomes the one inbox. A rep does not check a provider portal, a website admin panel and an email account; every lead from every source is a row in the same list, with its feed shown on the row so the rep knows what the customer asked for and where. The manager gets the same benefit in reverse: every source is set up the same way, in the same place, and switching a provider off means removing its feed rather than chasing down which mailbox it was forwarding to. The general case for source attribution in a dealership CRM is made on the CRM with dealership lead source attribution page and the automotive lead source dashboard page. This page is the tool itself. #### How a store sets up a feed on a normal day An internet director signs a new third party lead provider on a Wednesday. The provider asks where to send leads. In most stores that answer is a group mailbox, and the leads are then forwarded by hand or parsed by a fragile rule. In LeadLocate the director opens Lead Feeds Manager, clicks add feed, gives it a label the team will recognize, and picks how the leads will arrive. The feed shows a Lead Email address, a Lead Form URL and a form intake link, so the answer to the provider is whichever of those three the provider supports. Most providers send email; the feed's lead email address is what they get. The director then sets the assignment. All (Round Robin) spreads the new provider's leads across the floor; a single user sends them to the BDC; Unassigned (Up for Grabs) leaves them open for the first rep to claim. He turns on Instant Push so each lead appears in the CRM as it arrives, turns on SMS Notify so the assigned rep's phone buzzes, and turns on Auto 1st Msg so the feed's first text goes out under the rep's name. If the sales manager wants to see every lead from this provider as well, Allow Manager Copies does that per feed. He saves, sends the provider the address, and the first lead shows up in the Leads view an hour later with the new label on it. The whole exercise took less time than the provider's sales call. A month later, when the store wants to know whether that provider was worth it, the answer is a filter on the Leads view by feed, and the reporting behind it, rather than a spreadsheet somebody built from forwarded emails. #### The four ways a lead can enter a feed Every feed accepts leads by more than one route, and a store can use whichever the source supports. The Lead Email address is for providers and website platforms that send a lead notification by email; the CRM reads the incoming message and creates the lead. The Lead Form is a hosted form at its own Live URL, ready to link from a website, a social profile or a printed card, and it creates the lead directly with no email in between. The form intake link is for any website form or tool that can post data, and the feed accepts both standard form posts and JSON, so a developer or a website vendor has a clear target. CSV Upload takes a spreadsheet, with a Download Template link so the columns are right the first time, which is how a store loads an event list or a provider's monthly export. Custom source feeds add a layer for stores that need it. A custom feed carries its own Feed Label, its own Lead Assignment rule (Round Robin, Single User or Unassigned so everyone can claim), and a Default Status for New Leads, so leads from a particular source can land in a particular status the moment they are parsed. A store that treats service drive referrals differently from website leads sets that difference here once and never thinks about it again. LeadLocate's own lead delivery uses the default feeds, which are permanent. Their labels and settings are editable, and they behave like any other feed in the Leads view, but they are always there, because they are how the exclusive local leads included in the Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and Buyers & Sellers Hybrid plans reach the store. #### Where it lives in the CRM Lead Feeds Manager is under Billing and Admin in the main menu, next to Automated Templates, Follow Up Processes, DNC Blacklist, User Management and Account Settings. That placement is deliberate. The feed defines the source, Automated Templates define the first messages per feed, and Follow Up Processes define the drip per lead type, so the three pages a manager touches when adding a source sit together. The feed itself is visible everywhere a lead is. In the Leads view each row carries its feed, and the list filters by feed so a manager can look at one provider's leads in isolation. On the phone app the same leads appear in the Leads view with the same source label, and a rep who gets an SMS Notify for a new lead opens it from the notification. Tracking phone numbers are provisioned per source as well, so a feed that represents a print campaign or a third party site can have its own inbound number and the calls attribute to the same source as the forms, as described on the tracking phone numbers page. #### What it replaces, and what the old way costs The old way is a mailbox and a habit. Leads from six providers arrive in one inbox, someone reads it, someone forwards each lead to a rep, and someone else keeps a tally of which provider sent what so the store can decide at renewal time whether to keep paying. Every step depends on a person, and every person has days off. The failure modes are familiar: the lead that was read but never forwarded, the provider that was cancelled but kept sending to a mailbox nobody checked, and the renewal decision made on a feeling because nobody had the tally. Some stores solve this with a third party automation tool that catches the email and pushes it into the CRM. That works until the provider changes its email template, at which point the automation silently breaks and leads disappear for a week. LeadLocate replaced those per dealer automations with in-house Intake Process Automation, which sits on the feed itself and handles any custom source too. The feed is the integration. When a provider is added, the store gives it an address; when a provider is dropped, the store removes the feed; and the tally exists automatically, because every lead has always carried its source. There is also the cost nobody puts on the invoice, which is the rep who worked a lead from a provider the store had stopped paying for, or the lead that was worked twice because two providers sent the same customer. The feed label on the row makes the first obvious, and merge duplicate leads handles the second. #### The compliance angle: every lead keeps its origin Where a lead came from is the first thing a store needs to know when a customer asks why they were contacted. A lead that carries its feed carries its answer: this customer submitted this form, on this date, through this source, and here is the first message the store sent in reply. Because the feed and its Automated Templates are configured together, the first text and email a customer receives are the ones written for that source, with the right identification and the right context, rather than a generic blast. Assignment on the feed also means a lead is never worked by two reps who both think they own it, and the communications log ties every call, text and email to the lead and the rep who sent it. Blacklisted contacts are hidden from every CRM view regardless of which feed they arrived through, so a customer on the store's do not call blacklist stays off the floor even when a provider sends them again. And when a lead is bad, it goes through the replacement review workflow rather than being deleted, so the record of what the source sent stays intact for the renewal conversation. #### How to turn it on and add your first feed Lead Feeds Manager is on from the day an account is created, with the default feeds already in place. To add a source, open Billing and Admin, choose Lead Feeds Manager, click add feed, type a Feed Label your team will recognize on a lead row, and choose the assignment. Copy the Lead Email address or form intake link to the provider, or link the Live URL of the lead form from your site. Turn on Instant Push and SMS Notify, decide whether Auto 1st Msg should fire, and save. Then open Automated Templates and write the first text and email for that feed, so the moment a lead arrives the customer hears from a named salesperson. For a source that needs something the page does not express, such as a provider with an unusual format or a website platform that posts in its own structure, Intake Process Automation on the same page covers it, and anything beyond that is available on request; our team puts it in production for your dealership. The contact page is the place to describe the source. #### What to pair it with Lead Feeds Manager defines the source. Round robin lead assignment is one column of it, and the page on that feature explains how rotation works per feed and per user. Automated Templates are the per feed first messages, and a feed without a template is a lead without a first text. Follow Up Processes pick up after the first message with a multi step drip per lead type. The reports dashboard is where the by source tally lives once the feeds have been running for a month. Lead Feeds Manager is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only for a store that wants to bring its own lead sources without LeadLocate lead delivery. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where feeds sit among the rest of the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a lead feed in LeadLocate CRM? A: A feed is one lead source defined on the Lead Feeds Manager page: a Feed Label, an intake method (Lead Email, Lead Form, form intake link or CSV Upload), an assignment rule and settings such as Instant Push, SMS Notify, Auto 1st Msg and Allow Manager Copies. Every lead from that source arrives in the Leads view carrying the feed. Q: How do I get a third party lead provider into the CRM? A: Add a feed, then give the provider the feed's Lead Email address or form intake link. Their leads create records in the Leads view automatically, labeled with that feed, and the feed's Automated Templates send the first message. Q: Can different sources go to different people? A: Yes. Each feed has its own assignment: All (Round Robin), a single user, or Unassigned (Up for Grabs). Custom source feeds add a Default Status for New Leads so a source can land in a specific status. Q: What are the default feeds? A: They are the permanent feeds through which LeadLocate delivers the exclusive local leads included in the Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and Buyers and Sellers Hybrid plans. Their labels and settings are editable and they behave like any other feed. Q: Do I need a developer to connect my website? A: Usually not. Most website platforms send lead emails, which the feed's Lead Email address accepts. A site that can post data uses the feed's form intake link with form or JSON payloads, and the hosted Lead Form's Live URL works with no integration at all. Q: Is Lead Feeds Manager included in CRM Only? A: Yes. It is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, so a store can bring its own lead sources without LeadLocate lead delivery. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Lead Notifications by Text, Email and Sound URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/lead-notifications-and-alerts Lead notifications in LeadLocate CRM tell the right person the moment something happens: a text to the assigned rep when a new lead arrives or a customer replies, an email to the store's notify addresses, a sound in the browser and an on-screen toast. Each alert type is a per-user toggle under User Management, and the LeadLocate mobile app carries the same alerts to the lot. #### What lead notifications do, in one sentence Lead notifications put a new lead, a customer's text reply, an inbound call, a new email or a signed worksheet in front of the person who owns it, by text message, by email, by a sound in the browser and by an on-screen toast, within seconds of the event and on the channel that person has turned on. That is the feature. It sounds small until you count how many deals at a dealership are lost between the moment a lead arrives and the moment somebody reads it. The LeadLocate CRM treats a notification as a property of the user rather than a property of the lead source. A rep decides, or a manager decides for them, which events reach their phone and which ones only chime on the desktop. A store decides which addresses and numbers receive the company wide copy. The lead itself does not care; it fires the events, and the preferences decide who hears them. The CRM missed lead alerts page covers the thinking behind thresholds and escalation. This page is the product side: what the switches are called and what each one does. #### How a rep experiences it on a normal day A salesperson is on the lot at 10:40 with a customer looking at a used crossover. Her phone buzzes once. It is a text from the store's CRM number: a new lead has come in on the inbound feed and it is assigned to her, with the customer's name, what they asked about and a quick link. She does not open it yet; she finishes the walkaround. At 10:52 she is back at her desk, taps the link on her phone, and the lead opens in the LeadLocate mobile app with the number ready to dial. She calls, gets a voicemail, sends a text from the same screen, and moves on. At 11:15 the desktop chimes with the Text Message Sound and a toast slides in at the corner of the screen: the customer replied. Her phone buzzes again with a Text Reply Alert, because that conversation belongs to her and she has that toggle on. The BDC manager, who has New Lead Alerts on but Text Reply Alerts off, heard the first event and not the second, which is exactly the split he wanted. Nobody refreshed an inbox, nobody asked who had the lead, and the customer got a call inside twelve minutes of asking. The car sales follow up templates page has the words for that first call and text; notifications are what make sure it happens while the customer is still holding their phone. #### Which alerts exist and what each one is called Open a user under User Management and there is a Notifications block with two groups. The first is Text Notifications, the alerts that go to the user's own cell phone as a text. New Lead Alerts sends a text whenever a new lead comes in and is assigned to that user, including trade in form submissions and campaign signups. Text Reply Alerts sends a text whenever a customer replies by text to a conversation that belongs to that user, with a quick link to open it. Call Alerts and Email Alerts do the same for inbound calls and new emails. Worksheet Signature Alerts sends a text the moment a customer signs a worksheet on the user's deal, with the deal number and the signature reference code, which is the alert finance managers turn on first. The second group is Notification Sounds, the audible cues in the browser: New Lead Sound, Text Message Sound, Email Sound, Team Chat Sound, Deal Tracker Sound and System Message Sound. Each is its own toggle, so a rep who wants to hear a new lead but not every Team Chat message can have exactly that. On-screen toasts accompany the sounds, so a muted desk still sees the event. A user can also set their own preferences under Account Settings, where the Alert Settings read in plain language: Notify me when I get a NEW LEAD, a NEW TEXT, a NEW CALL, a NEW EMAIL. #### Store wide notify numbers and emails, and per feed alerts Per-user alerts cover the person who owns the lead. The store also needs a copy that does not depend on any one person, and that is what notify numbers and notify emails are for. Under Edit Notify Numbers a Master Administrator lists the cell numbers that receive a text on every new lead, and the notify email addresses receive the email copy. A general manager who wants to see every lead land, a BDC shared inbox, or an owner who checks from home each go on that list without being assigned anything. The Lead Feeds Manager adds one more layer. Each feed, whether it is our inbound lead feed, a custom source feed from the store's website or a default feed, has an SMS Notify setting of its own, so the used car manager can be texted on used inventory inquiries and the finance desk on credit application leads, while neither is bothered by the other. Combined with round robin assignment, the result is that a lead arrives, is assigned to the next rep in rotation, texts that rep, texts the notify list, emails the notify addresses, chimes on every desktop with the sound on, and shows a toast. All of it in the same few seconds, none of it configured per lead. #### What it replaces, and what a missed lead costs The system most stores actually run is a lead email to a shared inbox, a manager who forwards it, and a rep who checks email when they remember to. Every step in that chain is a delay, and the delays add up to the forty minute gap in which an online shopper, who submitted the same request to two other stores, has already been called by one of them. The fix stores usually buy is a separate alerting tool bolted onto the CRM, with its own login and its own monthly bill, that texts a rep a link to a system they then have to sign into. Built in notifications remove both the chain and the bolt-on. The text arrives from the CRM number the rep already knows, the link opens the lead directly, and the reply happens in the same thread. There is nothing to integrate and nothing extra to pay; notifications come standard on every plan, the lead plans on the pricing page as well. The cost of the alternative is not the tool. It is the lead that sat. #### The compliance angle: alerts that respect opt outs and preferences A notification is a text message, and a text message to a staff member's personal phone is still a text message. Two things keep that clean. First, every alert type is an opt in toggle per user, on or off, so a rep who does not want the store texting their phone at 9 p.m. turns Text Reply Alerts off and keeps the desktop sound. Nobody is enrolled in anything they did not choose, and a manager can see each user's settings on their user record. Second, the notification path honors opt outs. A notify number that replies with a stop keyword is blocked from further alerts on that channel, the same way a customer's number is, so the store's own alerting never becomes a compliance exception. On the customer side, notifications only ever describe the event to the rep. The consumer's information stays in the lead record and the encrypted Customer Profile; the alert carries a name, what they asked about and a link, not a dump of the record into a text. And every event that triggers an alert is also written to the communications log on the lead, so a manager asking who was told about this lead and when has an answer that is not a rep's memory. #### How to turn it on, and how it keeps the floor selling New Lead Alerts and the notification sounds are on for every new user by default, so a store that does nothing already gets the important one. To tune it, a Master Administrator opens User Management, edits the user, and sets the Text Notifications and Notification Sounds toggles; a user can adjust their own under Account Settings. Store wide numbers go under Edit Notify Numbers. Per feed SMS Notify lives in the Lead Feeds Manager. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app carries the same alerts and adds an inbound call alert screen, so a rep sees who is calling the tracking number before they answer. None of it needs a training session; the labels say what they do. Alerts are built so your store keeps selling. The second a lead arrives, the text and the email are on the rep's phone and in the notify inboxes, with the customer's name and what they asked about, so the follow up call gets made from the phone in the rep's hand instead of waiting for somebody to walk back to a desk. The lead itself is safe on the record the moment it lands, and it is still there with its whole history when the rep opens it that night or the manager opens it next month. Your tracking numbers are yours and keep ringing your own phones, and your main store line, your DMS and your website stay your own. If anything needs a person, the contact page reaches one. #### What to pair it with Notifications tell a rep something happened. Three neighbors decide what happens next. Round robin lead assignment decides who gets the alert, so a new lead is never notified to everyone and owned by no one. Automated Templates send the customer an immediate reply on the feed the lead came in on, so the rep's alert is about a conversation that has already started rather than a cold form. And the Workspace, with its reminders, to-dos and snooze, catches the lead the rep meant to call back after lunch, which is the second most common way a lead goes quiet. For the store wide picture, Reports on the dock show response activity by user, and In-Store Now flags who is physically on the lot, which is useful when deciding who should hold New Lead Alerts on a Saturday. The full map is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: How is a salesperson notified when a new lead comes in? A: By a text to their cell phone if New Lead Alerts is on for their user, by a New Lead Sound and an on-screen toast in the browser, by the same alert in the LeadLocate mobile app, and by an email and text to the store's notify addresses and numbers. The text includes the customer's name, what they asked about and a link that opens the lead. Q: Can each user choose which alerts they get? A: Yes. Under User Management each user has Text Notifications (New Lead Alerts, Text Reply Alerts, Call Alerts, Email Alerts, Worksheet Signature Alerts) and Notification Sounds (New Lead, Text Message, Email, Team Chat, Deal Tracker, System Message), each a separate toggle. Users can also adjust their own under Account Settings. Q: Can a manager be copied on every lead without being assigned leads? A: Yes. Edit Notify Numbers holds the cell numbers that receive a text on every new lead, and the notify email addresses receive the email copy, independent of assignment. Each feed in the Lead Feeds Manager also has its own SMS Notify setting. Q: Do the alerts work on the phone app? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app carries the same alerts, opens the lead from the link, and adds an inbound call alert screen so a rep sees who is calling the store's tracking number before answering. Q: Are text alerts to staff a compliance risk? A: Every alert type is opt in per user, so nobody is enrolled without choosing, and a notify number that replies with a stop keyword is blocked from further alerts on that channel. The alert carries the customer's name and a link, not the full record; the record stays in the encrypted Customer Profile. Q: Is there an extra charge for notifications? A: No. Text, email, sound and toast notifications are part of every LeadLocate plan, including CRM Only. Plans are listed on the pricing page. ### Lead Pages: The Landing Page Builder Inside the CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/lead-pages-landing-page-builder Lead Pages is the landing page builder inside LeadLocate CRM. From the Website menu, a store creates a page from the Lead Page Manager, sets its title, logo, lead forms and footer, picks a domain and URL settings, and publishes. Every submission arrives in the lead inbox with its source attached, ready for round robin assignment and the Automated Templates that fire on new leads. Included in every plan. #### What Lead Pages does in one sentence, and why it lives in the CRM Lead Pages is the landing page builder inside LeadLocate CRM: a store builds a page with a headline, a logo, up to three lead forms and a footer, chooses the domain it publishes on, and every form submission becomes a lead in the CRM inbox with its source already attached. That last clause is the reason the builder is in the CRM rather than beside it. A landing page built in a standalone tool ends its job by sending an email or a data post. A page built in Lead Pages ends its job by creating a lead that has an owner, a feed, a status and an automated first response, because the same system that rendered the page is the one that receives the form. The pages are built for the way a dealership actually markets: a sales event with a two week life, a single model that needs its own page for an ad, a tax season offer, a credit rebuilding page, a specific salesperson's page for their business card. Each of those is a page, each page has its own URL settings, and each page's leads are labeled by that page. The dealership CRM with built-in lead generation page covers what it means to have lead sources and a CRM on one bill; this page is the builder itself. #### How a store uses it on a normal week Monday morning the sales manager decides to run a used truck event for the last ten days of the month. She opens the Website menu, goes to the Lead Page Manager and clicks Create New Page. She gives it a page title, drops in the company logo, writes the contact text and the footer, and turns on Lead Form 1 for the main offer. In Page Details she sets the pop-up labels that appear on the page and picks which inventory categories show, in this case trucks and SUVs. In Lead Page Manager URL Settings she chooses a domain from the store's list and sets the page's address. She duplicates the page, changes the headline, and now has a second version for a different ad. By Monday afternoon the page URL is on the offer in Leads Manager, ready for the campaign our team runs, on the store's social posts and on a trackable short link in a bulk text to past customers. Tuesday the first submissions land in the lead inbox tagged with the page as their source. Round robin assignment hands each one to the next salesperson. The Automated Templates set for that feed send the first text within the minute and drop a task on the rep's Workspace. On Friday she opens the analytics on the Website menu and sees which page drew traffic, which one converted, and which salesperson is behind on responses. Nothing in that week involved a web developer, a ticket to a website vendor, or a spreadsheet of leads exported from somewhere. The page, the leads and the follow up are one motion. #### Where it lives: the Website menu, Lead Page Manager and Page Details Lead Pages sits under the Website item in the main menu of LeadLocate CRM, alongside the website editor. The Lead Page Manager lists every page with its page ID, title and domain, with Edit and Duplicate on each row. Page Details holds the content: company logo, contact us text, footer text, Lead Forms one through three, three iFrame form slots for a form a store already has elsewhere, pop-up labels, inventory categories, a screen tracking code field and a live chat code field so the store's free live chat widget can run on the page. The Lead Page URL Setting screen is where the page gets its address. A store picks a domain from those available to it, which includes the domains the store has purchased through the CRM, and can set a Forward URL Destination for a page that should send visitors on somewhere else. The custom domains and DNS page explains how a store buys and points its own domain without a developer. Every user with the right role can build pages, which is how personal salesperson websites come to exist: a rep's own page, with their own form, feeding leads to their own inbox. The salesperson landing page templates page walks through what those pages should say. #### What it replaces, and what a landing page builder costs elsewhere The standalone landing page builders most dealers have tried charge a monthly fee per account, sometimes per page, and then charge again for the automation tool that moves the form submission into the CRM. Three products, three logins, three bills, and the lead still arrives without a source attached, so the attribution report at month end says "website" for everything. The lead source attribution page explains why that one word costs stores real money. Lead Pages is part of the platform subscription. The builder, the hosting, the domain selection, the forms and the routing into the inbox are included in every plan, and each lead plan on the pricing page carries all of it. There is no per-page charge and no separate automation product to connect, because the Intake Process Automation that replaced per-dealer third-party automation tools is already the thing receiving the form. It also replaces the waiting. A dealership that depends on a website vendor for a new offer page waits days for a build and days again for a change. A manager with Lead Pages builds it before lunch and edits it while the ad is running. #### The compliance angle: consent captured at the form, honored everywhere after A landing page collects a phone number and an email, and everything the store does with them afterward rests on what the form said when the customer submitted it. Because the form and the CRM are one system, the consent the customer gave on the page travels with the lead. The first text goes out under that consent. If the customer later replies to stop, the opt out lands on the customer record and every tool in the CRM honors it, from Bulk Texting to Text Automation, and the DNC Blacklist page runs a live do not call lookup on numbers before campaigns go out. A landing page in a separate tool has no way to carry any of that. The pages are also the store's pages. The domain is the store's, the content is the store's, and the leads are the store's, on the store's account. When a salesperson leaves, their personal page and its leads stay with the dealership. The landing page optimization page has the practical guidance on what to ask for on a form; the short version is to ask for what you need to respond well and nothing you would have to explain later. #### How to turn it on Lead Pages is live for every account. Open the Website menu in LeadLocate CRM, go to the Lead Page Manager and click Create New Page. Fill in Page Details, turn on at least one lead form, set the URL in the Lead Page URL Setting screen and save. Point an ad, a text or a business card at the URL and the leads begin arriving in the inbox. If you want the page's leads to follow a specific process, open Lead Feeds Manager and Automated Templates and set the first response and the drip for that source. If your store wants a custom page layout, a particular form field set, or a page that behaves differently by campaign, that is available on request and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows a page being built and a lead arriving from it. #### What to pair it with A lead page is the front door; what matters is what happens in the first five minutes after someone walks through it. Pair Lead Pages with round robin lead assignment so every submission has an owner immediately, and with Automated Templates so the first text is sent before the rep has looked up from the desk. Pair it with trackable short links to see which text, post or card drove the click, and with the free live chat for car dealers widget so a visitor who would rather chat than fill a form can. For a store running lead campaigns, Leads Manager is where the page URL is set on the offer our team puts on the ads, and the website visitor analytics on the Website menu show what the page did afterward. The all features page lists everything else the pages connect to. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a web developer to build a lead page? A: No. Lead Pages is a builder inside LeadLocate CRM under the Website menu. A manager creates a page, fills in Page Details, turns on a lead form, sets the URL and publishes. Editing later is the same screen. Q: Where do the leads from a lead page go? A: Into the lead inbox in the CRM, labeled with the page as their source. From there they follow the store's round robin assignment, Lead Feeds Manager settings and Automated Templates like any other lead. Q: Can a lead page use my own domain? A: Yes. The Lead Page URL Setting screen lets you choose from the domains available to your store, including domains purchased through the CRM's self-service domain tools, and set a forward destination if needed. Q: Can each salesperson have their own page? A: Yes. A rep with the right role builds a page with their own form, and its leads route to them. That is the basis of the personal salesperson websites in the platform. Q: Can I embed a form I already use somewhere else? A: Yes. Page Details includes three iFrame form slots alongside the three native lead forms, and a live chat code field for the free chat widget. Q: How many pages can I build, and which plans include them? A: Build as many as your campaigns need; there is no per-page charge. Lead Pages is included in every LeadLocate plan, month to month, with the lead plans laid out on the pricing page. ### Lead Replacement Review: What Happens to a Bad Lead URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/lead-replacement-review Lead replacement review is how LeadLocate handles a bad lead after delivery. A salesperson opens the lead in LeadLocate CRM, clicks Report Lead To Quality Control, and explains what was tried. The Quality Control team approves or rejects the request: approval marks the lead Bad Lead and moves it into replacement review, rejection returns it to New so it gets worked again. #### What lead replacement review does, in one sentence Lead replacement review is the post delivery process where a dealership reports a lead that was never workable, our Quality Control team reviews the report against the lead record, and an approved report marks the lead Bad Lead and sends it into replacement review. That is the whole mechanism, and it sits inside the LeadLocate CRM rather than in an email thread with an account manager. It exists because of a decision made on purpose. We ask pre-screening questions at capture, and then every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, with nothing held back and nobody else selling that same buyer to the store across town. Exclusivity like that is worth standing behind, which is what replacement review is for: on the occasion that a submission turns out to be a wrong number, a duplicate, a test entry from somebody checking a form, or a person who denies ever filling anything out, the store reports it, our Quality Control team reviews it against the record, and it is handled, so a bad lead costs the store nothing. The what to expect from car sales leads page explains why most leads that look strange are still real buyers. Replacement review is for the ones that are not, and it settles them on the record, in the CRM, where the store can see what happened. #### How a salesperson reports a bad lead on a normal day Picture a Tuesday afternoon. A rep has a lead from this morning, has called twice, texted once from the CRM inbox and sent an email. The number rings straight to a disconnected tone, the text shows Not delivered on the bubble, and the email address bounces. She opens the lead, and in the lead detail she clicks Report Lead To Quality Control. A short form asks for the reason for review. The prompt is specific: tell the Quality Control team why this lead should be reviewed as a bad lead, and explain which methods of communication were tried, such as phone calls, text messages and email. She types three lines, hits Submit Request, and goes back to her other leads. That is the entire rep side of the process. Nobody has to find the account manager's email, screenshot the lead, or remember a support address. The request is filed from the lead it concerns, and it carries the lead data, the recent notes and the communications log with it, so the review starts with the evidence already attached. A rep who has really worked the lead has nothing to assemble; the CRM assembled it while she worked. #### What counts as a bad lead, and what does not The distinction matters because the review looks at the record, not at the rep's frustration. A bad lead is one that could not be worked: contact information that does not connect to anyone, a submission that was clearly a test, a duplicate of a lead you already received, or a customer who states they never submitted a request. Those are the cases the reason field is for, and the lead's own communications log usually confirms them in seconds. A lead that is not a bad lead is a lead that is simply hard. A shopper with a small budget asking about an expensive truck is a real lead. A customer who wants to negotiate before they visit is a real lead. Someone who went quiet after one reply is a real lead that needs a follow up process, not a replacement request. The Mark Lead As Lost popup in the same lead detail exists for exactly that second category, with reasons like No Agreement Reached, Shopping Out of Area and Bought Different Brand Elsewhere, and the sibling page on lost reason tracking covers it. Keeping those two actions separate is what makes the replacement numbers honest: the lost reasons tell you about your process, the quality control requests tell you about the lead source. #### Where the review happens and what each outcome means Submitted requests land on the Quality Control Requests page, where each one shows the company, who requested it, the reason, the lead data and the recent notes on that lead. The reviewer opens a request, reads the evidence, and takes one of two actions. Approve marks the lead as Bad Lead and it moves into replacement review. Reject returns the lead to New, which puts it back in front of the rep as a lead to work rather than leaving it in limbo. Either way a resolution note is attached, so the answer to why a request was decided the way it was is written down next to the request. The statuses are plain: Submitted, Approved, Rejected. There is a filter by status and by company, and a printable Quality Control Request Report for a manager who wants to walk through the month's requests on paper. A salesperson never has to wonder whether a report went anywhere; the lead's status changes, and the request has a visible outcome. Every lead vendor gets asked about counts, so here is the answer: an approved request is a replacement review, not a guarantee of a specific count on a specific day. Leads are delivered as consumers submit them, and no vendor can guarantee what a consumer will do. What the process does deliver is that a bad lead gets looked at by a person, decided on the record, and not quietly forgotten. #### What it replaces, and what a bad lead costs elsewhere At most stores the bad lead process is an email. A manager builds a list at the end of the month, sends it to the vendor, and waits. The vendor asks for proof, the manager digs through a rep's phone for call history, and by the time the argument is settled the leads in question are six weeks old and the credit, if any, is a line on the next invoice nobody checks. The cost is not just the lead. It is the manager's hours, the rep's cynicism about the source, and the fact that a real lead sometimes gets reported as bad because reporting is easier than working it. Filing from the lead record removes the digging. The communications log, which keeps every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail on the lead in one place, is the proof. A request that shows two calls, a text with a Failed status and a bounced email is decided quickly. A request with nothing in the log is also decided quickly, in the other direction, and that is fair to both sides. There is no separate tool, no per request fee and no dispute form to download; the review is part of the platform, and the pricing page shows the plans it comes with. #### Why every lead reaches you and review happens after delivery Dealers sometimes ask why review happens after delivery rather than before it. Two reasons, and both are compliance reasons before they are product reasons. First, exclusive delivery of every submitted lead in a zone means the store is not competing with three other rooftops for the same person, and that only works if nothing is withheld. The moment a vendor starts deciding which submissions are worth sending, the dealer is trusting a black box and the exclusivity claim gets soft. Second, financing campaigns run under fair lending rules that forbid narrowing an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP. A pre delivery quality filter that learns from outcomes tends to drift toward exactly those proxies. A post delivery review of a specific lead, on a stated reason, by a person, with the record attached, does not. It looks at whether the phone rang and the email bounced. That is a defensible process, it produces a written trail on every decision, and it keeps the store's own lead handling clean too: the reason for review and the resolution note are stored with the lead, alongside the encrypted Customer Profile that holds the consumer's information. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on. Report Lead To Quality Control is in every lead detail from the day the account is created, for any user role, because the person who worked the lead is the person who knows it was bad. Master Administrators and managers see the outcomes on the lead status and can review the month through the printable report. If a store wants requests routed through a manager before they are submitted, that workflow is set up for your store on request, usually the same day. The process also runs on your schedule, not ours. The leads you received are in your lead inbox and on the LeadLocate mobile app, the notes and communications log stay with every lead, and a request filed later still carries the full history of what was tried and when. Nothing about a bad lead needs to be reported the same hour it was worked. The contact page reaches a person for anything that does not fit the form. #### What to pair it with so fewer leads need reporting The stores that file the fewest replacement requests are not the ones with the best leads. They are the ones whose first hour on a lead is the most thorough, because a lead that has been called, texted and emailed inside the CRM either turns into a conversation or turns into an obvious, well documented bad lead. Three features do most of that work. Lead notifications put the new lead in the rep's hand by text and sound the moment it arrives. The Phone Validator and Email Validator show validity dots on the lead so a rep knows before dialing whether the number is live. And custom lead statuses and tags let a store mark a lead Attempted, Contacted or Appointment Set so a manager can see, before anyone reports anything, which leads were actually touched. Pair those with the DNC Blacklist, which blocks inbound spam in both directions and runs a live do not call lookup on numbers, and the leads that reach the Quality Control page are the genuine exceptions. The full list of what surrounds this feature is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: What happens to a bad lead after I report it? A: It appears on the Quality Control Requests page with your reason, the lead data and the recent notes. A reviewer approves or rejects it. Approval marks the lead Bad Lead and it moves into replacement review; rejection returns the lead to New so it is worked again. A resolution note is stored with the request either way. Q: Where is the Report Lead To Quality Control button? A: In the lead detail inside LeadLocate CRM, on every lead, for every user role. It opens a short form with a reason for review field and a Submit Request button. The request carries the lead's data and communications log with it automatically. Q: What should I write in the reason for review? A: What you tried and what happened. The form asks which methods of communication were used, such as phone calls, text messages and email, and why the lead should be considered bad. Two or three specific lines decide a request faster than a paragraph of frustration. Q: Is a lead that will not answer a bad lead? A: Not by itself. A lead that went quiet is a lead that needs a follow up process. A bad lead is one that could not be worked: a disconnected number, a bounced address, a duplicate, a test entry or a customer who says they never submitted anything. Use Mark Lead As Lost for the first kind and Report Lead To Quality Control for the second. Q: Why does LeadLocate deliver every lead in my zone to me? A: Because exclusive delivery of every submitted lead in your zone only means something if nothing is withheld, and because financing campaigns run under fair lending rules that a learned pre delivery filter tends to drift against. Reviewing a specific lead after delivery, on a stated reason, keeps both promises. Q: Does replacement review cost extra? A: No. It is part of the platform on every plan that includes lead delivery. There is no per request fee and no separate dispute tool. Plans and prices are on the pricing page. ### LeadLocate Add-Ons: More Leads, More Zones, More Users URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/leadlocate-add-ons LeadLocate add-ons are extras a store attaches to its active subscription from the shelf in My LeadLocate: extra inbound lead sets of 40 to 60 leads each, extra 20 mile sales zones, and extra CRM user logins. Each lead set or zone attaches to the active plan. Add-ons grow the plan you already run, on the same login, the same CRM and the same bill. #### What do LeadLocate add-ons do? Every LeadLocate plan is built around a zone, a flow of exclusive leads into that zone, and a CRM with the users who work them. Add-ons let a store turn up any one of those three without changing plans, calling a new vendor or signing anything new. They are ordered from the shelf in My LeadLocate, attached to the active subscription, and they show up in the same CRM the team already uses. Add-onWhat it addsWhen a store reaches for it Extra inbound lead set40 to 60 more inbound leads in the zone you already coverThe team is closing what it gets and wants more at bats Extra sales zoneA new 20 mile zone with its own lead flowA new town, a second rooftop or a market worth testing Extra CRM user loginOne more person with their own CRM loginA new salesperson, BDC agent or manager An extra lead set or zone builds on the plan you already run. Everything else on the shelf is priced in the portal before you confirm, and the plans the add-ons attach to are on the pricing page. #### How do you add more car sales leads without changing plans? With an extra inbound lead set. A set is built for 40 to 60 more inbound shoppers in the zone the store already works, delivered through the same campaigns, into the same feed, on the same terms as the rest of the plan. Every lead in the set is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture with the questions your store chose, and backed by a replacement review, so a bad lead costs you nothing. Inside the CRM nothing new has to be learned. The extra leads arrive through Lead Feeds Manager, round robin hands them to the next salesperson in the rotation, Automated Templates send the first text and email the moment each one lands, and the manager sees them on the Reports dashboard next to everything else. The only visible difference is more names on the Workspace. Shoppers decide how many forms they fill out in a given week, so a set is a size, never a promise of a count, and the guide to what to expect from car sales leads explains what arrives and why. #### What is an extra sales zone? An extra sales zone is a second 20 mile territory with its own lead flow, added to the account next to the zone the store already has. Dealers add one when a neighboring town keeps showing up in their deal jackets, when a second rooftop opens, when a used car lot wants reach beyond its own city limits, or when the owner wants to test a market before committing a store to it. The zone is set the same way as the first one. The store makes its selections in Leads Manager: the area in the zone editor, the zip stats and market scan that show what is in it, the campaign type and the prescreening questions. Our team launches and manages every campaign from those selections in the managed webXintel Ads Network, which is included with every plan. Leads from the new zone arrive exclusive to your store, in the same CRM, with the source on every record, so the manager can see exactly what the new territory produces. #### How do extra CRM user logins work? An extra user login gives one more person a full seat in LeadLocate CRM: their own login, their own leads and threads, their own notifications, and the mobile app on their phone. The account admin sets what that person can see and do through user roles and permissions, so a new BDC agent works leads and texts without touching credit applications, and a new desk manager sees the deals the role allows. The new person starts on the same data as everyone else, with the full customer history, the shared calendar and the templates the store already wrote. When a store grows by a salesperson, the CRM grows by a login, and nobody has to share a password to make it work. #### How does a dealership use add-ons in a normal month? The first week of the month, the general manager reads the Reports dashboard and sees the zone is producing and the floor is closing it. The salespeople are asking for more. The GM orders an extra inbound lead set from My LeadLocate before lunch, and the added volume starts feeding the same feeds without anyone touching a setting. Mid month the store hires a closer from a competitor across town. The office manager adds a user login, the account admin sets the role, and the new hire joins the rotation with the mobile app on their phone. Near the end of the month the owner decides the town 25 miles north is worth a look, adds an extra sales zone, and makes the zone selections in Leads Manager for our team to launch. Three decisions, one portal, one bill, and the CRM never changed shape under the team. #### Where do add-ons live, and how do you turn one on? Add-ons live in My LeadLocate, the account portal every plan includes. Open Add-on Products, use the Add-on categories tabs to find lead sets, zones or users, press Add to My Account on the one you want, review the total on Confirm Your Order, and continue to the secure checkout. Products & Subscriptions then lists the add-on beside the plan, and the next invoice carries it as its own line. The step by step guide to adding an add-on walks through every screen. Usage credits for bulk texting, bulk email, ringless voicemail and validation sit on their own shelf on the billing page, because they are packs a store spends rather than capacity it adds. The Usage Credits page covers those. #### What does it replace, and what does more volume cost elsewhere? In most stores, more leads means another vendor: another contract, another login, another portal the managers forget to check, and sometimes leads shared with other dealers before they reach yours. More territory means a second agency. More users means a per seat quote and a week of waiting. Each one adds a system the store has to run. LeadLocate add-ons add capacity to the system the store already runs. The leads are exclusive, the zone runs on the same campaigns our team already manages for you, the users land in the same CRM, and the charges land on the same invoice. The plan underneath stays month to month with no long term contract. For how exclusivity changes the math on a lead, see the counterpart guide on exclusive auto leads. #### The compliance angle: more reach, same rules More volume never means looser process. Every lead in an extra set or an extra zone comes from a shopper who filled out a form and asked to be contacted, answered the store's prescreening questions at capture, and arrives with the source on the record. Financing campaigns in a new zone run under the fair lending rules that forbid narrowing an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP, the same as the store's first zone. Inside the CRM, the DNC Blacklist covers every lead from every zone the moment it lands, and every call, text, email and voicemail is written to the customer's communications log. A new user login carries the permissions of its role, so each new person sees exactly what that role allows and nothing more. #### What should you pair add-ons with? More leads reward speed. Pair an extra lead set with round robin lead assignment so the added volume spreads across the floor, and with Automated Templates so every new lead hears from the store in the first minute. Pair an extra zone with a tracking phone number for that territory so the calls it produces are counted separately. Pair a new user with the video training library and a Live Training session, both included with every plan. And when the month turns quiet, the same portal holds the other lever: month to month leads you can pause with Skip A Month. Every capability is listed on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I buy an add-on on its own? A: Add-ons are built to grow an active subscription, so the plan comes first and the add-on attaches to it. Every plan is month to month, includes the CRM that receives the leads, and is listed on the pricing page. Q: Where are extra lead sets and extra sales zones listed? A: Each extra inbound lead set and each extra 20 mile sales zone is listed on the pricing page. Other add-ons, such as extra user logins, are priced on the shelf in My LeadLocate before you confirm. Q: How many leads come in an extra lead set? A: A set is built for 40 to 60 inbound leads in the zone you already cover. Shoppers decide when they fill out a form, so the set is a size rather than a promised count, and every lead is exclusive and backed by a replacement review. Q: How big is an extra sales zone? A: An extra zone covers 20 miles, set in the Leads Manager zone editor. The store makes its selections and our team launches and manages the campaigns for that zone in the managed webXintel Ads Network. Q: How do I add a login for a new salesperson? A: Order an extra CRM user login from Add-on Products in My LeadLocate, then the account admin gives the person a role. They get their own login, their own leads and threads, and the mobile app. Q: Do add-ons lock me into a contract? A: No. Add-ons ride on your plan, and every LeadLocate plan is month to month with no long term contract. The add-on appears as its own line on the invoice for as long as the store keeps it. ### Leads Manager: Lead Campaigns by Zone, Built and Run for You URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/leads-manager-campaign-builder Leads Manager is the lead campaign planner inside LeadLocate CRM. A dealership draws its sales zone in the zone editor, reads zip stats and a market scan for the area, sets the offers the campaign leads with, and submits it; our team runs the campaign from those selections, and every submitted lead in the zone lands in the store's LeadLocate CRM inbox, exclusively. #### What Leads Manager does, in one sentence Leads Manager is the screen inside LeadLocate CRM where a dealership plans its own lead campaign: it draws the zone it sells into, reads the zip stats and the market scan for that zone, chooses the offers the campaign will lead with, and submits the plan, after which our team runs the campaign from those selections and the leads arrive in the store's own CRM inbox. It is the product side of buying leads, the place where the store decides where the leads come from instead of being told. For years the arrangement with a lead vendor was a phone call: tell us your ZIP codes, we will send you what we get. The store never saw the territory, never chose the offer, and often shared the leads with three competitors. Leads Manager replaces the phone call with a map and a set of choices the store makes itself, in the same LeadLocate CRM where the leads will be worked. The managed advertising that runs behind it is the webXintel Ads Network, and a store that already holds its own ad accounts can have our team run campaigns under those instead. Either way, the plan is the store's. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal Tuesday A general manager in a mid sized market has watched two months of leads come in from the county to the north and almost nothing from the suburb twenty minutes south where half his service customers live. He opens Leads Manager, opens the zone editor, and redraws the zone so the southern suburb is inside it and the far northern ZIPs, where he has never delivered a car, are out. The zip stats tell him what each ZIP in the zone looks like; the market scan shows him the shape of the area he is about to campaign in. He sets the offers: the used truck event this month, the trade in offer for local owners who want a number on their car, and the financing offer the store runs year round. He submits the campaign. Our team takes those selections and runs the media, and by the end of the week the leads from the southern suburb start landing in the CRM inbox with their source attached, where round robin hands them to the floor and Automated Templates send the first text. He did not call anyone, did not wait for a proposal, and did not explain his market to a rep who has never been to it. A month later he opens Reports, sees what the zone produced, and adjusts the zone again. The campaign is a thing he edits, not a thing he orders. #### Where it lives: the zone editor, zip stats, market scan and offers Leads Manager is its own area inside the desktop CRM, with a list of the store's campaigns and, inside each, the editor. The zone editor is the map: the store draws the territory the campaign covers, ZIP by ZIP, so a rooftop that delivers across a river but never across a county line can say so. Zip stats put numbers beside each ZIP in the zone, which is how a manager decides whether an outlying ZIP earns its place. The market scan describes the area as a whole, so the store campaigns into a market it has looked at rather than guessed at. Offers are what the campaign leads with. A buyer lead campaign runs on the store's sales offers, and because Inventory Link reads the store's live inventory, the actual units the store has, with VIN, trim, mileage, price and photos, are what get advertised where the campaign calls for them. A feed is not required, which is why a broker with no lot runs the same builder. A seller lead campaign runs on offer requests: local owners who fill out one of our vehicle offer request pages and ask to be contacted by a dealership. The plan your lead campaigns page walks through the screens in order; the help center article shows the clicks. #### What comes back: every submitted lead in the zone, exclusively The rule that matters most is the simplest. Every lead submitted inside the zone is delivered to the store that owns the zone, and to nobody else. We ask prescreening questions at capture so the store knows what the shopper said about what they want, and then we deliver all of them. Those answers ride along on the record, so the first text out of the store answers what the shopper actually asked about instead of opening cold. Leads are a mix: some arrive with a VIN attached, because the shopper asked about a specific unit the campaign advertised; others describe what they want in general terms. That means the inbox will contain the shopper asking about a truck three times her stated budget and the buyer who intends to negotiate every dollar. Those are real people who raised a hand in your zone, and the what to expect from car sales leads page explains why that is what real demand looks like inside a zone. A lead that is genuinely bad, a wrong number, a duplicate, someone who never asked, goes through a Quality Control Request in the CRM for replacement review after delivery. That is the whole mechanism: every lead in your zone delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture, and a replacement review standing behind it, so a bad lead costs the store nothing. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere It replaces three things a dealership has probably paid for. The lead vendor who sells the same lead to several stores in the same market and calls it a shared lead. The agency that plans the store's advertising from a city it has never visited and sends a monthly report that explains why the numbers are what they are. And the targeting phone call, where the store describes its market to a vendor's rep and hopes the description survived the handoff. Each of those puts the map in someone else's hands. Leads Manager puts it in the store's. It is part of the plans that include leads, Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan, listed on the pricing page, month to month. A store that wants to cover the next town adds a zone from the add-ons shelf in My LeadLocate and draws it in Leads Manager the same day; a store that wants more volume adds a lead set the same way. The aged lead reactivation and declined service lead pages describe campaigns a store runs on the customers it already has; Leads Manager is how it reaches the ones it does not. #### The compliance angle: fair lending, opt in sellers and clean advertising A financing campaign is advertising for credit, and advertising for credit runs under fair lending rules that forbid narrowing an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP. In Leads Manager those controls are locked for a financing campaign; it is planned around a zone and an offer, not around a profile of who the store would prefer to finance, and our team runs it that way. A vendor who offers to help a store target around those rules is selling the store a problem. Seller leads are inbound and opt in. A seller lead is a local owner who filled out one of our own vehicle offer request pages and asked to be contacted by a dealership; that is the only kind of seller lead the platform delivers, and the store's follow up starts from a request the owner made. What decides a month is what the store controls: the zone it draws, the offers it puts in front of that zone, the speed of the first text back and the quality of the follow up behind it. Leads Manager exists to put the first two squarely in the store's hands and to keep the advertising behind them clean enough to show anyone who asks, and the CRM on the other side of the campaign is what turns the rest into appointments. #### Who runs the campaign once it is submitted Our team does, from the store's selections. The zone, the offers, the channels requested and the decision to start or stop a campaign are the dealership's, made in Leads Manager and in conversation with us; the media itself is run by our team, either through the managed webXintel Ads Network or, for a store that has connected its own ad accounts, through those accounts. The store is not left alone with an ad platform's console at eleven at night, and it is not told to trust a black box either. It sees its own plan, and it sees what the plan produced in the same Reports dashboard that measures every other lead source. That division is deliberate. Dealerships know their market best, and the daily work of running media across networks whose rules change monthly belongs with a team that does it all day. Leads Manager takes the part the store is good at and puts it on a map. The connect your own ad accounts page covers the store that wants campaigns to run through accounts it already holds, and what changes when it does. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Leads Manager is available to a store on a plan that includes leads. A current subscriber opens it inside the CRM, draws a zone, reads the zip stats and the market scan, sets offers and submits; our team takes it from there and the first leads arrive in the inbox with their source attached. A store on CRM Only that wants to add leads moves to a plan with them on the pricing page, and a store that already has a zone adds another from My LeadLocate. Leads can also be routed into a CRM the store already runs, at no price change, if the store is not ready to move its team. Pair it with Lead Feeds Manager, so the campaign's leads land in their own feed with their own Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes; with round robin, so they reach the floor evenly; and with the Reports dashboard, so the zone is judged by the same numbers as every other source. If you want to see a campaign drawn and submitted before signing up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the CRM in use, and the contact page reaches a person who will look at your market with you. #### Questions and answers Q: What is Leads Manager? A: The lead campaign planner inside LeadLocate CRM. A dealership draws its zone in the zone editor, reads zip stats and a market scan, sets offers and submits the campaign; our team runs it from those selections and the leads land in the store's CRM inbox. Q: Are the leads exclusive to my store? A: Yes. Every lead submitted inside your zone is delivered to your store and to nobody else. The consumer answers prescreening questions at capture and those answers arrive attached to the lead, with a replacement review standing behind every one, so a bad lead costs you nothing. Q: Do I run the ads myself? A: No. You make the selections in Leads Manager, the zone, the offers, the channels you want, and our team runs the media, through the managed webXintel Ads Network or through ad accounts you have connected. You see the plan and the results in the CRM. Q: Can I change the zone after the campaign starts? A: Yes. The campaign is a thing you edit. Open it in Leads Manager, redraw the zone, adjust the offers and submit again; our team runs the updated selections. Adding a whole new zone is an add-on in My LeadLocate. Q: Why does a financing campaign lock some targeting controls? A: Because advertising for credit runs under fair lending rules that forbid narrowing an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP. A financing campaign is planned around a zone and an offer, and our team runs it that way. Q: Which plans include Leads Manager? A: The plans that include leads: Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid Plan, listed on the pricing page, month to month. Leads can also be routed into a CRM you already run at no price change. ### Lender and DMS Export Formats for Applications URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/lender-and-dms-export-formats SecureWebX exports a worked credit application to your lender or DMS in the format the receiving system expects: STAR XML, fixed width, CSV or JSON, over SFTP, SOAP, a REST API, PGP encrypted email, structured email or a secure portal. A mapping template lines your fields up with theirs once. It is an export, set up per destination, rather than a live two way integration. #### What are lender and DMS export formats? An export format is the shape a credit application takes when it leaves SecureWebX for the system that needs it next, and the platform produces the shape that system expects rather than asking the other side to change. That is the one sentence version. The longer version is that every lender, every DMS and every third party a finance office feeds has its own idea of what an application file looks like. One wants the DMS standard. One wants a fixed width text file laid out to a spec written a long time ago. One wants a spreadsheet. One has an API. SecureWebX speaks all of those, and the store picks the one that fits each destination. It is important to say plainly what this is and is not, because vendors in this space blur it. This is an export: the application leaves SecureWebX as a file or a request in the format and over the transport a specific destination expects, configured for your store. It is not a live two way integration with a named lender or a named DMS, and nobody on our side will describe it that way. What it gives a store is the practical thing: the application arrives on the other side ready to ingest, without a finance manager rekeying it, and with the delivery recorded. This page is the product side view of the export capability. The online credit application software page covers the application system as a buying question, and the Send to Lender secure share page covers the other way an application reaches a lender, as a code gated share with a lender response portal rather than as a file. #### How does a finance office use it on a normal day? A franchise store's DMS wants every funded deal's application data in STAR XML, dropped on an SFTP folder the DMS vendor set up years ago. The finance manager finishes working an application in SecureWebX, the worksheet is attached, the lender has responded, and the deal is going to fund. She chooses the DMS destination, the export runs against the mapping template our team built for that store, and a STAR XML file lands on the SFTP folder. The console shows the delivery and how it was delivered. The DMS picks the file up on its own schedule, and the accounting office sees the deal without anyone typing a social security number a second time. The same store sends applications to a secondary lender that has no SFTP and no API but reads a fixed width file attached to an encrypted email. Same application, different destination, different format, different transport, one click. For a third destination, a local credit union with a small staff, the export goes through the secure portal: a link the credit union opens, with an access code, that presents the application for download. If a direct delivery fails, the console says so plainly and keeps the portal link live as a fallback, and the delivery can be retried once the other side's folder or endpoint is back. None of that changes the finance manager's job. She works the application in one place, and the format and transport questions were answered once when each destination was set up. #### The formats: STAR XML, fixed width, CSV and JSON STAR XML is the standard most DMS platforms and many franchise systems expect, and it is the format to reach for when the destination is the store's DMS. Fixed width is the older text layout still used by lenders and processors whose intake systems were built to a column spec; every field starts at a known position and is padded to a known length, which is exactly why a hand typed file breaks and a generated one does not. CSV is the spreadsheet friendly option for destinations that import a table, and for a store that wants a copy of its own applications in a form it can open. JSON is the format an API expects, and it is the shape a modern lender platform or a custom integration reads. The format is chosen per destination, not per application. A store that sends the same application to its DMS and to a lender sends STAR XML to one and a fixed width file to the other, from the same record, without editing anything. Where a destination has a layout of its own, a mapping template captures it, which is the subject of a later section. #### The transports: SFTP, SOAP, REST API, PGP email, structured email and secure portal Format is what the file looks like. Transport is how it gets there, and the two are chosen independently. SFTP drops the file on a secure folder the destination polls, the way most DMS vendors work. SOAP and a REST API send the application as a request to a destination that exposes an endpoint, which is how lender platforms and custom systems receive it. PGP encrypted email sends the file as an attachment encrypted to the destination's key, for lenders who work from an inbox but insist, correctly, that the attachment be unreadable to anyone else. Structured email is a plain email laid out in a fixed structure for destinations that parse their inbox. The secure portal presents the application at a link with an access code, for a destination that has none of the above and should not be handed a raw attachment. Any transport can be paired with any format, within reason, so a store's DMS might take STAR XML over SFTP while its special finance lender takes JSON over a REST API and its warranty partner takes CSV through the portal. Each pairing is a destination in the console, set once. For the lenders who still work by fax, the eFax capability sits alongside these. #### Mapping templates: line your fields up with theirs once The reason exports fail in most systems is not the format, it is the fields. Your application calls something monthly housing payment; the lender's spec calls it rent or mortgage amount and wants it in whole dollars in a column of its own. A mapping template records that translation, field by field, for one destination. Once it exists, every application exported to that destination follows it, and a change on the other side, a new required field or a renamed one, is a change to the template rather than a retraining of the finance office. Templates are built per destination by our team with the destination's spec in hand, and a store that adds a lender adds a template. Because the application in SecureWebX already carries the personal, residence, employment, income, co-applicant, trade and down payment sections in structured fields, and the attached worksheet carries the deal structure, most templates map cleanly from what is already there rather than asking the finance manager to fill in extra fields at export time. #### Where it lives, and what it replaces Export lives in the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button on the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and in the SecureWebX app on iOS and Android. Each application carries its delivery controls: choose the destination, see how it was delivered, retry if a direct delivery failed, open the portal link. Destinations and their mapping templates are configured for the store rather than by each user, so the finance manager sees a short list of places an application can go and picks one. What it replaces is rekeying, and the cost of rekeying is easy to underestimate. A finance manager who types an application into the DMS and again into a lender's portal spends real time per deal and introduces a transposed digit somewhere in a social security number or an income figure often enough that funding gets delayed. It also replaces the per integration fee that some application vendors charge for each lender or DMS connection. SecureWebX is part of every LeadLocate plan rather than an add on, plans are month to month, and the pricing page lists them. #### The compliance angle: encrypted in transit, recorded on the file An application leaving the building is the moment a store's control over the data is weakest, so the transports are built for it. SFTP is an encrypted transfer. PGP email encrypts the attachment to the recipient's key so a misdirected or intercepted message is unreadable. The secure portal gates access behind a code and presents a watermarked view. Every export is written to the audit log, so a question about where a customer's application was sent has a documented answer. Retention follows the SecureWebX rule: archive, never delete. The application, the worksheet, the delivery record and the lender's response stay together on a record that is retained for compliance. The credit application security page covers the controls around the record in detail. As with everything in this family, the software gives the store's compliance program a record to stand on; it does not stand in for the program. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Export destinations are set up per store by our team, because each one needs the receiving system's spec, credentials and transport details. Tell us where applications need to go, your DMS, your lenders, a processor, and share the spec or the contact who has it. We build the mapping template, connect the transport, run a test file, and the destination appears in your console. Adding a lender later is the same conversation. A destination with a format or transport not on this page is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership; the partner integrations catalog in the console also carries a custom integration request for exactly that. Pair export with Send to Lender, so lenders who want a reviewable share get one and systems that want a file get one, and with the Verified Partners directory, where the partner integrations catalog lives. The all features list shows where export sits among everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows an application going from a text message to a worked, lender ready file. #### Questions and answers Q: Is this a live integration with my DMS or my lender? A: It is an export in the format and over the transport your DMS or lender expects, configured per destination with a mapping template. The application leaves SecureWebX as a file or a request the other side ingests. It is not a live two way connection with a named system, and we describe it as an export on purpose. Q: Which formats are supported? A: STAR XML, the DMS standard, plus fixed width, CSV and JSON. The format is chosen per destination, so the same application can go to a DMS as STAR XML and to a lender as a fixed width file. Q: How is the file delivered? A: Over SFTP, SOAP, a REST API, PGP encrypted email, structured email or a secure portal with an access code. Any transport can be paired with any format, and each pairing is a destination set up once for your store. Q: What if the lender's layout is different from ours? A: A mapping template records the field by field translation for that destination. Our team builds it from the destination's spec, tests it, and every export to that destination follows it from then on. Q: What happens if a delivery fails? A: The console says so, keeps the secure portal link live so the destination can still retrieve the application, and lets you retry the direct delivery once the other side's folder or endpoint is available. Q: Is export an extra charge? A: No. Export formats and transports are part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Lost Reason Tracking for Every Dead Deal URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/lost-reason-tracking Lost reason tracking in LeadLocate CRM is a Mark Lead As Lost popup that opens whenever a rep sets a lead to Lost. The rep picks a reason from a list the master administrator manages, adds an optional note, and saves. The reason is stamped on the lead, a Follow Up Process can stamp one automatically, and the pattern across the month shows up in reporting. #### What lost reason tracking does Lost reason tracking makes a rep say why before a lead can be marked Lost. When a salesperson sets a lead's status to Lost in LeadLocate CRM, a popup titled Mark Lead As Lost opens with a Reason dropdown and a Custom comment field, and the Save & Mark Lost button is the only way through. The reason lands on the lead. The comment, if the rep wrote one, lands with it. The list of reasons is managed by the store's master administrator, and the defaults cover what actually kills deals at a dealership: Bad Credit, Bad or No Contact Information, Bought Same Brand Elsewhere, Bought Different Brand Elsewhere, No Agreement Reached, No Intent to Buy, Out of Market, Shopping Out of Area, Prospect Claims Never Submitted, Service & Parts, Test Lead, Incentivized and Lead Process Completed. A store adds its own or trims the list to what it wants reps choosing from. The point is that Lost stops being one bucket and becomes a dozen, each of which points at something a manager can do. That is the difference between a count and a diagnosis. A store that lost forty deals last month knows it lost forty deals. A store that lost twelve to Bought Same Brand Elsewhere, nine to No Agreement Reached and seven to Bad or No Contact Information knows it has a pricing conversation, a desking conversation and a lead source conversation to have, in that order. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day A salesperson at a used car store has been working a customer for two weeks on a mid size SUV. The customer texts on Thursday that she bought the same model from a store forty miles away because they beat the payment by twenty dollars. The rep opens the lead, changes the status to Lost, and the Mark Lead As Lost popup opens. He picks Bought Same Brand Elsewhere, types a one line note that the other store was twenty dollars a month lower on a seventy two month term, and clicks Save & Mark Lost. Fifteen seconds, and the lead is closed out with a reason and a detail the desk can actually use. Across the showroom, the BDC marks three leads Lost that morning as Bad or No Contact Information, because the numbers on them ring to a fax tone. Those three go into the store's replacement review, because a LeadLocate delivered lead with a dead number is exactly what lead replacement review exists for. A fourth lead is closed as Prospect Claims Never Submitted after the customer insisted on the phone that he never filled anything out, which is a reason worth tracking separately, because if it climbs, the store has a source to look at. At the end of the month, the GM does not ask the reps why deals died; he opens the reporting and reads it. Twelve deals lost to the same brand elsewhere, most with a note mentioning payment, tells him something the Lost count never could. He takes that to the desk. The reps, for their part, have been asked for fifteen seconds of honesty per dead deal, which is a fair price for not being asked to explain themselves at the meeting. #### Where it lives in the CRM The popup is part of the Leads view and the lead detail; it opens from any place a rep changes a lead's status to Lost, including the Contacts view and the appointments list, so there is no path to a Lost status that skips the reason. It is a small, self contained window: a Reason dropdown, a Custom comment (optional) line for a short note, Cancel and Save & Mark Lost. Nothing else. A rep who has to close out a dead deal on the way to a customer is not asked to fill out a form. The reason list itself is managed by the master administrator, which keeps it consistent; reps choose from the list rather than typing free text into the reason, and the free text goes into the comment where it belongs. Lost reasons also appear inside Follow Up Processes, where a drip that ends without a sale can carry a Lost Reason that is stamped on the lead automatically, so a lead that ran through an entire re-engagement sequence without a reply is closed out with a reason without a rep having to touch it. On the phone app, a rep sets statuses from the Leads view like any other, and the stamped reason is visible on the lead when a manager opens it at the desk. The reporting that rolls the reasons up lives on the Reports button on the dock, described on the reports dashboard page. #### What it replaces, and what an unexplained Lost costs Without a required reason, a Lost status is where leads go to stop being counted. Reps mark leads Lost to clean their queue, managers see a number, and the number gets explained at the sales meeting from memory, by the people with the most reason to explain it generously. The store never learns whether it is losing to price, to a competitor, to its own follow up, or to lead sources that send the wrong customers, because the data was never captured at the moment anyone knew. Some stores try a note field, which produces forty different spellings of the same reason and nothing that can be counted. Some try a spreadsheet, which the BDC maintains for three weeks. Some pay for a reporting product that sits on top of the CRM and asks reps to enter the same information a second time, in a second place, which they do not. The reason that gets captured is the one captured in the CRM, at the moment of the status change, from a short list, and that is what the popup does. The cost of not knowing is specific. A store losing deals to Bad or No Contact Information is paying for leads it should be sending back for replacement. A store losing to No Agreement Reached has a desking problem, which the desking tool and its multi pencil grid were built to address. A store losing to Bought Same Brand Elsewhere is losing on price or on speed, and those are different fixes. Each of those is only visible when Lost has a reason attached. #### Which lost reasons point at which fix? The default reasons were chosen because each one suggests an action. Bad Credit points at the finance office and at whether the store is sending an apply link early enough; SecureWebX puts a credit application on the customer's phone from the first conversation. Bad or No Contact Information and Prospect Claims Never Submitted point at a lead source, and for LeadLocate delivered leads they point at the replacement review. No Agreement Reached points at the desk. Bought Same Brand Elsewhere and Bought Different Brand Elsewhere point at price, speed or inventory, and the note the rep left usually says which. No Intent to Buy, Out of Market and Shopping Out of Area are the reasons a store should read alongside the what to expect from car sales leads page, because a shopper who is early, far away or just looking is still a real person who asked to be contacted, and a rep who marks them Lost after one call may be closing a deal that would have happened in ninety days. Service & Parts is a lead that belongs to another department, and a store that sees many of them has a routing question. Test Lead and Lead Process Completed are housekeeping, and keeping them separate keeps them out of the numbers that matter. Read the reasons together over a quarter and the pattern behind every deal the store did not write is on the screen in plain numbers, sorted by the thing that would fix it. That is a report a GM can take to the desk, to the BDC and to the lead source conversation with something better than a feeling. #### The compliance angle: a closed lead should stay closed A lead marked Lost with a reason is a lead the store has decided to stop working, and the CRM should honor that decision. A recorded reason ends the follow up on that lead, so a customer who bought elsewhere is not still receiving appointment reminders and price drop texts, which is the kind of message that turns a lost customer into a complaint. A customer who asks not to be contacted at all belongs on the Do Not Call Blacklist, which hides them from every CRM view; a lost reason is for deals that died, and the blacklist is for customers who opted out, and the store should use each for what it is. Lost is also not deleted. A Lost lead keeps its communications log, its notes and its reason, so when the customer comes back in six months for the next vehicle, or when a manager needs to show what happened on a deal, the record is intact. Leads that are removed go to the trash bin with restore, so even a deletion is recoverable. Because the reason list is managed by the master administrator rather than typed by reps, the reasons in the report mean the same thing across the store and across time, which is what makes a quarter over quarter comparison honest. #### How to turn it on Lost reason tracking is on from the first day of the account, with the default reason list in place. The master administrator reviews the list, adds any reason the store wants to track separately, and removes any it does not want reps choosing. From then on, every change to Lost, from any view, opens the popup. There is no per user setting and no way for a rep to skip it, which is the whole point. To make the automatic path work, open Follow Up Processes and set the Lost Reason on any drip that should close a lead out when it ends without a sale. That is how a re-engagement sequence that runs its course closes the lead with a reason and no rep involvement. If your store wants something beyond the built in list and report, such as reasons that require a comment, reasons visible to managers only, or a lost reason that triggers a manager alert, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The contact page is the place to describe it. #### What to pair it with Lost reasons are the end of the pipeline; they are most useful next to the features that define the rest of it. Custom lead statuses, tags and row colors are the stages a lead moves through before Lost. Follow Up Processes are the drips that either bring a lead back or close it with a reason automatically. Lead replacement review is where a LeadLocate delivered lead marked Lost for a dead number goes next. And the reports dashboard is where the reasons become the monthly picture. Lost reason tracking is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where it sits among everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What happens when a rep marks a lead Lost? A: The Mark Lead As Lost popup opens with a Reason dropdown and an optional comment line. The rep picks a reason, adds a note if there is one, and clicks Save and Mark Lost. The reason and the note are stamped on the lead, and the status change does not complete without a reason. Q: Who controls the list of lost reasons? A: The store's master administrator. The defaults cover the common causes, such as Bad Credit, Bad or No Contact Information, Bought Same Brand Elsewhere, No Agreement Reached and Out of Market, and the administrator adds or removes reasons to fit the store. Q: Can a lost reason be set automatically? A: Yes. A Follow Up Process can carry a Lost Reason, so a drip that runs to the end without a sale closes the lead with that reason and no rep involvement. Q: Is a Lost lead deleted? A: No. It keeps its communications log, notes and reason, so it is there when the customer returns or when a manager reviews the deal. Deleted leads go to the trash bin, which has restore. Q: What should I do with leads lost for bad contact information? A: For leads delivered by LeadLocate, report them through the Quality Control Request workflow for replacement review. The lost reason makes those leads easy to find at the end of the month. Q: Is lost reason tracking an extra cost? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Mail Center: Inbound Mail Handling for Dealer Brands URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/mail-center Mail Center is the inbound email desk inside LeadLocate CRM for the store's brand pages. Each brand has its own inbox where replies, form leads, chatbot conversations and abandoned chats arrive. From the same screen a rep composes a reply, schedules an email for later, reuses a template, and reviews the sent log. It is part of the platform subscription. #### What Mail Center is, and what it is not Mail Center handles the inbound email generated by your store's brand pages, one inbox per brand, with composition, scheduled sends, templates and sent logs in the same place. That is the one sentence version. It is not a postal mail room and it is not a general purpose email client for a salesperson's personal correspondence; the email inbox and composer in the CRM covers that. Mail Center is narrower and, for a store running more than one brand or offer page, more useful: it is the desk where everything a brand page sends back to you gets read and answered. The distinction matters because dealer email usually fails at the seams. A customer replies to an offer email at 9 PM, the reply lands in a shared mailbox three people can see and nobody owns, and by the time someone notices, the customer has stopped answering. Mail Center gives each brand a single inbox, so the reply has an owner and a log, and the reply the rep sends back is written from a template, scheduled if it should go later, and recorded when it goes. The brand pages themselves, the branded pages that carry your store's offers and forms, are described on the brand offer pages page. This page is the mail side of them. #### A normal day: the reply that comes in before the store opens A store runs two brands, the franchise store and a used car outlet on the other side of town, each with its own offer page. At 7:15 AM a customer who filled out the outlet's form the night before replies to the confirmation email with a question about a trade. The reply lands in the outlet's inbox in Mail Center, not in the franchise store's, and not in a mailbox that mixes the two. The internet manager opens Mail Center at 8:30, sees the outlet inbox has one new message, reads the question, and answers it from a template that already carries the store's name and address, edited with the two sentences that make it a real reply. She wants a second touch to go out mid afternoon if the customer has not answered, so she composes it now and schedules it for 2:30 PM. Then she checks the sent log to confirm yesterday's confirmation actually went, which it did, at 9:52 PM, which tells her the customer read it and replied within the hour. Nothing about that took a spreadsheet, a forwarded email or a note on a whiteboard. The inbox knew which brand the message belonged to, the template did the typing, the schedule did the waiting, and the log did the remembering. #### Where Mail Center lives and what is on the screen Mail Center is a section of the LeadLocate CRM alongside the brand page tools. Its pieces are the ones you would expect from a desk that handles inbound mail: the inbox itself, message composition, scheduled emails, templates and sent logs. Each brand page has its own inbox, so a store with three brands sees three inboxes rather than one pile, and the form leads, chatbot conversations and abandoned chats that the brand pages generate sit in the same brand context as the email. Composition is a normal email editor with the store's templates one click away. Scheduling is a date and time on the message; the email waits and goes when it should. Templates are the store's own, written once and reused by every rep who answers brand mail, which keeps the tone consistent between the person who wrote the first offer and the person who answers the reply. The sent log records every message that left, when it left and to whom. For the salesperson who lives on the phone rather than the desktop, replies to a customer still flow through the CRM's communications log, so the LeadLocate mobile app shows the customer's history in the same place it shows the texts and calls. #### What it replaces at most stores Ask a store how its offer page email gets answered and the answer is usually a shared mailbox with a password on a sticky note. Everyone can read it, so nobody is responsible for it. Replies are typed from scratch, so they vary by who is on duty. Nobody schedules anything, because the mailbox has no scheduler, so the second touch either goes immediately or never. And there is no sent log outside the mailbox's own sent folder, which means a manager auditing a conversation is reading someone else's email client. Mail Center replaces that with one inbox per brand inside the CRM, a template set that everyone uses, a scheduler for anything that should go later, and a sent log a manager can read without borrowing a login. There is no separate email service subscription and no per mailbox fee. The pricing page lists the plans; Mail Center is part of the platform on every one of them. The store keeps its own domain and its own sending identity. Nothing about Mail Center puts your brand mail behind someone else's name. #### Form leads, chatbot conversations and abandoned chats in the same brand inbox Email is only one thing a brand page sends back. The same page generates form leads when a customer fills in the offer form, chatbot conversations when the page's texting chatbot answers a visitor, and abandoned chats when a visitor starts a conversation and leaves. Mail Center keeps those in the brand inbox context, so the rep answering the outlet's email is also the rep who sees the outlet's form lead and the outlet's abandoned chat, rather than three different people looking at three different tools. An abandoned chat is worth a sentence of its own. A visitor who typed a question and closed the tab is a person who was interested enough to ask. Most stores never see that visitor at all. In Mail Center the abandoned chat is a row in the brand inbox, which means it is something a rep can follow up on the way they would follow up a form lead. The texting chatbots page describes the bots that text back; the live chat for car dealers page covers the website chat side. Form leads from the brand page also feed the CRM's lead handling, so the customer becomes a lead with an owner, a status and a follow up process, not just a message in an inbox. #### Scheduled emails, templates and the sent log Three small tools do most of the work in Mail Center. Scheduled emails let a rep write the follow up now and send it later, which is how a store keeps a second touch from going out thirty seconds after the first. Templates give every reply the same bones: the store's name, its address, its hours, the offer the customer asked about, with room for the two sentences that make it personal. The sent log is the audit trail, every message that left, when and to whom. Used together they turn a reactive inbox into a paced conversation. A rep answers the morning's replies from templates, schedules the afternoon's follow ups, and checks the log before leaving to confirm nothing is stuck. A manager reviewing the brand's week reads the log rather than asking each rep what they sent. Where a store wants a longer, automatic sequence rather than a hand scheduled email, the email drip automation in the CRM carries it; Mail Center is for the replies a person should write. #### The compliance angle: every brand email logged, sent from your own domain Commercial email carries obligations, and a store running several brands carries them several times over. The sent log in Mail Center is the record of what each brand sent, when and to whom. When a customer asks what they were sent, the answer is a row in the log rather than a search through a shared mailbox. Because every reply goes out through the CRM, it is also part of the customer's communications log, which holds their calls, texts and voicemails in the same place. Sending identity matters as much as the record. The CRM's email domain authentication lets the store send from its own domain rather than a generic one, so brand mail carries the store's name and passes the checks receiving mail systems apply. Contact hygiene sits beside it: the email validator shows validity on the lead so a rep is not writing to an address that bounces. None of this is a substitute for the store's own email compliance practice; it is the record and the identity that practice needs. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Mail Center is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription, so there is nothing to buy separately. A store that already has brand pages has brand inboxes; the first thing to do is write the templates, because every reply after that gets faster. Then schedule the standard second touch, and get in the habit of reading the sent log at the end of the day. Anything a store needs beyond that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair Mail Center with the Lead Feeds Manager so form leads from each brand page land in the right feed and the right rep. Pair it with Automated Templates so the first text and email to a brand page lead go out on receipt without anyone typing them. Pair it with Bulk Email when the message is to a list rather than to one customer. The all features list shows where Mail Center sits among the rest. Mail Center is built so your store keeps selling. Each product is its own application under one login, your domain and your sending identity stay the store's own, and every message sent, every reply received and every scheduled send is written to the log the moment it happens and stays safe there, so a manager reading back through yesterday's conversation is reading the store's own record instead of borrowing somebody's email client. The contact page reaches a person whenever you want one, and the pre-recorded live demo shows the inbox before you sign up. #### Questions and answers Q: Is Mail Center for postal mail or email? A: Email. Mail Center handles the inbound email your store's brand pages generate: replies to offer emails, form leads, chatbot conversations and abandoned chats, each in the inbox for its brand. Q: Does each brand get its own inbox? A: Yes. A store with a franchise brand and a used car outlet sees two inboxes, so a reply to the outlet's offer page lands with the outlet, not in a mixed pile. Q: Can I schedule an email to go later? A: Yes. Compose the message, set the date and time, and it waits. That is how a store keeps a second touch from leaving thirty seconds after the first. Q: Is there a record of what was sent? A: Yes. The sent log records every message that left Mail Center, when and to whom, and each reply also lands in the customer's communications log alongside their calls and texts. Q: How is Mail Center different from the CRM email inbox? A: The CRM email inbox is a rep's general inbox. Mail Center is the desk for brand page email specifically, with one inbox per brand and the form leads, chatbot conversations and abandoned chats from that brand in the same context. Q: Does it cost extra? A: No. Mail Center is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription on every plan listed on the pricing page, with no per mailbox fee. ### Manager Lead Copies: See Every Lead Your Team Receives URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/manager-lead-copies Manager Lead Copies put a sales manager on a lead feed so they receive a copy of every lead that feed delivers, by email and in LeadLocate CRM, beside the salesperson who owns it. LeadLocate's default feeds carry manager copies, and any source you add can carry them too, so the manager sees every new lead the moment the team does. #### What are manager lead copies? Every lead a store receives has an owner: the salesperson round robin picked, the BDC agent the feed points to, or the rep who claimed it first. Manager Lead Copies add a second pair of eyes without taking the lead away from its owner. A manager is placed on a lead feed, and from then on every lead that feed delivers also goes to that manager, by email and in the CRM, beside the salesperson who owns it. The salesperson still works the lead. The manager simply knows it exists, from the first second, without asking anybody. That sounds small until you count the leads a sales manager never hears about. In most stores the manager learns about an internet lead when it turns into an appointment, or when it turns into a complaint. With manager copies on, the manager sees each new lead and its source as it arrives, and can look at the lead in LeadLocate CRM an hour later to see whether anyone answered. It is the simplest form of lead accountability there is, and it costs the salesperson nothing. The copies are set per feed, which is the part that makes them practical. The general manager can take copies of the lead sources the store pays for, the used car manager can take copies of the trade-in and acquisition feeds, and the BDC manager can take copies of the website forms, all from the same settings page. #### How does a sales manager use lead copies on a normal day? Picture a Monday at a store with eight salespeople. By nine in the morning the weekend has left fourteen leads in the CRM: website forms, the store's exclusive local leads from LeadLocate, two leads from a third party provider. The sales manager has a copy of every one of them in the inbox, so the morning meeting starts with the list instead of a question. Who has the couple asking about the minivan? Has anyone called the trade-in from Saturday night? The manager already knows the answers are on the lead records and can open each one to see the texts that went out. During the day the copies keep arriving as the leads do. When a lead lands at eleven and the assigned salesperson is at lunch, the manager sees it at eleven, not at two. When a customer calls the store asking why nobody got back to them, the manager already has the lead, the source and the time it came in, and can hand it to someone on the floor in seconds. At the end of the month the copies become a habit rather than a report. A manager who has seen every lead as it arrived knows which sources are busy, which salespeople answer fast and where the store is losing customers, and the reports dashboard puts numbers on what the manager has already watched happen. #### Can I copy a manager on new leads from one source only? Yes, and that is how most stores set it up. Manager copies are chosen feed by feed, so each lead source can copy a different person, several people, or nobody. The default feeds, the ones through which LeadLocate delivers a store's exclusive local leads, carry manager copies, and any lead source the store adds for itself can carry them too with one tick when the source is created. There is also a store wide default for leads that arrive without a feed, such as a lead a salesperson adds by hand on the desktop or from the phone app. Set the default once and those leads copy the same managers. A single button puts the default recipients on every feed at once, for the store that wants the GM on everything, and any feed with its own recipients keeps them. Several managers can be listed on the same feed, separated by commas, so the sales manager and the general manager can both take copies of a new provider for its first month and then trim the list. #### Where do manager copies live in the CRM? With the lead sources. Open Account Settings under Billing and Admin and choose Lead Source Settings. The Default Manager Copies drawer holds the store wide recipients, with Save Default and Apply to All. The Your LeadLocate Feeds drawer lists every feed LeadLocate delivers for the account, each with a Manager Copies button that shows who is on it. Every source the store adds for itself carries a Manager copies box and its own recipient list in the same form that sets its label and assignment. The copies themselves arrive where a manager already looks. The email copy lands in the manager's inbox, on the desk or on the phone, and the lead is in the CRM on desktop and on the LeadLocate phone app, beside the salesperson who owns it. How feeds, sources and assignment fit together is on the Lead Feeds Manager page; this page is the manager's side of it. #### What do manager copies replace? The usual substitutes are a forwarding rule and a shared inbox. A store sets up a group mailbox for lead notifications, points every provider at it, and asks the managers to keep an eye on it. That works until a provider changes its address, a manager leaves and the forwarding rule goes with their mailbox, or the inbox fills with so many notifications that nobody reads it. Worse, the group inbox only knows about leads that came in by email. Leads entered by hand and many website forms never show up in it at all. Manager copies replace all of that with a setting on the feed. The copy follows the lead, not the mailbox, so it arrives for feed leads, form leads and leads entered by hand alike. When a manager joins or leaves, the store changes the recipients on the feed and every source is up to date the same minute. There is nothing to rebuild in an email program and nothing a departing employee can take with them. There is also the cost nobody invoices: the lead that sat unanswered because the one person who saw it was off that day. A copy to the manager is the cheapest insurance a store can buy against that, and pairing it with round robin lead assignment means the lead already has an owner when the manager sees it. #### How do manager copies support compliance and accountability? A lead that a manager has seen is a lead the store can account for. When a customer asks why they were contacted, or why nobody called back, the manager already has the lead, its source and the time it arrived, and the customer's communications timeline shows every call, text and email the salesperson sent, with who sent it and when. The store answers from the record, not from memory. Copies change who knows about a lead, not who owns it. The assigned salesperson stays the owner, the customer hears from one person, and nobody double texts a shopper because two people thought the lead was theirs. The store's do not call blacklist applies to every lead whichever feed it came through, and user roles (User, Manager and Master Administrator) set who does what in the CRM. Every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, and a manager who sees each one on arrival is the first to spot a bad lead and send it to the replacement review. #### How do I turn on manager copies? Open Account Settings, choose Lead Source Settings, and open Default Manager Copies. Type the managers' email addresses, separated by commas, and click Save Default. Click Apply to All if the same people should be on every feed. To give one feed its own recipients, open Your LeadLocate Feeds, click Manager Copies beside the feed and save the list. For a source the store added itself, open the source, tick Manager copies, enter the recipients and save. The step by step version is how to send managers a copy of every lead. If a feed should copy a manager and the button is not on its row yet, our support team switches it on for that feed on request. #### What should I pair manager copies with? Manager copies tell the manager a lead arrived. Lead notifications and alerts decide how each salesperson hears about it, with notify emails and numbers and per user preferences. Call alerts and keywords do for phone calls what copies do for leads: the manager picks the words that matter, such as trade in, cancel or payment, and chooses All Calls or Alert Calls Only. Website forms to CRM brings every form on your site into a feed, so the manager copies cover those too. And user roles and permissions give managers the Manager role, so the people receiving copies can act on them. Manager Lead Copies are part of LeadLocate CRM on every account, month to month, with the plans on the pricing page. The automotive CRM for sales managers page shows the rest of what a manager gets, and all features lists every tool in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: How does a sales manager get a copy of every lead? A: Put the manager on the lead feed as a manager copy. From then on every lead that feed delivers also goes to the manager, by email and in the CRM, beside the salesperson who owns it. LeadLocate's default feeds carry manager copies. Q: Can I cc a manager on new leads from only some sources? A: Yes. Manager copies are set per feed, so each source can copy a different manager, several managers or nobody. A store wide default covers leads that arrive without a feed, and Apply to All puts the default recipients on every feed at once. Q: Does the manager take the lead away from the salesperson? A: No. The assigned salesperson stays the owner and works the lead. The manager receives a copy so they know the lead exists and can check on it. Q: Can more than one manager receive copies? A: Yes. List several email addresses on the same feed, separated by commas, such as the sales manager and the general manager. Q: Do manager copies cover website form leads? A: Yes. Give each website form its own lead source, tick Manager copies on it, and every form lead arrives with the manager copied. Q: Are manager copies included in my plan? A: Yes. They are part of LeadLocate CRM on every account, month to month. The plans are listed on the pricing page. ### Merge Duplicate Leads Without Losing History URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/merge-duplicate-leads Merge Duplicate Records in LeadLocate CRM scans a lead for other records that match by name, phone or email, shows them side by side with a Keeper marked, and lets the rep choose which ones to combine. The chosen records fold into the keeper, a note records what was merged, and the merged rows are retired rather than erased, so the customer's history stays on one lead. #### What Merge Duplicate Records does Merge Duplicate Records is the tool on every lead and contact in LeadLocate CRM that finds other records for the same person and combines them into one. The scan checks name, phone and email, so it catches the customer who used a work email on the website and a personal email on a third party site, and the customer who typed a different phone number on the second form. The matches are shown in a list with one marked Keeper, the rep ticks the rows that are truly the same person, confirms, and the CRM folds them into the keeper. The words in the page title are the important ones: without losing history. A merge writes a note on the keeper describing what was combined, the merged records are retired rather than destroyed, and the keeper is assigned to the rep who did the merge so the combined lead has one clear owner. The customer's communications log, which already holds every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail in one place, keeps building on the single record from that point on. The general problem, why duplicates happen in automotive CRMs and what they cost a store, is laid out on the duplicate lead management for automotive CRMs page. This page is the tool. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day A customer named Marcus fills out a form on the store's website on the 3rd asking about a used half ton. A week later he submits a request through a third party site, which sends the lead by email to a different feed, with his cell number instead of the home number he used the first time. Ten days after that he replies to a LeadLocate offer request page for his trade. The store now has three Marcuses: one on the website feed assigned to Dana, one on the provider feed that rotated to Luis, and one on the acquisitions feed that landed on Dana again. Luis texts him about the truck on Tuesday; Dana texts him about the truck on Wednesday. Marcus, reasonably, wonders whether the store talks to itself. Dana opens the newest lead, clicks Merge Duplicate Records, and the overlay scans. It comes back with two matches: the provider lead matched on phone and the website lead matched on name and email, with the newest record marked as the Keeper. She checks both, confirms, and the three rows become one. The lead is hers, the note on it says what was merged and when, and the next time Marcus texts, one thread lights up on one rep's screen. Luis sees the merge note if he goes looking, and the sales manager, who had two reps working one customer, now has one. That is the whole workflow. There is no export, no spreadsheet, no admin ticket. The scan takes a few seconds and the merge takes one click after it. #### Where it lives in the CRM Merge Duplicate Records opens from the lead detail in the Leads view and from a contact in the Contacts view, because duplicates happen to both. The overlay first shows that it is scanning for duplicates and checking name, phone and email matches. If nothing matches, it says so plainly: no other records match by name, phone or email. If something does, it lists each match with the rep it is assigned to, the name, phone and email on the record, its status and when it was posted, and it marks how each one matched, so a rep can tell a phone match (almost always the same person) from a name only match (which might be a different Marcus). Name only matches are not merged unless the rep ticks them. That is deliberate. A phone number or an email is a strong signal; a name is a hint. The checkbox on each row is how a rep says yes, this is the same person, and the merge only touches the rows that were checked. The whole thing is scoped to the store's own account, so a merge never reaches another dealership's records and never touches a record that was already retired. On the phone app a rep works leads in the Leads view and sees the merged record like any other. Merging itself is a desktop task, which suits it; it is a decision a rep makes while looking at the details, not something to do one handed on the lot. #### What it replaces, and what duplicates cost a store Without a merge tool a store has two choices, and both are bad. The first is to leave the duplicates alone, which means two reps work one customer, the customer gets two sets of texts, the store's lead count is inflated, and any report on close rate by source is wrong because the same sale is attributed to a lead that was never the one that closed. The second is to delete the extra rows, which means the history on them goes with them: the first text Luis sent, the call recording from the provider lead, the note about the trade. A month later, when the customer says he already told someone about the lien on the trade, nobody can find it. Some CRMs charge for a data quality add on that does this; others require an export, a spreadsheet cleanup and a re-import, which is a weekend project a store does once and never again. In LeadLocate the merge is on the lead and is part of every plan. Because Lead Feeds Manager puts every source into one Leads view, the duplicate is visible in the same list where it will be merged, rather than hiding in a separate provider portal. The quieter cost is the one in the pay plan. When two reps have the same customer and the customer buys, somebody is getting a half deal and somebody is getting a conversation with the desk. A merged record with one owner and a note that says who merged what settles that before it becomes an argument. #### How does a merge protect the customer's history? Three things happen at the moment of a merge, and each one exists to keep the record honest. First, the CRM writes an audit note on the keeper describing the merge, so a manager reading the lead later knows the record was combined, when, and from what. Second, the merged rows are soft deleted rather than removed, which is the same retirement the trash bin uses elsewhere in the CRM; the CRM keeps what it knew. Third, the keeper is assigned to the rep who performed the merge, so the combined lead has one owner and the assignment history reflects the decision. From then on, the communications log on the keeper is the single record. Every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail that follows lands on it. The Customer Profile the store builds from the lead, with its encrypted personal information and its co-buyer, sits on one record rather than three. And when the lead becomes a deal in DealTracker, it starts from one lead with one history, which is what the finance office wants to see when it opens the deal. #### The compliance angle: one customer, one consent record Duplicates are a compliance problem before they are a tidiness problem. A customer who replied to one of the store's texts asking not to be contacted may have done so on the provider lead, while the website lead, owned by a different rep, keeps texting. The customer experiences that as the store ignoring the request, and the store experiences it as an exposure. Merging the records puts the customer's replies, the store's messages and the customer's status on one record that one rep is responsible for. The Do Not Call Blacklist is the other half of the answer: a blacklisted phone number or email is hidden from every CRM view, whichever feed it came through, so a duplicate that arrives after a customer asked to stop never reaches a rep's queue in the first place. Together, merge and blacklist mean a store can say with a straight face that it has one record per customer and one place where that customer's wishes are kept. The merge note is part of that record, so the answer to why two leads became one is written down rather than remembered. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on. Merge Duplicate Records is available on every lead and contact from the day an account is created. Open the lead, click Merge Duplicate Records, wait for the scan, check the rows that are the same person, and confirm. If the scan finds nothing, the overlay says no duplicates were found and the lead is left alone. A few habits make it work better. Merge from the newest record, because the newest one is marked as the Keeper and usually carries the customer's most recent contact details. Run the Phone Validator and Email Validator on the keeper afterward, so the surviving number and address show a validity dot on the lead. And after a large contact import, expect to merge a few, because a book of business almost always contains customers who are already in the CRM from a lead. If your store wants a scheduled sweep that finds duplicates across the whole account rather than one lead at a time, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What to pair it with Merge is the cleanup; three other features reduce how often it is needed. Lead Feeds Manager puts every source into one Leads view, so a duplicate is visible where it will be merged. Round robin lead assignment gives each lead one owner from the start, which makes the second Marcus obvious to the rep who already has the first. The Contact Import page explains how a store brings its book of business in without creating a duplicate for every past customer who later submits a lead. Merge Duplicate Records is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where it sits among the rest of the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows the lead views it lives in. #### Questions and answers Q: How does LeadLocate find duplicate leads? A: Merge Duplicate Records scans the store's own records for matches to the open lead by name, phone and email. Phone and email matches are shown as strong matches; name only matches are shown separately and are merged only if the rep checks them. Q: What happens to the merged records? A: The rows you check fold into the Keeper, which is the newest record. The CRM writes a note on the keeper describing the merge, assigns the keeper to the rep who merged, and retires the merged rows rather than erasing them, so the customer's history stays on one lead. Q: Can I merge contacts as well as leads? A: Yes. Merge Duplicate Records opens from a lead in the Leads view and from a contact in the Contacts view, and works the same way on both. Q: Will a merge ever touch another dealership's records? A: No. Every scan and every merge is scoped to your own account, and the CRM re-checks each selected record against your account before merging it, so a merge only combines records that belong to your store. Q: What if the scan finds nothing? A: The overlay tells you no other records match by name, phone or email, and the lead is left exactly as it was. Nothing is merged unless matches are found and you confirm them. Q: Is merging an extra cost or an add on? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### My Office: A Personal Desk Inside the CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/my-office My Office is the personal desk on the dock of LeadLocate CRM. Each user arranges a canvas of widgets for their own work: text to speech for reading a note aloud, AI images for a quick visual, a VIN decode, link previews, and saved spaces so a rep keeps one layout for the floor and another for the desk. It is included in every LeadLocate plan. #### What My Office is, in one sentence My Office is the personal desk inside LeadLocate CRM: a canvas each user lays out with the widgets they use, kept in saved spaces, with text to speech, AI images, a VIN decoder and link previews built in, one click from the dock. It is the one part of the CRM that is deliberately about the person rather than the store. The Workspace is where the store's tasks and appointments live; My Office is where a rep keeps their own way of working. Every salesperson already has a desk like this. It is the sticky notes on the monitor, the browser with thirty tabs, the notes app on a personal phone, the VIN decoder site bookmarked years ago, the image someone made for a social post. None of that lives in the store's system, which means none of it survives a new laptop, a new phone or a new employer. My Office puts that desk inside the CRM, where it is backed up, signed in with the same login as everything else, and next to the leads it exists to serve. The personal CRM for individual car salespeople page covers the wider case of a rep running their own book on the platform; this page is the desk. #### How a salesperson uses it on a normal day Eight in the morning, coffee, the dock. He opens My Office and it loads his desk space: a notes widget with the three customers he promised to call before ten, a link preview of the truck listing a customer texted him last night, and the VIN decode widget with the trade a customer mentioned on the phone, already decoded to year, make, model and trim so he knows what he is looking at before she pulls in. He taps text to speech on the long note a manager left him and listens while he checks the lead inbox. Midday he switches to his floor space, a lighter layout with the notes and the VIN decoder up front, because on the lot he wants two things and not ten. A customer asks what a certain color looks like on a certain body style and the store has no picture; he generates a quick AI image in the widget to show the idea, then walks her to the closest unit on the lot. It is not a photo of the car and he says so. It moves the conversation forward, which is what it was for. End of the day, back at the desk space, he drops links to the two deals he is working so they preview on his canvas tomorrow morning. Nothing about that day was in a personal notes app or on a sticky note. When the laptop is replaced next month, the desk is still there, because it lives on his account and not on the machine. #### Where it lives: the dock, spaces and widgets My Office is the first button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM, ahead of Marketing Tools, the Referral Program and Design Studio. It opens a canvas. Widgets are placed on the canvas and arranged the way the user likes; a layout is saved as a space, and a user keeps as many spaces as they want, one for the desk, one for the floor, one for month end. Switching spaces is a click. The widgets are the ones a salesperson reaches for during the day: notes, text to speech that reads a note or a pasted message aloud, an AI image generator for a quick visual, a VIN decode that turns a seventeen character VIN into a vehicle description, and link previews that unfurl any URL into a card with its title and picture so a desk full of links is readable at a glance. Everything on the canvas belongs to the signed-in user; it is a personal desk, not a shared board. For the shared board, Team Chat has channels, direct messages and polls for the whole store. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app carries the day-to-day tools, the inbox, the dialer, the VIN lookup and the Workspace, so the desk canvas is a desktop habit and the phone stays lean. #### What it replaces, and what a personal desk costs elsewhere Nobody buys a personal desk tool; they assemble one. A free notes app on a personal phone. A browser full of pinned tabs that disappear when the laptop is replaced. A VIN decoder website that shows six ads before the trim. An image tool with its own login, paid monthly by the rep, that the store has never heard of. A second phone for customers, which is the most expensive item on the list because of what it costs the store when the rep leaves and the customers go with the phone. My Office is part of the platform subscription, included alongside the inbox, desking and the communication tools in every plan, with the lead plans listed on the pricing page. It is not the biggest feature in the CRM, and it would be dishonest to sell it as one. Its value is that the rep's own way of working now lives inside the store's system, with one login, next to the lead record, backed up and still there when the laptop or the phone is replaced. That is worth more than the tools it replaces cost. #### The compliance angle: customer notes stay in the store's system The personal desk a rep builds on their own is where customer information quietly leaks out of the dealership. A note with a customer's name, number and what they can afford on a personal phone is outside the store's record keeping, outside its encryption, outside its opt out handling, and outside its reach when the employee leaves. It is also the note a customer would not expect to exist anywhere but at the store. My Office keeps that note inside LeadLocate CRM, on the user's account, under the store's User Management roles. The customer's actual record still lives in the Customer Profile, where personally identifiable information is stored encrypted, and the desk is where the rep keeps the working notes around it. When a rep leaves, their account is closed and their desk stays with the store rather than walking out in a pocket. The customer record itself, the one the store needs when someone is out, stays on the Customer Profile where every user with the right role finds it. It is a small feature with a large consequence: the store's customers stay the store's customers. #### How to turn it on Nothing to enable. Click My Office on the dock in LeadLocate CRM, add the widgets you want, drag them where you want them, and save the layout as a space. Make a second space for a different part of the day if it helps. Paste a VIN into the decoder, drop a link to see it preview, and try text to speech on a long note. The desk is yours from the first click, and every user in the store gets their own. A store that wants a particular widget on every rep's desk by default, a store-wide space a manager designs, or a widget the studio does not offer today can ask for it; that is available on request and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows the dock and the desk alongside the rest of the CRM. #### What to pair it with My Office is the rep's own corner; the tools around it are what make it useful. Pair it with the Workspace, where the store's appointments, reminders and to-dos live, so the personal notes on the desk and the assigned tasks on the Workspace are two clicks apart rather than two systems apart. Pair it with Jax, the AI assistant in the taskbar, for the questions a rep would otherwise open a search tab for. Pair it with Design Studio on the same dock for the cards and pieces a rep hands out, and with VIN decode and the vehicle database when the trade the rep decoded on the desk becomes a deal in DealTracker. For the whole store, Team Chat is the shared board and the Reports dashboard is the scoreboard. My Office is the place between them where one person keeps their day in order. The all features page lists everything else on the dock and in the menu. #### Questions and answers Q: What is My Office in LeadLocate CRM? A: A personal desk on the dock. Each user lays out a canvas of widgets, including notes, text to speech, AI images, a VIN decoder and link previews, and saves layouts as spaces. It is the rep's own corner of the CRM. Q: Is My Office shared with the team? A: No. The desk belongs to the signed-in user. Team Chat is the shared board for channels, direct messages and polls. The customer record itself stays on the shared Customer Profile, so the store never depends on one person's desk. Q: What are saved spaces? A: Named layouts of the canvas. A rep might keep a desk space with everything, a floor space with only notes and the VIN decoder, and a month end space. Switching is one click. Q: Are the AI images real photos of the car? A: No. They are generated visuals for illustrating an idea, such as a color on a body style, and a rep should say so when showing one. Real unit photos come from the store's inventory in Inventory Link. Q: Does My Office work on the phone? A: The desk canvas is a desktop tool. The LeadLocate mobile app carries the inbox, dialer, VIN lookup and Workspace so the phone stays lean on the lot. Q: Is My Office extra? A: No. It is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, including CRM Only. Every user in the store gets their own desk. ### OEM Incentives Showroom for Twenty Makes URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/oem-incentives-showroom The OEM Incentives Showroom is where LeadLocate surfaces manufacturer incentives for more than twenty makes. The incentives engine inside Inventory Link carries the programs, the Incentives Showroom shows them on the unit a salesperson is working inside the deal view of the LeadLocate CRM, and brand offer pages put the same offers in front of shoppers with a lead form beside them. #### What the OEM Incentives Showroom does The OEM Incentives Showroom puts the manufacturer's current programs for more than twenty makes on the vehicle in front of your salesperson, and on the brand page in front of your shopper, so both sides of the deal are working from the same offer. The engine behind it lives in Inventory Link and carries the programs; the Showroom is the view of them, inside the deal in the CRM and on the offer pages the platform builds for each make you carry. Incentives are where a listing becomes an offer. A vehicle with a price is a picture with a number. The same vehicle with the manufacturer's lease special, finance rate or cash incentive attached is something a shopper responds to, and something a salesperson can quote without leaving the desk to look it up. The Showroom exists so that the lookup is not a separate step, and so the number the shopper saw online is the number the salesperson quotes at the desk. It is part of the platform subscription rather than a separate incentive service, which is the point. A store should not need a third login and a second invoice to know what the manufacturer is offering on the car it is trying to sell today. #### How a dealership uses the Showroom on a normal day A salesperson has a customer at the desk on a new mid-size sedan, one of the twenty plus makes the engine covers. She opens the deal in the CRM, and the Incentives Showroom inside the deal view shows what the manufacturer is offering on that unit right now: the lease program, the finance rate, the customer cash. She does not walk to the tower to ask, she does not open a second browser tab and search, and she does not quote last month's program from memory. The offer is on the screen beside the vehicle, and the pencil she builds in the desking tool starts from it. Across town, a shopper who has been reading about that same sedan finds your brand page for the make. The current offers are on it, each in the card format that fits its type, with a lead form beside them. He picks the lease card, fills in the form, and the request lands in the CRM with the offer and the vehicle attached. When the salesperson calls him back, she is looking at the same program he saw. The conversation starts on the number rather than on a misunderstanding about it. The manager's part of the day is quieter than it used to be. Programs change, and the engine carries the current ones, so nobody prints a sheet for the sales floor on the first of the month and hopes everyone reads it. The salesperson who never remembers the rate and the one who always does are quoting the same thing. #### Where the Showroom lives: the deal view, the brand pages and the portal Inside the LeadLocate CRM, the Incentives Showroom is part of the deal view under Desking, so a salesperson working a deal sees the manufacturer programs on the unit without leaving the deal. It sits beside the worksheet, which is where a quoted incentive becomes a payment; the desking tool page covers that side of the desk. On the shopper side, the offers appear on the brand pages and brand hero pages Inventory Link builds for every make you carry, and on the dealer page that pulls your whole store together. Six offer card formats mean a lease special, a finance offer and a cash incentive each look like what they are, and one shared confirmation screen follows every submission so the experience is the same no matter which offer brought the shopper in. The brand offer pages page walks through those pages in detail. The engine itself runs inside Inventory Link, which opens from the My Inventory button in the CRM dock with single sign on. On the phone, the LeadLocate app carries the deal tracker desking view, so a salesperson working a deal from the lot sees the same offers the desk sees. #### What the Showroom replaces, and what incentive data costs elsewhere Most stores get their incentive information from some mix of the manufacturer's dealer portal, an incentive lookup subscription, a printed sheet from the desk manager and the memory of whoever has been there longest. The lookup subscription is a separate bill with a separate login. The printed sheet is stale by the second week. Memory is the worst of the three, because it is confident. The Showroom replaces the lookup as a separate step. The programs are on the unit in the deal view and on the brand page, from one engine, for more than twenty makes. For a store that carries one franchise, that is one make handled well. For a group, or an independent that sells across brands, or a broker who advertises what they can get rather than what they hold, it is the difference between quoting offers and guessing at them. The cost is the plan you are on. The engine and the Showroom are part of the platform subscription, month to month, and the pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: quote the program as written Incentive advertising is one of the places a store can get into trouble without meaning to. A rate quoted without its term, a lease payment without the amount due at signing, a cash offer advertised after it expired, a program for one region quoted in another. None of it is malicious; all of it comes from the offer living in someone's head or on a sheet instead of on the vehicle. The Showroom keeps the program with the vehicle. A salesperson quoting from the deal view is quoting the program the engine carries, and a shopper reading the brand page is reading the same one, in a card built for that offer type so a lease special and a finance rate are never dressed up as each other. When the offer and the vehicle arrive in the CRM together with a lead, the record shows what the shopper was responding to. That is a cleaner position than a screenshot of a sheet from the break room. Everything else about the deal stays where it belongs. Your lender relationships, your bureau account and your F&I process are yours; the Showroom informs the pencil, and the desking tool and SecureWebX carry the deal from there. #### How to turn the Incentives Showroom on There is no separate switch. Once your account is live and your inventory is in Inventory Link, from a feed, from an import of your own dealership website, or from auto broker inventory mode with no lot at all, the engine has the makes it needs and the Showroom shows the programs on the units you carry. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Brand pages for each make you carry are built automatically and carry the current offers. If your store sells a make outside the twenty plus the engine covers, or you want a program presented in a way the six card formats do not cover, that is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. To see the Showroom before you decide, the pre-recorded live demo shows a deal opened with the manufacturer's offers on the unit, and the contact page reaches a person who will pull up the programs on your own makes. #### What to pair the Showroom with The Showroom tells a salesperson what the manufacturer is offering; the desk turns that into a payment. Pair it with the EZ desking worksheets, so the incentive on the screen is the incentive in the pencil, and with the deal pages and pencil recap sheets that carry the number to the customer. On the shopper side, pair it with brand offer pages and the dealer page, where the offers live with a lead form beside them, and with the vehicle insert button in the CRM composers, so the follow up text carries the vehicle the offer applies to. Brokers pair it with auto broker inventory mode, which gives a broker with no lot brand offer pages connected instantly, with the manufacturer's programs on them. It is the feature that lets a broker advertise an offer on a car they can get rather than a car they are holding. The full picture of what surrounds the Showroom is on the all features page. #### Built so your store keeps selling The OEM Incentives Showroom is built so your store keeps selling. The manufacturer's current lease program, finance rate and customer cash sit on the vehicle inside the deal view and on the brand page the shopper is reading, so the desk and the customer quote the same number every time. Every deal your team has penciled, every worksheet already printed and every lead that arrived from a brand page is saved in the CRM and stays saved, waiting exactly where the salesperson left it. The manufacturer's dealer portal is still the manufacturer's, and your phones, your DMS and your website stay the store's own; the Showroom simply puts this month's program in front of the person writing the deal so nobody quotes from memory. Programs change, the engine carries the current ones, and the sales floor keeps writing deals on them. #### Questions and answers Q: Which makes does the incentives engine cover? A: More than twenty makes. If your store sells a make outside that set, coverage is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: Where does a salesperson see the incentives while working a deal? A: In the Incentives Showroom inside the deal view under Desking in the LeadLocate CRM, on the unit being worked, beside the worksheet where the offer becomes a payment. Q: Do shoppers see the same offers? A: Yes. The brand pages and the dealer page Inventory Link builds carry the current offers for each make you sell, in six offer card formats with a lead form beside them. A shopper who submits on an offer arrives in the CRM with the offer and the vehicle attached. Q: Does the Showroom pull credit or decide the deal? A: No. It shows the manufacturer's programs on the vehicle. The desking tool builds the pencil, SecureWebX handles the credit application, and your lender relationships and bureau account stay yours. Q: Do I need an inventory feed for the incentives to show? A: No. Inventory can come from a feed, from an import of your own dealership website, or from auto broker inventory mode with no lot at all. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Q: Is the Incentives Showroom an extra charge? A: No. The engine and the Showroom are part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page lists the current plans. ### OFAC Screening on Every Credit Application URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/ofac-screening OFAC screening in SecureWebX checks a credit applicant against the sanctions list maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, from inside the application record. The finance office runs the screening on the file, the result shows on the application, and the audit log keeps who ran it and when. It is part of every LeadLocate platform plan, with no separate screening vendor. #### What is OFAC screening, and why does a car dealership do it? The Office of Foreign Assets Control, part of the United States Treasury, publishes lists of individuals and entities that US businesses are prohibited from doing business with. The rule applies to everyone, not only banks, and a dealership selling and financing a vehicle is doing business. OFAC screening is the check of a customer's name against those lists before the deal proceeds. Most dealers know this obligation exists; the problem has always been making the check happen on every deal, and being able to prove afterward that it did. In SecureWebX, OFAC screening runs against the credit application record, inside the console, on the file the finance office is already working. The result is shown on the application and kept with it. That moves the check from a separate website someone visits when they remember to a step that sits on every application in the inbox. This page is the product side of the feature. The OFAC compliance software for car dealerships page explains what the screening obligation requires of a store, how to build the process around it and where a record layer fits; read that one for the compliance program, this one for the button. #### How a store runs OFAC screening on a normal day An application arrives from the website apply link on a Wednesday morning. The finance manager opens it from the inbox, reviews the applicant's details, and runs OFAC screening on the record before he does anything else with the file. The screening comes back clear, the result shows on the application, and the audit log records that he ran it and when. He assigns the application, sets the amount requested and moves it toward a lender. The screening took less time than reading this paragraph, and it happened on the file rather than in a tab he then had to screenshot and staple to a deal jacket. On a Friday a co-applicant deal comes in with an uncommon name, and the screening returns a potential match. The store's OFAC policy decides what happens next, and the store's counsel wrote it. The finance manager holds the deal, adds a note on the application recording what he saw and who he called, and follows the policy. Whatever the outcome, the application shows the screening, the note and the resolution, in order, with names and times. If anyone asks later, the answer is a record. #### What SecureWebX screens, and what it shows on the file The screening checks the applicant on the credit application against the OFAC sanctions list and reports the result on the application record. Because the check runs from the record, the name it checks is the name the applicant entered and signed, not a name retyped into a separate site. A co-applicant on the same application is part of the same file, so the finance office screens the people on the deal from the deal. The screening is run from the record by a console user whose role allows it, and because the console keeps a full audit log, the entry for the screening records that user and the time alongside every other action taken on the file. The result lives on the application next to everything else the file holds: the applicant's consent against versioned terms, the disclosures shown, the supporting documents, the stipulations, the lender shares and the decision. The audit log records who ran the screening and when. Records are archived, never deleted, so a screening run years ago is still on the file when a question about it arrives. #### Where OFAC screening lives On the application, in the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login. Open any application from the credit application inbox and OFAC screening is on the record. There is no separate screening tool, separate login or separate log to reconcile with the deal file. The screening sits in the same view as the stipulations, the supporting documents, the lender shares and the worksheets, so a finance manager working the file top to bottom passes the check on the way rather than leaving the console to do it. Users are invited into the console with roles, so a store decides who runs screenings. On the CRM side, the salesperson sees the application's status and can open it in SecureWebX to see the screening result if the store's roles allow it, so a rep who is asked whether a deal can proceed does not have to guess. #### What does OFAC screening in the console replace? It replaces the browser tab. In most stores the OFAC check is a website someone visits, a name typed by hand, and a screenshot printed and stapled into the deal jacket, on the deals where someone remembered. It replaces the binder of those printouts, the question of whether the check was done on the deal that closed on a busy Saturday, and the retyping that lets a transposed letter produce a clean result for the wrong name. It also replaces a line item. Compliance vendors sell dealership screening as a separate subscription with its own login and invoice, disconnected from the application it is about. Here the screening runs on the application inside SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, on the pricing page. The online credit application software page puts screening in the context of everything else an application system should do for a store. #### The compliance angle: the check, the record and the store's policy Two things matter to an examiner or a lawyer asking about a store's OFAC practice: was the check done on every deal, and can the store show it. Running the screening on the application record answers both. The screening is a step on the file rather than a separate habit, and the result and the audit log entry stay on the file under the archive, never delete rule, viewable in a watermarked PDF viewer with print and download gated, protected by two factor authentication on every sign in and encryption at rest. The decision stays with the store. A potential match is a fact on the file; what the store does with it is the store's OFAC policy, written by the store's counsel, and the finance office follows it. SecureWebX supplies the compliance program with the check and the record on every file, and the program itself stays the store's own, as it should. What SecureWebX provides is the check on every application and the proof that it ran. #### How do I turn OFAC screening on? It is on. OFAC screening is part of every application in the SecureWebX console, which is created with your LeadLocate account. Invite the finance office into the console with roles, open the first application, and the screening is on the record. If your store's policy calls for an additional screening step, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Each product is its own application under one login, so the finance office opens the console and works whether or not anybody else at the store is in the CRM that minute. Every screening result is written to the application the moment it runs, it stays on that file for as long as your retention policy says, and it is there for the auditor who asks for it a year later. The platform is built so your store keeps selling and every deal clears its compliance step on the way to funding. #### What to pair OFAC screening with Pair it with apply links, so the name being screened is the name the applicant typed and signed on their own phone. Pair it with Send to Lender, so the screening is on the file before the application goes to a lender. Pair it with the adverse action notice and the store's disclosures, so a file that could not proceed carries the full record of why. The all features page lists everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows an application worked from arrival to decision, screening included. #### Questions and answers Q: Do car dealerships have to run OFAC checks? A: The OFAC prohibition on doing business with listed persons applies to US businesses generally, and a dealership selling and financing vehicles is doing business. What a store's screening policy requires is for its compliance counsel; SecureWebX makes the check a step on every application. Q: Where do I run the screening? A: On the application record in the SecureWebX console. Open the application from the inbox, run OFAC screening, and the result shows on the file. The audit log records who ran it and when. Q: What happens if there is a potential match? A: The result shows on the application, and the store follows its own OFAC policy. The finance office records what it did in the application's notes, so the screening, the note and the resolution are on the file together. Q: Is the screening result kept? A: Yes. Records are archived, never deleted. The screening result and its audit log entry stay on the application for as long as the store needs them, next to the consent, disclosures, documents and decision. Q: Does OFAC screening in SecureWebX make my store compliant? A: Compliance comes from the store's program, and SecureWebX gives it what it needs from an application system: screening on every application and a record that it ran. The policy, and what to do on a match, are the store's and its counsel's. Q: Is there a separate charge for OFAC screening? A: No. It is part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, with no separate screening subscription. Plans are listed on the pricing page. ### One Customer Profile, Co-Buyer Included URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/customer-profile-with-co-buyer The Customer Profile in LeadLocate CRM is one shared buyer record for a customer and their co-buyer, with personal information encrypted at rest and a driver license and insurance card slot for each person. It opens from the lead or from the deal, so the salesperson, the desk and DealTracker all read the same names, numbers and addresses instead of retyping them at every step. #### What the Customer Profile does The Customer Profile is the one record in LeadLocate CRM that describes the people buying the car, as distinct from the lead that brought them in or the deal that is being structured for them. A lead is an inquiry; a deal is a set of numbers; a customer is a person, often two. The Customer Profile holds the buyer and the co-buyer together, with name, phone, email and address for each, and a place for each person's driver license and insurance card. The personal information in it is encrypted at rest. What makes it useful rather than just tidy is that it is shared. The profile is opened from the lead and from the deal, and both read from it. A salesperson who captured the co-buyer's phone number on the lot sees it on the deal; a desk manager who corrected the address on the deal page sees the correction on the lead. When the same household comes back for a second vehicle, the profile is already there. That is the difference between a CRM that stores a customer and a CRM that stores three copies of a customer and hopes they agree. The co-buyer is the part most CRMs treat as an afterthought, a second name typed into a notes field. In LeadLocate the co-buyer has the same fields as the buyer, their own license and insurance scans, and their own contact details, because in a large share of deals the second signer is the person who actually answers the phone. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day A couple comes in on a Saturday for a three row SUV. The husband submitted the lead, so the lead is in his name. On the lot the salesperson learns the wife will be the primary on the loan and her name will be first on the paperwork. He opens the lead, opens the Customer Profile, and adds her as the co-buyer with her cell number and email. He scans both driver licenses with the phone app; the driver license scanner reads them straight into the profile, one to the buyer slot and one to the co-buyer slot, and the insurance card from the glove box goes in the same way. Nobody typed a name. At the desk, the manager starts a deal from the lead. The deal page pulls the buyer and co-buyer from the profile, so the names, the address and both phone numbers are already on the pencil and on the customer facing deal page. When the deal page is shared to the customer's phone with a PIN, the CRM texts the passcode to the customer's number on the profile, and the co-buyer can be included in the same way. In the finance office, the SecureWebX application the customer completes carries a co-applicant section that the couple fills out on their own phone, described on the online credit application form page. Two weeks later the wife calls about the second key. The rep who answers searches the CRM, finds her by her own number, and opens the profile, which shows the deal, the vehicle and the husband's lead. The whole household is one click deep, which is how a phone call about a key turns into a service appointment and, eventually, the next car. #### Where it lives in the CRM The Customer Profile opens from the lead in the Leads view and from the deal in Desking. It is a page of its own, titled Customer Profile with the customer's name, with a Back button that returns to wherever it was opened from. The buyer and the co-buyer each have their contact fields and their document slots, labeled Co-Buyer Driver License and Co-Buyer Insurance Card on the second signer's side. The profile is scoped to the store's own account; a profile from another company login is not reachable from yours. On the phone app, the profile is where the driver license and insurance scans land. A rep uses the app's VIN lookup and driver license scan on the lot, and the identity scanner writes the license and the insurance card to the customer record rather than to a photo roll. The same scans are available inside DealTracker's deal jacket on the phone, so the documents a deal needs and the identity a profile needs come from the same camera. The profile also feeds the customer facing side. The deal page at the store's DealTracker address, the deal chat between customer and salesperson, and the PIN texted to the customer all use the numbers on the profile. That is why the profile matters more than a note field: the customer's own experience of the store depends on the phone number being right, once. #### What it replaces, and what a scattered customer costs The alternative is the customer described in five places. The lead has the husband's number from the website form. The deal has the address the desk typed from the license. The credit application has the wife's employer. The finance office has photocopies of two licenses in a folder. The phone in the salesperson's pocket has the wife's cell, which is the only number that gets answered. None of these agree, and the one that matters is the one the store does not control. The cost is paid in small amounts all day. The desk retypes the address and transposes two digits. The delivery coordinator calls the number on the lead, which is the husband at work, and the delivery slips a day. The CSI survey goes to an email the customer stopped checking. And when the salesperson leaves, the wife's cell leaves with him. A shared profile with encrypted fields, opened from the lead and the deal, is the store deciding that a customer's information belongs to the store, is entered once, and is correct everywhere or nowhere. Encryption at rest is the other half of what it replaces. A photocopied license in a folder, a customer's address in a spreadsheet and a co-buyer's number in a personal phone are all data the store holds without protecting. The profile holds the same data with personal information encrypted, in a system with roles, so the salesperson sees what a salesperson should and a manager sees the rest. The user roles and permissions page covers that side. #### Why does the co-buyer deserve a real record? In a large share of retail deals two people sign, and the CRM that only knows one of them is wrong about who the customer is. The second signer often has the stronger credit, the longer job history, the trade, or the final say. She is also, frequently, the one whose phone number the store never captured, because the lead came in under one name and nobody asked for the other. Giving the co-buyer a full set of fields means the store can text her the deal page, include her on the deal chat, keep her license and insurance card in the profile, and reach her directly about delivery. It means the SecureWebX application, which accepts a co-applicant inside the same five step form, starts with a co-buyer the CRM already knows. And it means that when the household is back in the market, the store can find the deal by either name. The deal pages with e-signature page describes the customer facing side that both signers see. #### The compliance angle: one record, encrypted, with a reason to exist A customer profile is the most personal record a dealership keeps outside the finance office, and the way it is kept is a compliance question before it is a convenience question. In LeadLocate the personal information on the profile is encrypted at rest, access is scoped to the store's own account, and the store's user roles decide who can reach it. The driver license and insurance card images live in the profile rather than in a phone's camera roll, which is where they end up when a store has no better place to put them. One record also means one consent context. The phone numbers on the profile are the numbers the customer and co-buyer gave the store, and the communications log on the lead records every text, call and email sent to them. A customer on the Do Not Call Blacklist is hidden from every CRM view, whichever record they are on. The store stores consumer data, and the Privacy Policy describes what is held; the profile is the place that data is kept properly rather than the place it leaks from. When a customer asks what the store has on file, the profile is the answer, and it is one page. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on. Every lead and every deal in the account has a Customer Profile behind it from the day the account is created. Open a lead, open the profile, fill in or scan the buyer, add the co-buyer, and it is shared from that moment. The phone app's driver license scan is the fastest way to fill it, and the identity scanner reads the insurance card the same way. If your store wants more on the profile, such as additional household members, custom fields for a particular franchise's requirements, or a profile export in a specific format for a system the store already runs, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The contact page is the place to describe it. #### What to pair it with The profile is the person; three other features are what the store does with the person. The driver license scanner fills it from the lot. EZ Desking worksheets pull the buyer and co-buyer onto the pencil. SecureWebX takes the same household through a credit application with a co-applicant on the customer's own phone. And merge duplicate leads keeps the household on one record when the co-buyer submits a lead of her own. The Customer Profile is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where the profile sits among everything else, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a lead becoming a deal with the customer carried across. #### Questions and answers Q: What is on the Customer Profile? A: Name, phone, email and address for the buyer and for the co-buyer, plus a driver license and insurance card slot for each. Personal information is encrypted at rest, and the profile is opened from the lead or from the deal so both read the same record. Q: Does the co-buyer get their own fields? A: Yes. The co-buyer has the same contact fields as the buyer and their own Co-Buyer Driver License and Co-Buyer Insurance Card slots, so the second signer is a full record rather than a name in a note. Q: How do I fill the profile without typing? A: Scan the driver license with the LeadLocate phone app. The identity scanner reads the license and the insurance card straight into the customer record, for the buyer and for the co-buyer. Q: Does the deal page use the profile? A: Yes. A deal started from the lead pulls the buyer and co-buyer from the profile onto the pencil and the customer facing deal page, and the PIN for that page is texted to the number on the profile. Q: Can another dealership see my customer profiles? A: No. Profiles are scoped to your own account. A profile that belongs to another company login is not reachable from yours. Q: Is the Customer Profile an extra cost? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Pencil Recap Sheets Customers Can Share URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/pencil-recap-sheets Pencil recap sheets are shared snapshots of a desked deal in LeadLocate CRM. From the Share menu next to Print, a salesperson turns any customer sheet version into a private link. The customer opens it, draws or highlights on it, adds notes and signs; the sheet freezes when signed, personal details are masked, and every view and mark is recorded. Included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. #### What a pencil recap sheet is, in one sentence A pencil recap sheet is the exact customer worksheet the desk would have printed, published as a private link instead of a piece of paper, with a drawing layer on top so the customer can mark it up, and a signature line so they can sign it. The word pencil is the old floor term for the first set of numbers a manager writes for a customer, and recap is what the customer asks for afterwards: send me what we talked about. This is that, without the photo of a printout in a text thread. The sheet is byte for byte the print version. The Share button next to Print on the deal captures the same sheet the print engine would produce, so the link the customer opens and the paper the desk keeps show the same numbers in the same layout. Six versions are available, the Dealer View and five customer views, each built for a different selling situation. The dealership desking software page covers desking in general; the print packets page covers the paper versions. This page is the link. #### How a desk manager uses it on a normal evening It is 8:15 and a customer who spent two hours at the store this afternoon has texted his salesperson: my wife wants to see the numbers. The manager opens the deal under Desking, checks the structure, and opens the Share menu. He picks the payment range version because the credit tier is not final and he does not want to commit to one rate, clicks the open in new window action to eyeball it, then clicks the copy action. The link lands on his clipboard with a small confirmation bubble, and he pastes it into the deal chat. At 8:30 the customer opens it on the couch. The page is titled with the vehicle and the deal number. His wife circles the middle cell with the highlighter, writes a sticky note asking whether the doc fee is negotiable, and he taps the pencil to underline the down payment. The manager sees the marks appear on his own screen because the sheet syncs live, and answers the doc fee question in the chat. At 8:50 the customer signs on the sheet. The signed sheet freezes: no more marks, no new numbers behind that link. In the morning, the deal history shows the share, the views, the marks and the signature, with the time of each. #### Where it lives: the Share menu on the deal and the sheet link On the desktop CRM the feature is the Share menu on the digital deal view under Desking, sitting next to the Print menu and styled to match it. Every row in the menu is a sheet version, and each row carries two actions: open in a new window, and copy the link. A divider separates the red Revoke All Links row at the bottom. The Print, Share and New Deal menus are mutually exclusive, so a manager is never looking at two open menus. The customer side is a short private link on the pencil recap domain. It has no navigation, no store menu and no index, just the sheet, the drawing tools under Show tools, zoom in and out for a phone screen, Print worksheet, and the Sign this worksheet action. The sheet is responsive, so the two column desk layout stacks on a phone. A salesperson can also open the same link from the LeadLocate mobile app to see what the customer is seeing. #### What the customer can do on the sheet The sheet is a shared, markable board. The customer picks up a pencil or a highlighter and draws on it the way people draw on paper at the desk: a circle around the option they like, a line through the one they do not, an arrow to a fee. Sticky notes hold a question or a counter. Marks are saved as they are made and sync to anyone else with the sheet open, so a manager at the desk and a spouse at home can work the same sheet at the same time. A Clear action removes marks. Every mark carries who made it, decided by the server rather than by the person drawing. Signing is its own step. The customer opens Sign here, signs with a finger or a mouse, and chooses Apply signature. The sheet then shows Signed and freezes: the drawing tools go away, and the freeze is enforced where marks are saved, not just in the toolbar, so a stale tab cannot add a stroke to a signed sheet. If the desk later re-shares the same version with new numbers, the old link shows the notice This worksheet is no longer current with a way back to the current one, so nobody negotiates against a superseded sheet. #### What the store controls: versions, re-share, view counts and revoke Each deal has one stable link per sheet version. Sharing the same version again refreshes the numbers behind that link rather than minting a new one, so a customer who saved the link sees the current sheet on reload. Every view is counted, which answers the question of whether the customer opened it before the follow up call. The sheet tab and the deal history are labeled with the vehicle and deal number, so a manager scanning ten open deals knows which sheet is which. When the deal is done, or a link was sent to the wrong number, Revoke All Links re-issues every sheet link for that deal at once. Old links stop opening, a red confirmation bubble tells the manager it is done, and the stored snapshots survive so the record of what was shared is intact. Revoke is deliberate and confirmed; it is not something a stray click does. The customer deal pages page describes the parallel controls on the full deal page. #### What it replaces and what that costs elsewhere The thing this replaces is a photo. A salesperson holds a phone over a printed worksheet, sends it, and the store now has a customer negotiating against a picture that may be crooked, cropped or already out of date, with the customer's name and phone number printed on it and forwarded to whoever. The other thing it replaces is the customer's own handwriting on a sheet that goes home in a purse and never comes back, which is where the counteroffer lived and why nobody at the store knows what it was. Pencil recap sheets are part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription. There is no per sheet fee and no separate signing product to license. The sheet comes from the same print engine the desk already uses, so there is nothing new to learn: pick the version you would have printed and share it instead. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: masked details, a frozen signature and a record A shared sheet is going to be forwarded, so it is built to be forwarded. Before a snapshot is stored, the buyer and co-buyer name, phone, email and address are replaced with blurred, same shape scrambles; the original text never reaches the stored sheet or the page source, while the figures, the vehicle, the deal number and the salesperson stay readable. The link itself is a long random token that is never all digits, the page is not indexed, and it sends no referrer. Behind the sheet is an append only record of everything that happens to it: each view, each mark, each clear, the signature, and any revoke, with the time and the network location it came from, resolved locally so no customer address leaves the box. The signature is applied to the sheet as it stood at that moment and the content is fingerprinted, so a signed recap is a specific document, not a living page. Every customer sheet also carries the same disclaimer as the printed one: not a contract, all figures estimates until final lender approval. This is a record of the presentation, and the store's own compliance program and final contract paperwork sit on top of it. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with There is nothing to switch on. The Share menu is on every deal in every LeadLocate CRM account, and the first share takes the time it takes to pick a version and copy a link. The one setup step worth doing is the store logo and colors in the website editor's Branding tab, so the sheet carries your identity. The pre-recorded live demo shows a sheet being shared, marked and signed. Pair it with the EZ Desking worksheets that produce the numbers, the deal chat where the link goes out and the questions come back, the print packets for the customer who wants paper, and the Road to Sale checklist to mark the payment step done once the sheet is signed. The all features page lists the rest. #### Questions and answers Q: Is the shared sheet the same as the printed one? A: Yes. The Share action captures the exact sheet the print engine would produce for that version, so the link the customer opens and the paper the desk keeps show identical numbers and layout. Q: Can the customer write on it? A: Yes. Pencil and highlighter strokes, sticky notes and a clear action are under Show tools. Marks save as they are made and sync live, so a manager and a customer at home can work the same sheet at the same time. Q: What happens when the customer signs? A: The sheet shows Signed and freezes. The drawing tools go away and the freeze is enforced where marks are saved, so nothing can be added afterwards. The signature is applied to the sheet as it stood at that moment. Q: What if the numbers change after I share? A: Re-share the same version and the link shows the new numbers. A signed sheet stays frozen, and a superseded link shows a notice that the worksheet is no longer current with a way to the current one. Q: Can I take a shared sheet back? A: Revoke All Links on the deal re-issues every sheet link for that deal at once. Old links stop opening and the stored snapshots survive for your record. Q: Does the sheet show the customer's personal information? A: No. Buyer and co-buyer name, phone, email and address are masked before the snapshot is stored, so a forwarded link carries the figures and the vehicle but not the person. ### Phone Validator: Weed Out Dead Numbers Before You Dial URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/phone-validator The Phone Validator is a tool inside LeadLocate CRM, under Marketing Tools on the dock, that checks a list of phone numbers before your store calls or texts them. Paste numbers one per line or upload a CSV, name the list, and the results come back with a Do Not Call flag per number, a report link and a row in the lookup history. Validity also shows as a dot on the lead. Part of every plan. #### What the Phone Validator does The Phone Validator checks whether the numbers on a list are worth dialing or texting, flags the ones a store should not contact, and records the result where the rest of the CRM can see it. That is the one sentence version. The dock tile that opens it reads Weed out dead numbers, and the page inside is titled Phone Number Lookup: a List Name field, a box that takes one number per line, a CSV File upload for a list from a spreadsheet, and a Results view with a Do Not Call column, a Scrubbed column and a Not checked marker for numbers that have not been run yet. Below the form is Phone Lookup History, a table with Date, List Name, Pulled By, Total Number and a Report Link for every run, so a manager can see that the service customer list was checked last week by the BDC lead and open the report rather than spending credits to run it again. It is a separate tool, built for the person who owns the store's outbound calling and texting, and it has a sibling: the Email Validator does the same work for addresses. Both sit under Marketing Tools with Bulk Texting, Texting Chatbots, Text Automation, Voicemail Drops, Bulk Email and Email Automation. The full features list shows where they fit, and the caller ID and contact validation page covers the wider set of phone hygiene tools this one belongs to. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day The BDC manager at a store has a Saturday sale coming and a list of six hundred customers who inquired about a truck in the past year. He wants the BDC to call the list Thursday and Friday and send a bulk text Saturday morning. Some of those numbers were typed wrong at a desk. Some belong to people who changed carriers or dropped the line. And some belong to people who have asked, somewhere, not to be called, which is the group that turns a sale announcement into a complaint. So he opens the CRM, clicks Marketing Tools on the dock, then Phone Validator. He names the list, uploads the CSV, and runs it. The Results view comes back with the Do Not Call flags and the scrubbed numbers, the run lands in the Phone Lookup History with his name on it, and he builds the call list from what is left. Thursday morning the BDC agents open the leads and dial from the softphone in the browser, and every number they reach is one that was worth reaching. The same check runs in miniature on every lead. The lead detail page carries a validity dot for the phone number, so an agent about to click to call sees whether the number was checked and what it came back as. If the dot says the number is dead, she goes to the email or asks for a better number in the first reply, instead of dialing a disconnected line, marking the lead as no answer, and moving on from a customer who was never actually reached. #### Where the Phone Validator lives in the CRM On the dock. The bottom taskbar in LeadLocate CRM carries My Office, Marketing Tools, Referral Program, Design Studio, My Inventory, SecureWebX, Reports, Feedback, More Options and Jax. Click Marketing Tools and the Phone Validator is one of eight tiles, the one that reads Weed out dead numbers. Every user who can see the dock can find it, though in practice it is run by a manager with a list rather than by a salesperson between customers. The results also live on the lead. Validation results are shown as validity dots on the lead record, next to the phone number and the email address, so the person working the lead sees the outcome of a check a manager ran on a whole list without opening the tool. That shared result is what turns a marketing hygiene job into something the sales floor uses on the next call. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app shows the same lead record with the same dot, alongside the VoIP dialer and the text composer, so a salesperson on the lot knows whether the number is live before he taps Call. The list tool itself is a desktop job, and the mobile app shows its results rather than its form. #### Do Not Call, scrubbed, and what the columns mean The Results view has two columns that matter most. Do Not Call flags a number the store should not contact, and Scrubbed shows the number has been through the check. A number marked Not checked has not been run yet, which happens when a list is added to but the new rows have not been validated. A manager who sees Not checked on a list before a call session runs it again, and the history table records the second run next to the first. The Do Not Call flag is the one that keeps a store out of trouble. The Phone Validator is the list side of that protection; the lead side is the DNC Blacklist page under Billing and Admin, which blocks inbound spam in both directions and runs a live do not call lookup on a number. Together they cover the two ways a bad number reaches a salesperson: on a list a manager built, or on a lead that arrived on its own. Validation draws on lookup credits, shown as a Credits figure on the page and topped up from My LeadLocate, the account portal, so a manager knows before a large run whether the whole list will be checked. The tool checks numbers; it does not touch leads. Every lead delivered to your store is delivered whether or not its number validates, and a lead with a dead number is still a lead with an email address and a name. #### What it replaces and what a bad list costs The direct replacement is a standalone phone lookup service: a separate account, an export from the CRM, an upload, a download, an import back, and a spreadsheet nobody trusts a week later. The steps are the problem. Every one of them is a reason the check gets skipped before a call session, and a skipped check is how a BDC spends Thursday dialing disconnected lines and how a store texts a number on a do not call list on Saturday morning. The cost of a bad list is paid twice. The first payment is time: an agent who dials thirty dead numbers in an hour has made no contacts and logged thirty no answers that will be worked again next week. The second is exposure: a sale text to a number that should not have been contacted is a complaint at best. A list checked two clicks from the dialer, with the Do Not Call flag on the same screen as the number, is how a store avoids both. The what to expect from car sales leads page explains why a lead that is hard to reach is still worth reaching, which is exactly why the number has to be right. The Phone Validator is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only to the lead plans, with lookup credits managed from the account portal. The pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: a checked list with a name and a date on it Calling and texting rules are stricter than email rules, and the record matters more. The Phone Validator supports a store in two ways. First, the Do Not Call flag surfaces the numbers a store should not contact before anyone contacts them, on a list built for calling or texting. Second, the Phone Lookup History records that the store checked the list, when, by whom and how many numbers, which is the ordinary diligence a manager wants on file when a question is asked later. The validator is about hygiene and flags, not consent. A number that is live and not flagged is still a number that should only be texted with the customer's permission, and consent lives in the lead record and the communications log, which records every call, text and voicemail with its date. Texting from the CRM carries delivery status on every message and handles opt outs, and the two way texting inbox page covers that side. The DNC Blacklist handles the lead that arrives already on a list, and the blacklist import brings a store's own do not contact list in so it applies everywhere. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on. The Phone Validator is part of LeadLocate CRM from the day the account is created and appears under Marketing Tools for every user with access to the dock. The first run takes a list and a name. If the store's contacts are not in the CRM yet, contact import brings the spreadsheet in first, and the validator can be run on the imported list before any call list or campaign list is built from it. Lookup credits are managed by the Master Administrator from My LeadLocate, and the Credits figure on the validator page shows the balance before a run. Our team walks through the tool on the onboarding call, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a list going in and the Results view coming back if you want to see it before you sign up. #### What to pair the Phone Validator with Pair it with Bulk Texting and Voicemail Drops before any list send, because a text or a drop to a dead number is a credit spent on nothing and a text to a flagged number is worse. Pair it with the VoIP softphone and click to call, where the validity dot on the lead is the difference between a contact and a no answer. Pair it with the DNC Blacklist so the list side and the lead side of do not call protection are both covered. Pair it with the Email Validator so a list is checked on both channels in one sitting, and with contact import for any list arriving from outside the CRM. Pair it with tracking phone numbers and caller ID verification, which keep the store's outbound number trusted in the same way the validator keeps the list clean. And pair it with the Reports dashboard on the dock, where call activity by user and by day shows whether cleaner lists are producing more conversations, which is what the BDC manager is measured on. #### Questions and answers Q: Is the Phone Validator free with LeadLocate? A: The tool is part of every plan, from CRM Only up. Lookups draw on credits that the Master Administrator tops up from My LeadLocate, and the Credits figure on the page shows the balance before a run. Q: How do I check a list of phone numbers? A: Open Marketing Tools on the dock, choose Phone Validator, give the list a name, then paste numbers one per line or upload a CSV file. The Results view shows Do Not Call and Scrubbed per number, and the run appears in the Phone Lookup History with a Report Link. Q: Does it flag do not call numbers? A: Yes. The Results view has a Do Not Call column. For a single lead that arrived on its own, the DNC Blacklist page under Billing and Admin runs a live do not call lookup on the number and blocks inbound spam in both directions. Q: Do results show on the lead? A: Yes. Validity dots on the lead record show the outcome for the phone number and the email address, so an agent sees whether a number has been checked before clicking to call. Q: Does validating change which leads I receive? A: No. Every lead delivered to your store is delivered regardless of whether its number validates. The validator is a hygiene tool for your outbound calling and texting lists, not a filter on your leads. Q: What does Not checked mean in the results? A: The number has not been run through the validator yet, usually because rows were added to a list after the last run. Run the list again and the new rows are checked, with the second run recorded in the history. ### Print Packets, Envelopes and First Class Postage URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/print-packets-and-mail Print packets are the paper side of DealTracker in LeadLocate CRM. The Print menu on any deal produces a Dealer View, five one page customer sheets including one with payment ranges, a profit and loss worksheet and a reservation confirmation. #10 window envelope templates and First Class postage with a printed indicia let the store mail the packet from the desk. Included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. #### What print packets do, in one sentence Print packets turn the deal on the screen into paper a customer can hold, in the version that fits the moment, and then into an envelope with postage on it when the customer is not in the building. Plenty of desking tools print. The difference here is that the print engine is the same one behind the shared pencil recap sheets and the customer deal pages, so what prints is what the customer saw online, to the penny, and the envelope and postage steps are part of the same flow rather than a separate errand. The Print menu lives on the digital deal view under Desking, next to Share. It offers a Dealer View and five Customer View sheets, and the desk manager picks one the way a manager picks a close: by the customer in front of him. The dealership desking software page covers the desk itself; this page is about what comes out of the printer and what happens to it next. #### How a store uses it on a normal day Morning: a customer at the desk wants three options and no lecture. The manager prints the first customer version, three option columns with the middle one featured and the payment block last, and slides it across. Afternoon: an engineer who wants to see every line item. The manager prints the fourth version, which puts the payment range grid on top of a full itemized ledger, and lets him read. Late afternoon: a couple who cannot agree on a budget. The third version, a large range board with no committed rate and plenty of white space below it for the manager to write on by hand. Evening: a customer who left at noon without deciding and who, by her own account, reads paper better than a phone. The salesperson prints the fifth version, the four square, plus a reservation confirmation, folds them into a #10 window envelope using the envelope template so the address shows through the window, prints the First Class postage indicia onto the sheet, and drops it in the outgoing mail. The deal history records the print. Nobody drove to the post office, nobody hand wrote an envelope, and the customer gets the same numbers her deal page shows. #### The five customer versions and what each one is for The five customer sheets share one design system, one header, one footer and one disclaimer, and deliberately different guts, because a sheet is a selling tool and different customers need different sheets. The first is the commitment close: three option columns only, the middle one featured, detail held back so the conversation stays on the payment. The second is a guided walkthrough with numbered steps in the order a manager narrates face to face, from customer information through vehicle, pricing, trade, down and rebates, taxes and structure, with the payment reveal last. The third is the budget conversation: a large payment range board with rates uncommitted and handwriting room below. The fourth, Details with payment ranges, is the proof sandwich for the analytical buyer or the finance turnover: information, then the range grid with totals, then the full itemized ledger. The fifth is the modern four square: people and car on top, the payment matrix in the center, the ladders at the bottom. Every version is one page. The finance grid honors per cell rate ranges, so a cell can read as a range rather than a single number where the desk set one. The lease version prints lease details and lease ranges. Cash prints three simple tiles. The Dealer View prints everything the screen shows, including the capped trade credit annotation, taxed negative equity, the full lease upfront tax itemization and the multi pencil grid with its rate rows and lender per row, with a manager notes box that grows to fill the page. A separate one page Deal Profit & Loss worksheet prints for the sales manager, and a customer reservation confirmation prints for the buyer who has put a vehicle on hold. #### Envelopes and postage printed from the same sheet The mailing half is where most CRMs stop and this one keeps going. Envelope sheet templates lay the customer's address in the exact place a #10 full window envelope shows it after a tri fold, so the printed sheet is the envelope insert and the address label at once. A perforated variant carries a tear off stub. First Class postage is bought from inside the software and printed on the sheet as an indicia, the postal service's own printed postage mark, which is valid to drop in any mailbox without a permit or a trip to the counter. The address is standardized at purchase, and a sent mail archive keeps every piece already paid for, with a view and reprint action per piece. A single deal packet is the common case, but the same tools mail a batch: upload a list, rate it, buy postage for all of it, print the sheets and fold. That is how a store mails a service reminder, an equity offer or a lease end letter to a list from the CRM without a mail house. The bulk email and bulk texting tools cover the digital versions of the same outreach. #### Where it lives: the Print menu, the deal, and the scanner packets The Print menu is on every deal in the digital deal view and inside the EZ Desking popup, so a manager can print from the worksheet or from the deal without leaving either. Print never submits the form, so a manager can print a worksheet that is still being built and carry right on building it. The one page P&L is its own action, Print a one-page Deal P&L worksheet, and the reservation confirmation is Print customer reservation confirmation. Two more packets print from the scanners on a lead. The driver license and insurance card scanner produces an identity scanner packet from the documents a customer scanned in with a phone, and the trade info scanner produces a packet of the registration, title and payoff documents plus vehicle photos; both have a Print Packet action in their modal. The driver license scanner and deal jacket and QR intake pages cover how those documents arrive. The mobile app does not carry the print engine; printing is a desktop job, and the shared link is the phone's version of paper. #### What it replaces and what that costs elsewhere The paper side of a deal is usually a mix: a worksheet printed from a spreadsheet or a desking product, a hand addressed envelope, a stamp from the drawer, and a stack of blank forms for the customer who wants a copy of anything. A mail house handles the big lists at a per piece price with a minimum and a lead time. A separate print product formats the sheets and bills per rooftop. None of them know which customer, which deal or which version was sent. Print packets, envelope templates and postage are part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription; the store pays only the postage it buys, at the postal service's own rate, and prints on its own printer. Every printed sheet is tied to the deal and every mailed piece is in the sent archive. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: what a printed sheet promises and does not Paper outlives a conversation, so every customer sheet is printed with the same disclaimer in the same place: this is not a contract, all figures are estimates until final lender approval, followed by the state liability text and the name of the person who prepared it. Odometer figures are marked with a footnote on customer sheets so a printed mileage cannot be read as a certified one, including the trade in miles. The range versions never print a single committed payment before the credit tier is known, only a band. The dealer copy is labeled for internal use and carries the manager's notes and the rate spread; it is the one sheet that is not meant to leave the building, and the menu says so. Mailed pieces carry a standardized address, printed postage with a tracking barcode, and a sent archive entry the store can reprint. A store's own disclaimer language goes on its sheets through the Worksheet disclaimer setting. None of this makes a store compliant on its own; it makes the paper trail complete and consistent, which is what a compliance review actually asks for. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with Printing is on for every deal from the first login. Envelope templates and postage are set up on request: our team puts the mailing tools in production for your dealership with a postage balance the store funds, and from then on postage is bought and printed from the software. Set the Worksheet disclaimer and the store branding once. The pre-recorded live demo shows a deal being desked and printed. Pair it with the EZ Desking worksheets the sheets come from, the pencil recap sheets for the customer who would rather have a link, the customer deal pages for the signature, and Design Studio for the business card and referral card that go in the envelope with the packet. The all features page lists everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: Which customer sheet should I print? A: It depends on the customer. Three option columns for a payment buyer, the numbered walkthrough for a first time buyer, the range board for a budget conversation, Details with payment ranges for the analytical buyer or the finance turnover, and the four square for the manager who works that way. All five print on one page. Q: Do the printed numbers match the deal page and the shared sheet? A: Yes. The print engine, the pencil recap share and the customer deal page all read the same deal, and the shared sheet is captured from the print output itself. Q: How does the envelope work? A: An envelope sheet template places the customer address where a #10 full window envelope shows it after a tri fold, so the printed sheet is both the insert and the address. A perforated variant adds a tear off stub. Q: Is the postage real postage? A: Yes. First Class postage is bought from inside the software and printed on the sheet as an indicia, the postal service's printed postage mark, valid to drop in any mailbox. The address is standardized at purchase and the piece is kept in a sent mail archive with reprint. Q: Can I print from my phone? A: Printing is a desktop job from the deal view or the EZ Desking popup. From the phone, share the pencil recap link or the deal page instead; it shows the same sheet. Q: Is any of this extra? A: Printing, the five customer versions, the dealer copy, the P&L and the envelope templates are part of every LeadLocate CRM plan. Postage is bought at the postal service rate from a balance the store funds. ### RCS Messaging With SMS Fallback for Dealerships URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/rcs-messaging-with-sms-fallback RCS messaging with SMS fallback in LeadLocate CRM sends a message as RCS when the customer's phone and carrier support it and as a standard SMS when they do not, automatically, in the same conversation thread, with the same delivery status on the bubble. A rep sends one message; the system decides the format. No second list, no second tool. #### What RCS with SMS fallback does, in one sentence RCS messaging with SMS fallback means a salesperson sends one message from the two way texting inbox and the platform delivers it as RCS to a phone that can receive RCS and as plain SMS to a phone that cannot, without the rep choosing, without the customer noticing and without splitting the store's contacts into two lists. The fallback is automatic and it happens per message, per handset, so a household with one phone on each side of the line gets each message in the format that phone understands. RCS is the standard that succeeds SMS on modern phones. Where the handset and carrier support it, a message can carry more than 160 characters, sharper images and a richer presentation than a bare text. The RCS marketing for car dealerships page explains the standard and why the fallback matters more than the features. This page is the product side: what the LeadLocate CRM does with it, where it lives and what a store has to do to use it, which is very little. #### How a rep uses it on a normal day, which is to say without thinking about it Here is the scene on the floor. The rep never picks a format; she just uses the inbox. A customer asked about a certified sedan, so she opens the thread, drops the unit in with the vehicle button, adds a line about the weekend hours and hits Send. The customer has a phone that supports RCS, so the message arrives as RCS with the photos rendered cleanly. The bubble on her screen shows Delivered. The customer's spouse, on an older phone, texts the same number from a second line an hour later; her reply to that thread goes out as SMS with the MMS attached, because that phone does not do RCS. The bubble shows Delivered. She never saw a format choice, and neither did either customer. That is the design. A dealership does not have a texting strategy and an RCS strategy. It has customers with whatever phones they have, and a rep who needs to reach all of them from one screen. The format is a detail the platform handles, the way it handles which tracking number the reply lands on. If a delivery in either format fails, the status says Failed and the rep calls, exactly as she would for any text. #### Where it lives in the CRM There is no RCS menu, and that is the point. RCS runs inside the same texting stack as everything else: the SMS inbox under the Messaging menu, the Send a Text button in the top bar, the single thread view, the composer in the LeadLocate mobile app under Text in the dock. A message that went out as RCS sits in the thread next to one that went out as SMS, both with a status, both in the lead's communications log, both marked with who sent them. Inbound works the same way. A customer's reply, in either format, lands in the same conversation and triggers the same Text Reply Alert to the rep's phone and the same Text Message Sound at the desk. Pictures a customer sends render inline whether they came as RCS media or as MMS. The lead record, the Customer Profile and the delivery statuses are format agnostic, which is what allows a manager to read a thread from top to bottom without a legend. #### Why the fallback matters more than the format Any messaging vendor can show a demo of a rich message on a phone that supports it. The question a dealer should ask is what happens on the phone that does not, because a store's customer base is not a demo. Some fraction of any list is on a handset or carrier that does not handle RCS, and a system that only sends RCS either fails those messages or makes the rep maintain two lists and guess. Both of those outcomes cost deals, and the second one also costs the rep's trust in the tool, which is the more expensive loss. Automatic fallback removes the question. Every message reaches every customer in a format their phone understands, and the richer format is a bonus on the phones that can show it rather than a requirement the store has to manage. The practical result for a sales floor is one inbox, one habit, one record. That is also why RCS here is not sold as a separate product with a separate bill. It is part of the texting stack on every plan on the pricing page. #### What it replaces, and what a second channel costs elsewhere Stores that have tried RCS through a standalone vendor usually describe the same experience: a separate platform, a campaign builder that is not their CRM, a list that has to be exported and uploaded, and no idea afterwards which customers received what. The rep on the floor never sees it, so it becomes a marketing tool rather than a sales tool, and the reply from a customer lands somewhere the salesperson is not looking. Inside the CRM, RCS costs nothing extra and replaces nothing the rep knows. There is no upload, because the contacts are already the leads. There is no separate reporting, because the statuses are on the bubbles and in the communications log. And there is no gap between marketing and sales, because a customer's reply to a rich message opens in the thread the rep already owns, on the phone in their pocket. #### The compliance angle: same consent, same opt out, same record A richer message is still a message to a consumer, and the rules do not relax because the format improved. The LeadLocate CRM applies the same handling to RCS that it applies to SMS. A stop keyword opts the customer out and adds the number to the two way blacklist regardless of the format their reply arrived in. Help keywords get a reply that identifies the store and how to reach it. The DNC Blacklist runs its live do not call lookup on the number, not on the channel. Nothing about RCS bypasses the store's consent practice, and a store should walk away from any vendor suggesting a new format is a new permission. The record is also identical. Every RCS message, its media and its delivery status are stored with the lead alongside SMS, MMS, calls, emails and voicemails, so the answer to what did we send this customer is one complete record, whichever format the phone supported that day. The consumer's information stays in the encrypted Customer Profile either way. #### How to turn it on There is nothing for the store to switch on. RCS with SMS fallback is part of the texting stack from the first message, on the store's tracking numbers, on the desktop and in the mobile app. A rep sends; the platform picks the format. Where a store wants a specific RCS configuration for its own sender, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The platform is built so your store keeps selling. Every message your team has sent sits in the thread on the customer's record and stays there, the tracking numbers are the store's own, and the customer keeps what arrived on their phone in whatever format it rendered. If you want to see it before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows a vehicle going out from the inbox; the customer's phone decides how it renders. #### What to pair it with RCS earns its keep on messages that carry something visual, so pair it with the features that make a message worth looking at. The vehicle button in the composer sends a real unit with photos and price, which is the message a car shopper actually wants; when the inventory comes from Inventory Link, that unit is the one on the lot today. Trackable short links put a booking page, a credit application apply link or a deal page behind a short URL with click stats, so the store knows the customer opened it whatever format the message took. For volume, Bulk Texting and Text Automation send through the same stack, so a store wide message or an automated follow up gets the same per handset format decision as a one to one text. And the Phone Validator's validity dots on the lead tell a rep, before sending anything, whether the number can receive texts at all. The complete list is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: What happens if the customer's phone does not support RCS? A: The message goes out as a standard SMS, with any attachment as MMS, automatically. The rep sends one message and the platform decides the format per handset. The bubble shows the same Delivered, Not delivered or Failed status either way. Q: Do I need a separate list or tool for RCS? A: No. RCS runs inside the same texting inbox, the same composer, the same mobile app and the same tracking numbers as SMS. Contacts are the leads already in the CRM, and replies land in the thread the rep already owns. Q: Does a customer's STOP reply work the same on RCS? A: Yes. A stop keyword opts the customer out and adds the number to the two way blacklist regardless of format, and help keywords get a reply identifying the store. Consent and opt out are tied to the number, not the channel. Q: Is RCS an extra charge? A: No. RCS with SMS fallback is part of the texting stack on every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are listed on the pricing page. Q: Can I see which format a message was delivered in? A: Every message sits in the thread with its delivery status and sender, and is written to the lead's communications log. A manager reads the conversation top to bottom without needing to know the format; the store's record is the same either way. Q: Can I set up a branded RCS sender for my dealership? A: A dealership specific sender configuration is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Reach us through the contact page and we will walk through what your store needs. ### Referral Program With Real Payouts URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/referral-program-with-payouts The Referral Program in LeadLocate CRM is a standalone page on the dock where a store runs referral campaigns, gives every salesperson a personal referral link and the team a shared one, collects referrals through a public form, and sends real gift card style payouts from Payout Settings, with a Payout History for every reward. It is part of every LeadLocate plan. #### What the Referral Program does, in one sentence The Referral Program in LeadLocate CRM gives a dealership a working referral engine: a public form a happy customer fills out to refer a friend, a personal referral link for each salesperson and a shared link for the team, referral campaigns the store designs, and real payouts, gift card style rewards sent from inside the CRM and logged in a Payout History. That last part is what most programs lack. The automotive CRM with a referral program page explains why a referral program has to capture, attribute, remind and reward to work at all; this page is the tool that does those four things. Referrals are the cheapest customers a dealership acquires and the least likely to be handled well, because the process usually lives on a sticky note and the reward usually arrives as a check someone forgot to cut. A program with real payouts changes the customer's math. Refer a friend, the friend buys, a reward arrives. When that sequence is reliable, people repeat it. #### How a store runs it on a normal month A customer takes delivery on the third. The salesperson's delivery text, sent from the CRM, ends with his personal referral link. The customer's brother-in-law is looking for a truck, so a week later she opens the link and lands on the store's referral form: her name, his name, his phone, a note that he wants a crew cab under a budget she names. That submission becomes a lead in the inbox, sourced to her referral and assigned to the salesperson whose link she used. The Referral Program page shows the referral pending against her name. The salesperson works the lead the way he works every lead, with the difference that the first text opens with "your sister-in-law mentioned you were looking." Eleven days later the brother-in-law buys. The manager opens the Referral Program page, finds the referral, and clicks Send Referral Payout. The reward, in the amount the store set in Payout Settings, goes to the customer who referred him, and the line appears in Payout History with the date and amount. The customer gets her reward the same day the deal funds, and the salesperson gets a second delivery text to send with the same link. At the end of the month the general manager reads Payout History next to the deals it produced. Every reward is tied to a name, a referral and a sale. That is a referral program a store can defend to its accountant and its customers in the same breath. #### Where it lives: the Referral Program on the dock, links, form and Design Studio The Referral Program has its own button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM, next to Design Studio and My Office, so it is one click from anywhere. The page carries Your Personal Referral Link for the signed-in user and the Shared Team Referral Link for the store, each with a click to copy, so a rep pastes a link into a text in seconds and a manager puts the team link on a sign at the service counter. Payout Settings holds the reward amount and the payout connection; Payout History lists every reward sent. The customer side is the public referral form, reached from those links and from the store's public booking page, where a Referrals pop-up opens the same form. The form asks for the referrer's details, the full name of the person being referred, what they are looking for, and an optional note on budget, timeline or a specific model. The website editor's Referrals tab controls how the program appears on the store's site, and the form link can be copied from settings for use anywhere. On the print side, Design Studio on the dock builds a referral card, the physical piece a salesperson hands over at delivery with the link on it. On mobile, the referral leads arrive in the same inbox as everything else in the LeadLocate mobile app. #### What it replaces, and what referral software costs elsewhere The standalone referral products sold to dealerships charge a monthly platform fee, add a per-reward fee on top, and live outside the CRM, so the referral arrives as an email that someone has to turn into a lead by hand. Attribution breaks at that step, because the person who typed the lead did not type the source. Payouts are a separate spreadsheet and a separate trip to buy gift cards. The customer referral program software page walks through the five jobs a referral tool has to do and where the standalone versions fall down. Inside the CRM the program is part of the platform subscription. The links, the form, the campaigns and Payout History are included in every plan on the pricing page; the store funds the rewards it chooses to send, in the amounts it sets, and nothing else. There is no second login, no email to retype, and no spreadsheet, because the referral is a lead from the moment it is submitted and the payout is a line in the same system that recorded the sale. #### The compliance angle: a referral is someone else's phone number A referral program collects a phone number from a person who is not the one being contacted, and that shapes how the first contact has to work. The form captures the referrer's details and the referred person's name and phone, and the resulting lead carries that origin. The first message should say who referred them and why the store is reaching out, and it should make stopping easy; a reply of stop lands on the record and every texting tool in the CRM honors it. The DNC Blacklist page with its live do not call lookup sits in front of any bulk campaign, so a referred number that should not be called is caught before a list goes out. Rewards have their own rules, and they differ by state and by what is being sold. The amount, who is eligible, and whether a reward requires a completed sale are decisions a dealership makes with its own counsel. What the software does is record them: the amount set in Payout Settings, the person who received it, the date and the referral it belongs to, all in Payout History. A program that can show that record is one a store can run in the open. A program that pays from a petty cash drawer is one a store hopes nobody asks about. #### How to turn it on The Referral Program is live for every account and switched on by default for new ones. Open it from the dock, copy Your Personal Referral Link, and put it in your delivery text. A manager sets the reward in Payout Settings, connects the payout method there, and turns on the Referrals tab in the website editor so the form shows on the store's site and booking page. Create a referral campaign when the store wants a specific push, such as a service customer program or a month where the reward is doubled. A store that wants the referral form to ask a particular question, a payout rule that depends on the deal, or a campaign that reminds referrers automatically can ask for it; that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows a referral arriving and a payout going out. #### What to pair it with A referral program lives or dies on the moment of asking, so pair it with the tools that put the link in front of a customer when they are happiest. Automated Templates put the link in the delivery text and the follow up a month later without anyone remembering to. Trackable short links show which of those messages got opened. Design Studio prints the referral card and the business card the link rides on, and the appointment booking links carry the Referrals pop-up on the store's public booking page. On the reporting side, the Reports dashboard shows the referral source next to every other source, so the general manager sees what the program produced against what the store paid in rewards. The all features page lists everything else the program connects to. #### Questions and answers Q: How are referral payouts sent? A: From the Referral Program page. Set the reward in Payout Settings and connect the payout method once. When a referral earns its reward, click Send Referral Payout and a gift card style reward goes to the referrer; the line appears in Payout History. Q: Does each salesperson get their own referral link? A: Yes. Every user has Your Personal Referral Link on the Referral Program page, and the store has a Shared Team Referral Link. Referrals through a personal link are assigned to that salesperson. Q: Where does a referred customer end up? A: In the lead inbox in LeadLocate CRM, sourced to the referral and the referrer, with the note the referrer wrote about what the person wants. It is worked like any other lead, with round robin and Automated Templates if the store uses them. Q: Can customers submit a referral without a salesperson involved? A: Yes. The public referral form is reachable from the shared team link, the Referrals tab on the store's website, and a Referrals pop-up on the store's public booking page. Q: Who decides the reward amount and the rules? A: The dealership. The amount and eligibility are set by the store in Payout Settings, with its own counsel on the rules that apply in its state. The CRM records who was paid, how much, when and for which referral. Q: What does the Referral Program cost? A: It is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, including each lead plan on the pricing page. The store funds the rewards it chooses to send and nothing else. ### Reports Dashboard: Activity, Company and Management URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/reports-dashboard The Reports dashboard in LeadLocate CRM opens from the Reports button on the dock and holds three reporting modules: activity reporting on what each user did, company reporting on the store as a whole, and management reporting for the decisions a manager makes from both. It reads the activity the LeadLocate CRM already logs, so nothing has to be entered twice. #### What the Reports dashboard is, in one sentence Reports is the dashboard on the LeadLocate CRM dock where a dealership reads its own activity, company and management reporting, built from what the CRM already recorded: every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail in the communications log, every lead status change, every lost reason a rep picked, every appointment on the calendar. That last part is the point. A report that depends on salespeople filling in a spreadsheet at the end of the day measures who is good at spreadsheets. A report that reads the system the team was already working in measures the work. The three modules divide the store's questions the way a manager actually asks them. Activity reporting answers what each person did. Company reporting answers what happened to the store. Management reporting is the layer on top, the comparison and the trend that turns both into a decision about who to coach, which source to keep and what to change on Monday. The dealer CRM reporting dashboard page explains why a CRM's reporting is the report that matters at a dealership; this page is about the screens themselves and how they get used. #### How a store uses it on a normal week It is Saturday morning and the sales manager has twenty minutes before the floor fills. She opens Reports from the dock and looks at activity for the week: who made calls, who sent texts, who let leads sit. One rep has a full inbox of leads and almost no outbound activity logged against them, so she pulls two of his leads and listens to the call recordings before she talks to him, because the recording tells her whether it is effort or technique. Another rep's numbers are high and his lost reasons are all the same reason, so she knows what to work on with him. Monday morning the general manager looks at the company view instead. Leads in, by source, because every lead in the CRM carries the feed it came from, against what happened to them. Two sources are producing leads that reps mark lost for price; one is producing appointments that show. He is not guessing which vendor to call this month. Later in the day the BDC manager uses the same reports to defend her team's appointment count to the desk, with the calendar and the communications log behind every line. Three people, three questions, one dashboard, no spreadsheet built by hand. #### Where it lives: the Reports button on the dock Reports sits on the dock, the bottom taskbar of the desktop CRM, next to My Office, Marketing Tools, Referral Program, Design Studio, My Inventory, SecureWebX, Feedback, More Options and Jax. It is a dashboard rather than a menu of exports: open it and the reporting is on screen. A manager can keep the Leads menu open in the main area and pull Reports up from the dock without leaving the lead she was reviewing, which is how most coaching conversations start. What feeds the dashboard is everything else in the LeadLocate CRM. The texting inbox records every message with its delivery status. The softphone logs every call, with recording and transcription where the store turned them on. The email inbox logs every send. Custom lead statuses record where each lead is; the lost reason popup records why a lead stopped; Lead Feeds Manager records where each lead came from. None of that is entered for the sake of reporting. It is the normal act of working a lead, and Reports is the view of it. #### Activity reporting: what each person did Activity reporting is the user level view. It exists because the most common disagreement in a sales office is between a rep who says he worked his leads and a manager who is not sure. The CRM keeps one communications log per customer with every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail in it, and activity reporting is that work seen by user rather than by customer. Who reached out, on which channel, and how much of each. Who booked appointments and who had them show. Who is quiet. Used well, it is a coaching tool rather than a scoreboard. Low activity on a rep who closes is a different conversation from low activity on a rep who does not, and the report gives the manager the opening to have the right one. It also protects good reps. A salesperson who is texting every lead the minute it lands has a record that says so, which is worth something when the argument is about who deserves the next fresh lead in the round robin. #### Company and management reporting: what happened to the store Company reporting is the rooftop view. It answers the general manager's questions about the store as a whole: how many leads came in, from which feeds, what status they reached, what the team said when they were lost. Because the CRM asks for a lost reason when a lead is closed out, and because every lead carries its source, the company view can show which sources produce leads that turn into appointments and which produce leads that stall, without anyone tagging anything by hand. For a store that buys leads from more than one place, or runs its own campaigns in Leads Manager alongside the webXintel Ads Network, this is where those sources are judged by the same yardstick. Management reporting sits on top of the other two. It is the comparison view: this rep against that one, this month against last, this source against the others. It is where the decision gets made and where the reasoning behind it can be shown to the person it affects. The BDC manager dashboard page describes how a BDC lead uses this kind of reporting to run a team; the same screens serve a sales manager, a general manager or a dealer principal who wants to read the store from a phone on a Sunday. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere The whiteboard, first. Most stores still keep a board with names and units, filled in by hand, that says nothing about the leads that never became a unit. Second, the spreadsheet a manager builds every Friday by asking each rep what they did, which is slow and is only as accurate as the least accurate rep. Third, and most expensive, the reporting add on from a CRM vendor that charges for the dashboard on top of the seats, and then charges again for the analytics module that makes the dashboard useful. Reports is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, with nothing extra to license; the lead plans are on the pricing page. The bigger saving is time. Nobody assembles the report, because the report is a view of work already recorded. And nobody argues about the numbers, because the number links back to the log, the recording or the status change that produced it. #### What does a lead report actually show you? One thing to know about LeadLocate leads before reading a report about them. Every submitted lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture, and backed by a replacement review, so a bad lead costs you nothing. Every one of them is on the report, including the shopper asking about a truck three times her budget and the buyer who intends to negotiate every dollar. That is what real demand looks like, and the what to expect from car sales leads page explains exactly how that shopper behaves once the report has counted her. A lead a rep judges bad goes through a Quality Control Request for replacement review, and that record is on the report as well, so a manager can see what the team did with it. The other thing is that reports count what was logged. A rep who calls customers from a personal cell and texts them from a personal phone will look idle in activity reporting, and the fix is not the report. It is moving the calls to the softphone and the texts to the inbox, where the store owns the record. Stores that do that get two things at once: reporting that reflects the work, and a communications log that holds up if a customer or a regulator ever asks what was said. The report is a byproduct of doing it right. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with There is nothing to turn on. Reports is on the dock from the first login, and it starts filling as soon as the team starts working leads in the CRM. The setup that makes it more useful happens elsewhere: custom lead statuses that match how your store actually moves a deal, so the status counts mean something; the lost reason popup left on, so the reasons get captured; Lead Feeds Manager with a feed per source, so the company view can tell sources apart; call recording on, so a number in activity reporting can be checked against a real conversation. The help center article walks through the screens. Pair it with website visitor analytics when the question is about traffic to the store's lead pages rather than leads themselves; the two are separate views on purpose. Pair it with lost reason tracking and Lead Feeds Manager for the source question, and with call recording and transcription for the coaching question. If you want to see the dashboard with real activity behind it before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows a working store, and the contact page reaches a person who can answer a specific reporting question about your rooftop. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the Reports dashboard in LeadLocate CRM? A: On the dock, the bottom taskbar of the desktop CRM, under the Reports button, next to My Office, Marketing Tools, Design Studio and SecureWebX. It opens as a dashboard on screen. Q: What are the three reporting modules? A: Activity reporting shows what each user did. Company reporting shows what happened to the store as a whole, including leads by source and lost reasons. Management reporting compares people, periods and sources so a manager can decide what to change. Q: Do salespeople have to enter anything for the reports? A: No. Reports read the calls, texts, emails, voicemails, status changes, lost reasons and appointments the CRM already logs as the team works leads. The only requirement is that the work happens inside the CRM rather than on personal phones. Q: Can I see which lead source is worth the money? A: Every lead carries the feed it came from, and every closed lead carries a lost reason, so company reporting can show what each source produced against what happened to it, whether the source is a purchased feed, your own Leads Manager campaign or the webXintel Ads Network. Q: Why does the report show every kind of shopper? A: Because every submitted lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture. The report shows real demand, including shoppers who want to negotiate, and a Quality Control Request sends any genuinely bad lead to replacement review, so it costs you nothing. Q: Is reporting an extra charge? A: No. Reports is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, including CRM Only, with no separate analytics module to license. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Road to Sale Checklist on Every Deal URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/road-to-sale-checklist The Road to Sale checklist is the step tracker on every deal in LeadLocate CRM. It runs from deal type through vehicle selection, trade information, credit application, approval, final documents, stipulations, delivery and follow up, with a Mark Done action per step, a documents and next task cockpit, and a matching checklist the customer works on their deal page. Included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. #### What the Road to Sale checklist does in one sentence The Road to Sale checklist puts the steps of a car deal on the deal itself, in order, so the salesperson knows what comes next, the manager knows where each deal stands, and the customer sees the same road on their own page. Every store has a road to the sale on a wall somewhere. The trouble is that the wall is not attached to any particular deal, so the question of where this customer is right now gets answered from memory. The checklist answers it from the record. It lives at the top of the digital deal view under Desking, above the worksheet and the deal jacket, as a row of steps: deal type, vehicle selection, trade information, credit application, approval, final documents, stipulations, delivery and follow up. Each step opens a panel with the options and details for that step and a Mark Done action that saves the checkmark. The dealership desking software page explains why the money conversation belongs in the CRM; this page is about the steps around it. #### How a manager uses it on a normal day It is the sales meeting and the manager has fourteen open deals. He opens each one from the deal list and reads the road before he reads anything else. Three deals show vehicle and trade done and credit application open: those customers have a deal page and no application yet, so the first task of the morning is three apply links. Two deals are at stipulations pending: the cockpit under the road shows which documents are still needed on each, a proof of income on one and a trade title on the other, so those two salespeople know exactly what to ask for and the customer sees the same request on their page. One deal is at ready for delivery with a delivery address on it, so the porter gets a name. One deal has been sitting at approval for four days. The manager opens the panel, sees the lender note, and moves it forward himself. The next task panel under the road already says what the following action is. Nobody asked a salesperson to remember, nobody read a spreadsheet, and the meeting took ten minutes because the road did the reporting. #### Deal type first, then the road that fits it The first step is the deal type: finance, lease, cash or acquisition. That choice does two things. It opens the matching tab on the EZ Desking worksheet, so a lease deal opens on lease math, and it sets the road. Finance and lease show the full path: vehicle, trade, credit, payment, documents, delivery and follow up. A cash deal hides the credit step, because there is no application to send. An acquisition deal, where the store is buying the customer's car outright, hides the sale vehicle, credit and payment steps and keeps trade or acquisition, documents, delivery and follow up, so a buying desk is not looking at a selling checklist. The panels start collapsed and open when a step is clicked. Step specific options live inside each panel rather than in a separate status block, so the choice of pickup or home delivery is in the delivery panel and the approval note is in the approval panel. Deal statuses move with the road: vehicle selected, submitted to lender, approved, stipulations pending, ready for delivery, delivered, follow up and closed, and the same status shows on the deal list and in the LeadLocate mobile app. #### The cockpit under the road: documents, trades, finance and the next task Below the steps sit four panels that mirror what the customer has done on their page. The documents panel lists every document slot on the deal with its review status; the salesperson marks each one needed, uploaded, approved, rejected or requests it again, and the customer sees the change. The trades panel shows each trade package the customer has submitted, since a deal can carry more than one. The finance summary shows the path the deal is on and its stipulations. The next task panel names the next best action for this deal, which is the line a manager reads first. Documents uploaded by the customer land on the deal for review and stay in the store's file library. Documents the salesperson uploads on the store's side attach to the same review list, marked as uploaded by the salesperson, so a license photographed at the desk and a payoff letter the customer sent from home sit in one list. The deal jacket and QR intake page covers the private folder those files also live in. #### The customer walks the same road on their deal page The customer's deal page carries the customer side of the checklist: vehicle, trade, credit, payment, documents, delivery and follow up. Each step can be checked off by the customer, and that progress is saved to the deal, so when a buyer checks the documents step at 9 p.m. the manager sees it at 8 a.m. The documents step lists the exact slots the store needs filled, driver license, insurance card, payoff letter, proof of income, proof of residence, trade title, co-buyer ID and any custom stipulation, and the customer uploads each from the phone camera. The trade step is where trade photos are added when the store has required them. The road is what makes the customer page a process rather than a brochure. A buyer who can see that three of seven steps are done, and exactly which document is holding up the fourth, does not need a phone call to find out. A salesperson who can see the same seven steps does not need to guess. The customer deal pages page describes the page in full, and the deal chat card next to the road is where the customer asks about a step. #### What it replaces and what that costs elsewhere The usual substitutes are a whiteboard, a deal log spreadsheet the manager updates by hand, a stack of paper deal jackets with a checklist stapled to the front, and the manager's memory. All four go stale the moment the person maintaining them is busy, which is always. Separate deal management products answer that at a per rooftop price and then keep the checklist in a system apart from the CRM, so the salesperson who owns the customer updates two records or, more often, one. The Road to Sale checklist is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription and sits on the same deal record as the worksheet, the customer page, the chat, the documents and the signature. It updates when the customer acts, not only when a manager remembers to. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: a record of the steps, not just the close A deal file that only records the outcome is hard to defend. The checklist records the sequence: when the credit application step was opened, when the approval was marked, which documents were requested and which were approved, when a stipulation was requested again, and when delivery was marked done. Document review decisions are stored with a note. The customer's own checkmarks are saved with the deal, so the record shows what the buyer confirmed on their side, not only what the store asserted. The credit step tracks the application's progress on the deal. The application itself is sent as a SecureWebX apply link and worked in SecureWebX, with its own consent capture, stipulations and adverse action notices; the checklist marks where the deal is in that process. Final contract paperwork, titling and the accounting entries stay in the finance office and the DMS. What the road gives the store is the timeline a compliance review or a customer dispute asks for, on every deal, without anyone keeping it by hand. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with The road is on every deal in every LeadLocate CRM account. Pick the deal type when the deal is started and the matching steps appear. Marking steps done is the only habit to build, and the customer's own progress fills in the rest. The pre-recorded live demo shows a deal moving down the road from vehicle selection to delivery. Pair it with the EZ Desking worksheets the payment step depends on, the trade in capture tools for the trade step, the deal jacket for the documents step, SecureWebX for the credit and stipulations steps, and the follow up processes that take over at the last step. The all features page lists everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What are the steps on the Road to Sale checklist? A: Deal type, vehicle selection, trade information, credit application, approval, final documents, stipulations, delivery and follow up. Each step is a panel on the deal view with a Mark Done action. Q: Does a cash deal show a credit application step? A: No. The deal type sets the road. Cash hides the credit step, and an acquisition deal hides the sale vehicle, credit and payment steps and keeps trade, documents, delivery and follow up. Q: Can the customer see the checklist? A: Yes. The customer's deal page carries the customer side of the road: vehicle, trade, credit, payment, documents, delivery and follow up. The customer checks steps off and uploads documents, and the deal view shows it. Q: How do I know which document is holding up a deal? A: The documents panel under the road lists every slot with its status. Mark a document needed, uploaded, approved or rejected, or request it again, and the customer sees the same status on their page. Q: How does the credit step work? A: The credit application step tracks where the deal is. The application itself is sent as a SecureWebX apply link and worked there, and the store pulls credit through its own bureau account. Q: Is the checklist on the mobile app? A: Deal statuses and the deal list are in Deal Tracker in the LeadLocate mobile app, with the deal jacket and customer chat, and the full road with every panel opens on the desktop deal view. ### Round Robin Lead Assignment in LeadLocate CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/round-robin-lead-assignment Round robin lead assignment in LeadLocate CRM gives each new lead to the next salesperson in rotation the moment it arrives, without a manager touching it. Rotation is set per lead source in Lead Feeds Manager, a feed can instead go to one user or sit unassigned for anyone to claim, and the same round robin runs on the shared team calendar. It is included in every LeadLocate plan. #### What round robin lead assignment does in one sentence Round robin lead assignment takes every new lead that enters LeadLocate CRM and hands it to the next salesperson in line, so the lead has a name on it before anyone has read it. That is the whole idea, and it solves a problem every sales manager recognizes: the lead that sits in a shared inbox for forty minutes because three people assumed someone else had it, and the lead that got quietly grabbed by the rep who happened to be standing near the screen. In LeadLocate the rotation is not a single global switch. It is set per lead source, feed by feed, in Lead Feeds Manager. Each feed carries an assignment choice: All (Round Robin), which rotates the feed's leads through the team, a single assigned user, or Unassigned (Up for Grabs), which leaves the lead open for the first rep to claim it. Custom source feeds carry the same three choices under Lead Assignment, labeled Round Robin, Single User and Unassigned (everyone can claim). Because the choice lives on the feed, a store can rotate its website leads across the floor, send its service drive referrals to one closer, and leave a trade show list up for grabs, all at the same time and without a rule engine to learn. The buying side of this question, why a dealership CRM should distribute leads automatically and what goes wrong when it does not, is covered on the CRM with round robin lead distribution page. This page is the product side: what the feature does, where it lives and how a store runs it. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day Picture a Tuesday at a two rooftop store with six salespeople on the floor. The internet manager set up the feeds weeks ago, so nobody is thinking about assignment at all. At 9:12 a website form comes in through the store's inbound feed. The feed is set to All (Round Robin), so the lead lands on the third rep in the rotation, her phone gets a notification, the CRM plays a sound at her desk, and the lead is already sitting in her Leads view with her name on it when she opens the app. Her Automated Templates for that feed send the first text while she is walking back from the lot. At 9:40 a seller lead from a LeadLocate offer request page arrives on the acquisitions feed. That feed rotates too, but the rotation is its own count, so the fourth rep gets it rather than the same person who took the website lead. At 11:00 a used car manager uploads a list of past customers through Contact Import and ticks Round Robin assignment on the upload, so 300 names spread across the team evenly instead of landing in one person's queue. And at 2:15 a walk-in with no appointment is entered as a new lead from the phone app by the rep who greeted him, which skips the rotation because a lead entered by hand belongs to the person who entered it. The manager's part of that day is short. He opens the leads list, sees which rep owns which lead, spots one that has not been touched, and sends it to a different salesperson from the lead's row. Nothing about the rotation needed him to be at his desk, which is exactly the point of a rotation. #### Where round robin lives in the CRM The setting lives under Billing and Admin in the main menu, on the Lead Feeds Manager page. Each feed on that page shows its Feed Label, its intake method, and an Assign control where the rotation is chosen. Custom source feeds have their own Lead Assignment dropdown next to Default Status for New Leads, so a custom feed can rotate leads and drop them into a specific status in the same breath. Who is in the rotation is decided in User Management. Each user record carries a Round Robin setting, so a salesperson on vacation, a BDC agent who only works appointments, or a manager who should never be handed a lead can be left out of the rotation without changing any feed. The user roles and permissions page covers the rest of that screen. The other place round robin appears is the shared calendar. When a customer books through the store's booking link rather than a specific salesperson's link, the appointment rotates through team availability the same way a lead does, so the rep who takes the appointment is the next one up, not the one whose name happened to be first on the page. On the phone app, the rep sees the leads assigned to them in the Leads view and gets the same notification a desktop user gets, so a rotation that lands on someone at lunch still gets answered. #### What it replaces, and what the alternative costs a store The alternative to round robin at most stores is a person. Someone reads the shared inbox, decides who gets what, and forwards it, which works right up until that person is in a deal, at lunch, or on a day off. The second alternative is the free for all, where the inbox is open and the fastest rep wins, which rewards the salesperson who camps on the screen rather than the one who is in the showroom working a customer. Both alternatives show up in the numbers the same way: leads that were paid for and then went unworked for hours, and a floor where the quiet reps stop believing the leads are distributed fairly. A rotation removes the person from the loop and removes the argument from the floor. It also gives a manager a truthful answer to the question every rep eventually asks, which is why they got fewer leads than the person next to them. With round robin per feed the answer is on the screen: they are in the same rotation, on the same feeds, and the CRM took turns. Because the assignment is per feed rather than per store, there is no separate rules product to buy and no integration to maintain. The dealership CRM lead routing rules page describes routing rules in general, including distribution lists and per rooftop routing for groups that need more than a rotation. Round robin is the setting most stores use most of the time, and it is a radio button. #### Does round robin help a store with response time and accountability? Speed to first contact is mostly a question of whether someone owns the lead. A lead with an owner gets a text; a lead in a shared pile gets a meeting about the pile. Round robin gives every lead an owner at the moment of arrival, and the rest of the CRM builds on that. The owner is notified by email, by text to their notify number, by a sound at the desk and by an on screen toast, as described on the lead notifications and alerts page. The feed's Automated Templates send the first message under that rep's name. The Follow Up Process attached to the lead type starts its clock. Accountability follows from the same fact. Every call, text, email and voicemail on the lead is written to one communications log against the rep who owns it, so a manager reviewing a lead that went nowhere is looking at one person's work, not guessing whose turn it was. The counterpart pages on lead response tracking and missed lead alerts go deeper on what a manager sees when a lead is not worked. Round robin is the reason there is a name to look at in the first place. #### The compliance angle: a rotation is also a record Assignment is not usually what a dealer thinks of as compliance, but a fair and recorded distribution matters in two practical ways. The first is internal. Pay plans, spiffs and lead count disputes all rest on who received what, and a rotation the CRM ran is a rotation nobody can quietly bend. When a rep says they never got their share, the assignment history on each lead is the answer, and it is the same answer for everyone. The second is external. When a customer's lead is handed to a rep, that rep inherits the customer's consent context: the form they filled out, the source they came from, the number they gave. Because the lead arrives already attached to its feed, the rep who receives it can see what the customer asked for and where they asked, which is the difference between a first text that references the truck they requested and a first text that reads like a cold call. Blacklisted numbers are hidden from every CRM view, so a rotation never hands a rep a customer who asked not to be contacted. A lead that turns out to be bad goes through lead replacement review rather than being deleted, so the record of what was received, by whom, stays intact. #### How to turn round robin on There is nothing to install and nothing to buy. Open Lead Feeds Manager under Billing and Admin, find the feed you want to rotate, and set its assignment to All (Round Robin). Save. From that point every lead that enters through that feed takes the next turn. Repeat for each feed that should rotate, and leave the feeds that should go to one person set to that person. For a custom source feed, open it, set Lead Assignment to Round Robin, and choose the Default Status for New Leads those leads should land in. Then check User Management. Confirm the Round Robin setting on each user matches who should actually be taking leads, and take out anyone who should not. A new hire is added to the rotation the day they are added as a user, and a departing rep is taken out the day they leave, which is how a store keeps a rotation honest without a spreadsheet. If your store wants something the radio buttons do not express, such as a rotation weighted toward a senior closer or a rotation that follows shift schedules, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Reach us through the contact page with a description of how your floor works. #### What to pair it with Round robin decides who gets the lead. Three other features decide what happens in the next five minutes. Automated Templates send the first text and email under the assigned rep's name, per feed, so the rotation and the first message are configured in the same place. Follow Up Processes put a multi step drip behind every lead type, so a rep who takes a lead at 9:12 has tasks waiting at 9:13. Lead Feeds Manager is where every source is defined in the first place, and the assignment choice is one column of it. Round robin is included in every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only for a store that wants the software without lead delivery to the Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and Buyers & Sellers Hybrid plans that include exclusive local leads. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. The all features list shows where assignment sits among everything else in the LeadLocate CRM, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a lead arriving and landing on a rep without anyone touching it. #### Questions and answers Q: What is round robin assignment in a dealership CRM? A: It is automatic distribution that gives each new lead to the next salesperson in rotation as it arrives. In LeadLocate CRM the rotation is set per lead feed with the All (Round Robin) option in Lead Feeds Manager, and each user's Round Robin setting in User Management decides who is in the rotation. Q: Can some feeds rotate while others go to one person? A: Yes. Assignment is chosen feed by feed. One feed can be set to All (Round Robin), another to a single user, and a third to Unassigned (Up for Grabs) so anyone can claim it. Custom source feeds carry the same three choices under Lead Assignment. Q: Does round robin run on the shared calendar too? A: Yes. Appointments booked through the store's shared booking link rotate through team availability the same way leads do, so the next rep up takes the appointment rather than whoever was listed first. Q: What happens if a salesperson is on vacation? A: Turn off the Round Robin setting on that user in User Management and they drop out of the rotation without any change to the feeds. Turn it back on when they return. A manager can also reassign any lead from its row in the leads list. Q: Can imported contacts be spread across the team? A: Yes. The Import Contacts page has a Round Robin assignment option, so a CSV of past customers or event names is divided evenly across the reps in the rotation instead of landing in one queue. Q: Is round robin an extra cost? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Schedule a Visit Requests From Inventory Pages URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/schedule-a-visit-requests Schedule a Visit requests come from a sheet Inventory Link places on every brand page and inventory page, beside a general request sheet. On a phone each panel rises from the bottom of the screen like a native app. The shopper picks the vehicle, the time and how to reach them, and the request lands in the dealer portal under Requests and in the LeadLocate CRM with the vehicle attached. #### What Schedule a Visit requests do Schedule a Visit is the sheet under every vehicle on your brand pages, your dealer page and your inventory pages that lets a shopper ask to come in and see that car at a time they choose, and it delivers the request to your team with the vehicle attached. It sits beside a general request sheet, for the shopper who has a question rather than a date in mind. Both are built into Inventory Link, and both are designed for the device most shoppers are holding, which is a phone. On a phone every panel rises from the bottom of the screen. That is a deliberate choice rather than a detail. A web form that pops up in the middle of a small screen fights the keyboard, hides the vehicle, and gets abandoned. A sheet that slides up from the bottom, the way the apps a shopper already uses behave, feels like something they have done before. They fill it in and send it. The difference between those two experiences is the difference between a request and a bounce. The request itself is a lead of the best kind: a person who chose a specific vehicle, picked a time, typed their own contact details and asked to hear from you. It is part of the platform subscription, and it turns the pages that show your cars into the pages that fill your appointment board. #### How a dealership uses Schedule a Visit on a normal day It is nine at night. A shopper on your dealer page has found the pickup she wants. She taps Schedule a Visit, the sheet rises from the bottom of her phone, and she picks Saturday morning, adds her name and number and a line about wanting to see the bed liner, and sends it. The confirmation appears and she goes to bed. Your store is closed and nobody did anything. At eight the next morning the request is in the dealer portal under Requests and in the LeadLocate CRM as a lead with the pickup attached. Notifications fired the way the store has them set, so the BDC agent who opens first sees it before the coffee is poured. He checks In Store Now to confirm the truck is physically on the lot, opens the composer, taps the vehicle insert button, and texts her back: the truck's card with the photo and price, a confirmation of Saturday at ten, and the name of the salesperson who will meet her. He puts the appointment on the shared team calendar so the whole floor can see it, and assigns the lead by round robin if the store runs it that way. Saturday at ten she walks in, the salesperson knows her name and the truck, and the truck is pulled up front. The store did three things on its side: read the request, reply with the vehicle, put the time on the board. The shopper did the rest, at night, on her phone, because the sheet made it easy. Our what to expect from car sales leads page explains why a request like this is worth answering fast even when the shopper's budget and the truck's price are not yet the same number. #### Where the sheet lives, and where the requests arrive The Schedule a Visit sheet and the request sheet appear on the shopper facing pages Inventory Link publishes: the brand pages and brand hero pages for each make you carry, the dealer page for the store, and the inventory pages the builder produces, including per salesperson sites. A shopper on your own dealership website reaches the same request path through the embeddable inventory widget, so wherever your inventory is displayed, the sheet is under it. On the dealer side, the request arrives in the portal under Requests and in the inbox, and in the CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached. The portal opens from the My Inventory button in the dock at the bottom of the CRM, with single sign on, and the Calendar item in the CRM main menu is where the appointment goes on the shared team calendar. The shared team calendar page covers how the floor sees the day's appointments. On the phone, the LeadLocate app carries the inventory list with a detail sheet, Quick Schedule for putting the appointment on the calendar from the lot, and the SMS inbox for the reply. A salesperson answering a visit request between customers can do all three without a desk. The dealer portal is in the app stores under the listing name MyInventory.Link for managers who watch the Requests view from a phone. #### What it replaces, and what appointment capture costs elsewhere Most dealer websites have a form. It is a generic contact form, it opens in the middle of the screen, it asks for the same fields whether the shopper wants a brochure or a test drive, and the submission arrives as an email with no vehicle attached. Stores that want better pay a chat vendor or a scheduling tool for a widget that floats over the page, at a monthly fee, and its submissions arrive in that tool's dashboard rather than in the CRM, so someone re-keys them. Schedule a Visit is built into the pages that show the car, the request carries the car, and it lands in the CRM as a lead. There is no re-keying and no second dashboard. It is a different job from making those inventory pages rank in search, which our used car inventory SEO page covers, including what happens to a page after the car sells. This page is the product side: what happens when the shopper is already on the page and wants to come in. The cost is the plan you are on. Schedule a Visit is part of the platform subscription, month to month, and the pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: the shopper asked to be contacted The cleanest contact a dealership can make is the one the customer requested. A Schedule a Visit request is exactly that: the shopper chose the vehicle, chose the time, typed their own phone number and asked to hear from you. That is inbound, opt-in contact, and the CRM logs the conversation from the first reply, so there is a record of what was requested and what was answered. Every call, text and email on that lead is in one communications log. The vehicle traveling with the request matters too. The reply quotes the unit the shopper chose, with the decoded trim and the price from the inventory record, so the car they asked about and the car they are told about are the same car. When the store's do not call rules and blacklist apply, they apply here as anywhere in the CRM. What the store promises about the visit, the time, the salesperson, the truck up front, is on the store, which is how it should be. #### How to turn Schedule a Visit on It comes with the pages. Once your inventory is in Inventory Link, from a feed, from an import of your own dealership website, or from auto broker inventory mode with no lot at all, the brand pages, the dealer page and the inventory pages carry the Schedule a Visit sheet and the request sheet. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Fill in Profile in the dealer portal so the pages show the right hours, and set your notification preferences in the CRM so the right people hear about a request the moment it lands. If you want the sheet to ask an extra question of your own, or want it placed on another page of your choosing, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. To see it before you decide, the pre-recorded live demo shows a shopper sending a visit request from a phone and the lead landing in the CRM, and the contact page reaches a person who will set it up on your own inventory. #### What to pair Schedule a Visit with A visit request wants three things on the store side: a fast reply with the vehicle, a time on the board, and someone at the door. Pair the sheet with the two-way texting inbox and the vehicle insert button, so the reply carries the car. Pair it with the shared team calendar and Quick Schedule on the phone app, so the time is where the floor can see it, and with round robin assignment and lead notifications, so the request reaches a person within minutes rather than sitting in a queue. Pair it with In Store Now, so the salesperson confirming Saturday knows the unit is physically on the lot, and with appointment booking links for the follow up when a shopper needs to move the time. Stores that run offers pair it with brand offer pages and the OEM Incentives Showroom, so the visit is about a program as well as a car. The all features page lists the rest of what surrounds it. #### Built so your store keeps selling Every appointment you set is yours to keep. The request a shopper sent, the time your salesperson confirmed and the text thread that carried both are stored with your account, and they stay on the calendar your floor works from, on the phone app in a rep's pocket and in the customer's own messages. The platform is built so the selling never stops: your dealership website keeps serving through your web vendor, your phones keep ringing on your own lines, and your DMS stays your DMS, because the sheet on the vehicle page adds a booking path on top of what you already own rather than standing in front of it. A shopper asks for Saturday at nine from her phone, a salesperson confirms it from his, the board fills in, and the store opens Saturday at nine with her name on it. #### Questions and answers Q: Which pages carry the Schedule a Visit sheet? A: The brand pages and brand hero pages Inventory Link builds for each make, the dealer page for the store, and the inventory pages the builder publishes, including per salesperson sites. Shoppers on your own dealership website reach the same request path through the embeddable inventory widget. Q: What is the difference between Schedule a Visit and the request sheet? A: Schedule a Visit is for the shopper who wants to come in and see a specific vehicle at a time they choose. The request sheet is for the shopper with a question. Both rise from the bottom of the screen on a phone and both land in the portal and the CRM with the vehicle attached. Q: Does a visit request go straight onto my calendar? A: It lands in the CRM as a lead with the vehicle and the requested time attached. Your team confirms it, replies with the vehicle card, and puts the appointment on the shared team calendar, from the desk or with Quick Schedule on the phone app. Q: Who gets notified when a request arrives? A: Whoever your CRM notification settings name: notify emails and numbers, per-user preferences, sound alerts and on-screen toasts. Round robin assignment can route the lead to the next person in line. Q: Does it work without an inventory feed? A: Yes. The sheet is on the pages Inventory Link publishes, and inventory can come from a feed, from an import of your own dealership website, or from auto broker inventory mode. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Q: Is Schedule a Visit an extra charge? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page lists the current plans and what each includes. ### Send Every Website Form Straight to Your CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/website-forms-to-crm LeadLocate connects your website forms to the CRM through your form intake link, a private address every account has. Any form that sends its submissions there, on your dealer website, a landing page builder or a WordPress form, creates a lead in LeadLocate CRM with the name, phone, email and message mapped to the right fields, assigned to a salesperson, and the first text can fire automatically. #### What does connecting a website form to the CRM actually do? A dealership website collects leads all day long: a contact form, a trade-in request, a schedule a test drive form, a get e-price button on a vehicle page, a landing page built for one weekend sale. In most stores those submissions arrive as notification emails in a shared inbox and wait for somebody to copy them into the CRM. When you connect your website forms to LeadLocate, that step is gone. Every account has its own form intake link, and any form that sends its submissions to that link creates a lead in LeadLocate CRM the moment the customer presses submit, with the customer's name, phone, email and message mapped to the right fields on the lead record. The lead goes straight to work. It arrives with its source attached, goes to the salesperson your assignment rule picks, and the first text can go out automatically under that salesperson's name. The shopper who asked about a truck at twenty to ten on a Tuesday night gets a text from your store while they are still scrolling your inventory, which is exactly when a reply wins the conversation. This page is about the forms you already have. When the store wants new ones, Lead Pages is the landing page builder inside the CRM, and every form built there is connected from its first publish. #### How does a website form lead move through the store on a normal day? Take a Saturday. A shopper fills in the trade-in form on your site at a quarter past eight in the morning, before anyone has unlocked the showroom. The form sends the submission to your form intake link and a lead appears in the Leads view, labeled with the source it came from. Round robin hands it to the next salesperson in the rotation, that salesperson's phone gets a text alert, and the first message written for that source goes to the customer: a short note from the salesperson, with the store's name, asking when is a good time to look at the trade. By the time the salesperson walks in, the customer has already answered. The whole thread sits on the lead next to the form fields the customer typed, so nobody asks for information the shopper already gave. The sales manager, who is on that source as a manager copy, saw the lead arrive by email and in the CRM at the same moment, and can see from the thread that it is being worked without walking the floor to ask. At noon a second form comes in from a landing page your marketing agency built for a holiday sale. Same path, different label. At the end of the month the store narrows its Leads view by source and knows exactly how many leads the contact form, the trade-in form and the holiday page produced, because every one of them carried its source from the first second. #### Which website forms can I connect to LeadLocate? Any form that can send its submissions to a link. That covers the forms on your dealer website, whichever company built the site, the forms inside landing page builders, and WordPress forms, where almost every form plugin has a setting for where submissions go. Contact us, value your trade, schedule a test drive, get e-price, vehicle inquiry, event RSVP: if the customer typed it into a form on a page you control, it becomes a lead. The fields map without a developer writing a line. Name (including first and last name as two separate fields), phone, email and the message or comments box land where a salesperson expects to find them on the lead. A short two field form works as well as a long one, because a name, a phone or an email is all a lead needs to start a conversation. Forms LeadLocate builds for you are connected out of the box. Your LeadLocate website, the personal salesperson websites and every Lead Page already send their submissions to your account, so connecting a form is only a task for forms built somewhere else. Credit applications have a home of their own: the online credit application form in SecureWebX is built for the sensitive data a finance application carries. #### Where do website form leads show up in the CRM? In the same Leads view as every other lead, on the desktop CRM and on the LeadLocate phone app. Each lead carries its source label, so a rep sees at a glance that this customer came from the trade-in form rather than a third party provider, and a manager can narrow the list to one form's leads in a click. The customer's typed message sits on the lead record, and from there every call, text and email with that customer builds on one communications timeline. The rules that decide what happens to a form lead live with your lead sources. Open Account Settings under Billing and Admin and choose Lead Source Settings, and every source you add there gets its own intake email and its own form intake link, together with the rules for that source: who gets the lead (Round Robin, a single user, or unassigned so the first rep can claim it), the status new leads land in, whether the assigned salesperson gets a text alert, whether your standard follow up messages run, and whether managers receive copies. Give the contact form one source and the trade-in form another, and each can follow its own rules. The full picture of how sources and feeds work together is on the Lead Feeds Manager page. #### What does this replace, and what does the old way cost? The old way is a notification email and a person. The website vendor emails each submission to a group inbox, somebody reads it, somebody retypes it into the CRM or forwards it to a rep, and the customer waits for all of that to happen. On a busy Saturday that is an hour. After closing it is the next morning. A shopper who filled in three dealers' forms on the same evening talks to whichever store texts back first, and the store that retyped the lead by hand is rarely that store. Some stores patch the gap with third party automation tools that catch the notification email and push it somewhere else. That adds another subscription, another login and another thing somebody has to watch every time the website vendor changes its email layout. Connecting the form straight to the CRM removes both the retyping and the middle layer: the form sends to your form intake link, the lead is created, and the rules you set run on it. For stores that already relied on those tools, LeadLocate built the same work into the CRM as Intake Process Automation. There is also the attribution cost. A lead retyped by hand usually loses its source along the way. A form lead in LeadLocate keeps it for life, which turns dealer website lead attribution into something the store reads off a report instead of rebuilding from memory at renewal time. #### How does a form lead stay compliant from the first text? A customer who fills in your form asked to hear from you, and the lead record keeps the proof: the source label of the form, the time the lead arrived and the message the customer typed. The first text the customer receives is the one you wrote for that source in Automated Templates, so it carries your store's name and the salesperson's name and answers what the customer actually asked for, instead of a generic blast. Your blacklist applies to form leads exactly as it applies to every other lead. A contact on the store's DNC Blacklist stays hidden from every CRM view whichever form it came through. Every call, text and email that follows is logged on the customer's communications timeline with the salesperson who sent it, so when a customer asks why they were contacted, the answer is one click away. Your form intake link is private to your account, and every lead it creates belongs to your store and only your store. #### How do I connect my website form? Forms on your LeadLocate website and your Lead Pages are connected already. For a form built anywhere else, open Account Settings under Billing and Admin, choose Lead Source Settings, and click New Lead Source. Give the source a Feed Label your team will recognize on a lead row, such as Website Trade-In Form, pick the assignment and the notifications, and click Save Feed. The confirmation shows the source's intake email and its form intake link, each with its own copy button. Paste the link into your form's settings where it asks where submissions should be sent, publish the form, and send a test from your own phone. The test lead appears in the Leads view within moments, labeled with the new source. The step by step version, with every button named, is how to connect a website form to the CRM. If your website vendor would rather handle it, send them the link; our support team can walk them through it on a call. For a form that sends its data in an unusual shape, a custom connection is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What should I pair website forms with? The form gets the lead in the door; the rest of the CRM decides how fast it turns into an appointment. Automated Templates set the first text and email for each source, so write one for every form you connect. Round robin lead assignment spreads form leads across the floor so the same rep is not buried every Monday morning. Manager lead copies put a sales manager on every form lead from the second it arrives, beside the salesperson who owns it. And live chat for car dealers catches the shopper who would rather type a question than fill in a form; the dealership CRM with website live chat page shows how chats and forms land in the same inbox. Website forms to CRM is part of LeadLocate CRM on every account, month to month, with the plans listed on the pricing page. See where it sits among the rest of the tools on all features, or watch the recorded demo to see a form lead land, get assigned and get its first text. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I connect a website form to my CRM? A: Every LeadLocate account has its own form intake link. Point any website form at it, or at the link of a lead source you add under Account Settings and Lead Sources, and each submission becomes a lead in LeadLocate CRM with its fields mapped and its source attached. Q: Can dealer website form leads go straight to a salesperson? A: Yes. Each source has its own assignment: Round Robin across the floor, a single user, or unassigned so the first rep can claim it. The assigned salesperson can get a text alert, and the first text to the customer can fire automatically. Q: Does it work with WordPress forms and landing page builders? A: Yes. Any form that can send its submissions to a link works, including WordPress forms, landing page builders and the forms on your dealer website. Forms built in LeadLocate Lead Pages and on your LeadLocate website are connected already. Q: Do I need a developer to connect my website form? A: Usually not. Most form tools have a setting for where submissions go; paste your form intake link there. Name, phone, email and message map on their own. If your website vendor wants help, our support team walks them through it. Q: Can a sales manager get a copy of every website form lead? A: Yes. Put the manager on the source as a manager copy and they receive every lead it delivers, by email and in the CRM, beside the salesperson who owns it. Q: Is connecting website forms included in my plan? A: Yes. Your form intake link is part of LeadLocate CRM on every account, month to month. The plans are listed on the pricing page. ### Send Vehicles by Text: Inventory Insert in Every Message URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/send-vehicles-by-text Send vehicles by text is the inventory insert button in every text and email composer in LeadLocate CRM. Tap the car button, pick a unit from the picker showing photo, stock number and price, and the message goes out with the vehicle's photo attached and its details in the body. Inventory comes from Inventory Link, on desktop and in the mobile app. Part of every plan. #### What the inventory insert does The inventory insert puts a real unit from your lot into a text or an email with one tap: the photo attached, the price and details in the body, ready to send. That is the one sentence version. The button sits in every composer in LeadLocate CRM, a car icon whose tooltip reads Insert a vehicle from your inventory, and it opens a picker of the store's live inventory with a Photo, Vehicle, Stock and Price column for each unit, along with whether it is New or Pre-Owned, its mileage and its MSRP. Pick the car, and the composer fills in. The inventory behind the button is Inventory Link, the dealer inventory software in the LeadLocate platform. It holds the store's units from a feed, or imports them from the dealer's own website when there is no feed, and it shows them in the CRM under the Inventory menu, on the phone app, and in this picker. The same unit a customer saw on the store's site is the unit the salesperson sends, with the same photo and the same price, because it is the same record. This page is the product side view of one button. The automotive BDC text templates page covers what to say around the car, and the full features list shows where the insert sits among the rest of the texting and inventory tools. #### How a salesperson uses it on a normal day A customer texts at 8:50 in the morning: still have the white one? The salesperson opens the thread in the SMS inbox, taps the car button, and the picker opens with the store's inventory. He types the stock number, or scrolls to the white pre-owned SUV the customer looked at on Saturday, and taps it. The composer now holds the vehicle's details with the photo attached. He adds a line, on the lot and washed, want to come see it at noon, and sends. The customer's phone shows the picture of the actual car with the price under it. That is a different message from the one that says yes it is still here. At two, a different customer says the payment on the crossover is too high and asks what else the store has. The salesperson taps the car button again and picks two other units in two messages, each with its own photo and price, so the customer is comparing real cars with real numbers instead of a description. When she asks about the second one, the trackable short link on the listing shows she opened it, and he calls while she is looking. At five, a rep in the service drive hears a customer say her lease is up in three months. She opens the LeadLocate mobile app, starts a new text, taps the car button, picks a unit from the inventory picker on her phone, and sends it before the customer's oil change is finished. No desk, no photo hunt, no typing a price from memory. #### Where the vehicle button lives In every composer. On desktop, the SMS inbox under the Messaging menu has the car button in the reply box of an open thread and in the new message box, next to the attachment button and the AI Writing Assistant. The email composer under the Email menu has the same button, and inserts the unit into an email with the photo rather than as an MMS. The deal view in DealTracker carries it too, so a rep working a deal sends the unit from the deal itself. On the phone, the mobile app has the SMS composer with the same button and an inventory picker built for a thumb, plus an Inventory list with a detail sheet for browsing units before choosing one. A rep on the lot sends the same photo and price a rep at a desk would, from the same record. The inventory itself is under the Inventory item on the main menu and the My Inventory tile on the dock, where a store sees its units, edits a vehicle and its photos, and marks a customer as In-Store Now when they are physically on the lot. The LeadLocate CRM product page walks through the menu if you want the map. #### What goes out, and what the picker shows The picker lists the store's inventory with a Photo, a Vehicle description, the Stock number and the Price, with a New or Pre-Owned marker, the mileage and the MSRP where the feed carries them, and a filter to show everything or narrow down. While it loads it reads Collecting your inventory now. Tap a unit and the composer receives the vehicle's details as text and the vehicle's photo as an attachment, so the customer sees the picture in the message rather than a link they have to tap to see it. If a unit has no photo on the feed, the details go out on their own and the composer says so, so the rep knows to add a picture from his phone or pick a different unit. Inventory Link also has promo photos and stock imagery for listings a photographer has not reached yet, covered on the stock photos for listings page, so a fresh trade can go out looking like a car rather than a blank. What makes this different from attaching a photo by hand is the record. The unit came from the store's inventory, with the stock number and the price the store set, and the message is logged on the lead in the communications log with the rest of the conversation. A manager reading the thread a week later sees exactly which car was sent at what price, which is not something a photo from a personal phone can tell anyone. #### What it replaces and what the old way costs The old way is a salesperson walking outside to take a picture of the car with his phone, texting it from his personal number, and typing the price from memory. The replacement is one tap. But the old way costs more than the walk. The photo lives on the rep's phone, not on the lead. The price he typed might be last week's. The text went out from a number the store does not own, which means the conversation goes with the rep when he leaves. And the customer who replies gets an answer only when that rep happens to look at his phone. The other old way is a link to the store's website, which asks the customer to leave the text, load a page, and find the car. Some do. A photo in the message with the price under it asks nothing; the customer sees the car the moment the phone buzzes. Inventory Link is what makes that possible without a feed: it imports the store's units from the dealer's own website when there is no feed, and an inventory feed and DMS access are not required to use the platform, which is why a broker or a solo salesperson can send cars by text on the same day the account is created. The import inventory from your website page covers how. The inventory insert is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only to the lead plans, with Inventory Link included. The pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: the right price, from the store's number, on the record Sending a car by text touches two things a store cares about: the price it advertises and the number it texts from. The insert pulls the price from the store's own inventory record, so the customer sees the price the store set rather than a number a rep remembered, and the same price they saw on the website. When the price changes in Inventory Link, the next insert carries the new one. That consistency is what keeps a store out of the conversation that starts with but your text said. The text goes out from the CRM, on the store's own tracking number, with delivery status on the bubble and the message logged on the lead. Opt outs and the DNC Blacklist apply to it the way they apply to any text from the CRM, and consent to be texted is the store's responsibility before any car goes out; the do not call scrub and blacklist page covers that side. The photo that goes with it is one the store put on its own inventory record, not one pulled from anywhere else. And the record stays with the store. A rep who leaves takes his personal phone and its photos; the CRM keeps the thread, the car, the price and the customer, assigned to whoever picks the lead up next. #### How to turn it on The button is in every composer from the day the account is created. What it needs is inventory behind it. If the picker opens and reads that inventory is not set up for this account yet, that is the cue: contact our team, and we switch on the inventory feed for your dealership. A store with a feed connects it in Inventory Link; a store without one gives our team the address of its website, and Inventory Link imports the units from there. A broker with no lot gets brand offer pages connected instantly instead, covered on the auto broker inventory mode page. Once inventory is flowing, the picker fills, the Inventory menu fills, and the mobile app's inventory list fills, all from the same record. A store that wants photos on every unit before the first send uses the promo photo and stock imagery tools in Inventory Link. If you want to see a car go out by text before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the picker, the tap and the message arriving on a phone. #### What to pair the inventory insert with Pair it with the AI Writing Assistant in the same composer, so the words around the car are drafted in the time it takes to pick the unit. Pair it with trackable short links, so a listing link sent alongside the photo reports back when the customer opens it. Pair it with the vehicle finder in Inventory Link when a customer describes a unit the store does not have on the lot, and with the OEM incentives showroom so the message about a new unit carries the offer that goes with it. Pair it with Bulk Texting and Text Automation when a manager wants a unit in front of a list rather than one customer, and with the deal pages in DealTracker for the moment the customer says yes, when the car in the text becomes the car in the deal. Pair it with In-Store Now so the floor knows the customer who got the text this morning is on the lot this afternoon. Everything here is part of the same subscription, which is why the car button is in the composer and not in a separate app. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need an inventory feed to send vehicles by text? A: No. Inventory Link imports the store's units from the dealer's own website when there is no feed, and an inventory feed and DMS access are not required to use the platform. A store with a feed connects it; a store without one gives our team its website address. Q: What does the customer receive? A: A text with the vehicle's photo attached and its details and price in the body, sent from the store's own number through the CRM. In email, the unit is inserted into the message with the photo. Q: Where is the vehicle button? A: In every composer: the reply box and new message box of the SMS inbox on desktop, the email composer, the deal view in DealTracker, and the SMS composer in the mobile app, where the inventory picker is built for a phone. Q: What if a unit has no photo? A: The details go out on their own and the composer tells the rep, so he can add a picture or choose another unit. Inventory Link also offers promo photos and stock imagery for listings a photographer has not reached. Q: Is the price in the text the same as on my website? A: Yes. The insert pulls the price from the store's inventory record in Inventory Link, which is the same record the website inventory uses. Change the price there and the next insert carries the new one. Q: Is the inventory insert an add on? A: No. It is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only up, with Inventory Link included. ### Send to Lender: Secure, Expiring Application Shares URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/send-to-lender-secure-share Send to Lender is the SecureWebX feature that shares a credit application with any lender your dealership chooses as a code gated, expiring, revocable, watermarked view. The lender opens a lender response portal, reviews the file and records a decision that lands back on the application. It is a secure share that works with any lender you pick, and it is part of every LeadLocate platform plan. #### What is Send to Lender? Send to Lender is how a credit application leaves your store. From an open application in the SecureWebX console, a finance manager picks a lender, and SecureWebX produces a share: a code gated, expiring, revocable, watermarked view of that application. The lender receives it, enters the access code, reviews the application and its documents in a secure viewer, and records a response through a lender response portal. The response comes back onto the application in your inbox. Send to Lender puts the store in charge of every handoff. It is a secure share to a lender of the store's choosing, sent from the application itself, and the store decides who sees the file, for how long and with which documents. Your lender relationships are yours, your bureau account is yours, and the credit pull happens through your own account. What Send to Lender does is make the handoff secure, documented and reversible, for any lender, including the local credit union that has never been on anyone's portal. The automotive lender portal integration page explains where the application intake layer fits beside the lender networks your store already uses. #### How a finance office uses Send to Lender on a normal day A used truck deal is sitting in the inbox with income, a down payment and a trade-in on the application, and a finance worksheet attached. The finance manager opens the application, clicks Send to Lender, and selects the credit union that likes this kind of paper from the store's partner list. He chooses whether the lender sees the deal worksheet or the documents only, sets the access to expire in seven days, adds a short custom message, and sends. The share goes out with an access code. The console shows delivery to the lender's mailbox, the portal link is live from the moment the share is sent, and a resend is one click away. An hour later the credit union's analyst opens the link, enters the access code, and reads the application and the deal recap PDF in the secure viewer, watermarked with the share. She has a question about residence, so she uses Request more information and lists the item she still needs. That request lands on the application as a stipulation, the finance manager uploads the document for this lender, and the analyst sees it in the same share. By mid afternoon she submits an approval with a call sheet attached. The application status moves, the decision and outcome are recorded on the file, and the salesperson on the deal sees it from the CRM. The deal that would have been a fax, three phone calls and an email chain is one application record with the whole exchange on it. #### What makes the share secure: code, expiry, revoke, watermark Four controls sit on every share. The share is code gated: the lender enters an access code before anything is visible, so a forwarded link on its own opens nothing. The share is expiring: the store picks how long access lasts, three, seven, fourteen or thirty days, and when the window closes the lender's access ends without anyone remembering to close it. The share is revocable: Revoke on the application ends access immediately, whether the deal went elsewhere or was sent to the wrong desk. The share is watermarked: the application and its documents open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated, so the file the lender sees carries the share on its face and cannot be quietly saved as a clean copy. Under those four sit the controls that apply to everything in SecureWebX. Application data is encrypted at rest. Every document in the share was virus scanned on upload. The audit log on the application records who shared it, with whom, when access was granted and when it was revoked or expired. Records are archived, never deleted, so the history of every share stays with the application for as long as the store needs it. #### What the lender sees, and how the answer comes back The lender never logs into your console. They receive a link, enter the access code, and land in a lender response portal built for one job: review this application and respond. Inside it they open the secure viewer for the credit application and supporting documents, open the lender deal recap PDF if the store attached a worksheet, and see the proposed deal structure, the vehicle book-out, and the decoded vehicle build on the deal. Then they respond: approve, with a call sheet attached; decline; or request more information with a list of items still needed and comments. The response lands on the application in your inbox. Status, decision and outcome update on the file, and a request for more information becomes a stipulation the finance office fulfills by uploading for that lender. For lenders whose own systems record decisions, their system can send the decision to the share automatically, so the answer arrives on the application without anyone rekeying it. Lenders and partners who still live on fax are covered by eFax, with fax numbers per company and per partner and inbound status in the console. #### What does Send to Lender replace, and what does it cost elsewhere? It replaces the fax with the cover sheet, the email with the application attached, the shared drive link that never gets turned off, and the photo of a paper app sent from a personal phone. Every one of those puts a customer's most sensitive document somewhere the store no longer controls. A share that expires, can be revoked and carries a watermark is a different category of thing. It also replaces the assumption that submitting to lenders requires buying into a portal network with its own per store fee. Stores that work with regional banks, credit unions and buy here pay here capital sources often have lenders who are not on any portal at all. Send to Lender works with all of them, because it needs nothing on the lender's side except a browser. It is part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, on the pricing page. When a lender or DMS needs a file rather than a share, the same application exports in the format that system expects; the lender and DMS export formats page covers that path. #### The compliance angle Sharing a credit application is the moment a store's data handling is most exposed, and the moment a regulator or a plaintiff's lawyer will ask about first. Send to Lender gives the store a specific answer to every question in that conversation. Who received the application: the lender named on the share. What they could see: the application, the documents, the worksheet if attached, in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated. For how long: the expiry the store chose. Who ended it: the expiry or the revoke, both logged. What the lender said: the decision recorded on the file. That record sits next to the rest of the application's compliance layer: the consent version the customer signed, the disclosures shown, the OFAC screening on the record, the stipulations and the adverse action notice if the deal was declined. Software supports the store's compliance program, and the store's counsel decides what that program requires. What Send to Lender provides is the evidence that the program was followed. #### How do I turn Send to Lender on? It is on. Send to Lender is part of the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and the console is created with your account. The only preparation is adding your lenders to the partner list so they are there to select when the first application is ready. The Verified Partners directory lists lenders by category if you are looking for new ones, and the Mailbox keeps your correspondence with each lender inside the console. Each product in the platform is its own application under one login, so a share you have already sent keeps moving on its own: the lender opens the portal, reviews the file and records the response, and the console holds every bit of it for you. Any additional share behavior your store wants is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What to pair Send to Lender with Pair it with the stipulations workflow, because a lender's request for more information becomes a stipulation and the upload for that lender lands in the same share. Pair it with worksheets, so the lender sees the deal structure the store is proposing and the deal recap PDF rather than a bare application. Pair it with the credit application inbox, where the share's status, the decision and the outcome all show on the file the finance office is already working. The all features page lists everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows an application shared with a lender and the decision coming back on the record. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the lender need a portal account to receive a share? A: No. Send to Lender is a secure share of an application to any lender your store chooses: code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked, with a lender response portal for the reply. The lender needs only a browser, and your lender relationships and bureau account stay yours. Q: Which lenders can I send to? A: Any lender, including banks and credit unions that are on no portal at all. The lender needs a browser and the access code. Add lenders to your partner list in the console and select one when you send. Q: How long does the lender have access? A: The store chooses when it sends: three, seven, fourteen or thirty days. Access ends at expiry, or immediately when the store revokes the share from the application. Q: What can the lender do with the application? A: Review it and its documents in a watermarked secure viewer with print and download gated, open the deal recap PDF if a worksheet was attached, and respond with an approval and call sheet, a decline, or a request for more information. Q: How does the lender's decision reach my inbox? A: Through the lender response portal, or automatically from the lender's own system for lenders whose systems record decisions. Either way the decision and outcome land on the application, and a request for more information becomes a stipulation. Q: Is there an extra charge for Send to Lender? A: No. It is part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. Plans are listed on the pricing page. ### Shared Team Calendar With Round Robin Appointments URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/shared-team-calendar The shared team calendar is the store level calendar inside LeadLocate CRM. It has its own company branded booking link and its own team hours, set on the Team Calendar tab of the Settings popup. Bookings through the team link land on the shared calendar unassigned, ready for a BDC agent to hand out round robin or to whoever is free, and every appointment shows who it is assigned to. #### What the shared team calendar is The shared team calendar is the store's own calendar in LeadLocate CRM, with a team booking link that shows only the company, team hours that are independent of any one salesperson, and a view of every appointment with the person it is assigned to. That is the one sentence version. It exists because the personal calendar answers a salesperson's question, "what do I have today", and a store also needs the manager's question answered: "what does the floor have today, and who is taking it". Round robin is the assignment engine that sits beside it. In the CRM, round robin is how leads are distributed fairly across the enabled users on a feed, in a fixed rotation rather than at random, and it is described on the round robin lead assignment page. On the calendar, the same fairness question shows up with appointments: when the store's team link books a visit, who takes it. The shared calendar's answer is to land the booking unassigned so a BDC agent hands it out, in rotation or to whoever is free at that hour, and to show the assignment on the appointment so nobody wonders. The buying side of the distribution question is on CRM with round robin lead distribution. This page is the calendar. #### A normal Saturday: eleven bookings and six salespeople The store's team link is on the website, the brand pages and every automated email. By Friday night eleven customers have booked Saturday visits through it, four of them for 11 AM, because the team link does not block a slot when one customer takes it. On Saturday at 8:30 the BDC agent opens the Calendar page and sees eleven appointments on the shared calendar, all marked unassigned. She works down the list. The 10 AM goes to the salesperson who was next in rotation. Two of the 11 AMs go to the next two in rotation, one goes to the salesperson who already sold that customer's brother a truck, since the lead record shows the connection, and the fourth goes to the salesperson who asked for more ups. By 8:45 every appointment on the shared calendar shows an assigned salesperson, and each of those salespeople sees the visit on their own calendar and on the Workspace under Today's Appointments. The confirmation went out when the customer booked; the reminder goes out from the store's Follow Up Process hours before the visit. At 11:05 the manager glances at the Calendar page, sees four 11 AMs, sees four names beside them, and sees from In-Store Now that three of the four customers are on the lot. No whiteboard, no group text, no argument about whose up it was. #### Where it lives: the Team Calendar tab in Settings Open Calendar in the main menu. The header carries Add New and Settings. Settings opens one popup with a My Calendar tab and a Team Calendar tab. The Team Calendar tab holds the shared booking link, its embed code with Copy URL and Copy Embed Code, and the team hours grid, saved with Save Hours. Any user in the company can open it, and a change to the team hours is visible to every synced team member, which the popup says plainly. The team hours are their own thing. They start from the store's receptionist business hours the first time the shared calendar is provisioned, and the moment someone saves the Team Calendar tab they become independent, so a store that answers the phone until 8 PM can stop taking bookings at 6 without touching the phone settings. The appointment booking links page covers the personal side of the same popup. On each appointment the calendar shows Assigned To, and a manager or BDC agent changes it there. In the LeadLocate mobile app the calendar view carries the Team Link, and a rep sees the appointments assigned to them on the Workspace. #### How the team link books differently from a personal link A personal booking link shows the salesperson's name and photo, offers that salesperson's hours, blocks a slot once it is taken, and books the appointment to that person. The team link does none of those four things, on purpose. It shows only the company, so the customer is booking with the store. It offers the team hours. It does not block a slot, so any number of customers can pick the same time and the store staffs it, which is how a Saturday with six salespeople should work. And it lands the booking unassigned. Unassigned is the key word and it is a design choice, not a gap. A BDC manager wants to take every team link booking and hand it to whoever is free at that exact hour, not have the system pre commit it to someone who might be on a delivery. The shared calendar honors that. The hand off is a human decision informed by the rotation, the lead record and the floor, and the calendar records the result. Round robin stays the fair default for the leads themselves, which is where fairness matters most, and the round robin lead assignment page describes how the rotation is kept deterministic so nobody can claim the system favors one rep. A store that wants team bookings to route without a human is asking for something available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere Ask a store how the floor knows who has an appointment at 11 and the answer is usually a whiteboard by the tower, a group text, or a shared calendar in an email suite that nobody updates after the first week. The whiteboard is invisible from the lot. The group text is a scroll of "who has the Johnsons?" The email suite calendar knows nothing about the lead, the vehicle, or the salesperson's own schedule, and it costs a seat per user. The shared team calendar replaces all three with a calendar that is part of the CRM: the booking is a CRM appointment attached to a lead, the assignment is a field on it, the reminder is a Follow Up Process step, and the arrival is an In-Store Now flag. There is no per seat scheduling fee and no second tool. Every lead plan on the pricing page carries it, and a store on Inbound gets the same calendar as a store on the Buyers & Sellers Hybrid plan. What the store keeps is a record of every appointment it ever booked, who took it, and how it ended, in the customer's record where it belongs. #### Managers, roles and who can see what A shared calendar raises a fair question about visibility, and the CRM's roles answer it. User Management carries three roles, User, Manager and Master Administrator, described on the user roles and permissions page. A salesperson works from their own calendar and Workspace. A manager works the shared calendar, assigns and reassigns appointments, and reads the whole floor's day. Every user in the company can open the Team Calendar tab to see the team link and hours, so a salesperson can send the team link when the customer should book with the store rather than with them. Notifications follow the assignment. When a BDC agent assigns an unassigned booking to a salesperson, that salesperson's notification preferences carry the alert, on screen, by sound, by email or by text, whichever they set on the lead notifications and alerts page. A manager reviewing the week uses the Reports dock button rather than counting cells on a calendar. Team Chat sits beside all of it for the conversation a calendar was never meant to hold: "I am running late, can someone take my 2 PM" gets answered in a channel, and the reassignment is made on the appointment. #### The compliance angle: every appointment has a name on it An appointment with no owner is an appointment nobody is accountable for, and a customer who drove in for a visit nobody expected is the most avoidable bad review in the business. The shared calendar's discipline is that every booking is visible from the moment it is made, every assignment is a recorded field, and every change to it is made on the appointment rather than in a text thread. When a customer says they had an appointment and were ignored, the calendar shows who had it and when it was assigned. The confirmations and reminders that go out for a team booking go to a person who booked the visit themselves, through the store's own templates, and every one of them lands in the customer's communications log beside the calls and texts. The team hours grid keeps the store from promising visits at hours it is not staffed to honor. None of this replaces the store's own customer handling standards; it gives those standards a calendar that shows whether they were met. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with The shared team calendar is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription and is provisioned the first time anyone opens Settings on the Calendar page. Set the team hours on the Team Calendar tab, press Save Hours, copy the team link, and put it on the website and in the automated emails. Decide who on the BDC owns the morning hand off, and make opening the Calendar page the first thing that person does. Anything the store needs beyond that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair it with appointment booking links for the personal side, with Google Calendar sync so an assigned appointment shows on the calendar the salesperson already carries, with the appointment confirmation templates in Automated Templates, and with Team Chat for the conversation around the day. The all features list shows the rest. If we are ever unavailable, the appointments already booked are on your calendar and in your customers' confirmations, the assignments already made were already seen by the people who got them, and your team link is yours; what you would wait on is the booking page and the calendar screen. The pre-recorded live demo shows a team booking landing unassigned and being handed out. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the difference between the shared team calendar and my own calendar? A: Your calendar has your personal link, your hours and your appointments. The shared team calendar has the store's company branded link, the team hours, and every appointment with the person it is assigned to. Q: Who gets a booking made through the team link? A: It lands on the shared calendar unassigned. A BDC agent or manager assigns it on the appointment, round robin or to whoever is free at that hour, and the salesperson is notified. Q: Can two customers book the same time on the team link? A: Yes. The team link does not block a slot when one customer takes it, so several customers can pick the same Saturday morning and the store staffs it. Q: Are the team hours the same as the store's phone hours? A: They start from the receptionist business hours, and the moment someone saves the Team Calendar tab they become independent, so you can stop taking bookings at 6 while the phone is answered until 8. Q: Where does round robin come in? A: Round robin is how leads are distributed fairly across the enabled users on a feed, in a fixed rotation. On the shared calendar the same rotation is what the BDC uses when handing out unassigned bookings. Q: Can every user see the team link? A: Yes. Any user in the company can open the Team Calendar tab to copy the team link or embed code, and a change to the team hours is visible to every synced team member. ### Single Sign On, Quick Access PIN and Biometric Login URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/single-sign-on Single sign on in LeadLocate means one login launches the LeadLocate CRM, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the My LeadLocate account portal. Each user also has a Quick Access PIN, set in User Management, for fast re-entry on the desktop and the phone app; the phone app adds biometric login; and the account portal adds passwordless login by magic link or text message. It is part of every plan. #### What single sign on means at LeadLocate, in one sentence One login, tied to one person, opens everything that person is allowed to use: the LeadLocate CRM at the desk and on the phone, the SecureWebX credit application console, the Inventory Link portal and the My LeadLocate account portal. There is no second username for the credit app system, no third password for the inventory tool, and no shared login taped under the keyboard so the weekend crew can get in. Around that one login sit three conveniences that decide whether people actually use it. A Quick Access PIN, per user, for getting back into the CRM and the phone app quickly during the day. Biometric login on the LeadLocate phone app, so the app opens with a face or a fingerprint. And passwordless login on the account portal, by magic link or text message, for the owner who checks an invoice twice a month and should not have to remember a password to do it. Sign in is not a feature anyone asks for in a demo. It is the feature that decides, at eight in the morning on a Saturday, whether the CRM gets opened or the personal phone does. #### How a store uses it on a normal day A rep walks onto the lot at eight with the phone app already on her phone. She opens it with her face, and the Workspace is there: appointments, to dos, a new lead that came in overnight. She texts the lead from the app. At nine she sits down at a shared desk in the showroom, opens the desktop CRM, and gets back in with her Quick Access PIN rather than typing a password in front of a customer. At eleven she has a buyer who wants to apply for financing, so she texts him an apply link; when the application comes back, the finance manager opens the SecureWebX console from the SecureWebX button on the CRM dock, already signed in, and starts working it. Across the floor the used car manager needs to fix a photo on a unit. He clicks My Inventory on the dock and is inside Inventory Link without a login screen. That evening the dealer principal, at home, gets a text with a link into My LeadLocate, taps it, and reads the month's invoice without a password. Four people, four products, one identity each, and nobody typed a password after breakfast. The absence of friction is the product. #### Where it lives: the dock, the app and the account portal In the desktop CRM, single sign on shows up as the buttons that just work. SecureWebX on the dock opens the credit application console for the same user, signed in. My Inventory on the dock opens Inventory Link the same way. The account portal has a launcher that goes the other direction: from My LeadLocate, a user launches into the CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX from one place, and its account access page shows which users can launch which apps. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app signs in with the same login as the desk, then offers biometric login and Quick Access PIN login so the full password is typed once and rarely again. Because the same identity is used everywhere, the roles set in User Management travel with the person: a User sees what a User sees, whether the door was the desktop CRM, the phone app, the SecureWebX button or the portal launcher. There is one roster and one set of rules, however many doors there are. #### The Quick Access PIN: fast re-entry without a password on screen Dealerships have a specific problem most software ignores: the CRM is used at shared desks, in front of customers, on a lot, and dozens of times a day. Typing a strong password in each of those situations is slow and public, so people either choose a weak password or stop signing out. The Quick Access PIN is the answer. Each user has their own PIN, set per user in User Management alongside their role, and uses it to get back into the desktop CRM and the phone app quickly during the day after the full sign in. Because the PIN belongs to one user, it keeps the store's record honest. The rep who steps up to a shared showroom desk and enters her PIN is working as herself, so the text she sends carries her name and activity reporting counts it for her, rather than for whoever signed in that morning and walked away. A manager who has ever tried to reconstruct who actually texted a customer from the shared BDC computer knows the value of that. The help center article shows where the PIN is set and how it is used on the phone. #### Biometric login on the phone, passwordless login on the portal The phone app opens with a face or a fingerprint, using the biometrics already on the phone, once the user has signed in the first time. For a rep who opens the app forty times a day on the lot, that is the difference between working leads from the CRM and working them from the personal messaging app that is one thumb away. Biometric login is also safer than the alternative, because the alternative is a four digit phone passcode and an app that is left signed in. The account portal takes a different approach for a different user. The person paying the bill opens My LeadLocate a few times a month and should not need a password for it, so the portal offers passwordless login by magic link, sent to the email that is the person's identity on the account, or by text message. Tap the link, or enter the code from the text, and the dashboard is open. The help center article covers the two options. Password, PIN, biometrics and magic link are four doors into one identity, matched to where and how often each person actually shows up. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere It replaces password sprawl. The typical store runs a CRM from one vendor, a credit application tool from another, an inventory tool from a third and a billing portal from each, and every person on the team has a login for some of them, a shared login for others and a sticky note for the rest. The costs are the ones nobody invoices: the ten minutes a manager spends resetting a rep's password for the inventory tool, the former employee who still has a working login to the credit app system, the shared account that means nobody knows who did what. Because SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the account portal are part of the same LeadLocate platform as the CRM rather than products from other vendors, one identity is possible in the first place. It comes with every lead plan on the pricing page, with no identity product to buy on the side and nothing extra to switch on. The SecureWebX and Inventory Link pages describe what each product does once the door is open; this page is about the door. #### The compliance angle: one identity, removed once A store's record is only as good as its attribution. When a customer disputes what a salesperson texted, when a manager reviews a recorded call, when a regulator asks who handled a do not call request, the answer has to be a person. Single sign on with one identity per user, a personal PIN and personal biometrics means the text, the call and the credit application were done by the login that did them, and the reports and the communications log say so. Shared logins, the thing password sprawl encourages, turn every one of those answers into a guess. The other half is removal. When someone leaves, a Master Administrator removes the user in User Management and that access is gone from the CRM, the phone app, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the account portal at once, because there was only one identity to remove. There is no checklist of five vendors to call and no login that gets forgotten. The customer information stays where it belongs, in the Customer Profile with personal information encrypted and in the credit application system, which is its own application under the same login and keeps its own record of who opened what. What leaves with the person is nothing. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Single sign on is on from the first login; there is no identity project to run. A Master Administrator adds each person in User Management with a role and a Quick Access PIN, and that one identity is what they use everywhere. Each rep installs the LeadLocate phone app, signs in once with the same login as the desk, and turns on biometric login when the app offers it. The owner opens My LeadLocate by magic link or text message the first time an invoice is due and never looks for a password again. Pair it with the roles in User Management, which decide what the one login can see; with the account access page in My LeadLocate, which shows the owner who can launch what; and with Team Chat, which is another place the same identity shows up, so a name in a channel is the same name on a text and a deal. If you want to see the one login carry a person from the CRM into the credit application console and the inventory tool before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows it, and the contact page reaches a person who can answer a question about your store's setup. #### Questions and answers Q: Which products does one LeadLocate login open? A: The LeadLocate CRM at the desk and in the phone app, the SecureWebX credit application console, the Inventory Link portal and the My LeadLocate account portal. The SecureWebX and My Inventory buttons on the CRM dock open those products already signed in. Q: What is the Quick Access PIN? A: A short code, set per user in User Management, that gets a person back into the desktop CRM or the phone app quickly during the day without typing a full password at a shared desk or on the lot. Each user has their own. Q: Does the phone app support face or fingerprint login? A: Yes. After the first sign in with the regular login, the LeadLocate mobile app offers biometric login using the biometrics already on the phone, alongside Quick Access PIN login. Q: How does passwordless login work on My LeadLocate? A: The account portal sends a magic link to the email that is the person's identity on the account, or a code by text message. Tap the link or enter the code and the portal opens, with no password to remember. Q: What happens when an employee leaves? A: A Master Administrator removes the user in User Management and that one identity loses access to the CRM, the phone app, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the account portal together. Leads, conversations, recordings and deals stay in the store's record. Q: Is single sign on an extra charge? A: No. It is how the platform works on every plan, including CRM Only, with no identity product or per user login fee. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Stipulations Workflow With Upload to Fulfill URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/stipulations-workflow The stipulations workflow in SecureWebX tracks every stipulation a deal needs on the credit application itself: add a stip from the common list or type a custom one, mark it required, and fulfill it by uploading the document against it. An upload for a lender shares it into that lender's secure view. It is part of every LeadLocate platform plan. #### What is the stipulations workflow? A stipulation is the condition a lender attaches to an approval: proof of income, proof of residence, a copy of the license, a phone bill, a reference. The deal funds when the stips are in, and it stalls while they are out. The stipulations workflow in SecureWebX puts every one of those conditions on the credit application record, tracks whether it is outstanding or on file, and lets the store fulfill it by uploading the document directly against the request that asked for it. That last part is what separates a workflow from a checklist. In most stores the stip list lives in the finance manager's head, on a sticky note on the deal jacket, or in a text thread where the customer sent a photo of a pay stub three days ago. When the lender asks whether the proof of income came in, the answer involves scrolling. In SecureWebX the answer is on the application: the stip, the upload against it, when it arrived and who uploaded it. This page is the product side of the feature. For the category view of how a dealership's application and document handling should work end to end, the online credit application software page is the place to start. #### How a finance office works stips on a normal day A lender approves a sedan deal on Monday afternoon through the lender response portal and lists what they still need: two recent pay stubs and a current utility bill. Those items land on the application as stipulations. The finance manager opens the file, sees both marked required, and emails the customer from the application's own thread with a plain request. Tuesday morning the customer replies to that email with photos of the stubs. The finance manager uploads them against the pay stub stip with Upload for this lender, which shares them straight into the lender's existing secure view of the application. One stip down, one to go. The utility bill takes longer, as utility bills do. Wednesday the salesperson asks whether the deal is funding. The finance manager does not have to check a notebook; the application shows one stip outstanding and which one. The salesperson texts the customer from the CRM, the bill comes in that evening, the finance manager uploads it, and the lender sees the complete set on Thursday morning. The deal funds with a record of exactly what was asked for, what was provided and when. Multiply that by a dozen open deals and a stack of lenders with different habits, and the value is clear: nothing is remembered, everything is recorded. #### Adding a stipulation: common list or custom, marked required Stips are added from the Stipulations section of an open application. The console keeps a list of common stipulations, the items lenders ask for on nearly every deal, so adding proof of income is one pick rather than one typed line. Anything unusual is typed as a custom item. Each stip can be marked required, so the application shows plainly which items block funding and which are nice to have. Stips also arrive without anyone at the store adding them. When a lender reviewing a Send to Lender share uses Request more information and lists the items they still need, those items land on the application as stipulations tied to that lender. The finance office sees what the lender wants without a phone call, and the lender sees the documents as they are uploaded. A store that knows what its lenders always ask for can collect much of it before the application arrives. Each apply link can carry document upload fields, so the special finance link can request a pay stub and a proof of residence during the application itself. Those documents attach to the submission as supporting documents, and the stip is fulfilled before it is ever opened. The apply links page covers customizing a link that way. #### Upload to fulfill: from the customer, the store or for a lender Fulfilling a stip means uploading the document against it. The upload accepts a file up to 20 MB, which covers a scanned bill, a phone photo of a pay stub or a PDF from an employer. Every upload is virus scanned before it is stored, and it is encrypted at rest with the rest of the application. Once uploaded, the stip shows as on file, with the document attached, and the application's audit log records who uploaded it and when. Where the document comes from is up to the store. The customer may have attached it during the application through a document upload field on the apply link. They may have replied to an email sent from the application's thread, which the console's Mailbox handles inbound. They may have handed a paper copy to the salesperson, who scans it at the desk. In every case the finance office uploads it against the stip that asked for it, and it lives there. When the stip belongs to a lender, Upload for this lender uploads the requested document and shares it with that lender in the same secure, watermarked view they already have. The lender never receives an email attachment; they see the document inside the share, with the same code gate, expiry and revoke the store set on the application. #### Where the stipulations workflow lives It lives on the application, in the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login. Open any application from the credit application inbox and the Stipulations section is on the record alongside supporting documents, the lender shares, the worksheets and the audit log. There is no separate stip screen to keep in sync with the deal, because the stips are part of the deal. From the CRM side, the salesperson sees the application's status and opens it in SecureWebX when they need the detail, so the question of what is holding up funding has an answer the rep can find alone. Users are invited into the console with roles, so a store decides who can add and fulfill stips and who can only see them. #### What does the stipulations workflow replace? It replaces the sticky note on the deal jacket, the highlighted line on the lender's call sheet, the personal text thread that holds a customer's pay stub, and the question, asked in every finance office every week, of whether we ever got that utility bill. It replaces the email to the lender with three attachments and a subject line of the customer's last name, and the reply asking for the one you forgot. It also replaces the exposure. Documents proving a customer's income and address are among the most sensitive things a store handles, and a workflow that keeps them in a text thread or an email attachment leaves them somewhere the store no longer controls. Uploading against the stip keeps them inside the application, encrypted, scanned, watermarked when viewed and logged when touched. The dealership CRM with credit application page covers the wider argument for keeping deal documents under one system rather than scattered across personal devices. #### The compliance angle A store that handles stips through personal phones and email has no reliable record of what it collected, from whom, or where the copies went. The stipulations workflow gives the store that record by default. Every stip shows when it was added and by whom, whether it was required, when it was fulfilled and by whom, and which lender it was shared with. Documents open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated. Uploads are virus scanned and encrypted at rest. The audit log on the application ties it together, and records are archived, never deleted, so the file answers questions years later. None of this makes a store compliant on its own; a compliance program is the store's, and its counsel decides what it requires. What the workflow provides is evidence that the program was followed on every deal, without asking the finance office to keep a second set of notes. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with There is nothing to turn on. Stipulations are part of every application in the SecureWebX console, which is created with your LeadLocate account and is part of every plan, month to month, on the pricing page. Each product in the platform is its own application under one login, so a stip can be added and fulfilled from the console any hour the finance desk is working, and every document uploaded is retained with the application. Pair the workflow with Send to Lender, since a lender's request for more information becomes a stip and the upload for that lender lands in the lender's share. Pair it with document upload fields on your apply links so the most common stips arrive with the application. Pair it with the adverse action notice when a deal cannot be made, so the file that was declined carries the record of what was asked for and what was received. The rest of the platform is on the all features page, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a stip added, fulfilled and shared with a lender on one application. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a stipulation on a car deal? A: A condition a lender attaches to an approval before funding, such as proof of income, proof of residence or a copy of the license. SecureWebX tracks each one on the credit application and fulfills it by uploading the document against it. Q: How do I add a stip to an application? A: Open the application in the SecureWebX console, go to Stipulations, and pick from the common stipulations list or type a custom item. Mark it required if it blocks funding. A lender's request for more information through a share also lands as a stip. Q: How is a stip fulfilled? A: By uploading the document against it, up to 20 MB per file. The upload is virus scanned, encrypted at rest and logged. Upload for this lender shares the document into that lender's existing secure view of the application. Q: Can the customer provide stips during the application? A: Yes. Each apply link can carry document upload fields, so a store can request a pay stub or a proof of residence inside the application itself. Those documents attach to the submission as supporting documents. Q: Does the lender get the documents as email attachments? A: No. An upload for a lender appears inside the lender's watermarked, code gated share of the application, with the same expiry and revoke the store set. The lender never receives a loose attachment. Q: Is the stipulations workflow included with LeadLocate? A: Yes. It is part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. Plans are listed on the pricing page. ### Stock Photos for Listings Without a Photographer URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/stock-photos-for-listings Stock photos for listings is an Inventory Link feature that adds promo photos and stock imagery to any vehicle that arrives without pictures, so a listing is never a blank grey box on your website, in the embeddable widget or in a text message. Your own photos lead when they exist, and the images follow the unit into the LeadLocate CRM and the vehicle insert button. #### What stock photos for listings does Stock photos for listings gives every vehicle in your inventory a picture from the moment it is decoded, using promo photos and stock imagery for the units that arrived without any, so nothing you advertise looks like a placeholder. Inventory Link does this automatically when a unit comes in, and a backfill pass does it for the listings that were already sitting there with no image. When your own photos exist they lead; the stock imagery is for the gap between a car landing on the lot and someone getting a camera to it. That gap is where independents and brokers lose the most. A franchise store with a lot porter and a photographer on a schedule has the gap down to a day. An independent whose photographer is also the used car manager has units sitting a week with one dusk shot from a phone. A broker has no lot to photograph at all. In every case the unit is being advertised, on a website, in a widget, in a text, and the first image is what decides whether a shopper clicks. The feature is part of the platform subscription rather than a photo service with its own invoice. It is the plain answer to a plain problem: a listing without a picture is a listing nobody opens. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day Two trades come in on a Tuesday. The used car manager adds both in the dealer portal, the VIN decode fills in the year, make, model, trim and specifications, and because neither has a photo yet, both get promo photos and stock imagery for what they are. By the afternoon both units are live on the dealership website through the widget, on the inventory site the builder published, and in the CRM inventory list, each with a picture a shopper would actually click on. Nobody had to remember to hold them back until Thursday. Wednesday a shopper texts about the silver one. The salesperson opens the composer, taps the vehicle insert button, picks the unit, and the vehicle card drops into the message with the stock photo, the price and the stock number. The shopper sees a real presentation of the car she asked about rather than a link to a third party site or a photo of a windshield sticker. She asks to see it Saturday. Thursday the photographer comes. He shoots both trades, the manager opens Edit vehicle and photos in the portal, uploads the real set, and orders them so the best exterior leads. The stock imagery steps aside. Everywhere the unit appears, the widget, the inventory site, the CRM list, the next text the salesperson sends, the real photos are what show. The listing was never blank and it is now fully yours. That is the whole workflow, and the only manual step in it is the one you would have done anyway. #### Where the photos live: the portal, the CRM and the phone Photos are managed in the Inventory Link dealer portal under Edit vehicle and photos, which is where a listing gets its real images uploaded, reordered and finished. The promo photos and stock imagery are applied when a unit is added or imported, and the backfill pass catches the listings that were already in the inventory without a picture. The portal opens from the My Inventory button in the dock at the bottom of the LeadLocate CRM, with single sign on. Inside the CRM, the Inventory item in the main menu shows the same list with the same images, and the vehicle insert button in every text and email composer attaches the unit with its photos and price, as MMS in a text or inline in an email. The send vehicles by text page covers that button in full. On the phone, the LeadLocate app carries the inventory list with a detail sheet, so a salesperson on the lot sees the images the shopper saw. The dealer portal is in the app stores under the listing name MyInventory.Link for managers who prefer to upload the Thursday photos from the phone they took them on. #### What it replaces, and what photos cost elsewhere The alternatives are all expensive in one way or another. A photo service that comes to the lot charges per unit and comes on its schedule, not yours, so a car still sits unphotographed for the days in between. A stock image subscription is a separate bill and a manual lookup for every unit. The most common alternative is the one nobody budgets for: holding a listing back until it has photos, which costs the days the unit was on the lot and not for sale anywhere. Stock photos for listings takes the holding period to zero and the lookup to none. The unit is decoded through VIN decode and the vehicle database, so the promo photos match what the vehicle actually is, and the images follow the record everywhere the platform shows it. The broader question of what vehicle photo management should cover, and what to demand of a vendor in a demo, is on our inventory photo management page; this page is the feature itself. The cost is the plan you are already on. It is part of the platform subscription, month to month, and the pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: a picture of the model, then a picture of the car Stock imagery shows what a vehicle of that year, make, model and trim looks like. It does not show the scratch on the rear bumper of the one on your lot, and no honest store wants a shopper to think it does. The way to use it is the way this feature is built to be used: as the picture that keeps a listing from being blank until your own photos exist, with your own photos taking the lead the moment they are uploaded. For a used unit where condition matters, get the real photos up as soon as you can, and let the stock imagery cover the days in between. The decoded record underneath helps here too. Because the promo photos are chosen from the decoded trim, a shopper is not looking at a picture of a higher trim than the one you are selling. The listing says what the vehicle is, the image matches it, and the price and stock number are the ones your portal holds. That is a more defensible listing than a hand picked image from a search engine with a description typed from memory. #### How to turn it on There is no switch to find. Stock photos for listings runs whenever a vehicle enters Inventory Link without pictures, whether it came from a feed under Feeds, from an import of your own dealership website, from Add a vehicle in the portal, or from auto broker inventory mode. The backfill pass handles the listings that were already there. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Your part is the part you would do anyway: when real photos exist, upload them under Edit vehicle and photos and order them so the best one leads. If you want a particular promo photo set for a make, or imagery presented in a way the standard listing does not cover, that is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. To see it before you decide, the pre-recorded live demo shows a unit added without pictures and appearing with them, and the contact page reaches a person who will run your own inventory through it. #### What to pair it with Photos are only useful where a shopper sees them, so pair this feature with the places the platform shows a unit. The embeddable inventory widget puts the listings on the dealership website you already run; the inventory website builder publishes them on a site of their own and on per salesperson sites from a template; brand offer pages and the dealer page show them beside the manufacturer's offers. Every one of those reads the same inventory record, so the Thursday photos replace the stock imagery everywhere at once. Inside the CRM, pair it with the vehicle insert button, which is where the picture does its most direct work: in the text a salesperson sends to a shopper who asked about a specific car. Pair it with In Store Now, so the salesperson sending that card knows the unit is physically on the lot. And for brokers, pair it with auto broker inventory mode, where there is no lot to photograph and the stock imagery is the listing. The all features page lists the rest. #### Built so your store keeps selling The pictures are additive, and that is the whole point of them. Your dealership website keeps showing your cars through your web vendor's own pages, your inventory feed keeps flowing to everyone else who consumes it, and every vehicle card your team has already texted is in a customer's hand with its picture attached. The real photos your lot porter shot this morning sit on the inventory record and travel with it, so replacing a stock image with a real one is a swap on one unit rather than a rebuild of a listing. The platform is built so the store keeps selling: a car that arrives in your feed overnight has a picture on the widget, on the inventory site and in the CRM list by the time a salesperson opens it in the morning, and your website, your feed and the photos you took stay the store's own. #### Questions and answers Q: What happens when I upload my own photos? A: They lead. Upload them under Edit vehicle and photos in the dealer portal, order them so the best exterior shot is first, and the stock imagery steps aside everywhere the unit appears: the widget, the inventory site, brand pages, the CRM list and the vehicle insert button. Q: Does it cover units that were already in my inventory without pictures? A: Yes. A backfill pass gives promo photos and stock imagery to existing listings that have no image, not only to new arrivals. Q: How does it know which image fits the vehicle? A: From the decoded record. Every unit goes through VIN decode and the vehicle database first, so the promo photos are chosen for the actual year, make, model and trim rather than guessed from a description. Q: Should I use stock imagery for a used car? A: Use it to keep the listing from being blank until your real photos exist, then upload the real set. Stock imagery shows what the model looks like; your own photos show the condition of the car on your lot, which is what a used car shopper is buying. Q: Do the photos come through in text messages? A: Yes. The vehicle insert button in every LeadLocate CRM composer attaches the unit with its photos and price as MMS in a text or inline in an email, and it uses whichever images the listing currently holds. Q: Is this an extra charge? A: No. Stock photos for listings is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page lists the current plans. ### Team Chat for Dealership Staff URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/team-chat Team Chat is the internal messaging tool inside LeadLocate CRM: channels for the sales floor, the BDC and the managers, direct messages between any two users, reactions, polls, file upload, presence and read receipts. It is included for every user on the account, opens from the top bar of the LeadLocate CRM and from the Team button on the phone app dock. #### What Team Chat is, in one sentence Team Chat is the messaging tool for the people who work at your dealership, built into LeadLocate CRM, with channels, direct messages, reactions, polls, file upload, presence and read receipts, available to every user on the account. It is the conversation that is not with a customer: the manager telling the floor a unit just got marked down, the rep asking the tower for a number, the BDC telling a salesperson their two o'clock just pulled in, the finance office asking who has the keys to the demo. That conversation has always existed. What changes is where it lives. In most stores it lives in a group text on personal phones, which means the store does not own it, cannot see it, and loses it every time a phone or a salesperson leaves. Team Chat moves it into the same LeadLocate CRM that holds the leads, the calendar and the desking tool, so the question and the thing the question is about are on the same screen. A rep asking for a number on a deal has the deal open. A manager answering has the same lead in front of them. #### How a store uses it on a normal day The day starts in the Sales Floor channel. The sales manager posts the units that need to move this week and the weekend spiff sheet as a file upload, and the reps react to it rather than replying one by one, so the channel stays readable. A used car manager posts a poll about which two units to feature on the front line and the floor votes between customers. Presence shows who is actually in the building and who is still on the way, which matters when a walk in needs a rep now. Mid morning, a BDC agent books a fresh appointment and sends the assigned salesperson a direct message with the customer's name and the unit. The read receipt tells her the rep saw it, so she stops chasing him. At the desk, a rep is working a payment with a customer across from him and does not want to leave. He messages the tower, the manager reads it, opens the same deal in Desking, and sends back the number. The customer never saw the rep walk away, and there is no post it note with a payment on it lying on a desk. After close, the finance manager posts in the Managers channel that two deals still need stipulations, with the checklist attached, and the general manager reads it from the phone app at dinner without calling anyone. None of that touched a personal phone number, and all of it is there in the morning. #### Where it lives: the top bar at the desk, the Team button on the phone On the desktop CRM, Team Chat sits in the top bar with Send a Text, Make a Call, Send an Email, Notify, the Favorites bar, Support and Schedule Training, so it is one click from any screen rather than a separate application to switch to. A rep working a lead in the Leads menu can open Team Chat, ask the question, and get back to the lead without losing their place. On the phone, Team Chat is one of the five items on the app's bottom dock: Text, Call, New Lead, Email and Team. The LeadLocate mobile app treats it as a first class destination because that is where most of the conversation happens for people who are on the lot, in the service drive, or on a demo. Channels, direct messages, reactions, polls, file upload, presence and read receipts are the same on the phone as at the desk. A manager between tasks can answer a rep from the phone without walking back to the office, and a rep who never opens the desktop CRM still has the whole team in a pocket. #### Channels, direct messages, polls, presence and read receipts, explained for a sales floor Channels are rooms the store creates for a purpose. Most stores start with three: one for the whole sales team, one for the BDC, and one for managers. Groups add a channel per rooftop or per department. A channel is where announcements live, so a rep who was off yesterday can read what was said rather than asking around. Direct messages are the one to one conversation between any two users, which is where most day to day questions go. Reactions keep channels readable. Twelve reps acknowledging a spiff sheet with a thumbs up is one line of reactions rather than twelve replies. Polls settle small decisions quickly, from which unit goes on the front line to whether the Saturday meeting moves to eight. File upload puts a spec sheet, a checklist or a photo of the lot in the conversation where it was asked for. Presence shows who is online, which for a dealership means who is available to take a walk in or a hot lead right now. Read receipts answer the question every BDC manager asks a dozen times a day: did he see it? They also change behavior; a message everyone knows was read tends to get acted on. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere What it replaces is the group text, and the group text is more expensive than it looks. It runs on personal phones the store does not control. It mixes the customer's phone number, sent as a screenshot, with lunch orders. It disappears when the rep who started it leaves. And it puts the store's internal conversation in a place a manager cannot see, which means nobody can coach it. The alternative most stores consider is a general purpose team messaging product with per user seats, a separate login, and no idea what a lead or a deal is. That is another monthly line item for a tool that has to be explained to every new hire. Team Chat is included for every user on every LeadLocate plan with no separate bill, and the pricing page lays out the lead plans. And because it lives in the CRM, the message about a lead is a click from the lead. The mobile CRM for car sales teams page covers the wider case for running the store from a phone; this page is about the conversation layer inside it. #### The compliance angle: keep customer conversation in the lead, keep team conversation in the store There are two conversations at a dealership and they should never share a channel. The customer conversation belongs in the lead record: the texting inbox, the email inbox, the call recordings and the communications log that holds every call, text, MMS, email and voicemail for that customer in one place. That is where consent lives, where the do not call check runs, and where a manager can review what was said. The team conversation belongs in Team Chat, owned by the store, tied to the users the store controls in User Management. When both live in the CRM, the store stops doing the thing that creates most of its exposure: photographing a customer's information and sending it around on personal phones. A rep who needs a manager to look at a lead sends the manager to the lead, not a screenshot of it. A rep who leaves takes no thread with them because the thread was never theirs. And when a question comes up about what the team was told, in a dispute or a review, the store can look at its own record rather than asking a former employee for their phone. The texting inbox handles the customer side; Team Chat handles the store side; the line between them is the policy. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to switch on. Team Chat is part of LeadLocate CRM for every user from the first login. The setup that matters is social rather than technical. A Master Administrator or Manager creates the first channels, usually the whole team, the BDC and the managers, and posts the first announcement there rather than in the group text, so the team learns where announcements now live. Reps install the phone app, sign in with the same login as the desk, and find Team under the Team button on the dock. The help center article shows the clicks for channels, direct messages and polls. Two habits make it stick. First, managers answer in Team Chat, not by walking over, for a week, so reps learn a message gets a reply. Second, the group text is retired on purpose, with a last message in it saying where the conversation moved. Stores that do both are fully over within days because the tool is already open on every screen the team uses. #### What to pair it with Team Chat is most useful next to the tools that create the questions. Lead notifications and alerts tell a rep a new lead landed; Team Chat is where the rep asks who else is talking to that customer. The Workspace lists the appointments and to dos for the day; the BDC channel is where the schedule gets adjusted when a customer moves. The desking tool produces the number; the direct message to the tower is how the rep asked for it. In-Store Now marks who is physically on the lot; a channel post is how the floor hears that the customer with the trade just arrived. Keep Deal Chat separate in your head. Deal Chat is the conversation between a customer and a salesperson on a customer deal page, with link previews and photo drops. Team Chat is between employees. Both are in the CRM, both are on the phone app, and they never mix. If you want to see Team Chat alongside the rest of the CRM before signing up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the desk and the phone together, and the contact page reaches a person who can talk through how a store your size usually sets up its channels. #### Questions and answers Q: Is Team Chat included for every user or only managers? A: Every user on the account. Channels, direct messages, reactions, polls, file upload, presence and read receipts are available to Users, Managers and Master Administrators alike, on every plan, at no extra charge. Q: Where do I find Team Chat? A: In the top bar of the desktop CRM, next to Send a Text, Make a Call and Send an Email, and under the Team button on the bottom dock of the LeadLocate phone app. Q: What is the difference between Team Chat and Deal Chat? A: Team Chat is between employees at the store. Deal Chat is between a customer and a salesperson on a customer deal page. Both are in the CRM and the phone app, and they stay separate on purpose. Q: Should reps share a customer's information in Team Chat? A: Send the manager to the lead rather than a screenshot of it. Customer conversation and customer information belong in the lead record, where the texting inbox, call recordings and communications log keep them; Team Chat is for the store's internal conversation. Q: Does Team Chat work on the phone? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app carries the same channels, direct messages, reactions, polls, file upload, presence and read receipts, and Team is one of the five items on the app's bottom dock. Q: Can I post a file or run a poll in a channel? A: Yes. File upload puts a spec sheet, a checklist or a lot photo in the conversation, and polls settle small decisions such as which unit goes on the front line without a meeting. ### Text Automation Triggered by Lead Activity URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/text-automation Text Automation in LeadLocate CRM sends texts when lead activity calls for them: an automated text the moment a lead is received on a feed, a text on appointment confirmation, multi step Follow Up Processes by lead type, keyword replies, and texts scheduled from the inbox or the Text Automation page for a chosen date and time. Every one lands on the customer's thread with a delivery status. #### What Text Automation does, in one sentence Text Automation in LeadLocate CRM is the set of tools that send a text because something happened to a lead rather than because a rep remembered: a lead arrived on a feed, an appointment was confirmed, a day in a follow up process came due, a customer texted a keyword, or a rep set a date and time. Each automated text goes out on the store's tracking numbers, lands on the customer's thread in the two way texting inbox with a delivery status, and the rep who owns the lead takes over the conversation from that thread the moment the customer answers. Searches for text automation usually turn up phone tricks and generic business tools that fire on a timer. A dealership needs the trigger to be the lead. The dealership SMS marketing automation page covers cadence and consent as a strategy; this page is the four places automation actually lives in the CRM and what each one is called. #### How it runs on a normal day, without anyone touching it A lead lands on the store's inbound feed at 8:52 a.m., before the first rep is at a desk. The feed's Automated TEXT Messages (on Lead Receipt) template fires: a short text from the store, by name, thanking the customer for the inquiry about the vehicle they asked about and asking when they would like to come in, with the rep's name merged in. At 8:53 the assigned rep's phone gets the New Lead Alert; at 8:57 the customer replies with a question about a trade, and the rep's Text Reply Alert takes it from there. From that point the thread has a human in it. A different lead from last Tuesday has not answered anything. It sits on the store's follow up process for inbound leads, so on day three the process sends its text step, on day five the email step, and on day seven it creates a call task for the rep. A third customer confirmed an appointment for 4 p.m. and gets the Automated TEXT (on Appointment Confirmation) with the address and the rep's name. And a rep who spoke to someone this morning who said try me Thursday opened the thread, clicked Schedule TEXT Follow-up, picked Thursday at 10, and moved on. Four kinds of text, four triggers, no spreadsheet. #### Automated Templates: the text on lead receipt, per feed The first tool is Automated Templates, under Billing and Admin. It holds the messages that fire the moment a lead is received, organized by feed: Inbound Lead Automated Templates for buyer leads, Acquisitions Lead Automated Templates for consumer sellers, and a Company Default set used to set up new feeds. For each there is an Automated TEXT Messages (on Lead Receipt) template, an Automated Email Messages (on Lead Receipt) template, a First Automated Voicemail (on Lead Receipt) that plays a recording the rep made in the browser, and Appointment Confirmation Templates with an Automated TEXT and an Automated Email of their own. Templates take merge fields, so the customer's name, the vehicle, the rep and the store fill in per lead, and the store can save six custom merge fields of its own for the things templates always need, such as the finance desk's direct line. Attach Business Card puts the rep's card on the automated email. There is one master switch: when automation is off for the account, the page says so in plain words, and nothing fires. Unassigned lead automation covers the lead that has not been routed yet, so a customer never waits on a round robin to hear from the store. #### Follow Up Processes: the steps by lead type The second tool is Follow Up Processes, also under Billing and Admin. A process is a series of steps for a lead type, each step a number of days out with its channels: Text, Email, Call, in any combination, with an SMS body and an email subject and body written with merge fields. Auto Send steps go out by themselves; a call step becomes a task for the rep with instructions. An Appointment Event can trigger a step, so an appointment that is completed or missed moves the customer onto the right message. After Last Step the process can change the lead to a Final Status, so a lead that never answered ends in a status a manager can report on rather than in limbo. Processes come with defaults the store can edit, and a Restore Defaults button brings back any default process that was deleted. The page includes a short How Follow Up Processes Work explainer and the list of Available Merge Fields, because a BDC manager should be able to build a process without a support call. The follow up processes page goes deeper on building them; for this page the point is that a text step in a process is text automation triggered by time since the lead, and every reply lands on the thread in front of the rep who owns it. #### Scheduled texts and keyword replies The third tool is the one named on the dock: Marketing Tools, then Text Automation. The page lists every scheduled text with its To, Message, Template, Attachment, Schedule and Status, and lets a user queue a new one for a date and time, to a contact or to a whole campaign list with Send to Campaign. When it is saved the page confirms TEXT Scheduled, and it goes out at that time. The same scheduling is one click from any thread as Schedule TEXT Follow-up, which is how a rep turns call me Thursday into a text that arrives Thursday without a reminder. The fourth is the keyword. Keyword triggers on a lead respond to words a customer texts, and Texting Chatbots extend that into campaigns, where a customer who texts a word to the store's number gets the reply the store wrote, is subscribed, and becomes a lead. Intake Process Automation sits underneath all four: in-house intake automations that replaced the per dealer third-party automation tools stores used to string together, with an intake hook, so a lead from any source gets the same treatment on arrival. #### What it replaces, and what a missed follow up costs Stores without text automation run follow up on the rep's memory and the manager's nagging, and both fail on busy days, which are the days the leads come in. The tools sold to fix it are usually a marketing automation platform bolted onto the CRM, priced per contact, with a drag and drop builder that a BDC manager sets up once and nobody maintains, and no way for the automation to know that a rep already answered the customer by text ten minutes ago. Built in, the automation and the inbox are the same system. The template fires from the lead record, the process step reads the lead's status, the scheduled text sits on the thread, and a reply from the customer lands on the same thread the automation wrote to, so the rep and the process are looking at one conversation. There is no per contact price and no second vendor; Text Automation is part of every plan on the pricing page. The cost of the alternative is the lead that got the first text and then silence, and the lead that got its fifth automated text after buying somewhere else because the marketing tool never saw the CRM. #### The compliance angle: automation that honors the stop word Automated texting to consumers is where a store's texting practice gets tested, so the safe behaviors are built in rather than configured. Every automated text goes to a lead who submitted a request or texted the store first, and it goes out on the store's tracking number that the customer already has. A stop word from the customer opts them out automatically, adds the number to the two way blacklist, and halts every process, template and scheduled text for that number; no automation checks a list a rep forgot to update. The DNC Blacklist runs a live do not call lookup and blocks spam in both directions. The master automation switch turns everything off for the account in one place when the store needs that. The record is complete because the automation writes to the same place a rep does. Every automated text is on the customer's thread with its delivery status and in the communications log with calls, emails and voicemails, so a manager can see what the store sent and when, and read it in order. The TCPA compliance for dealership texting page is the plain language guide to the rules the store still owns. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with Automated Templates and default Follow Up Processes come with the account, so a new store has a text on lead receipt and a default process the first day; a Master Administrator edits the wording under Billing and Admin and turns the master switch on. Scheduled texts need nothing but a date. Keyword campaigns need a keyword and a reply. Anything beyond that, a process for a lead type the store invents or a trigger on a custom status, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The platform is built so the texting never stops: every text already sent is on the customer's phone, the tracking numbers are yours, and every template, process and scheduled send is stored with the account and keeps running on the schedule the store set. Pair Text Automation with lead notifications, so the rep knows the moment a customer replies to an automated text and the handoff from system to person is immediate. Pair it with the Phone Validator, whose validity dots on the lead keep automation from texting a number that cannot receive it. And pair it with Email Automation and Voicemail Drops, the other two channels in the same Marketing Tools menu, so a process can text, email and leave a recorded message without leaving the CRM. The full set is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: What triggers an automated text in LeadLocate CRM? A: Lead receipt on a feed (Automated Templates), an appointment confirmation, a day coming due in a Follow Up Process for that lead type, a keyword the customer texts, or a date and time a rep set with Schedule TEXT Follow-up or on the Text Automation page. Each one lands on the customer's thread with a delivery status. Q: How do I stop automated texts for a customer or for the whole account? A: A stop word from the customer halts every process, template and scheduled text for that number and adds it to the two way blacklist. A user can edit or delete a scheduled text from the Text Automation page, and the master switch under Automated Templates turns all automation off for the account. Q: Can I send a different first text for buyer leads and seller leads? A: Yes. Automated Templates are organized by feed: Inbound Lead Automated Templates, Acquisitions Lead Automated Templates and a Company Default used to set up new feeds. Each has its own Automated TEXT Messages (on Lead Receipt) with merge fields. Q: Where is Text Automation in the CRM? A: In the dock under Marketing Tools, second item, for scheduled texts. The templates that fire on lead receipt are under Billing and Admin, Automated Templates, and the multi step drips are under Follow Up Processes in the same menu. Schedule TEXT Follow-up is inside every conversation. Q: Can a follow up process include calls and emails as well as texts? A: Yes. Each step has channels: Text, Email and Call, in any combination. Text and email steps can Auto Send; a call step creates a task with instructions for the rep. After the last step the process can move the lead to a Final Status. Q: Does Text Automation cost extra? A: No. Automated Templates, Follow Up Processes, scheduled texts and keyword replies are part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are on the pricing page. ### Texting Chatbots That Text Back for Car Dealers URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/texting-chatbots Texting Chatbots in LeadLocate CRM are keyword campaigns that text back. A store picks a trigger keyword and writes the reply; when a customer texts that word to the store's number, the bot answers instantly, subscribes the customer to the campaign, creates the lead, and texts the rep who asked to be notified. They live under Marketing Tools in the dock. #### What Texting Chatbots do, in one sentence A texting chatbot in LeadLocate CRM is a keyword campaign: the store chooses a trigger keyword and a reply, and when a customer texts that keyword to the store's tracking number, the bot replies at once, adds the customer as a subscriber to that campaign, records them as a lead, and texts the rep or manager who asked to be notified. Bots that text back, in the CRM's own words. No app for the customer to install, no form to fill out, and no salesperson required to be awake. The value is in the word instantly. A customer who texts TRUCKS to a number on a banner is at peak interest for about ninety seconds. A chatbot answers inside that window with the offer, the link or the hours, and it hands the store a lead with a phone number that has already proven it works. The missed call text-back software page covers the neighboring idea, an automatic text to a caller the store could not answer, built from the same tools. This page is the chatbot itself. #### How a store uses it on a normal Saturday The used car manager printed the campaign's sign on Friday, a full page layout that reads Text TRUCKS to the store's number, and taped it in the window of every pickup on the front line. Saturday at 11:20 a couple walks the lot before anyone reaches them, reads the sign on a crew cab, and texts TRUCKS. Within seconds the reply arrives: a short note that they are subscribed, the weekend pricing on trucks, and a link to the store's inventory page. At the same moment the manager's cell buzzes with a text from the CRM: a new subscriber interested in the TRUCKS campaign, with the customer's number. He walks out, introduces himself by name and asks which truck they were looking at. The lead is already in the CRM with the campaign as its source, so when he opens the LeadLocate mobile app in the lot the customer's thread is there, and the vehicle button drops the crew cab into it with photos and a price before they have finished the walkaround. By Monday the campaign page shows eleven subscribers from the weekend, and each one is a lead a rep can call, a thread a rep can text, and a name on the recipient list for the next bulk send. #### Where it lives and what the controls are called Open the dock, click Marketing Tools, then Texting Chatbots. The page is Chatbot Campaigns. Under Add new TEXT Chatbot Campaign there are four fields: Campaign Name, Trigger Keyword, Reply, and Notify Me with a cell number. Save it and the campaign appears under Active Chatbot Campaigns with its keyword, its subscriber count and the date it was created. Each campaign has Edit, View and Delete, and View opens the subscribers. Two links beside each campaign print the sign for it, a Full-page layout and a Half-page Layout, so the keyword goes on a windshield, a service counter or a mailer without anyone opening a design tool. Import from CSV loads an existing list of subscribers into a campaign, which is how a store brings a list from a previous vendor over. A Software Setup help section on the same page walks a new user through the first campaign. On the phone, the subscriber's lead and thread are in the LeadLocate mobile app like any other lead. #### What the customer sees, and what the store sees The customer texts the keyword and receives two things: the store's reply, and a short confirmation that they are now subscribed to the campaign by name, with the word to text to unsubscribe and the word to text for help. That confirmation is deliberate. It tells the customer what they just joined and how to leave, in the first message, which is what a reasonable person expects and what the rules ask for. A customer who texts the same keyword twice is told they are already subscribed rather than being added twice. The store sees a new subscriber under the campaign, a new lead in the lead inbox with the campaign as its source, a text to the Notify Me number, and, for the rep the lead is assigned to, a New Lead Alert on their phone, since campaign signups fire the same alert as any other new lead. The customer's number is on a thread in the two way texting inbox from that first message, so the follow up is a reply, not a cold call. #### What it replaces, and what a keyword service costs elsewhere Keyword texting has been sold to dealerships for years as a standalone service: a short code the store rents, a monthly fee per keyword, a web dashboard nobody logs into, and a subscriber list that lives with the vendor. The customer who texts the keyword gets an autoreply and then, usually, nothing, because the lead never made it to a salesperson's screen. When the store cancels, the list goes with the vendor. Inside the CRM the keyword rides on the store's own tracking number, the subscriber is a lead the moment they text, the rep is notified the same second, and the list is the store's, in its CRM, forever. There is no per keyword fee and no separate bill; Texting Chatbots are part of every plan on the pricing page. The real cost of the old way was never the fee. It was the customer standing at a truck who texted a sign and got a robot instead of a salesperson. #### The compliance angle: a keyword is consent, and it is recorded A customer who texts a keyword to a number printed on a sign has initiated the conversation, and that first message is the store's record of it. The CRM keeps that inbound text on the customer's thread with its timestamp, sends the subscription confirmation with the unsubscribe and help words, and honors the opt out automatically: a customer who texts a stop word is removed from the campaign, added to the two way blacklist, and told which campaigns they left. No user and no automation texts that number again. The DNC Blacklist page runs a live do not call lookup on numbers and blocks inbound spam in both directions, so a keyword campaign does not become a door for junk. The keyword reply itself should be honest about what the campaign is and how often it will message, and that is the store's call to make when it writes the Reply field. The TCPA compliance for dealership texting page is the plain language guide. What the platform contributes is that consent, confirmation and opt out are all applied by the system and stored with the lead, not remembered by a rep. #### How to turn it on, and what a chatbot is not Nothing to install. Open Marketing Tools, click Texting Chatbots, fill in a campaign name, a keyword, a reply and the number to notify, and save. Print the sign from the layout link. The first subscriber can text within the hour. If a store wants a keyword that routes to a specific rep, a reply with a vehicle attached, or a chatbot that hands off to a multi step follow up, those are available on request, and our team puts them in production for your dealership. The platform is built so the campaign keeps selling for the store: every subscriber and every lead the keyword captured is in the CRM, the tracking numbers are yours, and the reply goes out the second the next customer texts the sign. One thing to be clear about. A texting chatbot here answers a keyword with the reply the store wrote; it is not a conversational agent that negotiates on the store's behalf. Jax, the AI assistant inside the CRM, helps the rep write, and the free live chat widget for dealer sites is a separate product on the live chat for car dealers page. The chatbot's job is to answer instantly and hand a live lead to a person, which is the part that sells cars. #### What to pair it with A chatbot builds an audience. Two neighbors put it to work. Bulk Texting sends the next event, the next special or the next arrival to the campaign's subscribers as a list, so the sign on the windshield keeps paying after the weekend. Text Automation puts the campaign's new leads on the same follow up process as any other lead, with the automated text on lead receipt and the steps by lead type, so a subscriber who did not buy Saturday hears from the store again on schedule. Design Studio prints the sign, the referral card and the business card that carry the keyword, and trackable short links in the reply tell the store how many subscribers opened the inventory page. The rest of the toolset is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a texting chatbot in LeadLocate? A: A keyword campaign that texts back. The store sets a trigger keyword and a reply under Marketing Tools, Texting Chatbots. When a customer texts the keyword to the store's number, the bot replies instantly, subscribes them to the campaign, creates the lead and texts the Notify Me number. Q: Does the customer become a lead? A: Yes. A campaign signup is recorded as a new lead with the campaign as its source, fires the New Lead Alert to the assigned rep, and opens a thread in the texting inbox from the customer's first message. Q: How do customers find the keyword? A: However the store prints it. Each campaign has a Full-page layout and a Half-page Layout link that prints the sign, and Design Studio produces cards and print pieces that carry the same keyword and number. Q: Can a subscriber opt out? A: Yes. The subscription confirmation tells them the word to text to unsubscribe. A stop word removes them from the campaign, adds the number to the two way blacklist, and confirms which campaigns they left. No user or automation texts that number again. Q: Is the chatbot an AI that talks to customers? A: No. It answers a keyword with the reply the store wrote and hands the lead to a person. Jax is the AI assistant that helps the rep inside the CRM, and the live chat widget for dealer websites is a separate product. Q: Which plan do I need? A: Texting Chatbots are part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, including CRM Only, with no per keyword fee. Plans are on the pricing page. ### The Online Credit Application Form, Step by Step URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/online-credit-application-form The SecureWebX online credit application form is a five step application a customer completes on their own phone: personal, residence, employment, income, review. It accepts an ITIN as well as an SSN, adds a co-applicant inside the same application, collects income, down payment and trade-in, and ends with an e-signature and consent capture against versioned terms. It is part of every LeadLocate platform plan. #### What is the online credit application form? It is the form a customer sees when they open one of your store's apply links. SecureWebX, the secure credit application system inside the LeadLocate platform, breaks the application into five steps: personal, residence, employment, income, review. Each step is a short screen, each one saves as the customer goes, and the whole thing ends with an e-signature and a consent record. That structure is deliberate. A single long form on a phone gets abandoned at the first scroll; five short ones get finished. This page walks the form the way a customer walks it, screen by screen, so a finance manager or a GM knows exactly what a buyer is being asked before the store sends the first link. If you want the category view, what any online application should do for a dealer, read the online credit application software page. If you want to know how the link itself is created, customized and sent, that is the apply links page. This one is about the form. One distinction up front: this is a full credit application with consent, not a prequalification widget. The online credit prequalification page explains the difference and why a soft pull is a separate thing. #### Step one: personal information, with an SSN or an ITIN The first screen asks who the applicant is: the identity details a lender needs to know who they are being asked to finance. The field that matters most to a lot of stores is identification, and here the form accepts an ITIN as well as a social security number. In markets where a good buyer with steady income has an ITIN rather than an SSN, a form that only accepts one of them turns that buyer away at the first field. This one does not, and the finance office gets a complete application it can work with the lenders that accept ITIN paper. Everything entered here is saved as the customer moves to the next step. If the phone rings, the customer answers it, and the application is still there when they come back. That single detail is responsible for a large share of the applications that get finished rather than restarted. #### Steps two and three: residence and employment The residence step collects where the applicant lives, and the employment step collects who they work for and how. These are the screens a paper application usually gets wrong, because the customer skips a line, writes in the margin or leaves a date blank, and the finance manager has to call back to fill the holes. On the phone form each step is short enough to complete in one sitting, and the customer is guided through it in order. Stores that need more than the standard questions on either step add them without touching the form's core. Each apply link can carry extra sections and custom fields placed in a chosen step, with help text under a field to explain what is being asked for. A special finance store might add a field for length of time at the current address on the residence step, or a document upload for a recent pay stub on the employment step. Those additions belong to that link, so the website link can stay lean while the special finance link asks for more. #### Step four: income, down payment and the trade-in The fourth step is where the deal takes shape. The applicant enters income, states a down payment, and completes the trade-in section for the vehicle they are bringing in. These three numbers are what the finance office needs to structure a first pass, and having them on the application means the desk starts from the customer's own figures instead of guessing. This is also where the application connects to the rest of SecureWebX. A worked application can carry a worksheet: cash, finance and lease pencils at parity with the CRM desking engine, with a deal recap PDF for the customer. The down payment and trade-in the customer entered on step four are the starting point for that pencil. The desking tool page covers the engine; the point here is that the customer supplies the inputs on their own phone before anyone at the store types a number. #### Step five: review, disclosures, e-signature and consent The last step shows the applicant what they entered, presents the disclosures, and captures an e-signature and consent. The disclosures are the store's own: the standard credit authorization, any state specific disclosures the store has set up, and any disclosures added to that particular apply link, which the store can set to require acknowledgment before the applicant continues. The consent is captured against versioned terms. When your disclosure language changes, SecureWebX keeps the exact version each customer agreed to and the moment they agreed. A year later, when someone asks what a specific applicant consented to, the answer is a record rather than a memory. The compliance disclosures and privacy notices page explains how a store manages that language per state and per company. Once the customer signs and submits, the application appears in the store's SecureWebX inbox with a status, an assignee, an amount and notes. From there the finance office takes over. #### Adding a co-applicant A co-applicant is added inside the same application, with the same details as the primary applicant. There is no second link to send and no second form to reconcile. Two people buying one car submit one application with both of them on it, signed by both, and the finance office works one file. For stores that see a lot of joint applications, spouses, parents co-signing for a first car, partners buying a work truck, this is the difference between a clean file and two half files stapled together. On the console side, the co-applicant travels with the application everywhere it goes: into Send to Lender shares, onto the worksheet, into the export to your lender or DMS in the format it expects. #### What a normal day with the form looks like A BDC agent confirms a Saturday appointment on Thursday and adds one line: here is our secure application if you would like to have financing ready when you arrive. The customer opens it Thursday night, gets through personal and residence, and stops. Friday morning the abandoned application shows up in the LeadLocate CRM for follow up, and the agent sends a short, human message. The customer finishes on the lunch break, signs, and submits. Saturday the finance manager has a complete application with a co-applicant, income, a down payment and a trade-in already on it, works a pencil, and the customer sees a payment inside the first half hour on the lot. Nothing in that sequence required paper, a scanner, a fax machine or a clipboard, and every piece of it is recorded: when the link was opened, when each step was saved, what disclosures were shown, what version was signed, who at the store touched it afterward. The abandoned credit application follow up page covers the follow up half of that day in detail. #### What the form replaces, and how to turn it on It replaces the paper application on the clipboard, the fillable PDF on the website, and the third party online application a store rents from a separate vendor with its own invoice. The SecureWebX form is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, priced on the pricing page. There is no separate contract for the application system. Turning it on takes no setup. When a LeadLocate account is created, the SecureWebX company and its users are created with it and the first apply link is live behind the SecureWebX button in the CRM dock. The standard five step form is complete on day one; customization with extra sections, custom fields, document uploads and disclosures is done from Customize application in the console whenever the store wants it. Bot protection sits on the public form, application data is encrypted at rest, and every upload is virus scanned. Each product is its own application under one login, so a link you sent last week keeps taking applications, every submission is saved the moment the customer presses send, and the console keeps working them. Pair the form with the two way texting inbox so the link goes out in the conversation the customer is already having, and with the credit application inbox so the finance office sees every submission in one place. The rest of the platform is on the all features page. The pre-recorded live demo shows the form being completed on a phone. #### Questions and answers Q: What are the five steps of the online credit application form? A: Personal, residence, employment, income and review. Each step is a short screen that saves as the customer goes, and the review step presents the disclosures and captures an e-signature and consent against versioned terms. Q: Does the form accept an ITIN? A: Yes. The identification field accepts an ITIN as well as a social security number, so a buyer with an ITIN completes the same application as everyone else and the finance office works it with the lenders that accept ITIN paper. Q: Can two people apply together? A: Yes. A co-applicant is added inside the same application with the same details as the primary applicant. Both sign one application, and the co-applicant travels with the file into lender shares, worksheets and exports. Q: Can I add my own questions or a document upload to the form? A: Yes. Each apply link can carry extra sections, custom fields and document uploads placed in a chosen step, plus its own disclosures. Additions belong to that link, so different links can ask different questions. Q: What happens if a customer stops halfway? A: The application saves at every step, and the abandoned application feeds back to the LeadLocate CRM for follow up. When the customer reopens the link they continue where they stopped. Q: Is the online credit application form a prequalification? A: No. It is a full credit application with disclosures, e-signature and consent, worked by your finance office and your own lenders. Prequalification and soft pulls are a different thing, covered on the prequalification page. ### Title, Stolen Vehicle and Warranty Checks in the Deal Worksheet URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/vehicle-checks-in-the-worksheet SecureWebX puts the vehicle checks inside the deal worksheet. Enter the VIN once and the worksheet decodes it, lists factory warranties and open recalls, records the manager confirmed build and runs title, stolen vehicle, sales history, auction and warranty checks, set up for your dealership by our team. Each result is saved with the time and the user, and the lender sees it with the deal. #### What are the vehicle checks in the deal worksheet? Every deal in SecureWebX is built on a worksheet, and every worksheet has a deal vehicle. The vehicle checks are the tools that sit on that vehicle: a VIN decode that loads the full factory specifications, a stock number lookup against the store's own inventory, a build the manager confirms from the window sticker, a Kelley Blue Book QuickValues book-out, and the title, stolen vehicle, sales history, auction and warranty checks. Each one reads the deal VIN from inside the worksheet, and each result is saved on the worksheet with the time it ran and the name of the user who ran it. The point is the order in which people learn things. A finance manager should know what the store is financing before the lender asks: whether the title carries a salvage brand, whether the unit has been reported stolen, whether it crossed an auction lane, what factory coverage it still carries and which recalls are open. With the checks in the worksheet, that knowledge sits beside the numbers it affects, and it travels with the structure when the application goes to a lender. The category page on VIN decoder software for dealers covers what a store should expect from decoding in general. This page is the working tool inside the SecureWebX worksheet, where the decode is only the first step. #### How does a finance office use the checks on a normal day? A salesperson and a sales manager desk a used SUV in the CRM on a Saturday morning. The manager clicks Push to SWX, and the structure lands in SecureWebX as its own worksheet with the vehicle already on it. The finance manager finds it in the Worksheets list by the Worksheet ID the sales manager read to him, and the first thing he works is the vehicle, before he touches the payment. He loads the specifications for the deal VIN. The decode fills in the trim, the original MSRP, the engine and drivetrain, the factory packages, the safety ratings, any open recalls with the remedy, and the factory warranties. The VIN gives him the standard trim and the window sticker gives him the rest, so he confirms the actual transmission and the installed packages, adds the aftermarket wheels the store put on, and saves the confirmed build. He runs the book-out against that confirmed equipment. Then the title and stolen vehicle checks: a clear marker on each, saved with the time and his name. By the time the customer signs the credit application, the unit is documented. When the finance manager attaches the worksheet to the application and sends it to a lender, the lender's view shows the proposed deal structure, the confirmed vehicle build, the book-out and a vehicle history and checks panel with each result. The lender reads a file that answers its first questions before it asks them, which is exactly the file a lender wants to see from a store. #### Where do the checks live in SecureWebX and the CRM? The checks live in the deal vehicle area of every worksheet in the SecureWebX console. Open Worksheets, find the deal with the search box, which takes a Worksheet ID, a vehicle, a VIN, a stock number or a worksheet name, and open it. The vehicle card at the top carries the photo, the vehicle name and a build badge once the manager has confirmed one. Beneath it sit the VIN and stock number fields, each with its own lookup button, and the mileage. The side rail holds the book-out, the specifications, the confirmed build and the check results, so the vehicle side of the deal reads top to bottom in one place. From the CRM, the way in is the SecureWebX button on the dock, which opens the console under the same login. A deal desked in EZ Desking worksheets reaches SecureWebX by push, so the vehicle and the numbers arrive without anyone retyping a VIN. Once a worksheet is attached to a credit application, it appears in the application's Deal worksheets panel with a link back to the worksheet and a deal recap PDF, and the check results go wherever the application goes. #### Can I run a VIN title check or a stolen vehicle check on a deal? Yes, and from the same screen as the pencil. The VIN title check reads the vehicle's title history for salvage and brand records and reports a clear result when none are on file. The stolen vehicle check reads reported theft records for the VIN. The sales history check lists prior listings and sales, and the auction check lists auction lane records. Each check posts a one line summary and a marker, clear or alert, on the worksheet, so the finance manager sees the verdict at a glance and opens the detail when the marker calls for it. These checks are set up per dealership. Ask for the title, stolen vehicle, sales history, auction and warranty checks and our team puts them in production for your dealership, in the same worksheet as the VIN decode, the stock lookup, the confirmed build and the book-out. The step by step guide to running a vehicle check walks through every click, from finding the worksheet to reading the result the lender will see. #### What does a VIN warranty check show? Two tools answer the warranty question. The VIN decode carries the factory warranties for the vehicle whenever the manufacturer data includes them, listed in their own section of the specifications along with the OEM maintenance schedule and repair cost estimates. The warranty check adds the factory coverage for the year, make and model as its own saved result on the worksheet. Between them, the finance manager knows what coverage the unit still has before the customer asks about it at the desk. Open recalls sit in the same decode, shown prominently in the specifications with the component, the summary, the consequence and the remedy. A unit with an open recall is a conversation the store wants to have with the customer at the desk, on its own terms, with the remedy in hand. The confirmed build section beside it records who confirmed the equipment and when, so the vehicle the lender reads about is the vehicle on the lot. #### What do the checks replace? Without checks in the worksheet, a finance office works the vehicle in browser tabs. Someone copies the VIN into a title lookup site, then a second site for theft records, then a third for the book, prints each result and staples the pages into the deal jacket. The results live on paper, the times they were run live nowhere, and the lender gets whichever pages made it into the fax. When the structure changes, nobody reruns anything, because the printouts look finished. In SecureWebX the VIN is entered once, on the worksheet, and every check reads that VIN. The results are saved on the worksheet, a repeat check on the same VIN reuses the saved result and keeps the date it was actually run, and the lender's view reads the same results the finance manager saw. One place to look, one record to keep, one file to send. For the valuation side of the same panel, the book value guide walks through the book-out, and VIN decode and the vehicle database covers how decoding works across the rest of the platform. #### The compliance angle: a dated record of what the store knew A deal file is the store's memory of what it knew and when. Every check saved on the worksheet carries the time it ran and the user who ran it, and every run is written to the SecureWebX audit log, so the store can show that it checked the title and theft records on a unit before it financed it. That record sits inside the same credit application security the rest of SecureWebX is built on: two factor authentication on every sign in, encryption at rest for application data, and a full audit log. The same record strengthens the lender relationship. When a worksheet is attached to a credit application, its numbers freeze on the application, and the lender's view notes that the vehicle data was provided by the dealership's data service for the deal VIN on the dates the checks were run. A lender reading the file sees exactly what the store saw, with the dates attached. That is the kind of file that builds trust with a buyer one deal at a time. #### How do I turn the checks on, and what should I pair them with? SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account, your users sync across from the CRM, and the console opens from the SecureWebX button on the CRM dock. Tell us which vehicle checks your store wants on its worksheets, the title, stolen vehicle, sales history, auction and warranty checks alongside the VIN decode and the book-out, and our team puts them in production for your dealership. From then on, any user with permission to edit worksheets runs them from the deal vehicle area. Pair the checks with three features. Worksheets attached to credit applications carry the checked vehicle into the application. Send to Lender delivers the file, results included, in a code gated, expiring, watermarked share. And the push from CRM desking gets the desk's structure and vehicle into SecureWebX in one click. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page, and the all features list shows where the checks sit among everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What vehicle checks run inside a SecureWebX worksheet? A: The worksheet decodes the VIN into full factory specifications with warranties and open recalls, looks a unit up by stock number against your inventory, records the manager confirmed build and runs a Kelley Blue Book QuickValues book-out. Title, stolen vehicle, sales history, auction and warranty checks are set up per dealership, and our team puts them in production for yours. Q: Can I run a stolen vehicle check on the deal VIN? A: Yes. The stolen vehicle check reads reported theft records for the deal VIN from inside the worksheet and posts a clear or alert marker with a one line summary, saved with the time and the user who ran it. Q: Does the lender see the check results? A: Yes. When the worksheet is attached to the application and sent with Send to Lender, the lender's view shows a vehicle history and checks panel with each result, next to the proposed deal structure, the confirmed vehicle build and the book-out. Q: How does a VIN warranty check work in SecureWebX? A: The VIN decode lists the factory warranties whenever the manufacturer data carries them, along with the maintenance schedule and repair cost estimates. The warranty check adds the factory coverage for the year, make and model as its own saved result on the worksheet. Q: Do I retype the VIN for every check? A: No. The VIN is entered once on the worksheet, or arrives with a deal pushed from CRM desking, and every check reads that VIN. A repeat check on the same VIN reuses the saved result and keeps the date it was actually run. Q: How do I get the checks turned on? A: Ask our team which checks your store wants on its worksheets. We put them in production for your dealership, and from then on any user with permission to edit worksheets runs them from the deal vehicle area. ### Trackable Short Links With Click Stats in Every Text URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/trackable-short-links Trackable short links are built into the text composer in LeadLocate CRM, on desktop and in the mobile app. Any URL in a message, a vehicle page, an apply link, a booking link or a deal page, is shortened as the text is sent, and the thread shows click stats: not clicked yet, clicked once, or clicked a number of times, with the time. Part of every plan. #### What trackable short links do A trackable short link replaces a long URL in a text message with a short one that fits the message and reports back when the customer taps it. That is the one sentence version. In LeadLocate CRM it is not a separate tool a salesperson has to remember to use. It is part of the text composer: write the message, paste the link, send, and the CRM shortens every URL in the body on the way out and starts counting clicks the moment the customer's phone buzzes. The reason it matters at a dealership is that nearly every meaningful text a salesperson sends carries a link. The vehicle the customer asked about. The apply link from SecureWebX so they can finish the credit application on their phone. The booking link for a test drive. The deal page from DealTracker with the numbers the desk worked. A referral link. A long URL in a text is ugly, gets cut in half by some phones, and tells the salesperson nothing after it leaves. A short one is clean, whole, and answers the only question that matters an hour later: did they look. This page is the product side view. The two way texting inbox page covers the conversation the link travels in, and the full features list shows where short links sit among the rest of the communications tools. #### How a salesperson uses it on a normal day A customer texts at ten in the morning asking whether the certified sedan she saw online is still available. The salesperson opens the thread in the SMS inbox, taps the vehicle button to insert the unit with its photo and price, and adds the listing link so she can see the full gallery. He sends. The link goes out short. At 10:40 the thread shows the link was clicked once, with the time. He knows she is looking, and he texts a follow up while the car is on her screen instead of guessing at three in the afternoon. That afternoon a different customer says he wants to get financing sorted before Saturday. The salesperson pastes the store's SecureWebX apply link into the thread and sends it. The link goes out short. Two hours later it still says not clicked yet, which tells the salesperson something useful too: the customer has not started, so a gentle reminder tomorrow morning is the right move, not a call tonight asking how the application went. On Friday the thread shows the link clicked three times, and the application shows up in the SecureWebX inbox. Nobody had to ask. The stats are on the thread itself, next to the message that carried the link, on desktop and on the phone. A manager scrolling through a rep's conversations sees which links were opened without opening a report, and a rep on the lot sees the same thing in the LeadLocate mobile app between customers. #### Where short links live in the CRM In the text composer, everywhere the composer is. On desktop, the SMS inbox under the Messaging menu shortens links in the reply box of an existing thread and in the new message box when a salesperson starts a conversation. On the phone, the SMS inbox and composer in the mobile app do the same thing with the same rules, so a link sent from the lot and a link sent from a desk look the same to the customer and count the same on the thread. Both routes post the whole message to one place that decides what counts as a link, which is why desktop and mobile never disagree. Click stats appear on the message bubble in the thread. A message that carried a link shows whether the link has been clicked, how many times, and when. That is the whole reporting surface, and it is deliberately not a separate dashboard: the person who needs to know whether the customer looked is the person in the conversation, and the answer is on the conversation. Links a salesperson sends repeatedly to the same customer, such as the same vehicle page sent twice in a week, reuse the same short link inside the store's account, so the click count on that link reflects that customer's interest in that page rather than resetting every time. The LeadLocate CRM product page walks through the Messaging menu if you want the wider map. #### What gets shortened, and what the click tells you Any URL in the body of a text. The ones that matter most at a store are the apply link from SecureWebX, the customer deal page from DealTracker, the booking link from the calendar, the vehicle page from the store's inventory site or brand offer page, the salesperson's personal website, and the referral link from the Referral Program. Each of those is a long URL that the composer turns into a short one, and each one is a link where knowing it was opened changes what the salesperson does next. The click is a signal, not a verdict. A link clicked once means the customer looked; a link clicked several times means they came back, which usually means they are showing it to someone. A link not clicked after a day means the message may not have landed the way it was meant to, and a different message, or a call, is the next step. The what to expect from car sales leads page is honest about how customers behave, and click stats are one of the few ways to see that behaviour rather than guess at it. The link is also short in the plain sense. A text with a long URL is a text the customer has to scroll to read, and a text that some phones split into two. A short link keeps the message to a line or two and keeps the link intact, which is a small thing that decides whether the customer taps at all. #### What it replaces and what a blind link costs The direct replacement is a separate link shortening account with its own login, where a salesperson would have to paste the long link, copy the short one, and paste it back into the text, every time, on every phone. Nobody does that from a lot. So the real replacement is the blind link: the long URL that goes out with no record of whether it was opened, followed by the phone call that starts with did you get a chance to look at that. That call is the cost. A salesperson who does not know whether the customer looked either calls too early and annoys someone who has not had time, or calls too late and finds the customer bought somewhere else, or spends the first minute of every call asking a question the CRM could have answered. Across a BDC of five agents and a few hundred texts a day, that is a lot of first minutes. Trackable short links are part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only to the lead plans, with no per link charge. The pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: a link in a consented text, logged A short link does not change the rules of texting, and the rules are simple: the customer agreed to be texted, the message identifies the store, and the customer can stop it. LeadLocate CRM handles delivery status on every bubble, opt outs, and the DNC Blacklist for numbers that should not be texted, and the short link rides inside that. The do not call scrub and blacklist page covers the consent side. What the short link adds is a record. The communications log on every lead records the text and its time, and the click stats on the thread record that the customer opened the link and when. When a customer later disputes what they were sent or when they saw a price, the thread shows the message, the link and the click. That is the kind of ordinary record a manager wants on file, and it is kept without anyone doing anything beyond sending the text. The link also protects the customer's experience. A short link from the store's CRM opens the page the salesperson intended, whether that is a secure apply link with its own protections or a deal page gated by a PIN, and the customer sees a clean, short message rather than a wall of characters that looks like the messages people are taught to distrust. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on. Link shortening and click stats are part of the text composer in LeadLocate CRM from the day the account is created, on desktop and in the mobile app, for every user. A salesperson pastes a link and sends; the CRM does the rest. The first time a store notices it is usually when a manager sees the click count on a thread and asks where it came from. If a store wants to see it before signing up, the pre-recorded live demo shows a text going out with a link and the click stats appearing on the thread. And if a store has a particular link it wants to track differently, our team puts it in production for your dealership on request. #### What to pair trackable short links with Pair them with the SecureWebX apply link, because knowing a customer opened the application is the difference between a reminder and a nag. Pair them with DealTracker deal pages, where a click means the customer is looking at the numbers right now and a call in the next ten minutes is worth more than one tomorrow. Pair them with the calendar booking link so a salesperson knows the customer saw the available times, and with the vehicle insert button in the same composer, which attaches the unit's photo and price while the short link carries the customer to the full listing. Pair them with Bulk Texting and Text Automation, where a link in a message to a list or in a drip step is shortened the same way and the clicks tell a manager which message earned attention. And pair them with the file library's secure file sharing, which has its own tracking for documents a store sends, so a brochure or a buyer's order can be followed the same way a vehicle page can. Everything here is part of the same subscription, which is why the click stats are on the thread and not in a separate product. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a tracking link? A: A link that records when it is opened. In LeadLocate CRM, every URL in a text is shortened as the message is sent and the thread shows whether the customer clicked it, how many times and when. Q: How do I send a tracking link from the CRM? A: Paste the link into the text composer, on desktop or in the mobile app, and send. The CRM shortens every URL in the body on the way out. There is no separate tool to open and nothing to copy back. Q: Where do I see the click stats? A: On the message bubble in the thread that carried the link. It shows not clicked yet, clicked once, or clicked a number of times, with the time, on desktop and on the phone. Q: Which links are worth tracking at a dealership? A: The SecureWebX apply link, DealTracker deal pages, calendar booking links, vehicle pages, personal salesperson websites and referral links. Each is a link where knowing it was opened changes what the salesperson does next. Q: Do short links work in bulk texts and automated texts? A: Yes. Links in Bulk Texting sends and Text Automation steps are shortened the same way, so a manager can see which message in a sequence earned the clicks. Q: Is there a charge per link? A: No. Trackable short links are part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only up, with no per link charge. ### Tracking Phone Numbers for Every Lead Source URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/tracking-phone-numbers Tracking phone numbers in LeadLocate CRM are dedicated lines the store puts on each lead source: its website, a listing site, a mailer, a landing page. Every call to one is answered by the store's forwarding, logged on the Calls page with the caller ID and a recording, and tied to the lead it came from. They sync to SecureWebX and are part of every LeadLocate plan. #### What a tracking phone number does inside the CRM A tracking phone number is a real phone line that belongs to the dealership and is printed in exactly one place. Because it appears only on the store's website, or only on one listing site, or only on a mailer, every call to it can be traced back to that source without asking the caller how they heard about the store. In LeadLocate CRM the number is more than a counter. A call to it rings the store's Forward Calls To list, is recorded, is logged on the Calls page with the caller's name looked up from the caller ID, and lands on the lead's timeline if the caller is already a lead or becomes one. The first tracking number is provisioned when the dealership's account is created, so a brand new store has a working line the day it signs up. Additional numbers, one per source, are provisioned the same way and synced to the rest of the platform: to SecureWebX, so the phone on an apply link matches the phone on the ad, and to the phone service that answers them. A store never types a number into three systems and hopes they agree. The dealership call tracking software page covers the buying question of call tracking in general, and the CRM with dealership lead attribution page covers why attribution belongs in the CRM. This page is the product side: what a tracking number does in LeadLocate CRM, where the calls show up, and how a store uses it on a normal month. #### How a store uses tracking numbers on a normal month A dealer principal is paying for four things that are supposed to ring the phone: the store's website, a third party listing site, a monthly mailer to a nearby ZIP, and a landing page built for a tax season sale. Each one carries a different LeadLocate tracking number. On the first of the month he opens the Calls page and looks at inbound calls by the number dialed. The listing site produced eleven calls. The mailer produced two, both from people asking to be taken off the list. The landing page produced nineteen, and eight of those callers are now leads with appointments on the shared calendar. That is a budget conversation with numbers in it rather than opinions. The mailer gets cut. The landing page gets a second version for a different model. Nobody had to ask a single customer how they heard about the store, and nobody had to believe a vendor's own report of how well its listings performed. The same page settles a different argument on the fifteenth. A salesperson insists the website never sends real calls. The manager filters to the website's number, plays three recordings from the last week, and one of them is a shopper asking for the salesperson by name. The website sends calls. The salesperson lets them ring. #### Where the numbers and the calls live Tracking numbers are managed alongside the rest of the phone setup on IVR Settings, reached through Account Settings under Billing and Admin, where the Forward Calls To list decides which phones ring when any of them is dialed. The store's main tracking number is also the caller ID a customer sees when a salesperson calls out from the softphone, so a callback arrives on a tracked line rather than a personal cell. The calls themselves live on the Calls page in the main menu. Each row shows the direction, the number dialed, the caller ID with the name looked up on the inbound side, who answered, the duration, the status and the recording, with a transcript one click away. The same call sits on the lead's timeline in order with the texts, pictures and emails around it, because the communications log holds every channel in one list. On the LeadLocate mobile app, Call Logs is the phone version of the Calls page, and an inbound call on a tracking number rings the rep's phone with an alert screen that shows the caller's name. Source also reaches the lead itself. Lead Feeds Manager is where the store defines per source feeds for the leads it receives, and a call from a source number arrives with that context, so a lead created from a phone call is not an orphan with an unknown origin. The Lead Feeds Manager page covers the feed side of that. #### What it replaces and what a store pays for it elsewhere Call tracking is a whole industry, and it is sold separately from the CRM by design: a vendor provisions numbers, bills per number and per minute, and hands the store a dashboard that shows which numbers rang. The recording lives in that dashboard. The lead lives in the CRM. To connect a call to a customer, somebody exports one and imports it into the other, and most stores stop doing that within a quarter. The automotive lead source dashboard page describes what a store actually wants from that data, and it is not a second dashboard. In LeadLocate the tracking number is a feature of the CRM. The number, the forwarding, the recording, the caller ID lookup, the log and the lead are one record, and the source is visible on the Calls page without a report being built. There is no per number subscription and no per minute charge to reconcile against a lead count. A store running a separate call tracking service can move it into the CRM: every lead plan on the pricing page carries tracking numbers as part of the full CRM. What a tracking number does not replace is the store's main published number, which can stay on whatever system reception uses. Tracking numbers go where shoppers are: ads, listings, landing pages, mailers, business cards from Design Studio, and the salesperson websites the CRM builds. The main line can stay exactly as it is. #### The compliance angle: a record of every call, and the numbers you must not call A tracking number turns the phone into a record. Every inbound call carries the number dialed, the caller ID, the time, who answered and the recording, stored against the lead the store's managers control. When a customer says nobody called back, the log shows whether anyone did. When a customer says a payment was promised, the recording shows what was said. Recording laws vary by state, and a store should set its announcement policy accordingly; the call recording and transcription page covers that in detail. Outbound is the other side. Because the tracking number is the caller ID on calls placed from the softphone, callbacks return to a tracked line and get logged, which is how a store proves it returned a call. Before a number is dialed, the DNC Blacklist holds the store's own list of numbers never to contact, with a live do not call lookup and a two way inbound spam block, so a caller who asked to be removed stays removed. The do not call scrub and blacklist page walks through it. Response time is a compliance question of a different kind: the promise a store makes to itself. Because inbound calls on tracking numbers are logged with a time stamp and the callback is logged with another, the gap between them is visible. The CRM lead response tracking page covers how a store manages that number. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to turn on for the first number. It is provisioned when the account is created, forwarding to the store's own users is set up with it, and it is synced to SecureWebX and the phone service before the welcome email arrives. The store puts that number on its website and the calls start landing on the Calls page. For each additional source, ask for a number and it is provisioned and synced the same way, attached to the store's account and answered by the same Forward Calls To list, or by its own menu through the IVR call flow builder if the store wants sales and service callers handled differently. Anything beyond that, a specific area code for a market for example, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows an inbound call on a tracking number landing on a lead. #### What to pair it with A tracking number is the front door of the phone stack, so pair it with everything behind the door. Call forwarding and ring lists decide which phones ring when the number is dialed. The virtual receptionist answers it when nobody can, and the IVR call flow builder gives a number its own menu. Caller ID lookup is what puts a name on the inbound call before anyone answers. On the outbound side, the VoIP softphone is what shows the tracking number as the caller ID, and Lead Pages is where a landing page gets its own number printed on it. The all features page shows where tracking numbers sit among everything else in the platform. #### Built so your store keeps selling Tracking numbers are built to be permanent fixtures of the store. A number lives on the store's account for as long as the store wants it, so the one printed on a mailer, stuck in a window or listed on a third party site keeps ringing the phones on the Forward Calls To list and a salesperson keeps answering on a cell. Every call, every caller ID, every recording and every lead record is held safe and stays the store's own, and the store's main line, its DMS and its website stay the store's own as well. That is the whole design: the platform is built so your store keeps selling and every number you have published keeps producing calls you can read by source. If you want a hand with a routing change or a new number for a campaign, the contact page reaches our support team, who can see your screen with you and set it up on the call. #### Questions and answers Q: How many tracking numbers can a store have? A: One per source the store wants to measure. The first is provisioned with the account; additional numbers are provisioned and synced on request for each website, listing, mailer or landing page. A store that wants a number in a specific area code can ask for that too. Q: Do tracking numbers show up in SecureWebX? A: Yes. The store's tracking number syncs into SecureWebX, so the phone a customer sees on an apply link or a disclosure matches the phone on the ad and rings the same forwarding list. Q: What does the customer see when a salesperson calls them? A: The store's tracking number, by default, so a callback returns to a tracked and logged line. A rep can verify their office or cell number and show that instead if the store prefers. Q: Does a call to a tracking number create a lead? A: If the caller ID matches a lead the store already has, the call lands on that lead's timeline. Otherwise the call is logged with the caller's name looked up from the caller ID, and the rep who answers creates the lead from it, with the source visible on the call. Q: Can I see calls by source without building a report? A: Yes. The Calls page shows the number dialed on every inbound row, so filtering to one tracking number is filtering to one source. Reports add call volume and activity by user on top of that. Q: Which plan do I need? A: Tracking numbers are part of every LeadLocate plan, including CRM Only, with no per number subscription or per minute charge. The pricing page lists the plans. ### Trade In Capture With VIN Scan and Photos URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/trade-in-capture-and-vin-scan Trade in capture in LeadLocate CRM records up to two trade vehicles per customer on the lead, reads the VIN through the phone camera with a required odometer step, collects photos, registration, title and payoff documents through a QR scanner that reads them into the trade, and carries allowance, payoff, tax credit method and cap onto the EZ Desking worksheet. Included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. #### What trade in capture does in one sentence Trade in capture gets the customer's car into the CRM the way a manager needs it to value it, VIN plus current mileage plus photos plus the paperwork, from a phone on the lot or from the customer at home, and puts the result on the worksheet where the trade credit is applied. That is the whole feature, and each of those pieces is a place stores usually lose time: the VIN typed wrong from a windshield photo, the mileage nobody wrote down, the payoff letter that is in a text thread somewhere, and the trade allowance retyped into a worksheet that does not know the customer. Every customer record carries up to two trade in vehicles, visible at a glance on the desktop lead card and in the mobile app, and a record can hold trades with no vehicle for sale at all, which is how a store buys a car outright. The dealership desking software page covers the desk; this page follows the trade from the parking lot to the worksheet. #### How a salesperson captures a trade on a normal afternoon A customer pulls in with a sedan she wants to trade. On the lead card the salesperson clicks the plus next to the vehicle line and picks Trade-In from the small menu, which reveals a trade row with a label field, an odometer field and a camera button. He taps the camera. The scanner opens locked to that trade slot; he points the phone at the VIN plate in the door jamb, the VIN reads, and the scanner immediately asks for the current odometer reading, because a VIN without miles is not enough to value a car. He types 68,412 and the trade row now reads the year, make, model and trim with the miles beside it. Back at the desk the manager opens the deal, and the trade is already on the Trade & Fees section with the VIN. He clicks Load trade vehicle details from this VIN to confirm the decode, opens the store's trade values link, enters the allowance and the payoff, and the worksheet applies the trade credit under the state's method. The customer says the title is at home. The salesperson opens the Acquisition/Trade Info scanner, shows her the QR code, and she photographs the registration on the spot and sends the title and payoff letter that evening from her couch. The next morning the manager clicks apply and the payoff amount, lienholder and good through date fill the trade from the documents. #### Where it lives: the lead card, the deal, the customer page and the phone On the desktop CRM the trade rows sit on the expanded lead, contact and appointment cards under the vehicle options, below a dotted divider, tagged TRADE-IN 1 and TRADE-IN 2, each with a camera button that opens the VIN scanner for that slot and a remove action. On the digital deal view under Desking, the Trade-In (optional) section carries description, year, make, model, mileage, the trade VIN with a decode action, Trade Allowance, Loan Payoff, Lienholder, actual cash value, book value fields, the Trade-In Tax Credit Method and a per deal Trade Credit Cap, with Add Second Trade-In for the second car and Mark trade-in complete when the desk is done with it. On the customer's deal page the trade step reads trade vehicle, offer, payoff, notes and photos, and a Require trade-in photos from the customer switch on the deal asks the customer to upload walk around photos from their phone. The LeadLocate mobile app shows the same two trade rows on the lead with a VIN lookup, so a salesperson on the lot captures the trade without walking back to a desk. #### The VIN scan, the odometer rule and the decode The VIN scanner reads the VIN from the phone camera, on the desktop through a scanner modal that hands the camera to a phone and on the mobile app directly. Every VIN scan flow ends with a mandatory odometer step, and the miles are stored as digits only, so a manager valuing the car from the VIN and mileage pair always has both. A VIN can also be typed and decoded on the deal with Load trade vehicle details from this VIN or on the worksheet with Decode VIN, which fills year, make, model and trim from the vehicle database, and a decoded VIN can be re-validated later if it was edited. The VIN decode and vehicle database page covers the decode itself. Photos matter as much as the VIN for a car the manager has not walked. The trade info scanner accepts as many vehicle photos as the customer or the salesperson wants to add, labeled by file name or by a label field on the phone page, and the deal can carry a walk around photos link. A trade with no VIN, an older unit or a specialty vehicle, can carry a manually uploaded photo so the customer page still shows the car. #### Registration, title and payoff by QR, read into the trade The Acquisition/Trade Info scanner is a QR flow on the lead card next to the deal jacket. The desktop shows a QR code, the phone opens a private single use page, and the page asks for the specific documents a trade needs: registration front and back, title front and back, payoff letter front and back, plus repeatable vehicle photos. Document slots replace within the same session, so a blurry title photo is simply retaken. The originals are stored privately for the store and open only inside the CRM, for the people the store allows to see them. Once uploaded, the documents are read. The scanner returns the visible text, the vehicle facts, the payoff facts, the condition facts and any warnings, and the salesperson applies the vehicle information to the trade with one action rather than retyping the lienholder, payoff amount and good through date. Everything stays reviewable: the summary rows on the deal show vehicle, VIN, plate, owner, lienholder, payoff amount, payoff good through and odometer, and the original images are one click away. The scanner also prints a trade packet for the file. The deal jacket and QR intake page explains the shared QR mechanics. #### What it replaces and what that costs elsewhere Most stores capture trades with a windshield photo, a used car manager's clipboard and a text message to whoever has the payoff. The VIN gets mistyped one time in a dozen, the mileage is missing when the appraisal is written, the payoff letter is on a phone that is off today, and the allowance is typed into a worksheet by hand. Standalone appraisal products answer some of that for a monthly fee and then hold the trade in a system apart from the CRM, so the deal is desked from a number somebody read off another screen. Trade in capture is part of the LeadLocate CRM subscription. The trade lives on the customer record, flows onto the deal and the worksheet, appears on the customer's page and prints on the customer sheet with the allowance, payoff and net equity. The store's own trade values source stays its own; the CRM opens it from the deal. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. #### The compliance angle: the miles, the documents and the tax credit A trade generates the three numbers a store gets asked about later: the odometer, the payoff and the allowance. The mandatory odometer step means the miles are on the record at capture time, and every odometer figure printed on a customer sheet carries a footnote marker so a printed mileage is never read as a certified disclosure; the odometer statement itself stays in the finance office paperwork. The payoff, lienholder and good through date come from the payoff letter the customer sent, with the original image stored, rather than from memory. The trade documents are stored privately, previewed through the CRM only, and the phone page carries the terms and privacy links and a plain disclosure that documents are read automatically. On the worksheet, the trade credit is applied by the method the state uses, credit on the full allowance, credit on net equity only or no credit, with a per deal cap for states that limit it, and negative equity is taxed where required. That keeps the customer sheet's tax line right without the manager remembering the rule, and the sheet still says what every customer sheet says: not a contract, all figures estimates until final lender approval. #### How to turn it on and what to pair it with Trade capture is on for every lead and deal in every LeadLocate CRM account. The one setup item is the store's trade values link in company settings, so Open Trade Values on the deal goes to the source the desk uses, and the Trade-In Tax Credit Method default in the Dealership Profile. The pre-recorded live demo shows a VIN scan landing on a lead. Pair it with the EZ Desking worksheets where the trade credit is applied, the Road to Sale checklist whose trade step tracks it, the driver license scanner that captures the seller's identity in the same QR style, and the customer deal pages where the customer adds trade photos from home. For stores buying cars from the public, the acquisition deal type on the worksheet and the opt in seller leads described on what to expect from car sales leads fit together. The all features page lists the rest. #### Questions and answers Q: How many trade ins can a customer have? A: Two per customer record, each with a label, an odometer and a camera button for the VIN scanner, and a record can hold trades with no vehicle for sale when the store is buying the car outright. Q: Does the VIN scan capture the mileage? A: Yes. Every VIN scan flow ends with a required odometer step, stored as digits, so the manager always has the VIN and mileage pair the valuation depends on. Q: How do I get the title and payoff letter from the customer? A: Show the Acquisition/Trade Info QR code. The customer photographs registration, title and payoff on a private single use phone page, adds vehicle photos, and the scanner reads the payoff amount, lienholder and good through date so you can apply them to the trade. Q: Where does the trade appear on the deal? A: In the Trade-In section of the deal view with allowance, payoff, lienholder, cash value, tax credit method and cap, on the EZ Desking worksheet where the credit is applied, on the customer deal page, and on the printed customer sheet. Q: Can the customer send trade photos from home? A: Yes. Turn on Require trade-in photos from the customer on the deal and the trade step of their deal page asks for walk around photos from the phone. Q: Who puts the value on the trade? A: The store does, from its own trade values source, which the deal opens with Open Trade Values. The CRM captures the VIN, miles, photos and documents the valuation needs and applies the number the desk enters. ### Two Way Texting Inbox With Pictures and Delivery Status URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/two-way-texting-inbox The two way texting inbox in LeadLocate CRM holds every customer conversation on the store's tracking numbers in one place: a thread per customer, pictures and files sent as MMS, a delivery status on every outbound bubble, a vehicle button that drops a unit from inventory into the message, and the lead record one click away. The same inbox runs in the LeadLocate mobile app. #### What the texting inbox does, in one sentence The two way texting inbox is the screen inside LeadLocate CRM where every text a customer sends to the store's numbers, and every text the store sends back, lives as one conversation per customer, with pictures, files, delivery status and the lead record attached. It is the same inbox on the desktop under the Messaging menu and on the phone in the LeadLocate mobile app, so a conversation started at a desk continues from the lot without either side noticing a seam. Two things separate it from a texting tool bolted onto a CRM. The messages and the customer record are the same system, so a text is never orphaned from the lead it belongs to. And it was built for the way salespeople actually text: fast, with photos, from whatever device is closest. The automotive CRM with texting and calling page makes the case for built in messaging in general. This page is the inbox itself, control by control. #### A normal afternoon in the inbox A customer who submitted a lead this morning texts the store's number at 2:10: is the blue one still there. The Text Message Sound chimes, a toast shows the first line, and the conversation moves to the top of the list on the left of the inbox. The rep clicks it and the whole thread opens on the right: her earlier outbound text with its Delivered label, the customer's reply, and the lead's name and status above it. She clicks the vehicle button, picks the blue one from the store's inventory, and it drops into the message as an MMS with the photos and price. She types one line above it, hits Send, and watches the bubble go from Sending to Delivered. At 2:40 the customer sends a photo of their trade. It renders inline in the thread, no download, and she opens View Lead Details from the same screen to note the mileage. At 4:15 she is on the lot, so the customer's next reply comes to her phone as a Text Reply Alert, and she answers it from the mobile inbox. The thread on the desktop shows the answer too, marked Sent by with her name, because the manager reading it later should know who said what. Nothing was copied between systems. Nothing was typed twice. #### Pictures, files and a vehicle in the message MMS is not an afterthought here. The Attach file (MMS) control takes photos, PDFs and other files, up to 20 in a batch with a 50 MB ceiling per file, and the customer sees them as pictures and attachments in their messaging app rather than as a link to a portal. Inbound pictures, the trade photos, the insurance card, the screenshot of a competitor's quote, render right in the thread. Files can be pulled from the CRM's file library or uploaded from a computer or a mobile device, and a file the store sends often can be saved to a folder for next time. The Insert a vehicle from your inventory button is the one reps notice first. It opens the store's inventory, and the chosen unit lands in the message with its photos and price as an MMS. A customer asking about three cars gets three real cars, not a promise to send something later. When the store's inventory is fed by Inventory Link, the price and photos in that message are the ones on the lot today. For a picture that did not go through, an outbound bubble offers to resend the attachment to the customer as a tap-to-open link, which handles the customer whose carrier is strict about media without starting the conversation over. #### A delivery status on every bubble Every outbound message carries its own status under the bubble, updated live: Sending, then Delivered, or Not delivered, or Failed. The difference matters more than it sounds. A rep who sees Failed on a text at 9:05 calls at 9:06 instead of waiting two days for a reply that was never going to come. A manager reviewing a lead that went quiet sees whether the store's messages reached the customer at all, which changes the conversation from why did you not follow up to why did that number not accept texts. And a lead reported through replacement review carries those statuses as evidence. The same thread also shows who sent each message. Sent by: You on the rep's own bubbles, and the teammate's name on the ones a colleague or a manager sent from the same conversation. Because every text and MMS is also written to the lead's communications log alongside calls, emails and voicemails, the inbox and the lead agree with each other by construction. There is no export, no sync, and no conversation living only on a personal phone. #### The controls around the thread Above the message box sits the toolbox a busy rep actually uses. Select a Template drops in one of the store's saved texts. The AI Writing Assistant drafts a message from a short instruction, and Clean Up My Text tidies a message typed in a hurry; the AI writing assistant page covers both. Voice input dictates a message on a desk without a keyboard in reach. Schedule TEXT Follow-up queues a text for a chosen date and time, and Schedule Voicemail does the same with a recorded voicemail drop, both from inside the conversation. A link pasted into a message can be shortened into a trackable short link with click stats. Around the thread, Assign To hands a conversation to another user, so a Saturday inbound reaches the person working Saturday. Blacklist adds a number to the DNC Blacklist from the conversation itself. Row colors and Filter by Color let a rep mark and find threads the way they already mark leads. The conversation list searches by name, phone, email or company across the whole database, and New Text Message starts a thread with a contact who has not texted yet. The top bar's Send a Text button opens the same composer from any page in the CRM. #### What it replaces, and what a personal phone costs The inbox replaces the salesperson's personal phone, which is the most common dealership texting tool in America and the worst one. When that rep leaves, the threads leave. When a compliance question arrives, there is no record. When a manager asks what was said to the customer, the answer is a screenshot, or nothing. Stores that know this buy a separate texting platform and connect it to the CRM, which gives them a second login, a second bill, a second number pool and two vendors pointing at each other when a picture does not send. Here the inbox is part of the CRM on every plan, the lead plans on the pricing page among them, running on the store's own tracking numbers, with the phone app included. The rep gets a tool faster than their phone, which is the only reason they will use it, and the store gets the record. #### The compliance angle: consent, opt outs and the record Texting a consumer is regulated, and the inbox is built so the safe path is the default path. A customer who replies with a stop keyword is opted out automatically and added to the two way blacklist, so no rep and no automation texts that number again by accident. Help keywords get a reply that identifies the store and how to reach it. The DNC Blacklist page runs a live do not call lookup on numbers and blocks inbound spam in both directions, and Blacklist is one click from any thread. The TCPA compliance for dealership texting page explains the rules a store still has to follow itself; the inbox makes following them the easy option. Then the record. Every message, picture, status and sender name is stored with the lead, and the customer's contact information lives in the encrypted Customer Profile rather than in a rep's contacts app. A question from a customer, a regulator or a lawyer about what the store said and when has a written answer with a timestamp, from the store's own system, not from a personal handset that may have been replaced. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with There is nothing to install. Tracking phone numbers are provisioned to the account, the inbox is under the Messaging menu on the desktop and under Text in the dock of the mobile app, and the first conversation starts when a customer texts one of those numbers or a rep clicks Send a Text. If the store already has numbers it wants to keep, our team sets that up on request. Every thread, picture and delivery status the store creates is held safe and stays the store's own property, the numbers stay the store's, and a rep carrying the mobile app carries the whole conversation history in a pocket. It is built so your store keeps selling from wherever a rep happens to be standing, on the lot, at the auction or at a kid's soccer game on a Saturday. Pair the inbox with RCS messaging with SMS fallback, which sends the richer format to phones that support it and plain SMS to the rest through the same thread, and with the Phone Validator, whose validity dots on the lead tell a rep before typing whether the number can receive texts at all. Text Automation and Automated Templates start conversations so the inbox is answering interested customers rather than chasing cold ones, and Bulk Texting handles the store wide message. The full set is on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: Can customers text pictures to the store, and can we send them? A: Yes, both directions. Inbound photos render inline in the thread. Outbound, the Attach file (MMS) control sends photos, PDFs and other files, up to 20 in a batch and 50 MB per file, and the vehicle button drops a unit from inventory into the message with its photos and price. Q: How do I know if a text was delivered? A: Every outbound bubble shows its own live status: Sending, Delivered, Not delivered or Failed. A failed attachment can be resent to the customer as a tap-to-open link from the same bubble. Q: Does the inbox work on my phone? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app has the same SMS inbox and composer under Text in its dock, and a Text Reply Alert on your phone opens the conversation directly. A thread started on the desktop continues on the phone and back. Q: What happens when a customer texts STOP? A: They are opted out automatically and added to the two way blacklist, so no user and no automation texts that number again. Help keywords get a reply identifying the store. Blacklist is also one click from any thread. Q: Can a manager see who sent each message? A: Yes. Each bubble is marked Sent by with the user's name, or Sent by: You on your own, and every message is written to the lead's communications log next to calls, emails and voicemails. Q: Is texting an extra charge? A: The inbox, MMS, delivery status and the mobile app are part of every plan, including CRM Only. Plans are on the pricing page. ### Usage Credits for Texting, Email, Voicemail and Validation URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/usage-credits Usage Credits are prepaid packs that power the high volume tools in LeadLocate CRM: bulk texting (3,000, 5,000 or 10,000 messages), bulk email (3,000, 5,000 or 10,000), ringless voicemail deliveries (500, 1,000 or 5,000), and phone and email validation (1,000, 5,000 or 10,000 lookups each). A store buys them in My LeadLocate and they are applied to the account right away. #### What are usage credits in LeadLocate? Every LeadLocate plan puts eight marketing tools on the dock at the bottom of the CRM, under Marketing Tools: Bulk Texting, Texting Chatbots, Text Automation, Voicemail Drops, Phone Validator, Bulk Email, Email Automation and Email Validator. Five of those tools send or check at volume, and volume runs on Usage Credits. A credit is one unit of work: one bulk text, one bulk email, one ringless voicemail delivery, one phone number checked or one email address checked. The store buys credits in packs, the balance sits on the account, and every send draws from it. That is the whole idea, and it is why dealers like it. There is no second vendor to sign with, no separate login for the texting service, no list to export to a blast tool and import back again. The customer records live in the CRM, the tools live in the CRM, and the credits that power the tools are bought from the same account portal that holds the store's invoices. The packs come in these sizes: Credit typePack sizesWhere it is spent Bulk texting3,000, 5,000 or 10,000 messagesBulk Texting Bulk email3,000, 5,000 or 10,000 emailsBulk Email Ringless voicemail500, 1,000 or 5,000 deliveriesVoicemail Drops Phone validation1,000, 5,000 or 10,000 lookupsPhone Validator Email validation1,000, 5,000 or 10,000 lookupsEmail Validator Pack prices sit on the pricing page, and the price of each pack is shown beside it in the portal before anything is charged. #### How does a dealership use bulk SMS credits on a normal day? Picture a BDC manager on a Monday with a list of customers who bought three to five years ago. The first job is the Phone Validator: paste the numbers or upload the CSV, name the list, and the results come back with a Do Not Call flag on every number and a report link in the lookup history. That run spends phone validation credits, and it is the cheapest insurance a campaign can buy, because every dead or flagged number removed now is a text that never has to be paid for. The cleaned list goes into Bulk Texting with a short equity message and a trackable link, and the send draws on bulk SMS credits, one per message. Replies land in the two way texting inbox on each customer's own thread, and the rep who owns the customer gets the alert. By Wednesday the manager sends a ringless voicemail from the store's used car manager to everyone who did not answer the text, and on Thursday the same offer goes out through Bulk Email to the addresses the Email Validator passed. Four channels, one list, one balance, and every touch is written to the customer's timeline. Friday afternoon, before the weekend sale, the manager opens My LeadLocate and looks at the balance tiles. If the Saturday reminder text needs more credits than the account holds, a pack is bought in a minute and the balance is ready for the send. #### Where do the credits show up in the CRM and in My LeadLocate? Inside the CRM, credits live where they are spent. The Bulk Texting page shows the message credit balance beside an Add Credits button, and the Phone Validator and Email Validator each show a Credits figure before a run, so the person pressing send always knows what the account holds. Nobody has to leave the page to check. In My LeadLocate, the account portal, credits have their own card on the billing page called Service Credits. It shows the prepaid balance and one tile for each credit type with its live balance, and underneath it the Refill & Add-on Products picker lists every pack grouped by credit type with its price. Choose a pack, press Pay Online for the secure checkout or Pay with Prepaid Balance, and the credits are applied to the account right away. The purchase lands in the account's billing history with every other invoice and receipt, so the office manager reconciles one statement instead of five. The step by step guide to buying usage credits walks through every click. #### Ringless voicemail for car dealers: how the deliveries work Voicemail Drops is the tile under Marketing Tools that delivers a recorded message to a whole recipient list, straight to voicemail, without ringing the phones. A salesperson or manager records the message once in the browser, or uploads a professionally produced file to the Voicemail Drop Files library, picks the list and sends. Each delivery draws one ringless voicemail credit, and the packs come in 500, 1,000 or 5,000 deliveries. Dealers use ringless voicemail because a human voice gets a callback that a text sometimes does not. A service customer hears the sales manager say the store has buyers waiting for their model. A lease customer hears their own salesperson mention the end of term. When customers call back, the call rings the store's tracking number, lands on the Calls page with the recording, and sits on the lead's timeline next to the drop that prompted it. The ringless voicemail marketing guide for dealerships covers the campaign side in depth. #### Phone number validation and an email validation service, built into the CRM Most stores pay a separate email validation service and a separate phone number validation service, upload a list to each, download the results and import them back. In LeadLocate the validators are two tiles on the dock. The Phone Validator takes numbers one per line or a CSV file, names the list, and returns a Do Not Call column and a Scrubbed column per number, a report link and a row in the Phone Lookup History. The Email Validator does the same for addresses, with its own Email Lookup History. Each number or address checked uses one validation credit, sold in packs of 1,000, 5,000 or 10,000. The results do not stay in a report. Validity shows as a dot on the lead record, for the phone and for the email, so a salesperson sees at a glance whether a number has been checked before clicking to call. Validation is list hygiene for your outbound calling, texting and email. Every lead your zone produces is still delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture, and backed by a replacement review. #### What do usage credits replace, and what does the same stack cost elsewhere? A store that runs outbound marketing without LeadLocate usually carries four or five subscriptions: a bulk SMS platform, an email blast service, a ringless voicemail service and one or two validation services. Each one has its own contract, its own login, its own minimum, its own list upload and its own invoice. Replies from the texting service arrive in a separate inbox that the CRM never sees, and the voicemail service knows nothing about which customers already bought. Usage Credits collapse that into one balance on one bill. The texts go out on the store's own tracking numbers, the emails go out from the store's own authenticated domain, replies come home to the CRM inbox, and every message, drop and call back is on the customer's record. The tools themselves are part of every plan, including CRM Only, and every plan is month to month. The credits are the only moving part, and a store buys exactly the packs its campaigns call for. For how texting fits a full marketing program, the dealership SMS marketing automation page is the counterpart guide. #### The compliance angle: clean lists before volume Volume is where a store's process matters most, and LeadLocate builds the process into the tools. The DNC Blacklist hides a blocked contact from every CRM view, including the recipient lists for bulk texting and bulk email, so a customer who asked to be left alone is never on the next send. The blacklist imports the store's existing do not contact list by CSV and runs a live do not call lookup on any number. The Phone Validator adds a Do Not Call flag to every number on a list before the list is used. Every text, email and voicemail drop is written to the communications log on the lead, with who sent it and when, which is the record a store points to when a customer asks what was sent. Treat a ringless voicemail like a call: contact people who asked to hear from you, scrub the list first, and check the rules in your state with your own counsel. The TCPA guide for dealership texting covers consent and opt outs in detail. #### How do you turn usage credits on? The tools are on from the first day of every account. The account admin, or whoever holds billing in My LeadLocate, signs in to the portal, opens billing and scrolls to Service Credits. Pick a pack under Refill & Add-on Products, pay online or from the prepaid balance, and the credits are applied to the account right away. The balance tiles update on the same screen, and the Marketing Tools pages in the CRM show the new figure the next time they are opened. A smart first order is one pack of each validation type and a bulk texting pack sized to the largest list, then a refill as campaigns grow. Anything a store wants that is not on the shelf today, a pack size or a credit type, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What should you pair usage credits with? Credits are fuel, and the engine is the list. Trackable short links in every bulk text show who clicked, so the second send goes to the interested customers first. Automated Templates keep the one to one follow up running while the bulk campaigns do the reach. Bulk Email carries the long version of the offer that a text can only point to. And when the database has been worked and the store wants fresh names to send to, LeadLocate add-ons put extra inbound lead sets and extra sales zones on the active plan. Every feature is listed on the all features page. #### Questions and answers Q: What are bulk SMS credits? A: Bulk SMS credits are the prepaid messages the Bulk Texting tool in LeadLocate CRM draws on, one credit per text. They come in packs of 3,000, 5,000 or 10,000 messages, bought in My LeadLocate and applied to the account right away. Q: Are the tools an extra cost, or only the credits? A: The tools are part of every LeadLocate plan, including CRM Only. Bulk Texting, Bulk Email, Voicemail Drops and the two validators are on the dock from day one. Credits power the volume, and pack prices are on the pricing page. Q: Can I send ringless voicemail with usage credits? A: Yes. Voicemail Drops under Marketing Tools delivers a recorded message to a list straight to voicemail, and each delivery uses one ringless voicemail credit. Packs come in 500, 1,000 or 5,000 deliveries. Q: Is phone number validation a separate service? A: No. The Phone Validator and the Email Validator are tiles on the dock inside LeadLocate CRM. Paste a list or upload a CSV, and each number or address checked uses one validation credit from packs of 1,000, 5,000 or 10,000. Q: How fast can I use credits after I buy them? A: Right away. Credits bought in My LeadLocate are applied to the account as soon as the purchase clears, and the balance tiles on the Service Credits card show the new figure on the same screen. Q: Who on my team can buy credits? A: Anyone whose My LeadLocate login reaches billing, usually the account admin or the billing contact. Salespeople and BDC agents spend credits from the CRM, and the account holder keeps control of what is bought. ### User Roles and Permissions for Dealership Teams URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/user-roles-and-permissions User roles in LeadLocate CRM are set in User Management under the Billing and Admin menu. Every person on the account is a User, a Manager or a Master Administrator, and each user carries their own notification toggles, a Quick Access PIN and default file folders. One login then carries that person into the LeadLocate CRM, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the account portal. #### What user roles do, in one sentence User Management is the screen in LeadLocate CRM where a dealership adds each person on the team, gives them one of three roles, User, Manager or Master Administrator, and sets the handful of per user options that shape their day: which notifications they receive, their Quick Access PIN, and the default file folders they work from. The role decides how much of the store a person sees. The per user settings decide how the CRM behaves for that one person. That is deliberately simple. Some CRMs ship a permissions matrix with dozens of checkboxes per user, and the result at most stores is that nobody is sure who can see what, the general manager has the same rights as a green pea because somebody clicked the wrong template, and the vendor charges for a consultant to sort it out. Three roles map to how a dealership actually works: people who work leads, people who run those people, and the person who owns the account. The LeadLocate CRM is built around those three seats, and everything else on this page is what each seat carries with it. #### How a store uses it on a normal Monday A new salesperson starts at nine. Before he sits down, the sales manager opens User Management, adds him as a User, turns on the notifications she wants him to get, texts and new leads on his phone but not every email, sets his Quick Access PIN, and points his default file folders at Customer Handouts and Inventory. He installs the phone app, signs in once, and is texting leads by ten because the CRM already looks the way the store wants a new rep's CRM to look. His personal phone number never touched a customer, because the store's tracking number and the softphone did the work. The same afternoon a BDC agent gives notice. The Master Administrator removes her access in User Management, once, and it is gone from the desktop CRM, the phone app, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the account portal together, because there was only ever one login to remove. Her leads are still in the CRM, the texts she sent are still in each customer's conversation, and her call recordings are still on the calls, because none of that belonged to her login. It belonged to the store. That is the whole argument for roles in a system that owns the work rather than the person owning it. #### Where it lives: User Management under Billing and Admin User Management is one of the items under Billing and Admin in the desktop CRM, next to DNC Blacklist, Automated Templates, Follow Up Processes, Voicemail Drop Files, Lead Feeds Manager and Account Settings. It is the administrative layer of the CRM, which is why it lives with the other things a manager sets once and a rep never needs to see. Open it and you see the store's users, each with a role and the per user settings beside it. On the phone app there is no separate administration screen, and there should not be; roles carry over from the desk, so a person opens the LeadLocate mobile app and sees what their role allows. A Master Administrator who needs to add someone from the road does it from the desktop CRM in a browser. The account portal, My LeadLocate, has its own access page that says which users can launch which apps, so the person who owns the account can see the whole roster from the billing side as well as the CRM side. #### The three roles: User, Manager, Master Administrator A User is a salesperson or a BDC agent: someone whose job is to work leads, text and call customers, book appointments and desk deals. This is most of the store. A Manager is a sales manager, a BDC manager or a finance manager: someone who runs a team and needs to see the team's leads and activity, not just their own, and who sets up the things a team runs on, such as channels in Team Chat and the store's file folders. A Master Administrator is the dealer principal, general manager or the person they trust with the account: the seat that owns Billing and Admin, adds and removes people, and decides how the store's CRM is configured. Three roles are enough because the CRM handles the harder question, which lead belongs to whom, elsewhere. Round robin assignment, global lead distribution with rules and distribution lists, and routing rules per rooftop decide who gets a lead. The role decides what a person can see and change once they have it. Keeping those two questions apart is why a store rarely needs a fourth role: an assistant manager who should get leads like a rep but see the floor like a manager is a Manager in a distribution list, not a custom permission set. #### Beyond the role: the per user settings that shape a day The role is the big switch. The per user settings are the small ones that decide whether a person likes working in the CRM. Notification toggles are set per user in User Management and refined by the user in their own preferences: which events notify them, on which device, with which sound, so a rep who lives on the phone gets texts and new leads there and the manager who lives at the desk gets on screen toasts. The lead notifications and alerts page covers the choices. The Quick Access PIN is a short code per user for getting back into the CRM and the phone app quickly at a shared desk or on the lot, set in User Management alongside the role. Default file folders point each user at the part of the file library they use, so the Files menu opens where their work is. Each user also records their own voicemail greeting, and each user is a name a Master Administrator can put on the Forward Calls To ring list, so the phone rings the people who are actually on the floor. None of those live in the role. They live on the person, which is why a rep moving from one rooftop to another in a group keeps the CRM they are used to. #### One person, one login, every product A user added in User Management is a user everywhere. Ecosystem single sign on means one login launches the CRM, Inventory Link, SecureWebX and the account portal, so the finance manager who was given a seat in the CRM opens the credit application console from the SecureWebX button on the dock without a second username. The salesperson who needs to add a photo to a unit opens Inventory Link from My Inventory the same way. The phone app adds biometric login on top, and the account portal adds passwordless login by magic link or text message. The single sign on page covers that side in detail. The practical consequence is that adding or removing a person is one act, done once, in one place. A store that has ever discovered a former employee still had a working login to the inventory tool six months after leaving knows what that is worth. It also means the roster the owner sees in My LeadLocate, the users a manager sees in User Management, and the people a rep sees in Team Chat are the same list, which is a small thing until the day it is not. #### What it replaces, and what that costs elsewhere Per seat pricing, first. Many CRM vendors price by user, then price the manager tier higher, then charge again for the administrator seat. A store that adds a summer hire pays for the seat for the summer and forgets to remove it in the fall. LeadLocate plans with exclusive local leads are on the pricing page, each carrying the full CRM, and a new rep is added in User Management right away while the plan has logins available; past that, our team adds extra seats as an add-on, month to month. The second cost is the support ticket. In a lot of dealer software, adding a user, changing a role or resetting a login is a request to the vendor and a wait. In LeadLocate it is a Master Administrator's job in User Management, done in the time it takes to type a name. The third cost is quieter: the shared login. Stores that pay per seat share logins to save money, and then every text, call and deal in the CRM is attributed to a name that is not the person who did it. Roles that are free to assign remove the reason to share a login, and the reports, the communications log and the call recordings start meaning what they say. #### The compliance angle: one identity per person The compliance value of roles is not the role. It is that every person has their own identity, and that the identity can be removed once. When a text goes out under a rep's name, when a call is recorded on a rep's softphone, when a customer deal page is shared from a rep's desk, the CRM knows who did it, and activity reporting shows it by user. That record is what a store needs when a customer disputes what was said, when a manager reviews a conversation, or when a regulator asks how the store handles do not call requests. A shared login turns all of it into a shrug. Removal matters as much as creation. A departing employee's access is turned off in User Management and is gone from every product at once, while the customer conversations, the deals and the recordings stay where they were, in the store's record. The customer information itself sits in the Customer Profile with personal information encrypted, read by the deal and the desk, and the DNC Blacklist with its live do not call lookup applies to every user regardless of role. Roles keep the store's people straight; the CRM keeps the store's customers protected. #### How to set it up, and what to pair it with Roles exist from the first login. The person who signs the store up is the first Master Administrator, and the first hour is spent in User Management adding the team: each manager as a Manager, each salesperson and BDC agent as a User, with notification toggles, a Quick Access PIN and default file folders for each. The help center article shows the clicks. From there, new hires are added the morning they start and departures are removed the afternoon they leave, and the roster stays honest. Pair it with round robin and distribution lists, which decide who gets which lead once the people exist. Pair it with the Forward Calls To ring list, which is built from the same users. And pair it with My LeadLocate's account access page when the owner wants to see, from the billing side, exactly who can launch what. If you would like to see a store being set up before you sign up, the pre-recorded live demo shows the CRM in use, and the contact page reaches a person who can talk through how a store your size usually assigns its roles. #### Questions and answers Q: What roles does LeadLocate CRM have? A: Three: User, Manager and Master Administrator. A User works leads, a Manager runs a team and sees the team's work, and a Master Administrator owns the account and the Billing and Admin menu, including User Management. Q: Where do I add a user or change a role? A: In User Management, under Billing and Admin in the desktop CRM. The same screen sets each user's notification toggles, Quick Access PIN and default file folders. Q: Does adding a user cost extra? A: Not while the plan has logins available: a Master Administrator adds the new hire in User Management right away. Once the account reaches the logins its plan carries, our team adds extra seats as an add-on. Current plans are on the pricing page. Q: Does a user need separate logins for SecureWebX and Inventory Link? A: No. Ecosystem single sign on means one login launches the CRM, Inventory Link, SecureWebX and the My LeadLocate account portal. Removing a user in User Management removes that access everywhere. Q: What happens to a salesperson's leads and texts when they leave? A: They stay in the CRM. Leads, conversations, call recordings and deals belong to the store's record, not the login, so removing the user removes their access and nothing else. Q: How do I decide who gets which lead? A: That is a separate setting from the role. Round robin assignment, global lead distribution with rules and distribution lists, and routing rules per rooftop decide who receives a lead; the role decides what they can see and change once they have it. ### VIN Decode and Vehicle Database URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/vin-decode-and-vehicle-database VIN decode and the vehicle database are the data layer of Inventory Link. Every vehicle that enters the platform is decoded from its VIN to a real year, make, model, trim and specification set, then enriched from an automotive database that carries government safety and efficiency data. Vehicle text parsing handles units that arrive as a description, and the decoded record flows into the LeadLocate CRM and the phone app. #### What VIN decode and the vehicle database do VIN decode turns the seventeen characters on the door jamb into a real vehicle record, and the vehicle database enriches that record with government safety and efficiency data, so every listing, text message and deal in the platform describes the car as it actually is. That is the feature in one sentence. It runs inside Inventory Link on every unit that arrives, from a feed, from an import of your own dealership website, from a vehicle added by hand in the portal, or from a trade a salesperson scanned on the lot. A feed row is not a merchandised vehicle. It is a VIN, a price and whatever the last vendor decided to put in the trim field. The decode fills in what the VIN encodes: year, make, model, trim, body, engine, drivetrain, transmission and the rest of the specification. The database adds what the VIN does not carry but the shopper wants: the fuel economy figures and the safety information from government sources. Vehicle text parsing does the same job for units that arrive as a description rather than a clean record, which is common when inventory comes from a website instead of a feed. The database itself is imported and refreshed on a schedule, so the specifications a listing shows are drawn from a current reference rather than a table someone loaded once. None of this is a separate service with its own login; it is the layer everything else in the platform sits on. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal day A trade rolls in at ten. The salesperson opens the LeadLocate app on his phone, scans the VIN from the windshield, and the trade-in form fills with the year, make, model and trim. He adds the mileage and a few photos and the appraisal starts from a real record instead of a guess. That is the CRM side of the decode, and the trade-in capture and VIN scan page covers it in full. By noon the store has decided to keep the trade. The used car manager adds it in the dealer portal and the same decode runs again, this time producing the inventory record: the trim, the specifications, the fuel economy and safety data from the database. He applies a stock number override so the number on the windshield is the number in the system, and the unit goes live in the widget, on the inventory site and in the CRM inventory list with a complete description nobody typed. At three, a shopper texts about it. The salesperson taps the vehicle insert button in the composer, and the vehicle card that drops into the message carries the decoded trim, the mileage, the stock number and the price. The shopper asks about the fuel economy. The answer is on the listing, from the government figures, and the salesperson quotes it rather than estimating. Nobody at the store looked anything up all day, and every number the customer saw was the same number everywhere. #### Where the decode lives: the portal, the CRM and the phone In the Inventory Link dealer portal, the decode runs when a unit enters, under Feeds for a feed, under Add a vehicle for a unit added by hand, and during an import of your dealership website. The decoded fields are what you see on every row of the inventory list and what you correct under Edit vehicle and photos when a feed sent something odd. The portal opens from the My Inventory button in the dock at the bottom of the LeadLocate CRM, with single sign on. In the CRM, the decoded record shows in the Inventory item of the main menu and inside the vehicle insert button in every text and email composer. The trade-in form carries a trade VIN scan, and document AI reads a VIN from a scanned document or photo so a salesperson does not type seventeen characters by hand. When a lead arrives on a specific VIN, the decoded vehicle is attached to the lead from the first second. On the phone, the LeadLocate app carries a VIN lookup alongside the driver license scanner, the inventory list with a detail sheet, and the inventory picker. A salesperson standing beside a car on the lot can decode it, look it up in the inventory and send it to a customer without going back to a desk. The dealer portal is also in the app stores under the listing name MyInventory.Link. #### What it replaces, and what VIN data costs elsewhere Most stores pay for VIN data at least twice without noticing. The inventory feed vendor decodes on the way in, in whatever tier the contract bought. The website vendor decodes again, or does not, and shows what the feed gave it. A separate VIN decoder subscription sits in the used car office for appraisals. Each one is a bill, and each one produces a slightly different description of the same car, which is how a listing ends up saying one trim online and another on the buyer's order. Inside the platform there is one decode and one database, and every surface reads the same record. The widget, the inventory site, the brand pages, the CRM list, the phone app and the vehicle card in a text all describe the unit the same way. What a VIN decoder should do, the tiers of VIN data worth paying for, and how VIN specific leads work are on our VIN decoder software page; this page is the feature as it runs. The cost is the plan you are on. VIN decode and the vehicle database are part of the platform subscription, month to month, and the pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: advertise the trim you are selling Advertising the wrong trim is the most common honest mistake in inventory marketing. A feed says Limited because someone at intake thought it looked like one, the website repeats it, a shopper drives in expecting the leather and the sunroof, and the store spends the afternoon explaining. The decode removes the human step. The trim on the listing is the trim the VIN encodes, and the equipment that goes with it is the equipment the specification carries. The government data does the same for the numbers shoppers compare on. Fuel economy and safety figures on a listing come from the vehicle database rather than from a brochure someone remembered, so what the store advertises is what the source published. When a stock number override is applied, the number the customer sees on the windshield, in the text and on the paperwork is one number. That is a listing a store can stand behind, and a record the CRM keeps with the lead from the first contact. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to switch on. VIN decode and the vehicle database run on every unit that enters Inventory Link, however it gets there: a feed connected under Feeds, an import of your own dealership website with twenty eight website platforms recognised, a vehicle added by hand, or a trade scanned in the CRM. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Vehicle text parsing runs on units that arrive as a description, and the database refreshes on its own schedule. Your part is small. Apply stock number overrides where your store's numbering matters, correct the rare decoded field a feed confused under Edit vehicle and photos, and let the rest run. If your store needs a data field the standard decode does not carry, or a specialty unit outside the passenger and light truck range, that is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. To see it before you decide, the pre-recorded live demo shows a unit entering the portal and coming out fully described, and the contact page reaches a person who will run your own VINs through it. #### What to pair it with The decode is the layer under everything, so the pairings are the features that show the record. Stock photos for listings uses the decoded trim to choose promo photos for a unit that arrived without pictures. The vehicle finder searches the decoded fields, which is why a shopper can ask for a tow package and get the right answer. The embeddable inventory widget and the inventory website builder display the decoded specifications on every listing. In the CRM, pair it with the trade-in form and its VIN scan, with the driver license scanner on the phone app for the same no typing intake, and with the vehicle insert button, so the card a salesperson sends carries the decoded trim rather than a guess. At the desk, pair it with the OEM Incentives Showroom, which needs to know exactly what the unit is to show the manufacturer's program on it. The all features page lists the rest. #### Built so your store keeps selling Your inventory records are yours, and they are already decoded. Every unit that enters the store is decoded on arrival, and the trim, engine, drivetrain, factory equipment, fuel economy and safety figures ride with that record from then on, held safe in your account and yours to export whenever you want them. Your dealership website shows your cars through your own web vendor's pages, your feed keeps flowing to everyone else who consumes it, the vehicle cards you have sent carry their specifications in your customers' hands, and the trades you have appraised keep their build data on the deal. The platform is built so your store keeps selling with one accurate description of every car, in every place that car appears. #### Questions and answers Q: What does the decode fill in? A: What the VIN encodes: year, make, model, trim, body, engine, drivetrain, transmission and the rest of the specification. The vehicle database then adds government safety and efficiency data, which the VIN itself does not carry. Q: What if a unit arrives as a description instead of a VIN? A: Vehicle text parsing reads the description and builds the record from it. This is common when inventory is imported from a dealership website rather than a feed, and the result is treated the same way as a decoded unit. Q: Can a salesperson decode a VIN from a phone? A: Yes. The LeadLocate app carries a VIN lookup, the trade-in form has a trade VIN scan, and document AI reads a VIN from a scanned document or photo, so nobody types seventeen characters by hand on the lot. Q: My feed uses stock numbers nobody on the floor recognises. Can I change them? A: Yes. Stock number overrides let the number on the windshield be the number in the system, in the widget, in the text message and on the listing, without changing the feed at its source. Q: Do I need a feed for the decode to run? A: No. The decode runs on any unit that enters Inventory Link: a feed, an import of your own dealership website, a vehicle added by hand in the portal, or a trade scanned in the CRM. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Q: Is VIN decode an extra charge? A: No. VIN decode and the vehicle database are part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page lists the current plans. ### Vehicle Finder: Locate the Unit a Shopper Wants URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/vehicle-finder The vehicle finder, called Locate inside Inventory Link, is a search box for dealership inventory that works the way shoppers talk. A shopper describes the unit they want in plain language, the finder searches a lookup index built from the store's decoded inventory and locates the match, and the shopper's request lands in the LeadLocate CRM with the vehicle attached. #### What the vehicle finder does The vehicle finder lets a shopper describe the unit they want in plain words and locates it in your inventory, then hands the request to your sales team with that vehicle attached. Inside Inventory Link it is called Locate, and it is the search box shoppers actually use: the one where they type what they mean instead of working through five dropdowns that were designed for a database rather than a person. It works because of what sits behind it. Every vehicle in Inventory Link has been through VIN decode and the vehicle database, so the finder is searching real trims, real drivetrains, real equipment and real colors rather than whatever three words landed in the feed's description field. Vehicle text parsing does the same job for units that arrived as a description instead of a clean record. A lookup index built from that decoded inventory is rebuilt on a schedule, so the finder is searching what is on the lot now, not what was there when someone last exported a file. The result is a dealership car finder that behaves like a good salesperson on the phone. The shopper says what they are after, the finder answers with the unit, and the conversation starts with the right car on the table. #### How a dealership uses the vehicle finder on a normal day A shopper lands on your dealer page at nine at night, after the kids are down, looking for a certified crossover with a third row and a tow package in something other than black. She has no interest in a filter panel. She types roughly that into the finder, and it locates the two units on your lot that match. She taps the silver one, the request sheet rises from the bottom of her phone screen, and she asks whether it is still there and what the payment might look like. That request lands in the dealer portal under Requests and in the CRM with the silver crossover attached. The next morning the salesperson who picks it up does not have to ask what she was looking at. He opens the lead, sees the vehicle, checks In Store Now to confirm it is physically on the lot, and texts her back with the vehicle card, photo and price included, plus two times she could see it. She picks one. The whole exchange took the shopper thirty seconds at night and the salesperson two minutes in the morning, and both of them spent that time on the actual car. The finder also earns its keep when the answer is no. A shopper describes a unit you do not have, and the request still lands with what they described, which is exactly the information a salesperson needs to say what you can get, or to note the want so the next trade that matches gets a call. Every request is a shopper who told you what they want. The what to expect from car sales leads page explains why that is worth more than it first looks. #### Where the finder lives: dealer page, inventory site, widget and the CRM The finder is a shopper facing feature, so it lives where shoppers are: on the dealer page and the inventory websites the portal's Builder publishes. A shopper searches, browses and asks for a unit without leaving the page. Your own dealership website gets the same inventory through the embeddable inventory widget, so the units the finder locates are the same ones the widget displays, from the same inventory store. On the dealer side, everything the finder produces arrives in two places. The dealer portal holds the request under Requests and in the inbox, and the LeadLocate CRM receives the lead with the vehicle attached. The portal opens from the My Inventory button in the CRM dock with single sign on, and the Inventory item in the main menu shows the list the finder searched. In every text and email composer, the vehicle insert button drops the located unit into the reply as a formatted card. On the phone, the LeadLocate app carries the inventory list with a detail sheet and an inventory picker, so a salesperson answering a finder request from the lot sees the unit the shopper found. The dealer portal is also in the app stores under the listing name MyInventory.Link for managers who add and edit vehicles from a phone. #### What the finder replaces, and what search costs elsewhere Most dealer websites ship with a filter grid: make, model, year range, price range, body style, then a results page. It is fine for a shopper who already knows your inventory and terrible for the one who knows what they want in their own words. Stores that want a smarter search box on the website usually pay a web vendor or a plugin company for it, and it searches whatever text the feed carried, which is often a stock number and a color. The finder searches decoded inventory, and it comes with the platform rather than as a line item. The trim, the drivetrain and the equipment it matches on come from VIN decode and the vehicle database, which is why a shopper can ask for a third row or a tow package and get the right answer. The related question of how shoppers actually search a dealer site, and which design mistakes lose them, is on our inventory search page; this page is the product itself. The cost is the plan you are already on. The finder is part of the platform subscription, month to month, and the pricing page lists what each plan includes. #### The compliance angle: describe the unit as it is A search tool is only as honest as the records behind it. When a finder matches on a hand typed description, a vehicle can show up in a search for equipment it does not have, and a shopper who drives across town to see a package that is not on the truck has a fair complaint. Because the finder searches decoded records, the equipment it matches on is the equipment the VIN says the unit carries, and the fuel economy and safety figures on the listing come from the government data in the vehicle database. The request side is clean as well. Every finder request is a shopper who chose a vehicle, typed their own contact details and asked to hear from you. That is inbound, opt-in contact, and the CRM logs the conversation from the first reply so there is a record of what was asked and what was answered. If the shopper's budget and the vehicle's price are far apart, that is still a real lead; shoppers reach for the unit they want first and settle the payment second, and a salesperson who understands that sells the one sitting on the ground. #### How to turn the vehicle finder on The finder searches your inventory, so the inventory comes first. Connect a feed under Feeds in the dealer portal, or point the importer at your dealership website and Inventory Link imports the vehicles from it. A broker with no lot switches on auto broker inventory mode. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required in any of these cases. Once vehicles are in the portal, the finder is live on the dealer page and on any inventory site you publish from Builder. The lookup index rebuilds on a schedule, so newly added units become searchable without anyone doing anything. If you want the finder presented somewhere the standard placements do not cover, or wired to a search box your web vendor already built, that is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. To see it before you commit, the pre-recorded live demo shows a shopper describing a unit and the request landing in the CRM, and the contact page reaches a person who will run your own inventory through it. #### What to pair the finder with The finder locates the car; the rest of the platform closes the loop. Pair it with Schedule a Visit requests, so the shopper who found the unit can pick a time to see it, and with In Store Now, so the salesperson confirms the unit is physically on the lot before promising it. Pair it with the vehicle insert button in the CRM composers, because the reply to a finder request should carry the vehicle back to the shopper as a card with a photo and a price, not as a stock number typed from memory. Stores that run offers pair the finder with brand offer pages and the OEM incentives engine, so the unit a shopper located also shows what the manufacturer is offering on it. And every store pairs it with the shared team calendar in the CRM, so the Saturday appointment that came out of a Tuesday night search is on the board where the whole floor can see it. The full list of what surrounds the finder is on the all features page. Search that understands what a shopper means is a small thing to describe and a large thing to have. #### Built so your store keeps selling The finder is additive by design. It reads from your inventory, and your inventory stays yours: your dealership website shows your cars through your own web vendor's pages, your feed keeps flowing to everyone else who consumes it, and your phones ring on the numbers you publish. Every request the finder delivers is held safe in the CRM as a lead your team owns and works, the vehicle cards you have sent sit in your customers' hands, and the decoded records behind every search keep the listing true to the unit. The platform is built so your store keeps selling, whether a shopper is searching your lot at midnight, a salesperson is checking a trim level from the drive, or a manager is reading the week on the Reports dashboard on a Monday morning. #### Questions and answers Q: Can a shopper search the finder by VIN or stock number? A: A shopper describes the unit in plain language, and the finder matches against decoded inventory records that carry the VIN, the trim, the equipment and the stock number, including any stock number override you applied. Searching by a license plate is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: What happens when a shopper asks for a vehicle that is not on my lot? A: The request still lands in the dealer portal and the CRM with what the shopper described. That is a lead with the want already written down, which is exactly what a salesperson needs to say what you can get or to call when the next matching trade arrives. Q: Does the finder need a feed? A: No. It searches whatever is in Inventory Link, which can come from a feed, from an import of your own dealership website, from vehicles added by hand in the portal, or from auto broker inventory mode. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Q: How current is the inventory the finder searches? A: The finder searches a lookup index built from your decoded inventory and rebuilt on a schedule, so newly added units become searchable and sold units drop out without anyone re-uploading anything. Q: Where does a finder request show up for my team? A: In the dealer portal under Requests and in the inbox, and in the LeadLocate CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached. Salespeople on the phone app see the same unit in the inventory list and can reply with its vehicle card by text. Q: Is the vehicle finder an extra charge? A: No. It is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month. The pricing page lists the current plans. ### Vehicle Transport Quotes From Carriers on One Page URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/vehicle-transport-quotes Vehicle transport quotes in Inventory Link work from one request sheet. You name the unit by VIN or stock number, enter the pickup and delivery points and the date, pick carriers from the built in directory of transport carriers and service providers, and send one identical description to all of them. Every reply and quote lands on its own row of the same page. #### What does transport quoting in Inventory Link do? It turns the most scattered job in the used car department into one page. Moving a unit usually means four phone calls, three different descriptions of the same car, a quote on a sticky note and another in somebody's personal email. In Inventory Link you create a request for the vehicle, describe the move once, choose the carriers you want to hear from, and send it. The request sheet then holds a row for each carrier: what went out, whether they replied, the quote they gave and the outcome. The list of who to ask comes from the directory of transport carriers and service providers inside Inventory Link, so the manager is choosing from a list in the same portal as the inventory rather than working a search engine at eight in the morning. The same directory covers the service providers a unit may need before it is front line ready, and the same request sheet works for those jobs too. You choose the carrier and you book with them directly. The sheet is the store's record of what was asked, who was asked and what each of them said, which is exactly what a manager needs to approve the spend and exactly what the next person moving a car on the same route wants to read. #### How do dealers get car transport quotes on a normal day? A used car manager lands a clean half ton truck in a dealer trade from a store three hundred miles away. Before the handshake call is over, she opens Requests in the Inventory Link portal, clicks Create request, types the last six of the VIN, and the portal fills in the year, make, model and trim from the vehicle record. She enters the pickup city, state and ZIP, the store's address for delivery and the date she needs it on the lot. She notes that it runs and drives and needs no enclosed trailer, searches the directory by city for carriers near the pickup, adds four of them and clicks Send request. By lunch two carriers have replied and one has called. She puts the phone quote on its row so the sheet shows all three, picks the carrier with the best combination of price and pickup date, books the move with them, and marks the outcome. The general manager asks what the truck is going to cost landed; she uses Email this request and he has the whole comparison in his inbox in a few seconds. The same pattern handles an auction purchase that needs to come home, a sold vehicle going to a buyer in another state, and a unit headed to a body shop or a detail vendor across town. Every request lives in the requests list with its status, so a glance tells the desk which units are still waiting on a carrier. #### Where does it live in the platform? Transport quoting lives in the Inventory Link dealer portal, under Requests, next to the inventory list the requests are about. The portal opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on, so the manager who is working a lead can move to the vehicle and its transport in one click and with one login. Because the request starts from the vehicle record, the carrier quotes on a decoded unit rather than a description typed from memory. VIN decode fills the details, stock number overrides keep the store's own numbering intact, and a unit that arrived through a feed or through the import from your own website is ready to quote the moment it is in the list. A trade or wholesale piece that is in no feed yet goes in through Add a vehicle first, then onto a request. The step by step is in how to use the request sheet. Inventory Link is also in the app stores under the name MyInventory.Link, for the manager who wants the inventory in a pocket while walking the lot. #### How does a buyer ask for a vehicle shipping quote on the deal? Some quotes start on the customer's side. When a salesperson shares a DealTracker deal page, the store can switch on a shipping quote step in digital retail checkout. A buyer two hours or two states away requests delivery right on their deal page, with their address, and the request arrives on the deal instead of as a note that says to ask about delivery. That is the moment the manager opens a transport request in Inventory Link for the same unit. The delivery address from the deal goes on the request, the carriers are asked with one identical description, and the quote that comes back is the number the salesperson shares with the buyer. The buyer sees a store that answers delivery questions with a real figure, the manager sees every carrier's answer on one page, and the deal keeps moving. For the whole out of market deal, from texting the unit with photos to the signature, pair this with sending vehicles by text and deal pages with e-signature. #### What does it replace, and what does quoting cost elsewhere? It replaces the phone tree. A manager calling carriers one at a time describes the car a little differently to each, gets answers at different hours, and ends the day with prices that are hard to compare because the questions were never identical. It replaces the sticky note, the text thread with a dispatcher, and the email chain that one person can see. And it replaces the habit of using the same carrier every time because finding another one felt like work. Standalone quoting tools and marketplaces are a separate login, a separate account and a separate place to keep records, disconnected from the inventory the quote is about. In LeadLocate, transport quoting is part of Inventory Link, which is part of the platform subscription rather than a separate purchase, and every plan runs month to month. The pricing page lists what each plan includes. There is a quieter saving too. After a season of requests, the store has its own record of every lane it has moved cars on: who answered fast, who quoted fairly, who showed up on the day promised. That history lives on the sheets and is available to the next manager on the next request. #### The compliance angle: a record of every move A transport request is a written record. It names the vehicle by VIN, states its condition, gives the route and the date, and shows exactly which carriers received that description and what each one answered. When a buyer later asks why delivery cost what it did, or a manager audits wholesale expense, the sheet answers the question with the same facts every carrier was given. Build a habit on top of it. Confirm each carrier's operating authority and insurance at the moment you book, and put that confirmation on the sheet as a note, so the record shows the store did its diligence before a unit left the lot. Keep damage and delivery notes on the same page when the unit arrives. Transport is one of the few places a vehicle leaves the store's control between purchase and sale, and a clean paper trail is the store's best protection. Access follows the store's own team settings in Inventory Link, with invites and roles, so the store decides exactly who works in the portal and every request carries the name of a real member of the team. #### How do you turn it on? Nothing to install. Every LeadLocate account includes Inventory Link, and Requests is part of the dealer portal. Open the portal from My Inventory on the CRM dock, make sure the unit is in your inventory list, and create your first request. Invite the used car manager and anyone else who moves vehicles from the portal's team view and set their role. If your store works with a carrier or a service provider it wants in the directory, ask for it; our team puts it in production for your dealership. The same goes for a request field your store always needs on a transport job. The pre-recorded live demo shows the portal, and the Help Center carries the guide. #### What should you pair it with? Start with the inventory itself. Inventory feeds or the import from your own website keep the unit list current, so every request starts from a real record. Auto broker inventory mode gives a broker with no lot the brand offer pages that bring in buyers from farther away, and those are the buyers who ask about delivery. On the selling side, model research pages bring out of market shoppers to the store's site; the SEO for vehicle model research pages guide covers how. The all features list shows where transport quoting sits among everything else in the platform. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I get car transport quotes as a dealer? A: Create a request in the Inventory Link portal for the unit, enter pickup, delivery and the date needed, choose carriers from the directory and send it. Every carrier gets the same description and every reply lands on its own row of one sheet. Q: Does LeadLocate book the carrier for me? A: You choose the carrier and book with them directly. Inventory Link gives you the directory to ask from, one request that goes to everyone with the same details, and the sheet that holds every quote and the outcome. Q: Can a customer request a shipping quote? A: Yes. When the store turns on the shipping quote step in digital retail checkout, a buyer requests delivery with their address on their DealTracker deal page, and the manager quotes it through a transport request for the same unit. Q: Can I quote trucks and other vehicles, not only cars? A: Yes. The request starts from the vehicle in your inventory list, whatever it is, and the notes carry anything a carrier needs to know: oversized, low front end, no keys, or a unit that does not run. Q: Is transport quoting an extra charge? A: It is part of Inventory Link, which is part of the platform subscription on every plan, month to month. The carrier's own price for the move is between you and the carrier you book. ### Verified Partners Directory for Lenders and Vendors URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/verified-partners-directory The Verified Partners directory is a searchable directory of lenders and vendors by category inside SecureWebX. Verified Partners carry a note of what was checked, such as licenses and references, and lender entries link to public regulator records. A store filters by state, credit tier and dealer type, adds a partner to its own Partner List, and works with it through Send to Lender, the mailbox, eFax and export. #### What is the Verified Partners directory? The Verified Partners directory is the place inside SecureWebX where a dealership finds the lenders and vendors it might work with, sees which of them have been verified and what that verification covered, and adds the ones it chooses to its own Partner List. That is the one sentence version. It answers a question every finance office has at some point, usually at four on a Friday with a customer in the showroom: who else will look at this file, and how do I reach them. The directory is organized by category, from auto lending to the vendors a store leans on around a deal, and it is searchable by lender name or brand across every category. A lender entry carries the practical filters a finance manager actually uses: the states it lends in, the credit tiers it works, the dealer types it accepts, the products it offers and the size of its auto loan book. Bank and credit union entries link to their public regulator records, so a manager can confirm who a lender is before sending a customer's application anywhere near it. A Verified Partner entry states what was verified, licenses checked, references, and so on, so verified is a specific statement rather than a badge. This page is the product side view of the directory inside SecureWebX. The online credit application software page covers the application system as a whole, and the directory is the part of it that answers where an application goes once it is worked. #### How does a finance office use it on a normal day? A special finance manager at an independent store has a customer with a thin credit file, a solid job and a real down payment, and her three usual lenders have passed. In a store without a directory she starts calling people she met at a trade show. In SecureWebX she opens the Directory, filters to her state, the customer's credit tier and her dealer type, and gets a short list of lenders that work files like this one. She checks the regulator record on one, reads the lender guidelines on another, and adds two of them to her Partner List. From the partner entry she sends a request for more information, and the lender replies into the mailbox, where the thread stays with the partner rather than in her personal email. The next morning one of the new lenders has answered. She shares the application through Send to Lender, a code gated, expiring, watermarked share with a lender response portal, and the lender records a decision. The customer who was going to walk out drives home. The new lender is now on her Partner List with its capabilities, its contact, its own fax number if it wants one, and every application she has shared with it. The directory turned a Friday afternoon phone tree into a ten minute search, and the relationship it produced is recorded rather than remembered. #### What does Verified mean, and what does it not mean? Verified means our team checked the partner before marking it, and the entry says what was checked: licenses, references and the like. It is a statement about the partner being who it says it is and doing what it says it does. It is not a statement about how that partner will treat your customer's application, and nobody can make that statement. A lender's decision on a file is the lender's decision, and a directory that implied otherwise would be selling a guess. What the directory does is shorten the distance between a need and a qualified contact, and it does that better than a folder of business cards ever did. The filters, state, credit tier, dealer type, product, loan book size, narrow the list to partners whose stated business matches your file. The regulator record links let you confirm the institution. The verified note tells you what was examined. From there the decision to work with a partner is yours, which is how lender relationships should work, and the directory keeps the record of that decision on your Partner List. #### Your Partner List and Preferred Lenders: the working set The directory is the universe. The Partner List is the store's own working set, the lenders and vendors it actually sends business to, and it is where the rest of SecureWebX looks when it needs a partner. Adding a partner from the directory puts it on the list with its partner type and capabilities. A store can also add a partner the directory has never heard of, a local credit union with two branches, a warranty company it has used for years, and invite that partner to set up its own side, so the partner enters its own contact details rather than the finance office typing them. Preferred Lenders is the shortlist within the list, the handful a finance manager reaches for first, so Send to Lender and the mailbox present the usual suspects at the top. Each partner on the list can carry its own eFax number, so fax traffic from that lender is associated with it on arrival, and its own export destination through the lender and DMS export formats, so a file goes out in the shape that partner expects. Email to a partner goes through the console mailbox and the thread stays with the partner. A partner is a record with everything attached, which is the difference between a list and a rolodex. #### The vendor directory, the partner integrations catalog and custom integration requests Lenders are the loudest need but not the only one. The vendor directory covers the other categories a store works around a deal, browsable by category and searchable the same way, so the vendor side of the finance office lives in the same place as the lender side. A vendor added to the Partner List gets the same treatment: type, capabilities, contact, mailbox thread, fax number if needed. Next to the directory sits the partner integrations catalog, which lists the partner systems SecureWebX can deliver an application to and how, including a decision API path for a partner's own system when the partner has one. When your store works with a lender or vendor whose system is not in the catalog, the console carries a custom integration request. Fill it in, name the partner and what they need to receive, and our team takes it from there. Anything not already built is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. A store never has to choose a lender because the software happens to know that lender; it chooses the lender and the software follows. #### Where does it live, and what does it replace? The Directory and the Partner List live in the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button on the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and in the SecureWebX app on iOS and Android. The Directory is a menu item of its own with category browsing and search. Partner List sits with it, and Preferred Lenders is a view within the list. Send to Lender, the mailbox and the export controls on each application all read from the same Partner List, so a partner added once is available everywhere it should be. What it replaces is the finance manager's personal network as the store's only lender map: the rep's cell number on a sticky note, the trade show business cards in a drawer, the email thread from two managers ago that nobody can find, and the lender who was never called because nobody knew it existed. When that manager leaves, the network leaves with them. A Partner List belongs to the store. SecureWebX is part of every LeadLocate plan rather than an add on, plans are month to month, and the pricing page lists them. #### The compliance angle: know who you send a customer's file to, and keep the record Sending a consumer's credit application to a party you have not confirmed is a compliance problem before it is a business problem. The directory's regulator record links, the verified note on a Verified Partner, and the lender guidelines on an entry give a finance manager a way to confirm a lender before a share goes out. The share itself, through Send to Lender, is code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked, and the application record keeps which partners received it. Requests sent from the directory, mailbox threads with a partner and applications shared with a partner are all part of the SecureWebX record, under the same two factor sign in, encryption at rest and audit log that protect the application, and they follow the same rule: archive, never delete. A question later about which lenders saw a file, and when, has a documented answer. As with everything in this product, the directory supports a store's own compliance program rather than standing in for it. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with The directory is on for every SecureWebX company from the day the account is created with your LeadLocate subscription. Open the console, choose Directory, browse by category or search, and add partners to your Partner List. Invite a partner who is not in the directory to set up its own side. If your store wants a lender or vendor added to the directory, or a category beyond the ones it carries, tell us and our team adds it. Pair the directory with Send to Lender, which is where a new partner earns its place on the list, with export formats and eFax for the partners that want a file or a fax rather than a share, and with the stipulations workflow so the documents a new lender asks for land on the application. The all features list shows where the directory sits among everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows the console it lives in. #### Questions and answers Q: What does Verified mean on a partner? A: That our team checked the partner and the entry states what was checked, such as licenses and references. It confirms who the partner is and what it does. It is not a prediction of how the partner will decide on any application; that is always the lender's call. Q: Can I add a lender that is not in the directory? A: Yes. Add the partner to your Partner List directly, or invite the partner to set up its own side so it enters its own contact details. It then works with Send to Lender, the mailbox, eFax and export like any other partner. Q: How do I narrow the directory to lenders that fit my store? A: Filter by state, credit tier, dealer type, product and the size of the lender's auto loan book, or search every category by lender name or brand. Bank and credit union entries link to their public regulator records. Q: What is the difference between the directory and my Partner List? A: The directory is every lender and vendor SecureWebX lists. Your Partner List is the set your store has chosen to work with, and Preferred Lenders is the shortlist within it. Send to Lender, the mailbox and export all read from your list. Q: What if a partner needs a delivery method that is not in the catalog? A: The console carries a custom integration request. Name the partner and what it needs to receive, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: Is the directory an extra charge? A: No. The Verified Partners directory is part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Virtual Receptionist and Press 5 Call Screening URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/virtual-receptionist-and-call-screening The virtual receptionist in LeadLocate CRM answers a dealership's tracking number with a greeting in the store's name, follows the store's written call instructions on when to transfer and when to take a message, and sends message copies to the people who should see them. Press 5 call screening, a separate switch, makes whoever answers a forwarded call confirm they are a person. Both are part of every LeadLocate plan. #### What a virtual receptionist is, and what it is in LeadLocate A virtual receptionist is a service that answers a business line without a person sitting at a desk to do it. At a dealership it is the thing that picks up the number on the ad when every salesperson is with a customer, greets the caller by the store's name, finds out what they need, and either connects them to a person or takes a message that reaches the right person. In LeadLocate CRM it is a switch on the IVR Settings page, and once it is on, the store's tracking numbers are answered by it around the clock or during whatever hours the store sets. The receptionist works from three things the store writes: a Greeting, which is what the caller hears first; About Your Business, the context that tells the receptionist what the store sells, where it is and how it wants to be described; and Call Handling instructions, which are plainly labeled as when to transfer, when to take a message and what to ask for. Transfer Numbers are the phones a connected caller reaches, and Message Copies are the people who receive a message when the receptionist takes one. The AI receptionist for car dealerships page covers the general question of whether a dealership should let software answer its phone. This page is the product inside LeadLocate CRM: what it does on a normal day, where it lives, and the screening switch that sits beside it. #### How a dealership's calls go on a normal day with it on It is a weekday afternoon and the store has three people on the floor, all with customers. A shopper calls the number from the store's used inventory page. The receptionist answers on the first ring in the store's name, asks how it can help, and hears that the caller wants to know if a particular sedan is still available. The call instructions say to transfer sales inquiries during business hours, so the receptionist rings the transfer numbers. Nobody picks up in time. The instructions then say to take a message with the caller's name, number and the vehicle, and the receptionist does, politely, and tells the caller someone will return the call shortly. Two things happen at once. The message lands as a copy with the sales manager and the internet director, and the call itself is logged on the Calls page with the caller ID, the recording and the message taken. Because the caller's number matched a lead already in the CRM, the log sits on that lead's timeline. The rep who owns the lead sees it when they finish with their customer, calls back in ten minutes, and the shopper, who expected to be forgotten, is impressed. At nine that night another shopper calls. The store is closed, the hours say so, and the receptionist takes a message the same way instead of ringing four phones in an empty building. Nobody was interrupted at dinner, and nobody wonders in the morning whether anyone called. #### Press 5 screening: confirming a human answered Call screening is a separate feature that solves a specific problem with forwarding calls to cell phones. When a tracking number rings a list of personal phones, any one of them can answer the call by itself: the rep is driving, the phone rolls to carrier voicemail, and the carrier's voicemail system picks up. On an ordinary phone setup that counts as answered. The caller leaves a message in a voicemail box the dealership does not control, the other phones stop ringing, and the store never hears about it. The Announce Calls switch on IVR Settings changes that. When it is on, whoever answers a forwarded call hears a short prompt and presses 5 to accept. A voicemail box never presses 5, so that leg is treated as unanswered, the rest of the list keeps ringing, and if nobody accepts, the caller hears the store's own greeting and leaves a message the store can hear. The page also says exactly when to turn it off: if the number on the list is a phone tree, because a switchboard does not press buttons either. Screening also records who accepted. Because the accepting phone matches a user's mobile, the call log shows which salesperson took the call, not just that it connected. A manager can see who answers the store's line and who lets it ring, which is information a sales floor rarely volunteers. The call forwarding and ring lists page covers the list that screening sits on top of. #### Where it lives in the CRM Both features are managed on the IVR Settings page, reached through Account Settings under Billing and Admin. The page holds the Virtual Receptionist switch with its Greeting, About Your Business, Call Handling, Transfer Numbers and Message Copies fields, the Forward Calls To ring list, the Announce Calls screening switch, and the store's hours with Open 24 hours and Edit Hours. A greeting can be generated, uploaded as audio with Upload Greeting, or left on the standard one. The results land in the same two places every other call does. The Calls entry in the main menu opens the call log, where a receptionist handled call shows with its recording, the message taken and the caller ID. And the lead's own timeline carries the call in order with the texts and emails around it, because the communications log holds every channel in one list. On the LeadLocate mobile app, Call Logs shows the same history, and a call that transfers through to a rep's phone rings with the inbound call alert screen showing the caller's name. Notification preferences decide who hears about a message the moment it is taken. Notify emails and numbers on the account, and per user notification toggles in User Management, turn a taken message into a text or an email to the person who should call back. The lead notifications and alerts page covers those settings. #### What it replaces and what a store pays for it elsewhere Stores solve the unanswered line three ways today. Some hire a receptionist, which is a salary plus the hours the receptionist is at lunch, out sick or gone home. Some buy an answering service, billed per minute or per call, staffed by people who have never seen the store's inventory and read a script from a card. And most do nothing, and let the tracking number ring through to four cells and a personal voicemail box, which is the outcome screening exists to prevent. The virtual receptionist in LeadLocate is included in the CRM subscription, answers every call the same way, follows instructions the store wrote in its own words, and files the result on the lead where the salesperson will find it. It is not a replacement for a person greeting customers at the front desk. It is a replacement for the calls that person was never going to reach anyway: the ones at lunch, after close, and while three customers are standing at the counter. A store that relies on an answering service today can hand those calls to the receptionist instead, since screening and the receptionist come with every plan, the lead plans on the pricing page too. A store that specifically wants live operators can have that too: a live answering service with an operator greeting, warm transfer numbers and written handling instructions is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### The compliance and customer experience angle A receptionist that answers every call the same way is a consistency tool, and consistency is most of what compliance looks like on the phone. The greeting says the store's name. The instructions say what to ask and what to promise, so a caller is never quoted a payment by a machine that was not told to quote payments. Every call is recorded and logged with the message taken, so a claim about what a caller was told has a recording behind it. Recording laws vary by state, and a store should set its announcement policy accordingly; the call recording and transcription page covers that. Screening is a customer experience protection more than a compliance one. A shopper who dials the number on a dealership's ad and reaches a personal voicemail greeting has learned something about the store that the store did not want to teach. Press 5 makes sure the caller either reaches a person who chose to take the call or hears the store's own greeting. Neither outcome embarrasses anybody. Business hours matter here as well. A receptionist that transfers at nine at night rings a salesperson at dinner and annoys both the salesperson and the caller who was put on hold for a phone nobody answered. Hours set on IVR Settings tell the receptionist when to transfer and when to simply take the message, so late calls are handled gracefully and returned in the morning. #### How to turn it on A new LeadLocate account starts with plain forwarding: the tracking number rings the store's own users, the line is open around the clock, and screening is off, so the first call simply rings through with nothing to configure. The virtual receptionist is one switch away on IVR Settings. Turn it on, write a greeting or generate one, fill in About Your Business and the Call Handling instructions in plain English, list the Transfer Numbers and the Message Copies recipients, and set the hours. From that point the receptionist answers. Screening is its own switch, Announce Calls, on the same page. Turn it on once the Forward Calls To list is made of cell phones and desk phones that a person answers, and leave it off for any entry that is a phone tree. A store that wants help writing the instructions, or wants the receptionist to handle something specific to its business, can ask. Anything not covered by the standard fields is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows a call being answered and a message landing on a lead. #### What to pair it with The receptionist sits in front of the ring list, so the first pairing is call forwarding and ring lists, which decides who the receptionist transfers to. The second is tracking phone numbers, so the receptionist answers a different line for each lead source and the call arrives on the lead with its source attached. For a store that wants a menu before the receptionist, or a different path for sales and service callers, the IVR call flow builder puts those options in front of it. Behind it, voicemail greetings are what a caller hears when a transfer fails and no message is taken, and the BDC phone service page covers the store that wants a BDC team working the calls the receptionist logs. Jax, the AI assistant inside the CRM, is a separate tool that helps the rep, not the caller; the two are not the same thing and this page does not promise otherwise. The all features page shows where the receptionist sits among everything else in the platform. #### Built so your store keeps selling The receptionist answers every call your store gets, at two in the afternoon and at two in the morning. The greeting, the menu, the business hours routing and the screening question sit on the phone service your numbers live on, so a caller is greeted, routed to the right phone or invited to leave a message on the very first ring, and the Forward Calls To list keeps ringing the phones your people carry. Every call, caller ID, recording and message copy is held safe against the lead it belongs to and stays your store's own property, and your main line, your DMS and your website stay yours. The platform is built so your store keeps selling on every call that comes in, and if you want the greeting or the ring list changed, the contact page reaches our support team, who can see your screen with you and set it up on the call. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a virtual receptionist? A: A service that answers a business line without a person at a desk: it greets the caller in the store's name, finds out what they need, and either connects them to a person or takes a message. In LeadLocate CRM it is a switch on IVR Settings that works from a greeting, a description of the business and written call handling instructions. Q: Is the virtual receptionist on by default? A: No. A new account starts with plain forwarding so the first call simply rings the store's own users. The receptionist is one switch away on IVR Settings whenever the store wants calls greeted and messages taken. Q: What is press 5 call screening for? A: It makes whoever answers a forwarded call press 5 to accept, so a personal phone's carrier voicemail box is never mistaken for a person. An unaccepted leg keeps the rest of the list ringing, and the accepting user is recorded on the call. Turn it off for any number that is a phone tree. Q: Where do the messages go? A: To the people listed under Message Copies, and onto the call log and the lead's timeline with the recording. Notification preferences can also text or email the rep who should call back the moment a message is taken. Q: Can I have live operators instead of a virtual receptionist? A: Yes. A live answering service with an operator greeting, warm transfer numbers and written call handling instructions is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: Which plan do I need? A: The virtual receptionist and press 5 screening are part of every LeadLocate plan, including CRM Only. There is no per call or per minute charge for the receptionist. ### VoIP Softphone and Click to Call for Dealerships URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/voip-softphone-and-click-to-call The VoIP softphone in LeadLocate CRM is a browser phone that dials any lead or contact with one click from the record you are already reading. A rep can talk through a headset, trigger the call to their own desk or cell phone, or dial from the mobile app. Every call is recorded, logged and tied to the lead, and the softphone is included in every LeadLocate plan. #### What click to call means inside LeadLocate CRM Click to call is exactly what it sounds like: the phone number on a lead is a button, and pressing it places the call. The VoIP softphone is the phone that does the dialing. It runs in the browser, so a salesperson with a headset and a laptop has a complete dealership phone line without a desk set, a wall jack or a separate phone vendor's app open in another window. The part that matters to a manager is what happens around the call. Because the call starts from the lead, the CRM already knows who is being called, which salesperson is calling, and which tracking number the customer is going to see. The call is recorded, the outcome is stamped on the record, and the recording is waiting on the Calls page afterward. Nobody types a note that says called, left message. The system wrote it. The dealer VoIP phone system page covers the buying question of moving a store's phones onto the internet in general. This page is the product side: what the softphone in LeadLocate CRM does, where it lives, and how a store uses it on a Tuesday. #### How a salesperson works the phone on a normal morning A rep sits down at nine with coffee and a Workspace full of yesterday's leads. The first one is a shopper who asked about a used crew cab overnight. She opens the lead, reads the message, and presses the phone number. The softphone rings through her headset, the customer picks up, and they talk for four minutes about whether the truck has the tow package. When the call ends, the recording and the duration are already on the lead's timeline next to the text she sends a minute later with photos of the hitch. The next lead is a customer who never answers unknown numbers. She calls anyway, gets voicemail, and instead of reciting the same message for the fortieth time this month she presses Drop Voicemail on the softphone and picks her saved greeting from the list. Thirty seconds saved, and the call is logged as a voicemail drop rather than a mystery. By ten she has made eleven calls without touching a desk phone, and her manager, looking at the Calls page from his own screen, can see all eleven, play any of them, and read a transcript of the crew cab conversation before the customer walks in at noon. That is the whole point. The phone stopped being a black box. #### Three ways to place the call: browser, your own phone, or the app Not every rep wants a headset, and not every store wants reps tied to a laptop. The softphone gives three outbound paths, and all three land on the same call log. The first is the browser softphone itself. Press the number on a lead, or open Make a Call from the top bar and use the VoIP Phone dial pad. Audio runs through the computer's microphone and speakers or a plugged in headset, and Record this call is a switch on the phone. The second is a triggered call to a physical phone. A rep who prefers to talk on the office line or their own cell picks that phone as the source, and the CRM rings it first. When the rep answers and accepts, the CRM bridges the customer in. The customer sees the dealership's tracking number, not the rep's personal cell, and the recording still attaches to the lead. This is the path for a used car manager who lives on his cell but wants every conversation in the system. The third is the LeadLocate mobile app, which carries a VoIP dialer, an inbound call alert screen and a Call button on the bottom dock. A rep walking the lot taps a lead and calls from the phone in their hand, and the call shows up in Call Logs beside every call placed from a desk. The LeadLocate mobile app page lists everything else the phone version carries. #### Where the softphone lives in the CRM On the desktop CRM, the softphone is never more than one click away. Make a Call sits in the top bar beside Send a Text and Send an Email, and it opens the dial pad from any page. Inside a lead, the phone number itself is the button. The Calls entry in the main menu opens the call log, where every inbound and outbound call sits with its caller ID, direction, duration, status, recording and transcript. Filtering that page to one salesperson is how a manager coaches from real calls instead of from memory. On mobile, the bottom dock holds Text, Call, New Lead, Email and Team. Call opens the VoIP dialer, and Call Logs is the phone version of the desktop Calls page. An inbound call on the store's tracking number that reaches a rep's phone shows an alert screen with the caller's name from the CRM, so the rep answers knowing who it is. Everything the softphone produces also flows into the communications log, the single timeline on every lead that holds calls, texts, pictures, emails and voicemails in the order they happened. A manager reading that timeline sees the call, the text that followed it and the email with the price sheet as one conversation. #### What it replaces, and what a store pays for it elsewhere Most dealerships pay for the phone three times. There is the phone system itself, billed per seat. There is call tracking from a second vendor so marketing can see which numbers ring. And there is the CRM, which has a phone icon that logs a call only if somebody clicks it after hanging up. Three bills, three logins, and the call recording lives with the phone vendor while the lead lives with the CRM, so nobody can play the call from the lead. The LeadLocate softphone collapses that. The line, the click to call, the recording, the tracking number and the log are one feature of the CRM, and the CRM is what the store already pays for. There is no per seat phone charge and no second call tracking subscription to reconcile. The lead plans and what each includes are on the pricing page; the softphone comes with every one of them. What it does not replace is a store's existing desk phones if the store likes them. Reception, service and parts can keep whatever they have. The softphone is for the people who work leads, and a triggered call to a desk phone means even a rep who never opens a headset still gets every call logged. #### The compliance angle: who you call, and what you keep Outbound calling has rules, and the softphone is built to make following them the easy path. Before a number is dialed, the DNC Blacklist is the store's own list of numbers never to contact, with a live do not call lookup on numbers and a two way inbound spam block. A store that scrubs its lists and honors its blacklist has a record of having done so, and the do not call scrub and blacklist page walks through that tool. Recording is the second angle. Call recording laws differ by state, and some states require every party on the call to know it is being recorded. LeadLocate records and stores the call; the store decides its announcement policy and trains its people on it. Recording is a switch on the softphone, so a store in an all party consent state can run a recorded line with a spoken disclosure, or leave recording off for particular calls. The third angle is the record itself. Every call, its duration, its outcome and its recording are stored against the lead, in a log the store's managers control. When a customer disputes what was said about a payment, the answer is a recording with a date and a name on it, not two people's memories. #### How to turn it on There is nothing to install. When a dealership's LeadLocate account is created, a tracking phone number is provisioned for it, the softphone is enabled, and the number a customer sees on outbound calls is that tracking number. A rep signs in, opens a lead, and presses the phone number. If the browser asks for microphone permission, that one click is the whole setup for a headset user. A rep who wants to use their own cell or desk phone as the talking device picks that phone as the source the first time they trigger a call. A rep who wants their personal office number to show as the caller ID instead of the tracking number runs the caller ID verification once, which is covered on the caller ID and contact validation page. Anything a store needs beyond that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows a call being placed from a lead and landing on the Calls page if you want to see it before you sign up. #### What to pair it with The softphone is the front half of the phone stack. Pair it with call recording and transcription so a manager can read a call instead of listening to the whole thing. Pair it with tracking phone numbers so each lead source has its own line and inbound calls carry their source into the lead. Pair it with call forwarding and ring lists so a call to the tracking number rings the right people and gets logged the same way an outbound call does. For the voicemail side, the voicemail drop library is what turns the Drop Voicemail button into a saved minute per call. And for reps who text as much as they call, the two way texting inbox sits beside the softphone in the same lead, so the follow up text after a call is two clicks away. The all features page shows where the softphone sits among everything else in the platform, and the automotive phone system page frames the same capabilities from the store's phone system point of view. #### Built so your store keeps selling The phone side of the store is built to be always on. Your tracking numbers live on the phone service and forward to the phones on your ring list every time a customer dials, so the store is reachable on the numbers it publishes whether a rep is at a desk, on the lot or driving back from the auction. Every call, caller ID, duration and recording is held safe against the lead it belongs to and stays your store's own property, and your main line, your DMS and your website stay yours. That is the standard the softphone is built to: one click from the lead to the call, the caller ID your customer already knows, and the whole conversation on the record afterward, so your store keeps selling from wherever the next call happens. If you want a ring list or a caller ID changed, the contact page reaches our support team, who can see your screen with you and set it up on the call. #### Questions and answers Q: Do my salespeople need a headset to use the softphone? A: No. A headset gives the best experience for browser calls, but a rep can trigger the call to their own desk phone or cell instead. The CRM rings that phone first, bridges the customer in when the rep accepts, and logs and records the call exactly as a browser call. Q: What caller ID does the customer see? A: The dealership's tracking number by default, so a callback comes into the CRM. A rep can verify their office or cell number and show that instead. The rep's personal cell is never exposed unless the rep chooses to verify and show it. Q: Are calls recorded automatically? A: Recording is a switch on the softphone, so a store can record every call or leave it off for particular calls. Recordings and transcripts sit on the Calls page and on the lead's timeline. Recording laws vary by state, and the store sets its own announcement policy. Q: Can I call from the mobile app? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app has a VoIP dialer, a Call button on the bottom dock, an inbound call alert screen and Call Logs. Calls placed from the app land in the same log as calls placed from a desk. Q: Is the softphone extra, or part of the CRM? A: It is built into every LeadLocate plan, including CRM Only. There is no per seat phone charge. A tracking number is provisioned when the account is created and the softphone works the first time a rep opens a lead. Q: Does click to call work for contacts that are not leads? A: Yes. The dial pad under Make a Call works from any page, and the phone number on a contact record is a button the same way it is on a lead. The call is logged against whichever record it was placed from. ### Voicemail Drop and Voicemail Greetings for Dealers URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/voicemail-drop Voicemail drop in LeadLocate CRM lets a salesperson record a voicemail once, keep it in a Voicemail Drop library, and deliver it with one button when a call reaches voicemail or to a whole list at once. The same tools record the company greeting and each user's own greeting, so missed calls land on the store's voicemail and in the call log. It is part of every LeadLocate plan. #### What voicemail drop does, and what a greeting has to do with it Voicemail drop is a recorded message a salesperson made once and delivers many times. When a call from the softphone reaches a customer's voicemail, the rep presses Drop Voicemail, picks a saved recording, and the CRM leaves that message while the rep moves to the next call. The same library feeds Voicemail Drops under Marketing Tools, which delivers a recording to a list of numbers straight to voicemail without ringing anyone, for the follow up a store wants to send to fifty people who asked about a sale. Greetings are the other half of the same feature, and they are the half most stores forget. A customer who calls the store's tracking number and reaches nobody hears a greeting. In LeadLocate that greeting belongs to the dealership: a Company Voicemail greeting for the store, and a personal greeting each user records for the calls that were meant for them. Both are recorded in the browser or over the phone. The message the caller leaves lands on the call log and the lead, with a recording, not in a personal carrier mailbox nobody at the store can open. The ringless voicemail marketing for dealerships page covers the campaign use of voicemail drops in general. This page is the product side: how the library, the drop button, the list delivery and the greetings work inside LeadLocate CRM. #### How a salesperson uses it on a normal afternoon A rep has a list of twenty unsold showroom visitors from the weekend to call back. The first two answer. The third rings out to voicemail, and instead of improvising a message for the fortieth time this month, she presses Drop Voicemail on the softphone and picks the recording she made on Monday: her name, the store, a line about the vehicle they looked at, and her direct number. The CRM leaves it and the call is logged as a voicemail drop rather than as a mystery. She is already dialing the fourth. By four she has left eleven identical, well delivered voicemails without saying the same paragraph eleven times, and the ones that call back reach her verified office number. Two of them call after she has gone home. They hear her own greeting, in her own voice, recorded in the browser on her first day, and the messages they leave sit on their leads with a recording waiting when she signs in the next morning. Meanwhile the sales manager is working a different problem. Sixty people asked about a tax season promotion last month and never came in. He opens Voicemail Drops, uploads the recording he made announcing the last week of the sale, pastes the recipient list, and sends. Sixty voicemails land without sixty phones ringing, and the callbacks arrive on the tracking number over the next two days, each one logged on the lead it belongs to. #### Where it lives in the CRM The library is Voicemail Drop Files, under Billing and Admin, where a store's recordings are kept: a rep's personal drops and the store's shared ones. Recordings are made in the browser or over the phone and saved as Saved Voicemail Recordings, or uploaded as an audio file the store produced elsewhere. Any of them can be picked from Select Voicemail Recording on the softphone. The drop button itself lives on the VoIP Phone, reached from Make a Call in the top bar or from the phone number on any lead. When the far end rolls to voicemail, Drop Voicemail is right there. List delivery is Voicemail Drops under Marketing Tools on the dock, described on the dock itself as straight to voicemail, where a store builds a Voicemail Recipients list, chooses the recording and sends the blast, with a Bulk Voicemail History of every send. Greetings live on IVR Settings, reached through Account Settings, for the Company Voicemail, and with each user for the personal greeting. The LeadLocate mobile app carries a voicemail greeting recorder so a rep can record theirs from a phone. And every voicemail a customer leaves shows on the Calls page and the lead's timeline with its recording, because the communications log holds calls, texts, emails and voicemails in one list. #### What it replaces and what a store pays for it elsewhere Voicemail drop is sold on its own as a per drop service by companies that do nothing else, and as a paid add on by phone system vendors. Either way the drop lives outside the CRM: the rep switches to a second app, uploads a list, and the CRM never hears that a voicemail was left. Greetings are worse. On most stores' phone setups, a forwarded call that reaches a salesperson's cell and rolls to voicemail lands in that rep's carrier mailbox, which the store cannot hear, cannot log, and loses entirely when the rep leaves. In LeadLocate the drop, the list delivery, the greeting and the message a customer leaves are all features of the CRM and part of every plan. There is no per drop charge and no second app. A store running a separate voicemail service today can replace it outright, since voicemail drop is built into every plan, including each lead plan on the pricing page. What it replaces at a human level is the forty repetitions. A rep who records one good voicemail on Monday, with her name, the store and a reason to call back, leaves that good voicemail every time. The version she would have improvised at four on a Friday is not as good, and everyone knows it. #### The compliance angle: are voicemail drops legal? This is the question every dealer asks, and LeadLocate is built to answer it: a voicemail drop is treated with the same care as a live call, with the same scrub in front of it and the same record behind it. The rules that govern outbound calling to consumers, including do not call registries and consent for marketing contact, apply to messages left in a mailbox too, and some states treat a drop delivered without a ring as its own category. A store should check the rules where it operates and talk to its own counsel about its own list. What LeadLocate gives the store is the record and the scrub. Before a list goes out, the DNC Blacklist holds the numbers the store must never contact, with a live do not call lookup and a two way inbound spam block, and the Phone Validator flags numbers on a do not call registry and the line type, so a drop is not sent to a landline that will never receive it. Every drop is logged against the lead with the recording that was left, so a store can show exactly what was said to whom and when. The do not call scrub and blacklist page covers the scrub in detail. The safer use, and the more common one, is the drop left on a customer the store is already talking to: the showroom visitor, the internet lead who asked a question, the service customer with a trade offer. That is a callback, not a campaign, and it is where the Drop Voicemail button earns its place. #### How to turn it on Recording a drop takes a minute. Open Voicemail Drop Files, record in the browser or call in to record over the phone, name the recording, and it appears in the softphone's Select Voicemail Recording list. A store can also upload an audio file it recorded elsewhere. Greetings work the same way: the Company Voicemail greeting on IVR Settings, and a personal greeting per user recorded in the browser or from the mobile app. A new account starts with a standard greeting so callers never hear silence before the store records its own. List delivery needs nothing more than a recording and a Voicemail Recipients list, built from a lead list or pasted in, and a validated, scrubbed list is the one to send to. Anything beyond that, a drop triggered automatically after a missed call for instance, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The pre-recorded live demo shows a drop being left from the softphone and landing on a lead. #### What to pair it with Voicemail drop lives on the softphone, so the first pairing is the VoIP softphone and click to call, which is where the button is. Greetings sit behind call forwarding and ring lists, since the greeting is what a caller hears when the whole list is busy, and behind the virtual receptionist when a transfer fails. For the campaign side, pair list delivery with the Phone Validator so the list is real and scrubbed before it goes out, and with bulk texting, since a voicemail and a text to the same list on the same afternoon reach people who ignore one or the other. Lead notifications are how a voicemail a customer leaves becomes a text to the rep who should return it. The all features page shows where voicemail drop sits among everything else in the platform. #### Built so your store keeps selling Your greetings and your mailbox are built to be always on. The greeting a caller hears and the message a customer leaves sit on the phone service your numbers live on, so a customer calling after close hears your store's own voice and leaves a message that lands on the Calls page and on the lead for the morning. Every recording in the voicemail library, every message a customer leaves and every drop a rep sends is held safe against the lead it belongs to and stays your store's own property, and your main line, your DMS and your website stay yours. The platform is built so your store keeps selling, whether a rep is working the third list of the morning from the softphone or a customer is calling back at nine at night. If you want a greeting recorded or a list built for a campaign, the contact page reaches our support team, who can see your screen with you and set it up on the call. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a voicemail drop? A: A voicemail a rep recorded once and delivers many times. On the softphone, Drop Voicemail leaves the chosen recording when a call reaches voicemail. Under Marketing Tools, Voicemail Drops delivers a recording to a whole recipient list straight to voicemail without ringing the phones. Q: Are voicemail drops legal? A: It depends on where the store operates, who it is contacting and why. Treat a drop like a call: scrub the list against the DNC Blacklist and a do not call lookup, contact people who asked to hear from you, and check the rules in your state with your own counsel. LeadLocate logs every drop with the recording left. Q: Can each salesperson have their own greeting? A: Yes. Each user records a personal greeting in the browser or from the mobile app, and the store records a Company Voicemail greeting on IVR Settings. A caller who was trying to reach a specific rep hears that rep's greeting; everyone else hears the store's. Q: Where do the messages customers leave go? A: Onto the Calls page and the lead's timeline, with the recording, and to the rep's notifications if they are set to alert on new calls. They do not land in a personal carrier mailbox the store cannot access. Q: Can I upload a recording made somewhere else? A: Yes. Voicemail Drop Files accepts an uploaded audio file as well as recordings made in the browser or over the phone, so a store can use a professionally produced message for list delivery. Q: Which plan do I need? A: Voicemail drop, list delivery and greetings come with every LeadLocate plan, including the lead plans on the pricing page, with no per drop charge. ### Website Visitor Analytics for Dealer Sites URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/website-visitor-analytics Website visitor analytics in LeadLocate CRM show what happens on a dealership's site and lead pages: an overview, a realtime view of who is on the site now, sessions, sources, search terms, geography, devices, top pages, performance and a session detail timeline for each visit. It lives on the Analytics tab of the Website menu, with date ranges and print, and is part of every plan. #### What website visitor analytics show, in one sentence Website visitor analytics in LeadLocate CRM report on what visitors do on the store's website and lead pages, from a realtime view of who is on the site right now to a session by session timeline of which pages each visit touched, without leaving the CRM where the leads from those visits arrive. That is the feature. It is a website traffic analytics dashboard that sits next to the lead inbox instead of in a separate account somebody set up once and never opens. It is worth saying plainly what it reports on. Sessions, not people. The analytics show anonymous traffic as sessions with a source, a location, a device and a path through the pages. When a visitor fills out a form, that person becomes a lead in the inbox with their consent attached. The website visitor retargeting page covers what happens after a visit on the advertising side; this page is the reporting inside the CRM. #### How a dealership uses it on a normal Friday The internet sales director opens the Website menu on Friday morning and clicks the Analytics tab. The date range is set to 7 days. The overview shows the week's sessions, and the sources view shows that the store's own texts, sent as trackable short links, brought more visits than the paid campaign that costs twelve times as much. The search view lists the phrases people typed before they arrived, which is how she learns that shoppers are looking for a specific trim the store has three of and has never put on a page. She opens top pages. The used truck event page from Lead Pages is second on the list, and its session detail shows most visits reaching the form, which matches the leads that came in. The geo view shows a cluster of sessions from a town forty minutes away that the store has never advertised in. The devices view shows most of the traffic is on phones, which is the reminder she needed that the offer page must read well on a small screen. Before the Saturday meeting she flips to realtime, sees two visitors on the inventory page that minute, and notes it for the rep whose personal page one of them came through. Then she prints the report for the general manager, who wants numbers on paper. Thirty minutes, one tab, no export. #### Where it lives: the Analytics tab on the Website menu The analytics live on the Analytics tab of the website editor in LeadLocate CRM, alongside the tabs for Business Info, Branding, Menu Links, Social Media and Inventory. A Tracking enabled switch turns collection on for the store's site, and a field for tracking terms lets a store add a line about analytics to its website footer if its policy calls for one. The views are the ones a dealer site calls for: overview, realtime, sessions, geo, devices, sources, search, top pages, session detail and performance. Date ranges run Yesterday, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or a Custom range with an Apply button. A Bots view separates automated traffic so it does not inflate the numbers, and Print produces the paper version. The Visitor session timeline is the session detail: open one visit and read the pages it touched in order. It covers the store's LeadLocate-hosted website, the inventory site published from Inventory Link, and the pages built in Lead Pages. A store that runs its main website elsewhere and wants the same reporting on it can ask; that is available on request and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What it replaces, and what website analytics cost elsewhere Most dealerships have one of two situations. Either the website vendor sends a monthly PDF that arrives too late to act on and reports the numbers the vendor likes, or someone connected a free analytics account years ago, the login belongs to a person who has left, and the dashboard shows a hundred metrics nobody at the store can turn into a decision. A third group pays for a dashboard product on top of both, which mostly reformats the same data. Analytics in the CRM is included in the platform subscription; the pricing page lists the lead plans, and every one of them includes the Website menu and its Analytics tab. The bigger advantage is the position. The analytics and the lead inbox share a login and a screen, so the question "which source produced the leads that closed" is answered by looking left, not by exporting two systems into a spreadsheet and matching dates. The lead source attribution page covers why that matters at month end. #### The compliance angle: anonymous sessions, consent at the form Analytics that describe anonymous traffic are one thing; anything that claims to turn an anonymous visitor into a name and phone number is another, and the second thing is where dealerships get into trouble. The analytics inside the CRM report sessions: source, location at the level of a city, device type, pages viewed, time on the site. When a visitor chooses to fill out a form, the platform has a lead with the consent they gave, and everything the store does with that lead afterward runs under that consent and under the opt out rules the CRM enforces across texting and email. The Analytics tab gives a store a place to publish tracking terms in the website footer, which is how a dealership tells visitors, in its own words, what the site collects. That sits with the store's privacy policy, which describes what the store holds about its customers. The point is a plain one: report what visitors do, ask for contact details on a form, and keep the two separate until the visitor connects them. It is also the approach that keeps the store's email and text reputation intact, because every contact the store reaches out to is one who asked. #### How to turn it on Open the Website menu in LeadLocate CRM, click the Analytics tab, and switch on Tracking enabled. From that point the store's LeadLocate-hosted pages report into the tab. Pick a date range and Apply. If your store's policy calls for a footer notice, add it in the tracking terms field. Print when the general manager wants paper. Give the tab a week to fill before drawing conclusions, then build a habit: one person opens it on the same morning each week, looks at sources and top pages, and moves one thing. A page that draws traffic and no forms gets a clearer form. A source that sends visitors who leave in a few seconds gets its ad copy checked against the page it lands on. A search phrase the store keeps seeing gets a page in Lead Pages. That routine is the whole value of analytics, and it takes half an hour. #### What to pair it with Analytics are only as useful as the pages they measure and the follow up they inform. Pair them with Lead Pages, so every offer has its own page and its own line in top pages. Pair them with trackable short links in texts and emails, so the sources view can tell a text campaign from a social post. Pair them with the inventory website builder, so the vehicle pages people actually look at show up in the report, and with the free live chat widget, so a visitor on the site right now has a way to say hello. On the lead side, the Reports dashboard on the dock shows what happened after the form was submitted: response times, activity and outcomes by salesperson. Website analytics tell you what the site did; Reports tell you what the team did with it. The all features page lists everything in between. #### Questions and answers Q: Which sites do the analytics cover? A: The store's LeadLocate-hosted website, the inventory site published from Inventory Link, and pages built in Lead Pages. Reporting on a main website hosted elsewhere is available on request; our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: Do the analytics tell me who a visitor is? A: No. They report anonymous sessions: source, location, device, pages viewed and time on the site. A visitor becomes a lead with a name when they fill out a form, and that lead carries the consent they gave. Q: Can I see who is on the site right now? A: Yes. The realtime view shows current sessions and the pages they are on. Session detail opens any visit as a timeline of the pages it touched in order. Q: What date ranges are available? A: Yesterday, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or a custom range. Pick one and click Apply. A Bots view separates automated traffic so it does not inflate the counts, and Print produces a paper report. Q: How does this connect to the leads in my inbox? A: The analytics and the lead inbox share one login and one screen in LeadLocate CRM. Leads from a lead page carry that page as their source, so the sources and top pages views line up with what arrived in the inbox. Q: Is website visitor analytics extra? A: No. The Analytics tab is part of the Website menu in every LeadLocate plan, month to month, including CRM Only. ### Worksheets Attached to Credit Applications URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/credit-application-worksheets SecureWebX worksheets are cash, finance and lease pencils that attach directly to a customer's credit application. They run on the same math as LeadLocate CRM desking, carry store wide deal defaults, decode the VIN or look up a stock number, book out the vehicle, and print a deal recap PDF for the lender. A worksheet built in CRM desking can be pushed into SecureWebX rather than rekeyed. #### What is a worksheet attached to a credit application? A worksheet attached to a credit application is the deal structure, cash, finance or lease, saved on the same SecureWebX record as the customer's application, so the numbers the lender sees and the numbers the customer was quoted are one set of numbers. That is the whole idea in one sentence. In practice it means the finance office stops keeping the deal in three places: the application in one system, the pencil on a printed four square, and the lender's version of the structure buried in an email thread. Inside SecureWebX, worksheets are a first class object. You can create one from scratch, duplicate one to try a different structure, give every new worksheet your store's defaults, attach it to an application, detach it if the customer changes direction, and open a deal recap PDF that lays the structure out the way a lender wants to read it. An application can also travel with no worksheet at all, documents only, which suits a store that desks in the CRM and only needs the application file to move. The math is the desk's math. Worksheets in SecureWebX run at parity with the LeadLocate CRM desking engine, the one described on the desking tool page, so a payment structured on the showroom floor and a payment structured at the finance desk agree to the dollar. The dealership CRM with credit application page covers the CRM side of that relationship. This page is about the worksheet itself. #### How does the finance office use it on a normal day? Picture a Tuesday. A salesperson texted an apply link to a customer last night, the customer finished the five step application from the couch, and it is sitting in the application inbox this morning with a status, an assignee and an amount requested. The finance manager opens it, reads the income and down payment sections, and attaches a worksheet. The worksheet opens with the store's defaults already in place: the default term, the default sell rate and buy rate, the default sales tax rate, days to first payment, the lease type and money factor, whether GAP is included by default, whether negative equity is taxed by default. Nobody types those in. They were set once under Worksheet Defaults and every new pencil inherits them. The manager enters the vehicle. Either the VIN is decoded into year, make and model, or the unit is looked up by stock number against the store's own inventory. The trade is booked out inside the worksheet. Three down payments by three terms fill the pencil grid, the customer's preferred structure gets picked, and the manager opens the lender deal recap as a PDF. That recap is what accompanies the application when it is shared through Send to Lender, so the lender is looking at the structure the store actually wants approved rather than reconstructing it from the amount requested. When the customer calls back and asks about a shorter term, the manager duplicates the worksheet, changes one field, and now has two structures on the record with the original intact. When the customer switches to a different unit entirely, the first worksheet is detached and a new one is attached. The application never moves, and the record of what was penciled stays with it. #### Where does it live in the console, the CRM dock and on the phone? Worksheets live in the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button on the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login. The console has a Worksheets area of its own, searchable by worksheet ID, vehicle, VIN, stock number or customer name, and every application in the inbox has its own attach and open controls, so you reach a worksheet either from the list or from the application it belongs to. Worksheet Defaults sit under Settings, where a manager sets them once for the store. There is a second door. A deal structured in LeadLocate CRM desking can be pushed into SecureWebX as a worksheet, which is how a floor pencil arrives at the finance desk with its numbers intact instead of being rekeyed from a printout. The console is also available as the SecureWebX app on iOS and Android, so a manager away from the desk can still open an application and read the worksheet attached to it. #### Cash, finance and lease with the desk's own math The three pencils cover the way deals are actually written. Cash is the simple one: price, tax, fees and trade. Finance carries APR, sell rate against buy rate, term, days to first payment, payment frequency and a loan to value ceiling measured against the retail book. Lease carries the money factor, annual mileage, lease type and the lease tax method, which matters because states tax leases differently and a worksheet that only knows one method quotes a wrong payment in the wrong state. Because the engine is the same one behind CRM desking, the tax, frequency and trade handling the desk relies on are the rules the worksheet applies. Defaults are centralized on purpose. A store sets the default active tab, credit tier, approval status, term, rates, tax rate, GAP inclusion and negative equity treatment once, plus a worksheet disclaimer if it wants one. From then on every worksheet, on every application, starts from the store's policy rather than from whatever the last manager left in the fields. Duplicate saves a variation without touching the original. Rename keeps a busy record readable. The deal recap PDF prints the structure cleanly for the customer, the lender or the deal jacket. #### Deal vehicle: VIN decode, stock lookup, confirmed build and book-outs A worksheet is only as good as the vehicle it is pricing, so the deal vehicle section does real work. Decode a VIN into year, make and model, or look the unit up by stock number against the store's inventory so the price, mileage and equipment come from the record you already maintain. A wish list holds the structure for a customer whose unit has not landed yet. A manager confirms the build, factory packages and options plus dealer added equipment, from the window sticker, and marks it confirmed, so the pencil reflects the car on the lot and not a guess. The VIN decode brings factory warranty and open recall data onto the worksheet with the build. Title, stolen vehicle, sales history, auction history and warranty checks are set up for your dealership on request; our team puts them in production, so a finance manager learns about a branded title before the lender does. Kelley Blue Book QuickValues book-outs sit in the same panel, so the trade value or the retail book on the unit lands in the pencil, and the loan to value line reads against a book figure rather than against a number somebody remembered from last month. #### What does it replace, and what does it cost elsewhere? Most stores pay for this twice without noticing. There is a desking tool, sometimes a module of the DMS and sometimes a separate subscription, and there is a credit application tool, and the two know nothing about each other. The structure gets rekeyed from one into the other, or printed and stapled, and the version the lender receives is whichever one the finance manager remembered to update. Book-outs come from a third login. Vehicle history checks come from a fourth. Each one carries its own seat fee and its own password. In SecureWebX the worksheet, the application, the book-out and the decoded vehicle are on one record, with vehicle checks set up on request, and SecureWebX is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription rather than a line item. Plans are month to month: a store that wants the software without lead delivery picks CRM Only at sign up, and the pricing page lists the lead plans. A store that already desks in the CRM loses nothing by adding the worksheet at the finance desk, because the two are the same engine and a CRM deal can be pushed across. #### The compliance angle: one structure, one record, one retained history A credit application with a worksheet attached is a cleaner compliance record than an application with a payment scribbled on the folder. The structure the customer was quoted, the structure the lender received in the deal recap, and the application itself sit on the same record, under the same audit log that tracks who opened, edited and shared the file. Worksheets carry a disclaimer field the store controls, so the language that accompanies a pencil is the store's language on every pencil. Records in SecureWebX are archived, never deleted, so a question about what a specific customer was offered months later has a specific answer. It gives the store's own compliance program a clean record to stand on. What it does is close the gap between the numbers the sales floor shows and the numbers the finance office submits, which is where most of the ugly questions come from. The online credit application software page covers the application side of the record in more depth. #### How to turn it on, and what to pair it with There is nothing to buy or install. SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account, your users sync across, and the console opens from the SecureWebX button on the CRM dock. Set Worksheet Defaults once under Settings, then open any application in the inbox and attach a worksheet, or create one from the Worksheets area and attach it later. If your store wants defaults beyond the ones on the settings page, or a recap layout specific to a lender you work with, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Pair it with EZ Desking worksheets in the CRM so the floor and the finance desk share one engine, with Send to Lender so the recap travels with the application, and with stipulations so the proof of income the lender asks for lands on the same record as the structure. The all features list shows where worksheets sit among everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo shows an application coming in and a worksheet going out. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the worksheet use the same math as the CRM desking tool? A: Yes. SecureWebX worksheets run at parity with the LeadLocate CRM desking engine, so cash, finance and lease structures penciled on the floor and at the finance desk agree. A deal built in CRM desking can also be pushed into SecureWebX as a worksheet instead of being rekeyed. Q: Can I try a second structure without losing the first? A: Yes. Duplicate saves a new variation with the original intact. Attach the one the customer chooses and detach the other if the deal changes direction. The application record keeps what was penciled. Q: Where do the deal defaults come from? A: From Worksheet Defaults under Settings in the SecureWebX console. A manager sets term, rates, tax rate, lease type, money factor, GAP inclusion and negative equity treatment once, and every new worksheet starts from them. Q: Can the worksheet value the trade? A: Yes. Kelley Blue Book QuickValues book-outs run inside the worksheet, so the trade value or the retail book on the unit lands in the pencil without a separate login, and the loan to value line reads against a real book figure. Q: What does the lender actually receive? A: A deal recap PDF generated from the worksheet, shared with the application through Send to Lender, which is a code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked share to any lender you choose. The lender needs only a browser to open it. Q: Is the worksheet an extra charge? A: No. SecureWebX, worksheets included, is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### Workspace: Your Whole Day on One Screen URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/workspace The Workspace is the first screen in LeadLocate CRM and the daily planner for every salesperson. It puts today's appointments, follow up tasks, reminders and personal to-dos in one list, flags what is past due, and lets a rep text, call or email the customer, snooze a task, move it to tomorrow or bulk clear the list from the same row. It comes with every plan. #### What is the Workspace in LeadLocate CRM? The Workspace is the first item in the main menu of LeadLocate CRM, ahead of Leads, Contacts, Desking and Inventory, because it is where a salesperson's day starts. It answers one question the moment it opens: who do I owe a call, a text or a visit today? Everything that answers it sits on one screen instead of five. The screen has two working panels. Today's Appointments lists every appointment on the rep's calendar for the day with a count beside the title, so a glance tells the rep whether it is a two appointment day or a nine appointment day. Tasks & To-Dos is the follow up list: the scheduled tasks the CRM created from leads and appointments, plus the personal to-dos the rep or a manager added by hand, in one list. Two buttons above it, Due Today and Past Due, narrow the list to exactly what needs attention, and a Complete tab keeps the day's finished work where the rep and the manager can see it. Every row carries its own actions. The top row reaches the customer: text, call or email, each one opening the CRM's own composer or phone on that lead. The bottom row manages the task: mark it complete, snooze it for an hour, or move it to tomorrow. A rep works the list from the top down and never leaves the screen to find a phone number. Alongside the lists, a News to be aware of panel carries dealer industry news drawn from automotive retail news feeds, so the rep who walks in at eight knows what the customer at ten may have read. #### How does a car salesman use it as a daily planner? A salesperson signs in at quarter to nine and the Workspace is already built. Four appointments today, the first at ten. Seven tasks due, two of them past due from yesterday afternoon. The rep clicks Past Due, and the two leftovers are at the top: a customer who asked for a payment on a certified SUV and a trade customer who wanted a callback after work. The rep texts the first from the row, calls the second, and marks both complete before the coffee is cold. Marking a task complete opens a short popup that asks how the customer was reached, by phone, by text message, by email, by direct message or by postal mail, and offers a line for a note. The rep types that the customer is coming Saturday with the co-buyer, presses save, and the note lands on the lead's timeline. Nobody writes the same fact twice, and the next person who opens that lead reads exactly what happened. At eleven a customer texts that he is running late and wants to talk after lunch. The rep snoozes the follow up for an hour instead of letting it sit in the list as a reproach. At four a lease customer asks to push the conversation to tomorrow, and the rep moves the task to tomorrow with one click. At six the list is short, the Complete tab is long, and the rep prints the task list for the morning huddle. That is the whole daily planner, and it lives in the same place as the customer records, the texts and the calendar. #### How do reminders, to-dos and snooze work? A reminder in LeadLocate is a to-do with a due date. The rep presses Add To-Do on the task panel, types what needs to be done in the To-Do Item field, adds optional notes, chooses who it is assigned to, and picks a due date and time. The item appears in the same list as every lead task, and when its time comes it counts as due today and then as past due until someone deals with it. The to-do fields take voice dictation and a one click grammar cleanup, so a rep walking the lot can speak the reminder instead of typing it. Assign To is what turns a personal note into a management tool. A sales manager can add a to-do for a rep, such as calling back the customer who walked on price, and it lands on that rep's Workspace with a due time. A rep can add one for a teammate who covers the weekend. The item stays visible until it is done, which is the difference between a reminder and a sticky note. Snooze is for timing, not avoidance. A snoozed task moves one hour forward and comes back on its own; a task moved to tomorrow leaves today's list and waits on tomorrow's. Appointments move the same way: reschedule to a new date and time from the appointment row, add a quick note to the appointment, or delete it with a reason, and a deleted appointment goes to the Trash Bin with that reason attached and can be restored. On the phone calendar, a rep taps an appointment and sends the customer a text or email reminder right from it. #### What does bulk clear do, and when should a store use it? Every task list eventually carries weight it should not: a rep back from a week off, a book of business handed from a departing salesperson, a campaign that generated follow ups for customers who already bought. The Clear All button on the task panel handles that in one step. It opens a small menu with two choices, clear all tasks on the list or select tasks to clear, and the second choice lets the rep tap the specific rows to retire. Bulk clear closes tasks without recording a contact, which is exactly what it is for. A completed task says the customer was reached; a cleared task says the reminder no longer applies. Keeping the two apart keeps the store's activity reporting accurate, because a manager reading the numbers at month end sees real contacts, not a rep emptying a list. A Workspace that is cleared on purpose once in a while is a Workspace reps trust, and a list reps trust is a list they work. #### Where does it live on the desktop and on the phone? On the desktop the Workspace is the first entry in the main menu, and it is the natural home screen for anyone on the floor. The top bar stays above it with Send a Text, Make a Call and Send an Email, and the dock stays below it with My Office, Marketing Tools, Reports and Jax, the AI assistant, so the rep can reach any tool without losing the list. On the LeadLocate mobile app the Workspace is its own screen with the same appointments and the same tasks and to-dos. A rep adds a to-do with a title, a due date and time and a note, completes a task with a note, snoozes a task or reschedules an appointment from the phone, and the change is on the desktop the moment the rep sits down. The phone's bottom dock carries Text, Call, New Lead, Email and Team, so the planner and the tools to act on it are one thumb apart. A salesperson who spends the day on the lot has the whole day in a pocket. #### What does the Workspace replace? Most salespeople already keep a daily planner. It is a paper pad on the desk, a stack of sticky notes on the monitor, a notes app on the phone, a spreadsheet of callbacks, and a memory of which customer said Thursday. Each of those holds a reminder in a place that knows nothing about the customer. The rep sees the note, then goes looking for the phone number, the last text and the vehicle, and half the time the note is the only thing that survived. The Workspace holds the reminder on the customer. The row that says call Maria is the row that calls Maria, and the note the rep leaves after the call is on Maria's timeline for the next person. Dealers comparing tools on the auto dealer CRM software page will find that some CRMs sell a task dashboard as a separate module or bury it three menus deep. In LeadLocate it is the first screen, in every plan, at no additional cost, and it is fed by everything else in the platform: leads from the lead feeds, appointments from the shared team calendar and booking links, and follow ups from the store's own processes. #### The compliance angle: every follow up on the record A follow up that happened and a follow up that was recorded are the same thing only in a good CRM. When a rep completes a task on the Workspace, the method of contact and the note go on the lead's communications timeline next to every call recording, text, email and voicemail for that customer. A manager reviewing a complaint, a deal or a missed opportunity reads one timeline instead of interviewing three people. Appointments carry the same discipline. Deleting one asks for the reason, a duplicate, a mistake or something else, and the deleted appointment goes to the Trash Bin with that reason, where it can be restored. Contacts on the store's Do Not Call Blacklist are hidden from the CRM's views, so a customer who asked to be left alone never shows up as someone's reminder. The store gets a planner that respects the customer's wishes and keeps a clean record of what each rep did, built in from day one. #### How do you turn it on? The Workspace is on for every user from the first login, and it fills itself as the account comes to life. Add each salesperson in User Management so their tasks and appointments are their own, connect the lead feeds so new leads create follow ups, and set each rep's booking link in Calendar Settings so appointments land on the right calendar. By the end of day one the Workspace shows real work. Then set the habit. Ask every rep to start the morning on the Workspace, clear the past due items first, complete tasks with a note rather than letting them age, and use Add To-Do for every promise made on the phone. The step by step guides in the Help Center cover it: how to use the Workspace and how to add a reminder or to-do. Every plan also includes live training, and the training and onboarding page explains how a store books a session and gets the whole floor running on it the same week. #### What should you pair it with? The Workspace is the front of the house; a few features feed it. Appointment booking links let customers book themselves onto a rep's calendar, and every booking shows up in Today's Appointments. Follow Up Processes generate the drip and the tasks for each lead type, so the list reflects the store's process rather than each rep's memory. Lead notifications and alerts tell a rep the moment something new arrives, and In-Store Now marks the customer who just walked in for the ten o'clock appointment. The Workspace is part of the LeadLocate CRM in every plan, and every plan is month to month; the plans with exclusive local leads are on the pricing page. The all features list shows everything else that plugs into it. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the best CRM dashboard for a car salesman? A: One that shows the day's appointments and follow ups in one list and lets the rep act on each without leaving the screen. The LeadLocate Workspace does that: appointments, tasks and to-dos together, past due items flagged, and text, call, email, complete, snooze and move to tomorrow on every row. Q: Can I set reminders in LeadLocate CRM? A: Yes. Press Add To-Do on the Workspace, type the reminder, and pick a due date and time. It shows as due today when its day comes and as past due until someone completes it. You can assign it to yourself or to another user. Q: What does snooze do on a task? A: Snooze moves the task one hour forward and brings it back on its own. For a task that belongs on another day, move it to tomorrow instead, and it leaves today's list and waits on tomorrow's. Q: How do I clear old tasks all at once? A: Press Clear All on the task panel and choose to clear every task on the list or to select the ones to clear. Cleared tasks close without recording a contact, so the store's activity numbers stay accurate. Q: Is the Workspace on the phone app? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app has its own Workspace screen with the same appointments, tasks and to-dos. Add, complete, snooze and reschedule from the phone, and the desktop shows the change right away. Q: Does the Workspace cost extra? A: No. It is part of LeadLocate CRM in every plan, including CRM Only, and plans are month to month. Current plans are on the pricing page. ### eFax for Dealers: Fax Numbers per Store and Partner URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/efax-for-dealers eFax is the fax layer inside SecureWebX, LeadLocate's secure credit application system. A dealership gets fax numbers assigned per store and per lender or partner, each set for inbound, outbound or both, and inbound fax status shows in the console next to the application it belongs to. Nothing to install, no fax machine, no separate fax subscription. #### What is eFax for dealers? eFax for dealers is a fax number, or several, that belong to your dealership inside SecureWebX, so a lender or partner who still works by fax can reach your finance office and the fax shows up in the console with the application it belongs to. That is the one sentence version. The reason it exists is not nostalgia. A meaningful share of credit unions, regional banks and secondary lenders still send countersigned approvals, funding notices and stip requests by fax, and a store that pretends otherwise ends up with a fax machine in the corner that one person knows how to check. Inside SecureWebX, fax numbers are a managed object rather than a phone line. A number is assigned to the company, given a plain label such as the main fax line or the finance office fax, and set for inbound, outbound or both. A number can also be assigned to a specific lender or partner on your partner list, so the fax traffic for that relationship is separated from everything else. Recent fax activity and inbound status appear in the console, which means the finance manager waiting on an approval sees it arrive rather than walking to the machine on a hunch. This page is the product side view of one capability. The Send to Lender secure share page covers the modern path for getting an application in front of a lender, and eFax is what covers the lenders who are not on that path yet. #### How does a finance office use it on a normal day? A used car store works with a credit union that approves deals quickly and communicates the old way. The finance manager shares the application through Send to Lender, the credit union reviews it in the lender response portal, and the countersigned approval with the funding conditions comes back by fax, because that is how the credit union's funding desk works. In a store without eFax, that approval lands on a machine in the back office, sits in the tray under a parts invoice, and the customer who was told to come back at four is waiting in the showroom while somebody hunts for a sheet of paper. With eFax the approval arrives on the fax number assigned to that credit union, the console shows the inbound fax under recent fax activity, and the finance manager opens it from the desk. The stipulation it asks for, proof of residence, gets requested from the customer through the stipulations workflow, uploaded, and shared back. The deal funds. Nobody touched a fax machine and nobody guessed whether the approval had come in. The same afternoon a warranty company that only accepts contracts by fax needs a signed form. The store's outbound fax number handles that, and the record of the send sits in the console beside everything else on the deal. The finance office's day is a series of handoffs to outside parties, and eFax makes the fax handoffs as visible as the email ones. #### Where does it live in the console and the CRM? eFax lives inside the SecureWebX console, the same place the application inbox, worksheets, partner list and mailbox live. The console opens from the SecureWebX button on the LeadLocate CRM dock, one login, no second password. Fax numbers are provisioned and assigned on the administration side, so a store asks for a number and our team assigns it to the company or to a partner; from then on the store sees its assigned fax numbers, each with its label and its inbound and outbound setting, and the recent fax activity for each. Because a fax number can be tied to a partner, the fax traffic for a lender sits alongside that lender's entry in your partner list, next to the email thread in the mailbox and the applications you have shared with them. The store's tracking phone numbers from the CRM sync into SecureWebX as well, so the numbers a customer or a lender sees on your paperwork are consistent across the platform. The console is also available as the SecureWebX app on iOS and Android, so a manager off the floor can see that a fax arrived without being at the desk. #### Fax numbers per store, and per lender or partner The distinction in the title matters. A single store fax number is what most dealerships have, and it becomes a bottleneck the moment two lenders send on the same afternoon. eFax lets a dealership hold more than one number and label each one, so the main fax line, the finance office line and a line for a specific partner are separate. Assigning a number to a partner means inbound faxes from that partner are already associated with the relationship when they arrive, and outbound faxes to that partner go out from the number that partner recognizes. Each number carries an inbound setting, receive faxes, and an outbound setting, send faxes, which can be on together or separately. A dealership group with several rooftops gets numbers per company, since each company in SecureWebX is its own console with its own users, partners and fax numbers. The activity view answers the question a finance manager actually asks, which is not how many faxes came in this month but whether the one they are waiting on has arrived. #### What does it replace, and what does it cost elsewhere? It replaces three things. The physical fax machine and its phone line, which a surprising number of stores still pay for monthly. The standalone online fax subscription, which is a separate login, a separate bill and an inbox nobody in the finance office checks after the person who set it up leaves. And the habit of photographing a faxed approval with a phone and texting it to whoever needs it, which puts a customer's approval on a personal device and outside any record. eFax is part of SecureWebX, and SecureWebX is part of every LeadLocate plan rather than an add on with its own contract. Plans are month to month, and the pricing page lays out every plan that brings exclusive local leads. A store already paying for a fax line and a fax service is paying for something it already has once it is on the platform. #### The compliance angle: the fax is part of the application record A faxed approval is a document about a consumer's credit, and a fax tray is the least controlled place in the building for it to sit. When the fax lives in SecureWebX, it is inside a system where every sign in requires two factor authentication, application data is encrypted at rest, uploads are virus scanned, and the audit log records who viewed and shared what. A fax about an application belongs with the application, and the partner assignment on the number is what keeps it there. Retention follows the SecureWebX rule: archive, never delete. A funding notice that arrived by fax is retained with the rest of the record, so a question months later about what the lender actually said has a document to point to. The credit application security page covers the controls in detail. A page like this one is careful to say what a fax number is and is not: it is a delivery path into a secure system, and it does not by itself make a store compliant, which is the job of the store's own compliance program. #### How do I turn it on? Fax numbers are assigned by our team rather than self served, because a number has to be provisioned and then attached to the right company and partner. Ask for one from inside the console, from your SecureWebX support ticket, or from the contact page, and tell us how many you want and which partners should have their own. The number appears under assigned fax numbers with its label and its inbound and outbound settings, and fax activity starts showing in the console as soon as the first one arrives. A number for a partner who is new to your partner list starts with adding the partner, which takes a minute. If your store needs something specific, a fax number in a particular area code, a routing rule that alerts a named user, or a number per rooftop for a group, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What should I pair it with? eFax is most useful alongside the rest of the lender handoff. Pair it with Send to Lender, so the modern lenders get a secure share and the fax lenders get a number, and both responses land on the application. Pair it with the stipulations workflow, so a stip requested by fax is fulfilled by upload and shared back without a second fax. Pair it with the lender and DMS export formats when the receiving side wants a file rather than a page, and with the mailbox for the partners who prefer email. The all features list shows where eFax sits among everything else in the platform, and the pre-recorded live demo walks through the console it lives in. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a fax machine or a fax line? A: No. eFax numbers live inside SecureWebX. Inbound faxes appear in the console under recent fax activity, and outbound faxes go out from a number assigned to your company or to a partner. There is nothing to install. Q: Can each lender have its own fax number? A: Yes. A fax number can be assigned to a specific lender or partner on your partner list, so that relationship's fax traffic is separated from the main line and associated with the partner when it arrives. Q: Can a number receive and send? A: Each number carries an inbound setting for receiving faxes and an outbound setting for sending them. They can be on together or separately, depending on how the number is used. Q: How do I get a fax number? A: Ask our team from the console, a support ticket or the contact page. Numbers are provisioned and assigned to your company or partner on the administration side, then appear under your assigned fax numbers with their labels and settings. Q: Is eFax an extra charge? A: eFax is part of SecureWebX, which is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. Q: Is a faxed approval kept with the application? A: Yes. Fax activity lives in the same console as the application, under the same two factor sign in, encryption at rest and audit log, and records are archived rather than deleted. ## Help Center ### How to Add Custom Disclosures in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-custom-disclosures In the SecureWebX console, open the compliance settings and State-specific disclosures, click Add disclosure, give it a title, paste the wording and click Save disclosure. Then open the apply link that needs it and use Add from library so the disclosure appears on that link's credit application. Steps: 1. Open the compliance settings: Open the SecureWebX console from the dock in the CRM and go to your company's compliance settings. This is where your privacy notice, your terms and State-specific disclosures live, and it is the library the apply links draw from. Adding a disclosure here takes a role with access to company settings, so it is usually the finance director or a master administrator. 2. Add the disclosure: Click Add disclosure and give it a title that names the thing, not the file it came from. The field shows e.g. California Disclosure as the hint, which is exactly the right shape: the state or the subject, in words your finance office will recognize in a list two years from now. 3. Paste the exact wording: Put in the text your counsel or your state association gave you, word for word. Do not paraphrase a required notice to make it read better, and do not merge two notices into one paragraph because they are both about privacy. Set the state it applies to so it can be pulled onto the right applications later, then click Save disclosure. 4. Put it on the apply links that need it: Open the apply link in the customizer and go to Disclosures. Use Add from library to pull in the one you just wrote, which keeps a single source for the wording across every link. The customizer is where each link gets its own Add fields, sections and disclosures to this application treatment, so a link for out of state buyers can carry a different set than the one on your website. 5. Write a one off when a link needs it: Some disclosures belong to one path only, such as a notice tied to a particular promotion or a commercial application. Use Add a disclosure inside the customizer, give it a Disclosure title and type the text there. It lives on that link, which is the point, and it does not clutter the company library. 6. Require the acknowledgment and preview it: Set whether the customer has to acknowledge the disclosure before they continue. Then open the apply page yourself and read it on a phone, because a disclosure that is technically present and practically unreadable helps nobody. Check the line breaks, check the length, and check it appears on the step where a customer expects it. 7. Keep them current: Put a standing item on someone's calendar to reread the library. When a state changes a requirement, you edit the disclosure once in the console and every link that uses it shows the new wording from that moment on. Applications already signed keep the version the customer actually agreed to, which is the whole point of versioned terms. #### Before you start You need the SecureWebX console, which opens from the dock in the CRM with the login you already use, and the wording you intend to show. The console gives you the editor, the library, the acknowledgment and the record of who agreed to what; your counsel owns the words. That division is worth keeping straight, because the part software does well is proving what a customer saw and when, and the part your attorney does well is deciding what that should say. It also helps to have your apply links sorted out first. Disclosures attach to links, so knowing which links exist, and what each one is for, decides where each notice belongs. How to customize an apply link covers the customizer itself, and compliance disclosures and privacy notices covers the wider picture of per store legal text inside SecureWebX. #### What you should see In the console, your disclosures listed under State-specific disclosures, each with a title, the state it belongs to and the text you pasted, all editable. In the customizer, a Disclosures area on the apply link showing which ones that link carries and in what order. On the customer's side, the disclosure appears inside the branded application at the point you placed it, with the acknowledgment if you required one. When the customer signs, the e-signature and consent capture records the exact version of the terms and disclosures they agreed to, together with when they agreed. That record stays with the application in the credit application inbox, where a manager can open it months later and see precisely what the customer was shown. Archiving is how records leave the active list. Nothing is deleted, which is what you want the day someone asks what a customer saw on a Saturday last spring. #### Which disclosures belong on a credit application? Ask your counsel, then put what they give you in the library. The pattern most stores end up with looks like this: a privacy notice, the consent to obtain credit information, an electronic signature and electronic records consent, a contact consent covering calls and texts, and one or more state specific notices for the states the store sells into. Dealers who sell across state lines usually keep one link per market so the right set travels with the right customer. Two habits separate the stores that sail through a review from the ones that scramble. The first is writing each notice once and reusing it from the library, instead of pasting slightly different wording onto four links and losing track of which is current. The second is treating the acknowledgment as a feature and not a nuisance: a customer who checked a box next to a notice they could actually read is a customer whose file holds up. Compliance here is built into the way the system works rather than bolted on. Bot protection sits on the public form, application data is encrypted once submitted, every sign in to the console uses two factor authentication, uploads are virus scanned and a full audit log records who opened, edited, shared and exported each application. Adding your disclosures is the last piece that only your store can supply. #### If it did not work The disclosure is in the console but not on the application. It is in the library and not yet on the link. Open the apply link in the customizer, go to Disclosures and use Add from library. It shows on one link and not another. That is the design. Each link carries its own set, so add it to every link that needs it, and leave it off the ones that do not. The formatting looks wrong on a phone. Long notices pasted out of a word processor can arrive with odd spacing. Retype the paragraph breaks in the editor and preview the apply page on a phone before you send it to a customer. You changed the wording and want to know what older customers saw. Open the application in the inbox. The signed record holds the version of the terms and disclosures in force when that customer signed, not the version you are looking at today. Your state requires something the editor does not obviously cover. It is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Send the wording and the requirement to our team and it gets built. #### Related tasks Adverse action notices are generated from the application record itself and are covered on adverse action notices. Screening runs on every application, described on OFAC screening. The security that surrounds all of it, from encryption at rest to the watermarked document viewer, is on credit application security. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the SecureWebX guides, including creating and customizing apply links and reviewing applications as they arrive. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do custom disclosures live in SecureWebX? A: In the company compliance settings in the dealer console, under State-specific disclosures. Apply links then pull from that library, so the wording has one source. Q: Can different apply links carry different disclosures? A: Yes. Disclosures attach to a link, so your website link, your special finance link and an out of state link can each carry the set that belongs to it. Q: What happens to applications signed under older wording? A: They keep it. Consent is captured against versioned terms, so each signed application records the exact disclosures the customer saw and when they agreed. Q: Can I require the customer to acknowledge a disclosure? A: Yes. Set the acknowledgment on the disclosure and the applicant has to accept it before continuing, and the acceptance is stored with the application record. ### How to Add More Than One Vehicle to a Lead URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-more-than-one-vehicle-to-a-lead Open the lead from Leads in LeadLocate CRM and click the plus button at the end of the first vehicle line. Choose For Sale and a second numbered vehicle line opens; do it again for a third. Type each vehicle or pick it from inventory, and every line saves on its own, with its own button to start a deal on that vehicle. Steps: 1. Open the lead: Click Leads in the main menu and open the customer's lead. The vehicle the customer asked about sits on the first vehicle line in the lead detail, with fields for the vehicle, the VIN and the odometer. 2. Click the plus button on the first line: At the end of the first vehicle line is a plus button. Click it and a small menu opens with two choices: For Sale, for another vehicle the customer is interested in, and Trade-In, for a vehicle they are bringing to you. 3. Choose For Sale: A new numbered line opens under the first. Each line now carries a tag, For Sale 1, For Sale 2 and so on, so everyone who opens the lead reads the options in the same order. 4. Fill the new line: Type the year, make, model and trim, or click the inventory button on that line to pick the unit from your store's Inventory, which fills the vehicle and its details for you. Add the VIN and odometer if you have them. The line saves as you type. 5. Add a third vehicle: Click the plus button on the first line again and choose For Sale. The plus button always stays on the first line, so it is in the same place every time, and when the lead reaches its maximum a short tip tells you so. 6. Start a deal on any vehicle: Each line has its own Start a Deal button, which opens a new deal in Desking with this customer and that line's vehicle already filled in. Once a deal exists, the same spot shows Go to Deal and takes you straight to it. 7. Remove a vehicle the customer ruled out: Click the red X at the end of a second or later line. The lines below it move up, and any deal already started on that vehicle stays exactly as it was. #### What do you need before you start? You need a lead open in LeadLocate CRM. The first vehicle line usually already holds the unit the customer asked about, filled in from the lead source or typed by whoever took the call. Everything else happens on the lead itself: there is no separate screen for vehicle options and nothing to set up first. Picking from inventory works best when your store's vehicles are in the CRM. Inventory from Inventory Link shows in the Inventory menu and in the picker on every vehicle line, so a second option is two clicks away instead of a VIN typed from the lot. A vehicle you do not stock can still go on a line: type it, or decode it by VIN in the picker. #### Why keep more than one vehicle on a lead? Because buyers cross shop, and the vehicle that sells is often not the one they first asked about. A customer who came in on a loaded SUV may drive home in the trim below it when the lender comes back with a smaller approval, or in the used one on the back row when the payment matters more than the model year. When the lead holds one vehicle, the salesperson overwrites it every time the conversation moves, and the history of what the customer considered is gone. With several lines, nothing gets erased. The manager opening the lead sees every vehicle the customer is weighing, the BDC following up knows which three units to mention, and when financing falls through on the first choice, the second is already on the record with its own deal button. The same record answers the question every sales meeting asks: what was this customer actually shopping? #### What should you see when it works? The lead shows numbered For Sale lines, one per vehicle, each with its own vehicle, VIN and odometer fields, its inventory button and its own deal button. The plus button sits on the first line. Lines two and up carry a red X to remove them. Trade-in lines sit below a dotted divider, with a VIN lookup on each. Everything saves as you type, so a manager who opens the same lead a minute later sees the new vehicle without anyone clicking save. On the LeadLocate phone app, the same vehicle lines appear on the lead with the inventory picker, so a salesperson on the lot can add the unit the customer just sat in. #### Quick checks Use the inventory button for units you stock. A picked unit carries its real details, which makes the text you send and the deal you start accurate from the first message. Put the customer's own car on a Trade-In line. The plus menu adds a Trade-In line for the vehicle they are bringing in, with a VIN lookup that fills the details. How to capture a trade-in covers photos and payoff when the deal gets serious, and vehicle acquisition leads explains how stores turn more of those trades into inventory. A unit on its way from another store goes on a line too. In the picker, decode the VIN or describe the vehicle and add it to the For Sale line. To bring it home, get vehicle transport quotes from carriers in Inventory Link. Removing a line never touches a deal. Clear the vehicles the customer ruled out freely; any deal started on one stays in Desking. #### Related tasks Once the options are on the lead, send a vehicle in a text with photos and price from the composer, then start a deal from the lead on the one the customer picks. The LeadLocate Help Center carries every other guide for leads, deals and inventory. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I track multiple vehicles per customer in the CRM? A: Add them to the lead. Click the plus button on the first vehicle line, choose For Sale, and each vehicle gets its own numbered line with its own inventory picker and its own deal button. Q: Can I start a deal on the second vehicle instead of the first? A: Yes. Every vehicle line has its own Start a Deal button, which opens a deal in Desking with that line's vehicle and this customer already filled in. Q: What happens to a deal if I remove that vehicle from the lead? A: Nothing. Removing a vehicle line takes it off the lead and moves the lines below it up, and any deal already started on that vehicle stays in Desking as it was. Q: Can I add the customer's trade-in the same way? A: Yes. The same plus button offers Trade-In, which adds a trade-in line below the vehicles of interest with a VIN lookup that fills in the vehicle. ### How to Add Stipulations in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-stipulations Open the credit application in the SecureWebX console and go to Stipulations. Use + Add a common stipulation… to pick proof of income or proof of residence from the list, or type a custom item and press Add. Mark it required if it blocks funding, then upload the document against that request to clear it. Every stip stays on the deal record. Steps: 1. Open the credit application: In the SecureWebX console, open the deal you are working from the application inbox. Stips belong to the customer's own record, not to a note on someone's desk, so add them on the application itself. The applicant details, the amount requested, the documents and any lender shares are already on that page. 2. Go to the Stipulations section: Scroll the application to Stipulations. Anything already outstanding is listed there, including items a lender asked for through a share, each showing whether it is required and whether it is still open or on file. 3. Add from the common list: Click + Add a common stipulation… and choose from Common stipulations…: proof of income, proof of residence, a copy of the license, a phone bill, references. One pick beats one typed line, and the wording stays identical on every deal the store works. 4. Or type a custom stip: For anything the list does not cover, type the item in your own words and press Add. Use the lender's phrasing and include the count: two recent pay stubs, three months of bank statements, a utility bill in the applicant's name. The person who picks the file up later should not have to guess. 5. Mark what blocks funding: Mark a stip required when the deal does not fund without it. The application then shows plainly which items are holding the money and which are housekeeping, and the manager reading the file at close sees exactly what you see. 6. Clear it with the document: Upload the document against the stip it answers, up to 20 MB per file, which covers a scanned bill, a phone photo of a pay stub or a PDF from an employer. Every upload is virus scanned and encrypted at rest. The line flips to on file with the document attached to it, and the audit log records who uploaded it and when. 7. Send it to the lender who asked: When the stip came from a lender's request for more information, upload it for that lender. The document lands inside that lender's existing secure view of the application, under the code, expiry and watermark the store already set, so nothing travels as a loose attachment. 8. Note anything the file should remember: Use Add a note on the application when the story matters: the customer is mailing the bill, the employer verifies on Tuesdays, the second stub arrives Friday. The note sits with the stips, so the next person to open the deal is current without calling you. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login and a submitted application to work. The console opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock, one login for both, and every application your store's apply links produce lands in the credit application inbox. If you have never opened it, a manager invites you and sets your role. SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account, so there is nothing to buy before you start. Have the lender's list in front of you. Stips are the lender's words, and the closer your entry is to what they asked for, the fewer rounds the deal takes. Have the documents ready as well, as files or clear phone photos: a pay stub, a utility bill, a copy of the license, a bank statement. Anything up to 20 MB uploads, which covers every one of those. #### What you should see Each stip on its own line under Stipulations, showing the item, whether it is required, and whether it is open or on file. Adding one puts it on the list immediately, and that list is what a manager sees when the deal comes up at close. Upload a document against a stip and the line flips to on file with the document attached to the request, instead of sitting in a folder under a filename nobody can read. The audit log on the application records each of those actions with a name and a time: who added the stip, who uploaded the document, who shared it with a lender. A stip that arrived from a lender's request for more information shows there too, so the file tells you what the lender wants without a phone call. Documents open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated, and records are archived, never deleted, so the deal reads the same years from now. #### If it did not work The item is not in the common list. Type it. The common list covers what lenders ask for on most deals; anything else is a custom line in your own words. Keep the lender's phrasing and the count, because a stip that says pay stubs and a stip that says two recent pay stubs are two different conversations. The upload will not take the file. Check the size first: the limit is 20 MB per file, and a burst of phone photos can pass it. Reshoot the page in one frame, or save it as a PDF, and upload again. Every upload is virus scanned before it is stored, so a file that fails the scan comes back to you instead of onto the deal. The lender says they never received it. The document was probably uploaded to the store file rather than for that lender. Upload it for the lender who asked and it appears inside that lender's own view of the application. If their access window has already closed, send a fresh share from Send to Lender and the document is in it. The customer cannot get you the document. Ask for it inside the application instead. Each of your apply links can carry document upload fields, so proof of income arrives with the next application rather than as a photo in somebody's personal text thread. #### Related tasks The feature itself, including how a stip arrives from a lender and how an upload reaches that lender, is on the stipulations workflow page. Putting the deal structure on the same application is covered on credit application worksheets, and the LeadLocate Help Center holds the rest of the finance office guides, each starting from the same record. A stip routine your store runs differently is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Add the stips the moment the lender says them, while the wording is fresh. Mark only the items that truly block funding as required, so the flag keeps its meaning. Clear the easy ones the same day, because a deal with one stip left feels closeable and a deal with five feels like work. And when a customer hands you a document at the desk, photograph it and upload it against the stip before they leave the building. The second trip is the one that never happens. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a stipulation on a car deal? A: A condition the lender attaches to an approval before it funds: proof of income, proof of residence, a copy of the license, a reference. SecureWebX keeps each one on the credit application and clears it when you upload the document that answers it. Q: How do I add a stip that is not on the common list? A: Type it in your own words and press Add. Use the lender's phrasing, including how many stubs or months of statements they want. Custom stips sit alongside the common ones on the same application. Q: How large a file can I upload against a stip? A: Up to 20 MB per file, which covers a scanned bill, a phone photo of a pay stub or a PDF from an employer. Every upload is virus scanned and encrypted at rest, and the audit log records who uploaded it. Q: Does the lender get the document as an email attachment? A: No. An upload made for a lender appears inside that lender's code gated, watermarked view of the application, under the expiry the store set. The lender never receives a loose attachment. ### How to Add Users and Roles in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-users-and-roles You add users and roles in LeadLocate CRM from User Management under the Billing & Admin menu. Click Add User, enter the person's name, email, cell number and a starting password, choose User or Manager as the role, and save. Then open the new record with Edit User to set the PIN, notifications, signature and routing. One login carries them into every product. Steps: 1. Open User Management: In the desktop CRM open Billing & Admin and choose User Management. The Users list shows everyone on the account with their Role, Job title and Mobile phone (US). Only a Manager or the Master Administrator sees this menu. 2. Start a new user: Click Add User. A short form opens for one person. 3. Enter the person's details: Fill in New User Full Name, Best Contact Email Address, Cellphone Number for SMS Notifications and a Default Password they will change on first sign in. The email is their login and the cell is where their text alerts go, so both need to be right. 4. Choose the role: Pick User for a salesperson or BDC agent who works leads, or Manager for someone who runs a team and needs to see the team's leads and activity. The Master Administrator seat is the account owner's and already exists. 5. Save the user: Click Save New User. The person appears in the Users list at once. 6. Finish the record: Open the new user with Edit User. Set the 4 digit PIN for mobile quick access, switch on the alerts under Notifications, add a photo and signature under Profile and Signature, and set who receives what under Lead Routing and Access Control. 7. Hand over the login: Give the person their email and starting password. Their one login opens the desktop CRM, the phone app, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the account portal, with the role deciding what they see in each. #### Before you start You need to be a Manager or the Master Administrator, and you need three things about the person: the email address they will sign in with, the cell number they carry, and which of the two roles fits. Decide the role by the job, not the title: a User works leads, a Manager runs the people who do. The user roles and permissions page explains what each seat sees. It helps to have the person's photo and the wording of their email signature ready, so the record is complete before they sign in. If you are also deciding who gets which lead, note that assignment is a separate setting from the role: round robin lead assignment and the feeds decide who receives a lead, the role decides what they can see once they have it. #### What you should see The new person appears in the Users list with their role beside them. When they sign in on the desktop CRM they see the menus their role allows: a User sees their own leads, calendar, inbox and deals; a Manager sees the team's as well. On the phone they install the LeadLocate mobile app, sign in once with the same email and password, and the PIN you set gets them back in after that. The SecureWebX and My Inventory buttons on the dock open the other products without a second username, because single sign on ties the products to the one login. Their name is now available everywhere a user is chosen: in round robin rotation, on the Forward Calls To ring list, in Team Chat and on the shared calendar. #### If it did not work User Management is not in your menu. Your role is User. Ask a Manager or the Master Administrator to add the person; the menu only appears for those two seats. The Users page offers Send Request instead of a form. The account has reached the number of users its plan carries. Use Send Request and the request reaches our team, who add the seat for your dealership; additional users are an add-on to an active subscription rather than a separate plan. The new person's alerts are silent. The cell number was saved as a desk line or with an extension, or the alerts on the Notifications tab were left off. Open Edit User, fix the number, and switch on the events they should hear about. The notification preferences guide in the help center covers every toggle. #### Related tasks When someone leaves, open their record from the Users list and use Delete user; the access is gone from every product at once, and their leads, texts, calls and deals stay in the store's record. When someone changes jobs, change the role on the same record. Next steps after adding the team are setting each person's notification preferences and booking link, and setting up lead feeds so the new names are in the rotation. Every guide is in the help center; the LeadLocate CRM page shows the whole platform a new user is signing into. #### Tips from the floor Add the user the afternoon before the start date, with the PIN and alerts set, so the first morning is spent selling rather than configuring. Never share a login to save a seat; every text, call and deal in the CRM is attributed to the login that did it, and reports only mean something when that is a real person. And put the new rep on the Forward Calls To list the same day, so the phone rings the people who are actually on the floor. #### Questions and answers Q: What roles can I give a user? A: User or Manager when you add them. A User works leads; a Manager runs a team and sees the team's leads and activity. The Master Administrator is the account owner's seat, which owns Billing & Admin and already exists on the account. Q: Does adding a user cost extra? A: Not while the plan has logins available: a Manager adds the new hire right away. If the Users page offers Send Request, the account has reached the users its plan carries and our team adds the seat as an add-on. Q: Does the new user need separate logins for SecureWebX and Inventory Link? A: No. One login opens the desktop CRM, the phone app, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the My LeadLocate account portal. Removing the user in User Management removes that access everywhere. Q: How do I remove someone who left? A: Open their record from the Users list in User Management and use Delete user. Their leads, conversations, call recordings and deals stay in the store's record; only the access goes. ### How to Add Your Credit Bureau Account to SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-your-credit-bureau-account In SecureWebX, open Settings and find the Credit bureau access card. Enter your store's own bureau account number, username, API key and password, then save. The credentials are stored encrypted and never shown again, and our team verifies the account and activates it. No bureau account yet? Request a referral from the same card and we walk you through the setup. Steps: 1. Sign in as a user who manages settings: Sign in to SecureWebX with a user whose role can manage the store's settings, typically your SecureWebX admin. Other users see the card's status without the form. 2. Open the Credit bureau access card: Open Settings in the SecureWebX console and scroll to Credit bureau access. With no account on file, the card offers two paths side by side: one for a store that already has a bureau account, one for a store that needs one. 3. Enter your store's bureau account: Under the path for a store with an existing account, type the account number, the username, the API key and the password exactly as your bureau issued them, then save. The card confirms the credentials are stored encrypted and gives you a reference number. 4. Let our team activate the connection: Our team verifies the account with the bureau and activates the connection. The badge on the card shows where it stands, and it reads active once the account is live for your store. Keep the reference number handy if you want to ask about it. 5. No bureau account yet? Request a referral: Use the second path on the same card. Write a line about where you are, such as a new dealership or a store switching providers, and send the request. The follow up arrives in your SecureWebX Mailbox and our team walks you through the bureau's own setup. When the account is issued, paste its credentials into this card. 6. Name the bureau on adverse action notices: When a lender declines and you issue an adverse action notice, leave A credit report was used ticked when one was, then pick the bureau from Choose a bureau… under Credit bureau used (name and contact, if a report was used), or type it in Or type a different bureau's name and address. A custom address is saved for next time. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX sign in whose role can manage settings, and your store's own credit bureau account: the account number, the username, the API key and the password the bureau issued to the dealership. The bureau relationship is the store's, and so are the account and its terms. SecureWebX is where that account is stored securely, alongside the credit applications, stipulations, adverse action notices and lender shares it belongs with. If your store has no bureau account yet, you need nothing more than a sentence about where you are. The referral path on the same card starts the process, and our team walks you through it. Which users can reach settings is covered in how to manage SecureWebX users. #### What you should see After you save, the Credit bureau access card shows a status badge and a line confirming the credentials are saved and encrypted, with your reference number. The fields themselves stay empty from then on: saved credentials are never displayed again, to anyone. When our team has verified and activated the account, the badge turns green and reads active. To change a credential later, open the same card, type only the value that changed and save. A field left blank keeps its saved value, so rotating a password never means retyping the account number. Every save is written to the SecureWebX audit log with who made it, and the same credit application security covers the account as covers every application: two factor authentication on every sign in, encryption at rest and a secrets vault. #### Where the bureau shows up after setup The account itself stays behind the card, and its name travels where the paperwork needs it. When a lender declines an application and the store sends an adverse action notice, the notice form asks whether a credit report was used and which bureau supplied it, with a picker of bureaus and a field for any other bureau's name and address. The notice goes to the applicant from the application record, and the bureau details sit in the file with it. The adverse action notice guide walks through that form in full. #### Quick checks Missing the form? Your role sees the card's status only. Ask a user who manages settings, or have your admin adjust your role. Copy the credentials straight from your bureau. Paste rather than type, and check the account number against your bureau paperwork before you save. Waiting on activation? Keep the reference number from the card handy; it ties any question you ask to your account. Switching bureau providers? Use the referral path and tell us in the note; our team walks you through the change. #### How do stores keep bureau access secure day to day? The bureau account is one of the most valuable credentials a dealership holds, and SecureWebX gives the store everything it needs to keep it protected. A few habits keep it that way. - Keep settings with a small group. Give the role that manages settings to the people who need it, usually the SecureWebX admin and the finance director. Everyone else sees the card's status, which is all a salesperson needs. - Keep every user's phone number current. SecureWebX sends a text code on every sign in, so a password alone is never enough to reach the console. A current number means that code always reaches the right person. - Rotate the password on your bureau's schedule. When the bureau issues a new password, type it into its field on the Credit bureau access card and save. The other fields keep their saved values, and the change is written to the audit log. - Update the card when people move on. When someone who knew the bureau credentials leaves the store, change the password with the bureau and save the new one here the same day. - Keep the paperwork together. Adverse action notices, state specific disclosures and the store's privacy notice all live in the same console, so every notice the store sends names the right bureau. With the account saved, encrypted and active, the finance office works every application, stipulation and lender share in one place, and the bureau relationship stays exactly where it belongs: with the dealership. #### Related tasks The LeadLocate Help Center carries the guides around this one. Setting up two factor authentication protects the sign in that reaches this card, and reviewing applications in the inbox is where the finance office works every application that follows. For the deal side, pushing a desked deal to SecureWebX puts the structure next to the application. #### Questions and answers Q: Whose credit bureau account is stored in SecureWebX? A: Your store's own. The dealership holds the bureau account and its terms, and SecureWebX stores the credentials securely, encrypted and never displayed again, in the same console as your credit applications. Q: What if my dealership does not have a bureau account yet? A: Request a referral from the Credit bureau access card with a short note about where you are. Our team walks you through the bureau's setup, and once the account is issued you paste its credentials into the same card. Q: Can I see or edit the saved credentials later? A: Saved credentials are never shown again. To change one, type the new value in its field and save; fields left blank keep their saved values. Q: Who can add the bureau account? A: A SecureWebX user whose role can manage the store's settings. Other users see the card's status, and every save is recorded in the audit log. ### How to Add a Reminder or To Do URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-a-reminder Open the Workspace in LeadLocate CRM and press Add To-Do. Type the reminder in To-Do Item, add optional Notes, choose a user under Assign To, set the Due Date and Time, and save. The reminder joins your task list, shows as due today when its day comes, and stays on the list until someone marks it done. Steps: 1. Open the Workspace: Click Workspace at the top of the main menu. On the right of the Tasks & To-Dos panel, next to Clear All and the print button, is Add To-Do. Press it and the Add To-Do popup opens over the list. 2. Write the reminder: In To-Do Item, where it says What needs to be done?, type the reminder in plain words, such as call Dana back with the lease numbers on the Tahoe. Use Notes for anything longer, like the payment she asked for. Both fields take the microphone button, Dictate with microphone, and the keyboard button, Clean up grammar and spelling, so you can speak it on the lot and tidy it in one click. 3. Choose who it is for: Under Assign To, leave yourself selected for a personal reminder, or pick a teammate. A manager uses this to hand a rep a callback; a rep uses it to pass a Saturday promise to whoever is working Saturday. The to-do lands on that person's Workspace. 4. Set the due date and time: Pick the Due Date from the calendar and the Time from the list, which runs in half hour steps through the selling day. You can type any other time by hand. Leave the date empty for an open reminder with no deadline. 5. Save it: Press Add To-Do at the bottom of the popup. The reminder appears at the top of your task list with a To-Do chip, ahead of your lead tasks. When its day arrives it counts as due today, and after its time it moves under Past Due until it is done. 6. Mark it done: When the job is finished, click the done button on the row. Add a line about how it was handled and press Save Note & Mark Done, or press Skip Note & Mark Done. The reminder moves to the Complete tab for the day. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login; every user has a Workspace with a to-do list of their own. Decide what kind of reminder you need, because LeadLocate has three and each is the right tool for its own job. A to-do is a reminder for you or a teammate: call someone back, send the trade photos to the used car manager, chase a payoff. An appointment is a customer booked onto a calendar, and the guide on how to schedule an appointment covers it. A customer reminder is a text or email that goes to the buyer before the visit. This guide covers the first, with a note on the third at the end. All three show up on the Workspace, so the day's reminders, appointments and follow ups are always in one place. #### Adding a reminder from the phone In the LeadLocate app, open Workspace and tap Add To-Do on the Tasks and To-Dos card. Fill in the Title, pick the Due Date and Time with the phone's own date wheel, which snaps to half hours, add a note if you like, and tap Save To-Do. The reminder is on your desktop Workspace the moment you sit down, and it counts down the same way on both. To remind a customer instead, open the calendar in the app and tap the appointment. The appointment sheet has Send Text Reminder and Send Email Reminder, which open a message to that customer with the appointment in front of you, so a buyer hears from you the evening before the visit. The LeadLocate mobile app page covers the rest of the app. #### What you should see Your new to-do at the top of Tasks & To-Dos with a To-Do chip, the due date and time, and the name of the person it is assigned to. On the due day, the Due Today count above the list includes it. After the due time, the Past Due count does. When you mark it done, it leaves the open list and appears on the Complete tab with the note you left. A to-do you assigned to a teammate shows on their Workspace, not yours, and stays there until they mark it done. That is what makes it more useful than a sticky note: the reminder follows the person who has to act on it. #### Quick checks Assigned it to someone else? It lives on their Workspace. Ask them to look under Tasks & To-Dos, or add a second to-do for yourself to check in with them. Time came out at half past nine? A date with no time saves at half past nine in the morning, the start of the time list. Open the to-do and pick the time you meant. Want it attached to a customer's record? A to-do is a personal reminder. For a follow up that belongs on a lead, book an appointment from the lead, and completing it saves the method of contact and your note to the lead's timeline. Too many old reminders? Press Clear All and choose the ones to retire. #### Related tasks The full walkthrough of the planner is in how to use the Workspace. For customer bookings, see how to schedule an appointment and how to connect Google Calendar, so your appointments sit next to everything else on your phone. To dictate anything in the CRM, read how to dictate a message. Every other guide is in the Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I add a reminder in LeadLocate CRM? A: Open the Workspace, press Add To-Do, type the reminder, pick a due date and time, choose who it is assigned to, and press Add To-Do to save. It joins your task list and shows as due today when its day comes. Q: Can I set a reminder for another salesperson? A: Yes. Pick their name under Assign To when you add the to-do. It appears on their Workspace with the due time and stays there until they mark it done. Q: Can I add a reminder from my phone? A: Yes. In the LeadLocate app, open Workspace, tap Add To-Do, fill in the title and the due date and time, and tap Save To-Do. It shows on your desktop right away. Q: How do I send a customer an appointment reminder? A: In the app, open the calendar and tap the appointment, then use Send Text Reminder or Send Email Reminder. A message to that customer opens with the appointment in front of you. ### How to Add a Tracking Phone Number in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-a-tracking-phone-number Adding a tracking phone number in LeadLocate CRM gives one lead source its own line. Your first number is provisioned when the account is created; each additional number is requested through a support ticket, provisioned by our team and synced to SecureWebX and the phone service. You confirm the ring list on IVR Settings, register the number, and print it in exactly one place. Steps: 1. Find the number you already have: Sign in as a Master Administrator. Open Billing & Admin, then Account Settings, then Phone & IVR and IVR Settings. The Register Your Number card shows the store's current tracking number, the one provisioned on the day the account was created. 2. Decide which source gets its own line: A tracking number only tells you something if it is printed in one place. Pick the source: a listing site, a mailer, a landing page, a business card. If you want a number for several sources, plan one number for each. 3. Request the number: Open More Options on the dock and choose Support Tickets. Name the source the number is for and any area code preference. Our team provisions the number, attaches it to your account and syncs it to SecureWebX and the phone service, so it is answered the same way as your first line. 4. Confirm who answers it: Back on IVR Settings, under Call Handling, the Forward Calls To list decides which phones ring when any of your tracking numbers is dialed. The same list serves every number, so check that it holds the people who should answer calls from this source. 5. Register the number: On the Register Your Number card press Register Number and complete the free carrier registration. Carriers can label an unknown business number as likely spam; registration tells them your calls are legitimate, which matters because the number is also the caller ID your softphone shows on outbound calls. 6. Give the source a feed, then test: Open Lead Source Settings in Account Settings, press New Lead Source, enter a Feed Label that matches the source and press Save Feed, so leads you create from these calls have a source to land in. Then print the number on the source, call it from a cell phone, and watch the call appear on Calls. #### What do you need before you start? You need a Master Administrator login. IVR Settings sits under Account Settings in Billing & Admin, and a User or Manager role sees the phone setup without being able to change it. You also need a clear answer to the question of where the number goes, because a tracking number printed in two places tells you nothing about either one. There is nothing to buy. Tracking numbers are part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, with no per number subscription and no per minute charge, and your first one already exists. An additional number is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership, usually as part of the same support ticket in which you describe the source. #### What should you see when it works? When the new number is live, a call to it rings every phone on the Forward Calls To list at once, and whoever answers hears the caller. On the desktop the call shows on the Calls page with the number dialed, the caller ID with the name looked up, who answered, the duration and the recording, with a transcript one click away. On the LeadLocate mobile app the same row appears under Call Logs, and an inbound call rings the rep's phone with an alert screen that shows the caller's name when the number matches a lead. If the caller is already a lead, the call sits on that lead's timeline in order with the texts and emails around it. If the caller is new, the rep creates the lead from the call and files it under the source feed you made, so the lead is never an orphan with an unknown origin. Over a month, the Calls page filtered to the new number is your answer to whether the source rings the phone. #### What if it did not work? The number rings nobody. The Forward Calls To list is empty or holds a number that is no longer a user's phone. Open User Management, check each salesperson's Mobile phone (US), then reopen IVR Settings and correct the list. Commas ring several phones at once; an extension is written after the number with a hash. Calls arrive but the log shows no name. Caller ID lookup only puts a name on a number it can resolve, and a lead that does not exist yet has no name to show. Create the lead from the call and the next call from that number lands on it. Your outbound calls show as likely spam on customers' phones. The number has not been registered. Go back to Register Your Number, press Register Number and finish the registration. Carrier labels take a little time to update after that. #### Which related tasks come next? A tracking number is the front door of the phone stack, so the next tasks are behind it. The tracking phone numbers feature page explains what the number does on a normal month, and the call forwarding and ring lists page covers the list the number rings, including the press 5 confirmation that keeps a personal voicemail box from swallowing a call. The automotive phone system page shows where a tracking number sits in the store's whole phone setup. If one source should be answered differently from the rest, the IVR call flow builder gives a line its own menu, and the virtual receptionist answers when nobody can. Turn on Call Alerts in your notification preferences so a missed call on the new line becomes a text to the person who should return it. The rest of the guides are on the help center. #### Tips from the floor Print the number where the shopper is and nowhere else. Ads, listings, landing pages, mailers and the business cards from Design Studio each deserve their own line; the store's main published number can stay on whatever system reception uses. When a source stops earning calls, you see it on the Calls page before the invoice arrives. Name the source feed the way the floor talks about it, so the Feed Label a rep picks when creating a lead from a call is the same phrase the manager uses in the Monday meeting. A specific area code for a market, or a number that should ring a different list from the rest, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Describe it through contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I have to buy tracking numbers separately? A: No. Tracking numbers are part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan. Your first number is provisioned when the account is created, and additional numbers for other sources are provisioned by our team on request. Q: Can each tracking number ring different people? A: By default every number rings the same Forward Calls To list on IVR Settings. A number that should ring its own group gets its own path through the IVR call flow builder, or our team sets it up on request. Q: Which number shows as caller ID when a salesperson calls out? A: The store's main tracking number is the caller ID on calls placed from the softphone, so a customer who calls back reaches a tracked line rather than a personal cell. Register the number so carriers show the store's name. Q: Where do I see which source a call came from? A: On the Calls page in the main menu, or Call Logs on the mobile app. Each row shows the number the caller dialed, so filtering to one number shows every call that source produced. ### How to Add a Vehicle Manually in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-a-vehicle-manually In the Inventory Link portal, open the inventory list and click Add vehicle. Type the VIN into Vehicle identification number and the decode fills the year, make, model, trim and build. Add mileage, price, stock number and photos, then save. The unit is immediately available in the CRM, in texts and on your lead forms. Steps: 1. Open the inventory list: Sign in to the Inventory Link portal and open your inventory. Check first that the vehicle is not already there from a feed or a website import, because a duplicate is more annoying to clean up than it is to avoid. Search the stock number or the last six of the VIN. 2. Start a new vehicle: Click Add vehicle. You get a blank Vehicle record with the VIN field at the top, which is where the work actually happens. Everything else on the form is either filled for you in a second or is a number you already know. 3. Enter the VIN and let the decode do the typing: Type or paste the seventeen characters into Vehicle identification number. The decode returns year, make, model, trim, body style, engine and drivetrain, plus the safety and efficiency data that comes with the vehicle database. On a phone, scanning the VIN off the door jamb beats typing it. 4. Fill in what no VIN knows: Mileage, asking price, stock number, exterior and interior color, and anything a shopper would ask about on the phone. Use the stock number from the window label so the number your team says out loud is the number on the screen. Two minutes here saves a salesperson a phone call later. 5. Add photos, or let stock imagery hold the spot: Shoot the unit if you can, even on a phone, and upload the pictures. If it just landed and nobody has photographed it, stock imagery for that year, make and model keeps the listing presentable until your photographer gets to it, instead of a grey box that no shopper clicks. 6. Save it and confirm it landed everywhere: Save the record, then check the two places your team will look. In a CRM text or email composer, the vehicle insert search field, Name, email, phone or vehicle, should find it by model or stock number. On your own site, the widget from Add it to your website shows it alongside the rest of the inventory. #### Before you start You need an Inventory Link login, the VIN, and the numbers a shopper asks about: mileage and price. Photos can follow later; the VIN cannot, because it is what fills in the build. If you are standing at the car, this whole job is a phone job. It is also worth knowing where the vehicle is coming from. If the store runs a feed or a website import, most units arrive on their own, and adding by hand is for the exceptions. Inventory feeds covers the automatic route, and the two mix fine: hand entered vehicles sit in the same list and behave the same way. #### When should you add a vehicle by hand? Four cases come up every week. A dealer trade that is physically on your lot but lives in another store's system. A fresh trade in you want to sell before it goes through reconditioning. A unit on the way from an auction that a customer is already asking about. And any vehicle a broker or a solo salesperson is working, where there is no lot and no feed behind it at all. The common thread is speed. A customer asks about a car today, and the answer should not wait for the next import. Add it, text the customer the vehicle with its photo and price, and sort out the feed side later. That is also why VIN decode and the vehicle database matters this much: it turns seventeen characters into a listing while the customer is still on the phone. #### What you should see The vehicle in your inventory list with its photos, price and mileage, and a build filled out from the VIN rather than typed by hand. Open it once and read it as a shopper would; a wrong trim or a missing price is easier to catch now than after it has gone out in twenty messages. Then it turns up everywhere the rest of your inventory does. It is in the CRM inventory menu and on the phone app. Salespeople drop it into a message from the composer the way send vehicles by text describes, with the photo, the year, make, model and price in the body. It answers a lead form set to show matching vehicles, it publishes on your inventory site and widget, and the vehicle finder locates it when a shopper describes what they want in their own words. #### If it did not work The VIN comes back empty or wrong. Check the characters. There is no letter I, O or Q in a VIN, so those are almost always a one, a zero and a nine. Read it off the door jamb or the registration rather than a handwritten sheet, or scan it with the phone. The unit does not appear in the text composer. Give the save a moment, then search by stock number rather than by model. If it still does not show, the record saved without a price or without the fields the composer uses to build the card; open it and finish it. You added a duplicate. It happens when a feed brings in the same car the next morning. Keep the record with the photos and the correct stock number and remove the other, so a salesperson never sends the wrong price. Photos will not upload. Shoot them landscape and upload from the phone rather than emailing them to yourself first. Until they land, stock imagery covers the unit, as stock photos for listings explains. #### Related tasks If your store does this more than a few times a week, connect a feed or import from the website and keep hand entry for the exceptions. Both are short guides in the LeadLocate Help Center, and both leave the hand entered units exactly where they are. Once a vehicle is in, the merchandising side is the payoff: an inventory site, a widget on the store's own website, brand offer pages, and a vehicle insert button in every text and email your team sends. A field your store wants on a vehicle record that you do not see today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: How long does it take to add one vehicle? A: About a minute with the VIN in hand. The decode fills the build, so you type mileage, price and stock number, then add photos when you have them. Q: Can I add a vehicle from my phone? A: Yes. The portal works on a phone, scanning the VIN off the door jamb beats typing it, and you can shoot and upload the photos in the same pass while standing at the car. Q: What if I do not have photos yet? A: Save the vehicle anyway. Stock imagery for that year, make and model holds the listing until your photographer gets to it, which is far better than an empty photo slot. Q: Do hand added vehicles work in texts and on lead forms? A: Yes. A hand entered unit behaves like any other: it inserts into texts and emails, answers lead forms, publishes to your inventory site and widget, and appears in the CRM. ### How to Add an Add on in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-add-an-add-on Sign in to My LeadLocate and open Add-on Products. Use Add-on categories to narrow the shelf to extra lead sets, extra zones or extra features, then click Add to My Account on the one you want and confirm the order. Add-ons attach to an active subscription, so the new capability shows up on the account right away. Steps: 1. Sign in to My LeadLocate: Open your account portal and sign in with the email on the account. The products shelf is in the same portal as billing, files and support, so you never need a CRM seat to order something for the store. 2. Open the add-on shelf: Click Add-on Products. Everything a store can bolt onto an active plan is listed there with what it does and what it costs, so nothing has to be quoted by email first. What you see is priced for your account. 3. Narrow it to what you actually need: Use Add-on categories to filter the shelf. Extra lead sets add volume where you already sell, extra zones add territory you do not cover yet, and feature add-ons switch on a capability your plan does not include today. Read the description before you pick; a zone and a lead set solve different problems. 4. Add it to the account: Click Add to My Account on the item you want. The portal builds the order and shows you the total before anything is charged, including how it sits alongside what you already pay each month. 5. Confirm the order: Check the summary, then move through to the secure checkout and confirm. Use the card already saved on the account or enter another one. The confirmation screen tells you the order is placed and the account is being set up. 6. Top up the things that run out: For anything that depletes rather than renews, open Refill & Add-on Products in billing and refill it there. That is the quickest route when the store is mid month and needs more of something it already bought once. 7. Give the new capability to a person: If the add-on is a seat or an app a teammate will use, open user access and click Add a User, then set which products that person can launch. An add-on nobody has been given is an add-on nobody uses. #### Before you start You need an active subscription and a My LeadLocate sign in that can reach billing. Add-ons attach to a live plan rather than standing on their own, so the plan comes first and the shelf comes second. What each plan already includes is on pricing, and it is worth reading before you buy: several things dealers expect to pay extra for are in the plan already. Know what problem you are solving. More leads in the zip codes you already work is a lead set. A new town, a second rooftop or a market you want to test is a zone. A capability you saw in a demo and want switched on is a feature. If you are not sure which one you are looking at, call us before you order rather than after; nobody enjoys unpicking a purchase. #### What you should see After you confirm, the order shows as placed and the account moves to setting up. Extra volume and extra territory begin feeding the CRM without anyone in your store touching a setting, and a feature add-on appears on the menus of the users who are allowed to see it. Your next invoice carries the new line alongside the plan, and the receipt for the order itself is in billing with everything else. The shelf itself keeps working after the purchase. Add-on Products shows what you already own, and Refill & Add-on Products is where you go for the things a busy month burns through. Nothing about the plan you are on changes because you added to it: same login, same CRM, same phone app, more of what you bought. #### If it did not work The shelf is empty or the buttons are missing. The account is not currently active, or your user does not have billing on its menu. The account admin can order it, and can also give your user access to billing. You cannot find the add-on you were shown in a demo. Some capabilities are already part of your plan, so they never appear on the shelf. Check pricing, and if it is genuinely something new, it is available on request and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The order went through but nobody can see the new feature. It has not been handed to a user yet. Open user access, pick the person, and switch the product on for them, or use Add a User if they need a sign in of their own. You bought the wrong thing. Call us. Orders on the shelf are for an active account and a person here can sort it out the same day, which is faster than any form. #### What is worth adding first Start with volume where you already close. A lead set in a zip code your store wins in pays faster than a zone in a town nobody drives to, because your pricing, your reputation and your inventory already work there. Add the zone when the current territory is genuinely picked over, not before. Feature add-ons earn their keep when they remove a job nobody in the store enjoys. If your BDC spends its mornings retyping the same message, if your desk is rebuilding the same worksheet by hand, or if every follow up depends on somebody remembering it, the add-on that removes that job pays for itself in a week. The platform overview lists what each product covers so you can tell what is a plan feature and what is a shelf item. #### Related tasks The portal itself, including invoices, receipts, credits, the file library, support tickets and the launch tiles for the CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX, is described on the My LeadLocate page. The LeadLocate Help Center carries the guides that usually follow this one: paying the invoice the add-on lands on, managing which users can reach which apps, and opening a support ticket if something on the shelf reads wrong. If your store wants an add-on nobody else has asked for, say so; our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I buy an add-on without a subscription? A: No. Add-ons attach to an active plan, so the subscription comes first. Pricing lists every plan, and each one is month to month with no long contract behind it. Q: What kinds of add-ons are on the shelf? A: Extra lead sets for more volume where you sell, extra zones for territory you do not cover yet, and feature add-ons that switch on a capability your current plan does not include. Q: How soon does an add-on start working? A: The order is placed as soon as you confirm and the account is set up from there. Extra volume and territory begin feeding the CRM without anyone in the store changing a setting. Q: Where do I refill something that runs out? A: Open Refill and Add-on Products in billing. That screen handles the items a store uses up during a month, so you are not reordering from the main shelf every time. ### How to Ask Jax in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-ask-jax Click the ask box in the middle of the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM, type your question and send it with the arrow. The microphone beside the box takes the question out loud instead. Jax answers in the language you asked in, English or Spanish, and the trash icon clears the thread when you move to something else. Steps: 1. Find the ask box on the dock: The dock runs across the bottom of the CRM. In the middle of it is a box that invites you to ask for help from the assistant, with a send arrow on the right and two small controls under it, a trash icon that clears the conversation and a microphone for speaking instead of typing. It is on every screen in the CRM, so you never leave the lead you are working to ask something. 2. Ask a real question, not a keyword: Type the question the way you would say it to a coworker. Ask how to do the thing you are stuck on, ask it to write the text you are about to send, ask what a term on the worksheet means, ask it to shorten the message you just typed. Short keywords get vague answers; a whole sentence gets a useful one. Send it with the arrow. 3. Or say it out loud: Tap the microphone and speak the question instead. Voice input is the right choice when you are between customers, standing at a desk with paperwork in both hands, or simply faster at talking than typing. The words land in the box, where you can read them before you send, so you can confirm a VIN or a name reads exactly the way you said it. 4. Read the answer and ask the follow up: The answer comes back in the same panel. Keep going in the same thread when your next question is about the same thing, because the follow up lands better with the first question behind it. Ask it to make the draft shorter, friendlier, or to take the exclamation points out. 5. Ask in Spanish if that is how you think: Jax works out whether you are writing or speaking English or Spanish and answers in that language. There is no setting to change and no second app to open. A bilingual floor can share a workstation and the assistant follows whoever is talking, which matters most on the busiest day, when the person handling every Spanish speaking customer is also the person with the least time. 6. Clear the conversation when you change subject: The trash icon under the box clears the thread. Do it when you move from writing a text to a customer to asking how a setting works, so the answers stay on the subject you are actually on. Starting clean takes one click and saves you reading around an old conversation. 7. Take the draft back into the composer: When you have asked for wording, the message still has to go out from the place that records it. Paste or write it into the text or email composer on the lead, read it once more with the customer's name in front of you, and send it from there so the delivery status and the whole thread land on the record. #### Before you start Nothing to install, nothing to enable, no second login. Jax is part of LeadLocate CRM, sitting on the dock with My Office, Marketing Tools, Design Studio, My Inventory, SecureWebX and Reports. If you are signed in to the CRM, the ask box is already in front of you. It helps to know what it is for before the first question. Jax faces the person working at the store: the salesperson with eleven texts to answer, the BDC agent who sends the same kinds of messages all day and needs each one to read like it was written for that shopper, the manager who would rather ask than hunt through a menu. The Jax page covers what the assistant is; this page is how to ask it something. #### What you should see An answer in the panel, in the language you asked in, within a few seconds. A draft you can edit rather than a finished thing you have to accept. The thread staying where it is while you keep working in the CRM behind it, because the assistant sits on the dock and not in a separate window you have to go back and forth to. What you will not see is anything leaving the building on its own. Jax drafts; a person sends. Every text and email still goes out from your login, from the store's number or the store's domain, with the delivery status on the bubble and the whole conversation in the communications log on the lead. That is the design, not a setting, and it is why the responsibility for what a customer receives stays exactly where it was. #### If it did not work The answer was generic. The question was. Add the detail you left out: the unit, the customer's situation, what you already tried, how long the message should be. Ask again in the same thread and the second answer is usually the one you wanted. It answered in the wrong language. Ask again in the language you want the answer in and it follows. A question typed in English gets an English answer even from a Spanish speaking rep, so type the way you want to read. The microphone did not pick anything up. The browser asks for permission to use the microphone the first time; allow it. Then speak at a normal distance, and read what landed in the box before you send it. The answers are drifting off the subject. Clear the conversation with the trash icon and ask the new question on a clean thread. You wanted a person. Support is in the top bar, the feedback button on the dock sends a note or a request with a screenshot, and our team can see your screen with you and walk through it on the call. #### Jax faces you, not your customers This is the line worth being precise about. Jax helps the people who work at your store. Your shoppers hear from your people, and every message that reaches a shopper goes out only after a person at the store has read it first. The customer facing tools are separate and they are on purpose. A shopper on one of your vehicle pages who taps Ask a Question sends an inquiry that lands in the CRM as a lead, for a person to answer. Live chat on your site is its own product with its own page. And what your store tells the answering service about the phones is a setting of its own in the receptionist and call handling settings, where the call instructions box prompts you with When to transfer, when to take a message, what to ask for. Three different jobs, three different tools, and a rep in the middle of all of them. #### Related tasks Most of what people ask Jax for is wording, and the writing assistant built into the text and email composers is the faster route for that: it drafts in the composer you are already in. The AI writing assistant page covers it, and the LeadLocate Help Center has the step by step guides for texting a customer, sending a vehicle in a text and reading a call transcript. A store that wants the assistant to know its own way of doing things has a Jax AI Trainer tab on the CRM's training page, where a Master Administrator adds what the store wants it to know. Anything beyond that which your dealership needs is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your store. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is Jax in LeadLocate? A: On the dock at the bottom of the CRM. The ask box sits in the middle of it, with a send arrow, a microphone for voice input and a trash icon that clears the conversation. Q: Does Jax speak Spanish? A: Yes. It works out whether you are writing or speaking English or Spanish and answers in that language, with no setting to change. Q: Who does Jax work for? A: The people who work at the store. Every message to a customer goes out from a person's login, from the store's number or domain, and lands on the lead. Q: Can I ask Jax to write a text for me? A: Yes, and you can also ask in the composer itself, where the writing assistant drafts the message in place and you edit it before sending. ### How to Attach a Worksheet to an Application in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-attach-a-worksheet-to-an-application Open the credit application in the SecureWebX console and use Attach a worksheet. Find an existing pencil with Search Worksheet ID, vehicle, VIN, stock #, name… or start a fresh one with Create New Worksheet, then click Attach to this deal. The structure now travels with the application, and you choose whether a lender sees it. See credit application worksheets. Steps: 1. Open the application: In the SecureWebX console, find the deal in the inbox and click Open application. The worksheet belongs to this record, so start from the customer's file rather than from a list of loose pencils. 2. Open the worksheet panel: On the application, use Attach a worksheet. The panel shows anything already attached to this deal and gives you the two ways forward: pick a worksheet you already built, or build one now. 3. Find the pencil you already built: Use Search Worksheet ID, vehicle, VIN, stock #, name… to pull up the structure the desk worked earlier. Searching by stock number or VIN is usually fastest, and the worksheet ID is what a manager will quote you across the desk. 4. Or create one from the application: No pencil yet, click Create New Worksheet and build it from here. Your store's defaults fill the new sheet so tax, fees and the term grid start where your desk starts, and the vehicle can be decoded from a VIN or looked up by stock number against your inventory. 5. Attach it to the deal: Click Attach to this deal. The worksheet now shows on the application, and the application shows on the worksheet, so a manager landing on either one sees both. An application can also stand alone: choose No worksheet (documents only) when the desk is running the numbers in the CRM and the file only needs to move. 6. Name it so the file reads: Open it with Open this worksheet and give it a Worksheet name that says what it is: the unit, or the structure, or the lender it was built for. Three unnamed pencils on one customer is how the wrong number gets quoted at delivery. 7. Decide what the lender sees: When you send the file out, Deal worksheet (optional: the structure the lender sees) controls whether your structure travels with it. Attached and shared, the lender opens a deal recap laid out the way a buyer reads it. Attached and not shared, the worksheet stays inside your store. 8. Swap it when the deal changes: Customers change direction, and the record should follow. Duplicate the worksheet to try a different term or a different unit, attach the new one, and detach the structure that no longer describes the deal. The history stays on the file. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login with a role that works deals, and an application in the credit application inbox. The console opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account. It is worth setting your worksheet defaults once before the first deal, so every new pencil starts with your store's tax treatment, fees, term grid and disclaimer instead of a blank sheet. And know where your numbers come from: worksheets here run at parity with the LeadLocate CRM desking engine described on the desking tool page, so a payment quoted on the floor and a payment attached to the application agree to the dollar. #### What you should see The worksheet listed on the application, with the vehicle, the structure and its worksheet ID, and the application listed on the worksheet. Opening either one gets you to the other. A deal with no structure attached shows that plainly too, which is exactly right for a file the desk has not priced yet. When you share the file, the lender's copy of the structure is the deal recap PDF: the vehicle with its confirmed build and options, the term, the numbers and the decoded vehicle details. The credit application worksheets page covers what a worksheet holds, and Send to Lender covers the share itself. #### Cash, finance or lease, and where the numbers come from A worksheet is built as a cash, finance or lease pencil, and it carries the deal vehicle with it. Decode a VIN into year, make and model, or look the unit up by stock number against your own inventory so price, mileage and equipment come from the record you already maintain. A manager confirms the build, the factory packages, the options and the dealer added equipment from the window sticker, and marks it confirmed, so the structure prices the car on your lot rather than a guess at one. From there the book-out lives in the same panel, with Kelley Blue Book QuickValues for the book figure, and title, stolen, sales history, auction history and warranty checks are set up for your dealership on request; our team puts them in production. That is why a lender reading the recap can answer faster; the vehicle side of the deal is already documented when the file arrives. #### If it did not work The worksheet is not in the search. Search by stock number or VIN rather than by name, since a pencil built in a hurry often has no name yet. If it was built on another customer, create a new one on this application instead of attaching the wrong deal's numbers. You attached the wrong one. Detach it and attach the right one. The application records both, so the file shows the structure you actually sent, not just the last one standing. The lender got the application without the numbers. The share was sent with documents only. Send a fresh share with the worksheet included, or attach the worksheet first and then share. Every new worksheet starts wrong. Your defaults need a pass. Set the tax treatment, fees, term grid and disclaimer once at the store level and every new pencil starts there, which saves a correction on every deal after it. #### Related tasks The worksheet itself, cash, finance and lease at parity with the desk, the deal vehicle, the book-out and the recap PDF, is described on the credit application worksheets page. Sending the file with the structure attached is on Send to Lender, and what a lender asks for afterward is tracked on the stipulations workflow. The LeadLocate Help Center holds the rest of the finance office guides, and a worksheet layout your desk wants is available on request, with our team putting it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Can one application carry more than one worksheet? A: Yes. Duplicate a pencil to try another term or another unit and attach the one that describes the deal. Detach the structures that no longer apply, and the history stays on the file. Q: Does the lender always see the worksheet? A: Only when you send it. The share panel asks whether the deal worksheet travels with the application, so you can send the structure to one lender and the documents alone to another. Q: Can an application move without a worksheet? A: Yes. Choose documents only. Stores that desk in the CRM often work that way, with the application carrying the customer's file and the numbers living where the desk already keeps them. Q: Do the numbers match what we quoted on the floor? A: They do. Worksheets in SecureWebX run at parity with the LeadLocate CRM desking engine, so the payment on the showroom pencil and the payment attached to the application agree to the dollar. ### How to Authenticate Your Email Domain in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-authenticate-your-email-domain Authenticating your email domain in LeadLocate CRM makes every email the CRM sends, from a one to one reply to a bulk blast, leave from your dealership's own domain with the records receiving servers check. The Master Administrator chooses the domain and opens a support ticket, our team supplies the records, you publish them where the domain is managed, and a test email confirms the sender. Steps: 1. Choose the domain: Decide which domain the store's email should come from. Most stores use the same domain as their website, so the address a customer sees matches the site they visited. A group with several rooftops can authenticate one domain per rooftop. 2. Open a support ticket: Sign in as a Master Administrator, open More Options on the dock and choose Support Tickets. Name the domain you want to send from and whether it is managed inside LeadLocate or elsewhere. Domain authentication is set once for the account, not per user, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. 3. Receive the records: Our team replies on the ticket with the records the domain needs: one that names the servers allowed to send for it, one that carries the signing key, and a policy record that tells receiving servers what to do with mail that fails. Each is a name and a value to be published on the domain. 4. Publish the records where the domain lives: If the domain is managed inside the CRM, open the Website menu, go to My Domains, open the domain and add each record in the DNS editor exactly as supplied. If the domain is managed elsewhere, whoever handles the store's website adds the same records there. It takes a few minutes either way. 5. Confirm with our team: Reply on the ticket once the records are published. Our team checks that they resolve and switches the account to send from the domain. Records published outside the CRM can take a little time to propagate before the check passes. 6. Send a test email: Open Send an Email in the top bar, address a message to yourself from the Email Composer and send it. The message arrives from the store's domain, with your Email Signature beneath it. Every tool in the account now sends the same way with no per user change. #### What do you need before you start? You need a Master Administrator login, because a sending domain is a store asset and the ticket that sets it up is raised from the account, not from a salesperson's profile. You need to know where the domain is managed: inside LeadLocate, where the Website menu holds domain search, purchase, transfer out and a self service DNS editor under My Domains, or with an outside provider, in which case you need whoever holds that login on hand for a few minutes. Nothing needs to be bought. Email domain authentication is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan with no deliverability surcharge. If the store does not yet own a domain, the same Website menu lets you search for one and purchase it inside the CRM, and the custom domains and DNS page covers those tools. Do this before the ticket so the records have somewhere to go. #### What should you see when it works? The test message you send from the Email Composer arrives from an address on the store's domain, and when a customer forwards it to a spouse the spouse sees the dealership's name where the sender goes, not a string of characters from a sending service. Replies thread back into the Email Inbox under the lead. From that point every email tool in the account uses the domain without a second setting: the composer under the Email menu, Bulk Email and Email Automation under Marketing Tools on the dock, the Automated Templates that answer a Sunday night lead within the minute, the Follow Up Processes behind every lead type, and the composer in the LeadLocate mobile app. What the store notices over the following weeks is the absence of the old problems: fewer customers saying they never got the email, and drip steps that were going to junk starting to be read. #### What if it did not work? Our team's check fails after you published the records. A value was pasted with a stray space, a record name was entered with the domain repeated on the end, or the outside provider has not propagated the change yet. Open the domain under My Domains or at the provider, compare each record character by character with the ticket, and reply once they match. Give an outside provider some time before asking for a second check. The test email still shows a shared sending address. The account has not been switched yet because the check has not passed, or the message was sent from a user whose profile carries a different reply address. Confirm the switch on the ticket, then check the user's Edit User profile. Emails send from the domain but still land in junk for some customers. Authentication makes a message trustworthy; it does not make a dead list healthy. Run the Email Validator on the list before the next blast, and keep sending to people who asked to hear from the store. #### Which related tasks come next? The email domain authentication feature page explains what the records do and why volume from an unauthenticated address is the pattern receiving servers distrust. The domain itself, whether purchased through the CRM or pointed from elsewhere, is covered on custom domains and DNS. Once the domain is authenticated, clean lists are what keep it in good standing, so pair it with the Email Validator before any campaign and with the email drip automation that generates most of a store's volume. Whether the messages earn replies once they land shows in the Reports dashboard on the dock, by user and by day. The rest of the guides are on the help center. #### Tips from the floor Raise the ticket on the onboarding call rather than a month later. A store that authenticates on day one never learns what a shared address costs. Tell the floor when the switch happens, because salespeople who gave up on CRM email and were texting from personal phones need a reason to come back to the composer, where every send is logged under the lead. A domain per rooftop, a separate sending domain for marketing versus one to one mail, or a policy record set to reject rather than quarantine is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Describe what you want through contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I have to authenticate the domain for each user? A: No. Authentication is set once for the account by the Master Administrator working with our team, and every user and every email tool in the account sends from the domain from then on. Q: What if our domain is managed by our website company? A: Our team supplies the records on the support ticket and whoever manages the domain adds them there. It takes a few minutes, and you reply on the ticket when they are published so our team can check them. Q: Can I use a domain purchased inside LeadLocate? A: Yes. The Website menu includes domain search and purchase and a self service DNS editor under My Domains, so the records can be published without leaving the CRM. Q: Does authentication stop our emails from going to junk? A: It makes the store the verifiable sender, which is what receiving servers check first. Clean lists and messages people asked for do the rest, so run the Email Validator before campaigns. ### How to Blacklist a Number in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-blacklist-a-number To blacklist a number in LeadLocate CRM, open the lead and click Blacklist in its button row, then confirm. To add a number that has no lead, open Billing & Admin, then DNC Blacklist, click Add to Blacklist and enter the name, phone and email. Blocked contacts disappear from Leads, Contacts and the inbox. Steps: 1. Blacklist from the lead: Open the lead in Leads or open the customer's text thread. In the button row, next to In Store Now, Print and Delete, click Blacklist. The CRM warns that the contact will be hidden from all CRM views; confirm, and the customer is gone from every screen. 2. Or open the DNC Blacklist page: For a number that is not on a lead, open Billing & Admin in the main menu and choose DNC Blacklist. The page is titled Do Not Call Blacklist and lists every blocked contact with who added it, its activity and when it was blocked. 3. Add the contact: Click Add to Blacklist. Fill in Contact Name, Contact Phone and Contact Email; any one of the three is enough, but the more you enter, the more the block catches. Under the phone field the live do not call lookup reports the line type and whether the number is on the national registry. 4. Save and check the row: Save the form. The contact appears in the list with your name under Added By, and the Activity column carries a small counter whose label reads Leads in the CRM matching this contact, so you can see how many leads the block just hid. If it reads no leads, the number or email did not match any lead in the account. 5. Import a list: To bring over a do not contact list from a previous CRM, click Import, drop a CSV with Name, Phone and Email columns on the Import DNC Blacklist panel, and use Back to Blacklist when it finishes. Every contact in the file is hidden as soon as the import completes. 6. Remove one if you must: On the entry, click Remove from Blacklist and confirm with Yes, Remove. The contact is restored to the views it came from. Do this only when the customer has asked to hear from you again. #### Before you start The Blacklist button on the lead is there for every user, because the person who reads the stop request is the person who should act on it. The DNC Blacklist page sits under Billing & Admin, so if you do not see that menu, ask your master administrator to add the contact or to import the list. Have the number or the email address exactly as the customer used it; the block matches on what is stored, so a number with a typo blocks nothing. Know what the block does. A blacklisted contact is hidden from Leads, Contacts and the inbox, and is left out of bulk texting and bulk email lists. The block works both ways: inbound texts and calls from that number are stopped too, and the entry counts what it stopped. The Do Not Call Scrub and Blacklist page explains the lookup and the compliance side in full. #### What you should see After you confirm from the lead, the lead is gone from the list and from the rep's inbox, and from the manager's list and any scheduled bulk text. On the Do Not Call Blacklist page the contact appears as a row under the Contact, Added By, Activity, Blocked and Options columns, with the name, phone and email you entered. The Activity column carries two small counters: how many leads in the CRM match this contact, and, once the block has stopped something, how many inbound messages it stopped, with the time of the last one on the counter's label. The lookup under the phone field is the other thing to read. It reports the line type, so a landline is told from a mobile, and whether the number appears on the national do not call registry, checked on demand against a current source rather than a list the store downloaded months ago. What the store does with that fact is the store's policy; the blacklist is the tool to act on it with one click. The caller ID and contact validation page covers the related checks on a lead. #### If it did not work The customer is still texting a rep. The block is keyed on the number the customer writes from. If they text from a second number, add that number too; the Add to Blacklist form takes a phone, an email or both, and one entry per number is fine. The lead is still in the list. The entry was saved with a number formatted differently from the lead, or with only an email while the lead has only a phone. Look at the entry's Activity counter; if it reads no leads, remove the entry with Remove from Blacklist and add it again with the phone or email exactly as the lead carries it. The import took the file but nothing was blocked. The CSV needs Name, Phone and Email column headings in the first row. Open the file, fix the headings, and run Import DNC Blacklist again. Someone removed a contact by mistake. Add them again from Add to Blacklist. The activity on the new entry starts from zero, and the removal and the re-add both show who did them. #### Related tasks A stop request usually arrives as a text, so the two way texting inbox is where most reps meet this button. A do not contact list from a previous CRM comes over the same way a book of business does, and the contact import guide covers the CSV shape. Every guide for the CRM is in the Help Center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows how the blacklist sits with texting, calling and the communications log. #### Tips from the floor Make the Blacklist button the store's only answer to a stop request. Not a note on the lead, not an email to the team, the button. Import the old list on day one, before the first bulk text goes out, so the store's history of opt outs does not reset with the new CRM. And before any campaign to a list of uncertain origin, run the doubtful numbers through the lookup on the Do Not Call Blacklist page; it takes seconds and the entry records that it was checked. #### Questions and answers Q: What happens to a blacklisted contact? A: It is hidden from Leads, Contacts and the inbox, left out of bulk texting and bulk email lists, and inbound texts and calls from that number are stopped. The entry shows who added it, when, and what it stopped. Q: Who can blacklist a number? A: Any user can click Blacklist on a lead or a text thread. The DNC Blacklist page with the add form, the lookup and the import sits under Billing & Admin. Q: Can I import an existing do not call list? A: Yes. Click Import on the DNC Blacklist page and drop a CSV with Name, Phone and Email columns on the Import DNC Blacklist panel. Every contact in the file is hidden as soon as the import completes. Q: What does the lookup under the phone field check? A: The line type, so a landline is told from a mobile, and whether the number is on the national do not call registry, checked on demand against a current source. ### How to Build a Follow up Process in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-build-a-follow-up-process A Follow Up Process in LeadLocate CRM is a timeline of steps that runs after a lead status changes or an appointment event happens. Each step lands at an offset, creates a task for the salesperson and can auto send a text or email. You build one on the Follow Up Processes page under Billing and Admin, in the Process Builder, and save it with an ending status. Steps: 1. Open Follow Up Processes: In LeadLocate CRM on the desktop, open the Billing & Admin menu and click Follow Up Processes. The page lists the default processes the account came with, such as New Lead 14 Day Follow Up, each with an Enabled switch. 2. Start a new process: Click + New Process and choose Create a brand new follow up process from scratch. The Process Builder opens. Type a Process Name that says what lead type it is for, such as Missed Appointment Reschedule. 3. Pick the trigger: Under Starts When choose one of the two triggers. Lead status changes to starts the process when a lead moves to the status you pick from your own status list. Appointment event happens starts it on Appointment completed, Missed appointment or a number of hours before the visit. 4. Add the timeline steps: Click Add Step for each touch. Set the offset and its unit from the trigger, the channels the step uses, a task title and the salesperson instructions that appear on the task. Attach an optional text or email template with the merge fields for the customer name, the vehicle and the store, and decide whether the message auto sends or waits in the task. 5. Decide how the process ends: Under After Last Step choose Change to status with a Final Status, Move to Lost with reason with a Lost Reason, or No status change. Every process should end somewhere so a customer who never answers stops being messaged. 6. Write the notes and save: Put the why in Manager Notes for whoever runs the desk after you, then click Save Follow Up Process. Make sure the Enabled switch on the list is on. #### Before you start You need a Manager or Master Administrator role in LeadLocate CRM. Before you open the builder, decide which lead type the process is for and which trigger fits it. A status trigger needs the status to exist first; if your store uses custom statuses such as Visited No Purchase, add them under the lead status settings before you build the process that starts on them. An appointment trigger needs nothing extra. Write the cadence on paper: how many touches, how far apart, which ones are a text the system sends on its own and which ones are a call a person should make. Your best salesperson already does this by hand; ask them. If the first touch is what you are after, that belongs in Automated Templates, which fire on lead receipt. A process picks up after that. #### What you should see After saving, the Follow Up Processes list shows your new process by name with Enabled on. Open it again and the Process Builder shows the trigger, the steps in order with their offsets, and the ending you chose. Test it on a real lead. Change a test lead to the trigger status, or mark a test appointment missed, and the first task appears on the assigned salesperson's Workspace at the offset you set, with the title, the instructions and the lead attached. A step set to auto send has already sent its text or email by the time the rep sees the task; a step not set to auto send waits in the task for the rep to read, edit and send. Open the lead and the communications log shows each message the process sent with its delivery status. When the last step passes, the lead moves to the final status you chose or to lost with the reason you set. #### If it did not work The process never started. The trigger did not fire. For a status trigger, confirm the lead moved to exactly the status you picked; a similar sounding status is a different status. For an appointment trigger, confirm the appointment was marked completed or missed rather than deleted. Check that Enabled is on for the process. The task appeared but no message went out. The step is not set to auto send, which is by design for steps a person should read first. Open the step and switch auto send on if you want the message to go on its own. A number on the DNC blacklist or a customer who replied STOP is never messaged by a step, and that is correct behavior. You edited a default process into a corner. Click Restore Defaults on the page. Your own processes are separate and stay as you built them. If a process should be removed, open it and click Delete Process. #### Related tasks Set the first touch on the Automated Templates page so the process has something to follow. Give the reschedule step a link the customer can act on with an appointment booking link, and if a step should carry the unit with photos and price, attach the vehicle from inventory in the template. A rep can also put a specific process on a single appointment from the appointment itself, without waiting for a status change. The Follow Up Processes feature page covers the builder in full. Every other walkthrough is in the help center, and the contact page reaches a person who will build your first process with you. #### Tips from the floor One process per lead type, not one process for everyone. A missed appointment and a lost deal deserve a different pace and a different tone. Make the first step a text the system sends and the second step a call a person makes; the text warms the call. Keep the whole timeline finite and end it with a status, because a lead that sits in the pipeline forever is worse than a lead marked lost with a real reason. And use the notes field: the manager who inherits your processes in a year will thank you. #### Questions and answers Q: What can start a follow up process? A: One of two triggers: a lead status changing to a status you choose, or an appointment event, which is appointment completed, missed appointment, or a set number of hours before the appointment. Q: Does the salesperson have to do anything? A: Only what the step asks. The task appears on their Workspace with the instructions and the lead attached. Messages set to auto send have already gone; messages not set to auto send wait in the task for the rep to send. Q: How do I stop messaging a customer who never answers? A: Set After Last Step to change to a final status or move the lead to lost with a reason. The process ends there and no further step runs. Q: Can I get the default processes back after editing them? A: Yes. Restore Defaults on the Follow Up Processes page puts the default set back. Processes you built yourself are separate and are not touched. ### How to Build a Lead Campaign in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-build-a-lead-campaign A lead campaign in LeadLocate CRM is built in Leads Manager. You create the campaign, choose whether it brings in buyers or sellers, draw the Sales Zone on the map, run Scan My Market to read the area, set the offers the campaign leads with, choose the schedule and volume, review and submit. Our team runs the media from those selections and every lead lands in your CRM inbox. Steps: 1. Create the campaign: In LeadLocate CRM on the desktop, open Leads Manager and click Create a New Campaign. Choose Inbound Campaign for buyer leads or Acquisitions Campaign for local owners who want an offer on their vehicle. Type a Campaign Name that says where and what, such as Westside 30 Mile Shoppers, and click Continue to Zone Setup. 2. Draw the sales zone: On the Sales Zone step, enter the dealership address or a landmark to center the map and set the Sales zone radius. Adjust the shape ZIP by ZIP so the zone covers where you deliver cars and leaves out where you never have. The zip stats beside each ZIP tell you whether an outlying one earns its place. 3. Scan the market: Click Scan My Market or Scan This Zone to read the area you are about to campaign in. Use what it shows to decide whether the zone is the right size before you spend anything on it. 4. Set the offers: Under Custom Offers click Add Offer for each offer the campaign leads with: the event this month, the trade in offer, the financing offer the store runs year round. Click See Samples to see what a shopper in the zone will see, and open How the lead form works to read what the form asks. 5. Choose schedule and volume: On Schedule & Volume set when the campaign runs and how many leads a month you want it to bring in. Under Delivery Preferences confirm how the leads reach your team; they land in the CRM inbox with the campaign as their source. 6. Review and submit: Open Review, read the zone, the offers and the volume back to yourself, then submit the campaign. Our team takes those selections and runs the media. To rename it later use Rename campaign; to run a second zone click Add Another Campaign. #### Before you start Leads Manager is available on the plans that include leads, listed month to month on the pricing page; a store on CRM Only moves to one of those to build a campaign. A Manager or Master Administrator role in LeadLocate CRM is required. Before you open the builder, know three things: the territory you actually deliver into, the offers the store is running this month, and how many leads a month the floor can work well. A zone drawn around where the service customers live beats a zone drawn around the county line. For a buyer campaign, the units the store has are what get advertised where the campaign calls for them, because Inventory Link reads your live inventory; a feed is not required, so a broker with no lot runs the same builder. For a seller campaign, the leads are local owners who filled out one of our vehicle offer request pages and asked to be contacted. If you hold your own advertising accounts and want the campaign to run through them, connect them first from Ad Accounts. #### What you should see After you submit, the campaign appears in the Leads Manager list with its name, its Ad Network and its Network Status. Open it and the zone, the offers and the volume are as you set them; the campaign is a thing you edit, not a thing you ordered. Our team launches and manages the media from your selections. Within days the first leads land in the CRM inbox with the campaign as their source. Every lead submitted inside the zone is delivered to your store and to nobody else, prescreened at capture by the questions on the form, and backed by a replacement review, so a wrong number or a duplicate goes through a Quality Control Request and costs you nothing. Round robin hands each lead to the floor, the Automated Templates for the feed send the first text, and a month later the Reports dashboard shows what the zone produced so you can redraw it. #### If it did not work The builder is not in your menu. The account is on a plan without leads. The pricing page lists the plans that include Leads Manager, and moving to one is done from My LeadLocate. The campaign submitted but no leads have arrived. Check Network Status on the campaign. A campaign our team is still completing has not gone live yet; once it is live, leads follow within days, not minutes. If the zone is very small or the volume is set low, the first leads take longer; open the campaign, read the market scan again and widen the zone or raise the volume. The leads are landing under the wrong feed. Give the campaign its own feed in Lead Feeds Manager so the leads carry the campaign as their source and get their own first touch templates. Some targeting controls are locked. That is a financing campaign, which runs under fair lending rules; it is planned around a zone and an offer, and our team runs it that way. #### Related tasks Give the campaign's leads their own feed and their own Automated Templates in Lead Feeds Manager. If the store already holds advertising accounts, connect your own ad accounts and point the campaign at one; otherwise the managed webXintel Ads Network carries it. To cover the next town, add a zone from My LeadLocate and draw it in Leads Manager the same day. The Leads Manager feature page covers the builder in full and the what to expect from car sales leads page explains what the inbox will look like. Every other walkthrough is in the help center, and the contact page reaches a person who will look at your market with you. #### Tips from the floor Draw the zone around where you deliver, not around where you wish you delivered. Lead with the offer the store can actually honor on a Saturday afternoon. Set the volume to what the floor can call back within minutes, because a lead the store cannot answer is money spent twice. Redraw the zone once a month from the Reports numbers rather than from a feeling, and name campaigns by place and offer so a year from now the list still makes sense. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I run the ads myself? A: No. You make the selections in Leads Manager, the zone, the offers, the schedule and the volume, and our team runs the media from them, through the managed network or through ad accounts you have connected. Q: Are the leads exclusive to my store? A: Yes. Every lead submitted inside your zone is delivered to your store and to nobody else, prescreened at capture and backed by a replacement review, so a bad lead costs you nothing. Q: Can I change the zone after the campaign starts? A: Yes. Open the campaign in Leads Manager, redraw the zone, adjust the offers or the volume and submit again. Our team runs the updated selections. Q: What is the difference between an inbound and an acquisitions campaign? A: An Inbound Campaign brings in buyers who want a vehicle. An Acquisitions Campaign brings in local owners who filled out one of our vehicle offer request pages and want a number on their car. ### How to Build an IVR Call Flow in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-build-an-ivr-call-flow Building an IVR call flow in LeadLocate CRM means designing, step by step, what happens when somebody calls your tracking number: a greeting, a menu of options, and for each option a ring group, a voicemail, a message or a business hours check. You build it in the Call Flow section of IVR Settings, every save is kept as a revision, and an unfinished flow never goes live. Steps: 1. Open the Call Flow section: Sign in as a Master Administrator. Open Billing & Admin, then Account Settings, then Phone & IVR and IVR Settings. Scroll to Call Flow. While the flow is off, your number keeps standard handling: the Forward Calls To list rings and the Company Voicemail takes messages. 2. Set the store's hours first: Tick Open 24 hours or use Edit Hours to enter the real schedule. A business hours step in the flow branches on these hours, and the team calendar and anything that answers the phone for you follow the same schedule, so set them once here. 3. Turn on your own call flow and add the greeting: Switch the section from standard handling to your own flow. Add the greeting as the first step: type it as text and the system speaks it, or press Upload Greeting to use a recording in your own voice. Keep it short and end with the options. 4. Add the menu and a step behind each option: Add a menu step and map each key a caller can press to what happens next: ring a group of phones, take a voicemail, play a message, check business hours, pause, or end the call. Steps chain, so sales can ring three phones and then fall to voicemail while service plays a message and transfers. 5. Save the flow: Save with the bar at the bottom of the page. Every save is kept under Earlier versions, so you can read what the menu said last month and go back to it. A flow is live only when it is saved, switched on and complete; anything else stays on standard handling. 6. Test every option by phone: Call the tracking number from a cell phone that is not on the ring list. Listen to the greeting, press each key in turn and confirm where it lands. Each call shows on the Calls page with its recording, and on the mobile app under Call Logs. #### What do you need before you start? You need a Master Administrator login, because the Call Flow section of IVR Settings is read only for everyone else. You need the store's real hours, the phone numbers each option should ring, and a sketch on paper of the menu: which key goes to sales, which to service, and what a caller hears after close. Most stores fit on one page. Nothing needs to be bought. The builder is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan and a new account starts without a menu, with the tracking number ringing the Forward Calls To list through plain forwarding. A flow answers calls only once you switch it on, so you can build it over several sittings and every caller keeps hearing the way your store answers today. A ring step inside the flow uses the same dialing, the same press 5 confirmation under Call Handling and the same recording as a plain forwarded call. #### What should you see when it works? On the next call to the tracking number the caller hears your greeting instead of ringing straight through. Pressing a key does what the menu says: the sales option rings the phones you listed, the service option plays its message or transfers, and after close the business hours step takes a message with the Company Voicemail greeting. A step with nothing after it, a caller who presses a wrong key too many times, and a ring group nobody answers all land on voicemail, so a caller who does what the menu asks is never left in silence. The Calls page logs each call with its recording and the path the caller took, and the lead's timeline carries it in order with the texts and emails around it. Earlier versions lists every revision you saved, which is how the argument about what the menu used to say gets settled by reading it rather than remembering it. #### What if it did not work? Callers still ring straight through with no greeting. The flow is switched off, or it is incomplete: a menu with no options, or an option pointing at a step that no longer exists. Reopen Call Flow, fix the loose end, confirm the switch is on and save. Until then standard handling runs on purpose. An option goes to voicemail instead of ringing anyone. The ring step has no numbers, or the numbers are not phones a person answers. Enter the mobiles from User Management, and if the press 5 confirmation under Call Handling is on, make sure none of those numbers is a phone tree. Phones ring at night. There is no business hours step in front of the menu, or Open 24 hours is ticked. Clear it, set Edit Hours, and add the hours step ahead of the menu so late callers hear a message and leave one. If a change made things worse, open Earlier versions and go back to the revision that worked, or press Back to standard handling to switch the flow off while you fix it. #### Which related tasks come next? The builder decides where a caller goes; the pieces it sends them to are their own features. The IVR call flow builder feature page explains the steps and the revision rule in full. A ring step uses the list covered on call forwarding and ring lists, and each line the menu answers is one of your tracking phone numbers. A store that would rather have a caller greeted and asked what they need than offered a numbered menu should turn on the virtual receptionist, which sits on the same page and can be placed behind a menu option. The automotive phone system page frames the menu as one part of the store's whole phone setup. The rest of the guides are on the help center. #### Tips from the floor Two options beat six. A shopper who dialed the number on an ad wants sales; a coupon holder wants service. Give each a key and send everyone else to a person. Keep the greeting under fifteen seconds and put the most common option first, because callers press before the list ends. Type the greeting as text while you are still changing it, and record it in your own voice once it has survived a week. Describe the menu you want and our team builds it for you, and a menu that differs by tracking number is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Ask through contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: What happens if I save a flow that is not finished? A: Nothing changes for callers. A flow is live only when it is saved, switched on and complete. An unfinished flow, or any step that leads nowhere, falls back to standard handling automatically. Q: Can I go back to a previous version of the menu? A: Yes. Every save is kept under Earlier versions on the Call Flow section, so you can read a past revision and restore it, or switch the flow off with Back to standard handling while you edit. Q: Do I have to record the audio myself? A: No. Type the greeting or any message as text and the system speaks it. When you want your own voice, upload a recording with Upload Greeting. Q: Does the menu replace our main switchboard? A: No. The flow governs the tracking numbers a shopper dials from an ad or listing. Reception, parts and the main published number keep whatever system they use, and many stores run both side by side. ### How to Buy Usage Credits in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-buy-usage-credits Sign in to My LeadLocate, open the billing page and scroll to Service Credits. Under Refill & Add-on Products, choose a pack for bulk texting, bulk email, voicemail drops, phone validation or email validation, then press Pay Online for the secure checkout or Pay with Prepaid Balance. The credits are applied to the account right away. Steps: 1. Sign in to My LeadLocate: Open your account portal and sign in with the email on the account. A magic link by email or a code by text message gets you in without a password. Use the login that reaches billing, which is normally the account admin or the billing contact. 2. Open billing and find Service Credits: Click Billing in the portal menu and scroll to the Service Credits card. The first tile is your prepaid balance, and beside it sits one tile for each credit type with its live balance: bulk texting, bulk email, voicemail drops, phone validation and email validation. Read the tile for the tool you are about to use before you buy. 3. Pick a pack: Under Refill & Add-on Products, open the package list. Packs are grouped by credit type, each with its price beside it: 3,000, 5,000 or 10,000 bulk texts; 3,000, 5,000 or 10,000 bulk emails; 500, 1,000 or 5,000 ringless voicemail deliveries; and 1,000, 5,000 or 10,000 phone or email validations. Choose the one that covers your next send. 4. Pay online or from your prepaid balance: Press Pay Online to open the secure checkout in a new tab, and the credits are added as soon as the payment is confirmed. If the account carries a prepaid balance, press Pay with Prepaid Balance instead: the first press shows the exact amount it will charge, and a second press confirms the purchase. 5. Check the new balance: A confirmation line under the buttons shows how many credits were added and the new balance, and the tile for that credit type updates on the same screen. The purchase appears under Transactions on the billing page alongside every other payment. 6. Send from the CRM: Open LeadLocate CRM and choose the tool from Marketing Tools on the dock. Bulk Texting shows the message credit balance beside the send button, and the Phone Validator and Email Validator show a Credits figure before a run, so the team sees the new balance the next time the page opens. #### Before you start You need a My LeadLocate login that reaches the billing page. That is usually the account admin or the billing contact your store named at signup. Salespeople and BDC agents spend credits inside the CRM, and the account holder decides what is bought, which keeps the spend in one pair of hands. Know which tool the credits are for. Each credit type is spent by one tool: bulk texting credits by Bulk Texting, bulk email credits by Bulk Email, ringless voicemail credits by Voicemail Drops, and validation credits by the Phone Validator and Email Validator. The Usage Credits page explains each type and the pack sizes, and pack prices are on the pricing page and beside every pack in the portal. #### What you should see After a purchase from the prepaid balance, the confirmation line under the buttons reads the number of credits added and the new balance, and the tile for that credit type shows the higher figure straight away. The prepaid balance tile drops by the price of the pack. After a purchase through Pay Online, the checkout confirms the payment and the credits are added to the account as soon as it clears; refresh the billing page and the tile shows the new balance. The purchase is recorded under Transactions with the date and amount, and the receipt is there for your office manager. Inside the CRM, the Marketing Tools pages read the new balance the next time they are opened, so a BDC agent who was waiting on credits can send right away. #### Quick checks Match the tile to the tool. Before you press send in the CRM, confirm the pack you bought is the type the tool spends. A bulk email pack powers Bulk Email, and bulk texting has its own balance. Use the checkout when the prepaid balance is short. Pay with Prepaid Balance shows the current balance on the button when it is lower than the pack price. Press Pay Online and the secure checkout takes a card instead. Paying an open invoice at the same time. Invoices have their own pay button under Invoices, and the confirm window asks for the Last 4 Digits of Credit Card so the charge matches the card you meant to use. Want a pack size that is not listed? Open a support request from the portal and your rep sets it up. Anything the shelf does not carry today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Which pack should you buy first? Start with validation. A pack of phone validation credits run against an older list removes the dead and flagged numbers before any text is paid for, and a pack of email validation credits protects the reputation of the store's sending domain before the first blast. Then size the bulk texting pack to the largest list you plan to text in the month, with room for the follow up send to the customers who clicked. Ringless voicemail packs start at 500 deliveries, which suits a focused campaign such as lease maturities or service customers with high equity. When a campaign works, the refill is the same few clicks. #### Related tasks Once the credits are on the account, the guides for spending them are in the LeadLocate Help Center: how to send a bulk text, how to send a bulk email, how to drop a voicemail, and how to validate a phone number. To add extra lead sets, extra zones or extra users to the plan, follow how to add an add-on. For invoices and receipts, see how to pay an invoice and how to view a receipt. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I buy more bulk texting credits? A: Sign in to My LeadLocate, open the billing page and scroll to Service Credits. Choose a bulk texting pack of 3,000, 5,000 or 10,000 messages under Refill and Add-on Products, then press Pay Online or Pay with Prepaid Balance. Q: How soon can I use credits after I buy them? A: Right away. Credits bought from the prepaid balance are added the moment you confirm, and credits bought through the secure checkout are added as soon as the payment clears. The balance tile shows the new figure on the same screen. Q: Can I pay for credits from my prepaid balance? A: Yes. Press Pay with Prepaid Balance, read the amount it will charge, and press it again to confirm. When the prepaid balance is lower than the pack price, the button shows the balance and Pay Online takes a card instead. Q: Who can buy credits for the store? A: Anyone whose My LeadLocate login reaches the billing page, usually the account admin or the billing contact. Salespeople and BDC agents spend the credits from the CRM. ### How to Capture a Trade in in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-capture-a-trade-in Capturing a trade in in LeadLocate CRM starts on the lead card, where Add a Trade-In reveals a trade row with a VIN scan and an odometer field, and finishes on the deal view under Desking, where the allowance, payoff, lienholder and tax credit method go onto the worksheet. Registration, title and payoff documents come in by QR from the customer's phone. Steps: 1. Add the trade row: Expand the lead card and click Add a Trade-In. A Trade-In row appears with a label, an odometer field and a camera control. A second car gets its own row with Add Second Trade-In. 2. Scan the VIN and enter the miles: Use the camera control to read the VIN from the door jamb with a phone, then type the Odometer reading the scanner asks for. The row fills with year, make, model and trim. On the deal, Load trade vehicle details from this VIN confirms the decode. 3. Collect the paperwork by QR: Open the Trade Info scanner on the lead card and show the QR code. The customer photographs the registration, the title and the payoff letter, front and back, and adds vehicle photos from a private single use page on their phone. The scanner reads the payoff amount, lienholder and good through date, and you apply them to the trade with one action. 4. Value the car: On the deal view, click Open Trade Values to open the store's own trade values source, then enter the Trade Allowance and the Trade ACV (Actual Cash Value). If the customer still owes on the car, enter the Payoff Amount and the Lienholder. 5. Set the tax treatment: Check the Trade-In Tax Credit Method on the deal: Credit on Full Trade Allowance (Most States), Credit on Net Trade Equity Only or No Trade-In Tax Credit. It starts from the default in your Dealership Profile, and the worksheet applies the credit and taxes negative equity where required. 6. Ask the customer for photos if needed: Turn on Require trade-in photos from the customer when the manager has not walked the car. The 2. Trade-In step on the customer's deal page then asks for walk around photos with Upload photos of your vehicle. 7. Mark it done: When the desk has what it needs, click Mark trade-in complete on the Road to Sale checklist and save the deal. The trade prints on the customer sheet with the allowance, payoff and net equity. #### What do I need before I capture a trade in? You need the customer's lead or deal open in LeadLocate CRM, a phone with a camera for the VIN scan and the document QR, and the car in front of you or the customer on the other end of a deal page. Any user can capture a trade; nothing is turned on. Two settings make the desk side faster and a manager sets them once: the store's trade values link, so Open Trade Values goes to the source your desk uses, and the default Trade-In Tax Credit Method in the Dealership Profile for your state. Every customer record holds up to two trades, and a record can hold a trade with no vehicle for sale at all, which is how a store buys a car outright; the worksheet has an Acquisition tab for that. A customer who has not visited yet can start from your store's public Trade-in Form, whose link you copy from the calendar settings popup with Copy Trade-in Form link to clipboard. The trade in capture page describes the whole flow from the lot to the worksheet. #### What should I see when the trade is captured? On the lead card, the Trade-In row shows the year, make, model and trim with the odometer beside it, and the mobile app shows the same row. On the deal view, the trade section carries the VIN, the Odometer reading, the Trade Allowance, the Payoff Amount, the Lienholder, the cash value and book value fields, the Trade-In Tax Credit Method and a per deal trade credit cap for states that limit it. The summary rows from the Trade Info scanner show vehicle, VIN, plate, owner, lienholder, payoff amount, payoff good through and odometer, with the original images one click away. On the worksheet, the trade credit is applied by the method you set and the net equity flows into the structure. On the customer's deal page, the 2. Trade-In step shows the trade vehicle, offer, payoff, notes and photos. On the printed customer sheet, the trade line shows allowance, payoff and net equity, and the odometer carries a footnote marker so a printed mileage is never read as a certified disclosure. Removed trade documents sit in the trash bin under Trade Info Documents with restore. #### What if it did not work? The trade credit on the worksheet looks wrong. The Trade-In Tax Credit Method is set for another state's rule, or the per deal cap is on. Check the method on the deal against your state, clear or correct the cap, and the tax line recalculates. The EZ Desking worksheets page explains each method. The payoff did not fill from the documents. The payoff letter photo was not readable, usually a blurry shot or a missing back page. Have the customer retake it on the same phone page; document slots replace within the session, and apply again. You can always type the Payoff Amount and Lienholder by hand from the letter image on the deal. The customer's page does not ask for photos. Require trade-in photos from the customer is off on the deal. Turn it on and save; the 2. Trade-In step shows the photo request the next time the customer opens the page. There is a second car. Use Add Second Trade-In on the deal for the second row; each customer record holds two. #### What do I do next? The trade is one input to the deal. How to desk a deal covers the structure the trade feeds, and how to scan a VIN covers the camera read in more detail. The customer's own identification comes in the same way through how to scan a driver license, and anything else the customer hands you goes into the deal jacket by QR. For a store buying cars from the public, the acquisition deal type on the worksheet and the opt in seller leads described on what to expect from car sales leads fit together. The Help Center lists every task in order, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where trade capture sits in the platform. #### Tips from the floor Scan the VIN in the parking lot before the customer sits down, and type the miles from the dash while you are standing next to it. Show the Trade Info QR code at the desk for the registration the customer has in the glove box, and let the title and payoff letter come in that evening from the couch; the link works from home the same way. Ask for photos through the customer's page rather than a text thread, so the walk around is on the deal and not on somebody's personal phone. And remember how the work divides here: the CRM captures the VIN, miles, photos and documents the valuation needs and applies the number the desk enters, and the store values the car from its own source. #### Questions and answers Q: How many trade ins can a customer have? A: Two per customer record, each with a label, an odometer and a camera control for the VIN scan, and a record can hold trades with no vehicle for sale when the store is buying the car outright. Q: How do I get the title and payoff letter from the customer? A: Show the Trade Info QR code. The customer photographs registration, title and payoff on a private single use phone page, adds vehicle photos, and the scanner reads the payoff amount, lienholder and good through date so you can apply them to the trade. Q: Who values the trade? A: The store does, from its own trade values source, which the deal opens with Open Trade Values. The CRM captures the VIN, miles, photos and documents the valuation needs and applies the number the desk enters. Q: Can the customer send trade photos from home? A: Yes. Turn on Require trade-in photos from the customer on the deal and the trade step of their deal page asks for walk around photos from the phone. ### How to Change a Lead Status in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-change-a-lead-status To change a lead status in LeadLocate CRM, open Leads, find the lead, open the status dropdown on its row and pick the new status. The pill on the row updates at once. Picking Lost opens the Mark Lead As Lost popup for a reason, and your store can add its own statuses to the same list. Steps: 1. Open the lead list: Click Leads in the main menu on the desktop CRM. Each row shows the lead's current status as a pill, with the status dropdown beside it. Use the filter at the top of the list if you need to narrow to New leads or one status. 2. Open the status dropdown: On the lead's row, open the dropdown that reads Change. The list carries the built in statuses such as New, Contacted, Working a Deal, Sale Pending, Sold, On Hold and Lost, followed by any custom statuses your store added. 3. Pick the new status: Choose the status that matches where the lead is now. The pill on the row changes immediately, and the list, the filters and the reports read the new status from that moment. 4. Handle the two special picks: Choosing Lost opens the Mark Lead As Lost popup, which asks for a Reason before the status is saved. Choosing Report to QC opens a request to the Quality Control team instead of changing the status directly. Both are covered in their own guides. 5. Do the same on the phone: In the LeadLocate mobile app, tap a lead in Leads to expand it and use the status dropdown in the expanded row. The same list, including your custom statuses, is there, and the Lost and Quality Control popups open the same way. #### Before you start Any user who can open a lead can change its status; there is nothing to turn on and no manager approval in the way. What is worth agreeing on before the floor starts is what each status means at your store, because the status list is shared by every user in the account. A store where one rep uses Contacted to mean a voicemail and another uses it to mean a conversation gets a report that means nothing. If the built in list does not fit, add your own. At the top of Leads, open the status filter and use the add control at the bottom of the list to type a new status name and save it. It appears in the dropdown on every lead for every user right away. Keep the list short enough that reps use it. The Custom Lead Statuses, Tags and Row Colors page explains the thinking behind statuses, tags and colors and which one to use for what. #### What you should see The moment you pick a status, the pill on the row shows the new word. Filter the list by that status and the lead is in it. On the mobile app the same lead shows the new status the next time the list refreshes, because the phone and the desktop read one record. Statuses also feed the numbers. Open Reports and the By Status and Status Breakdown views count leads by the statuses your team set, which is why the meaning of each one matters. The reports dashboard page shows what else those reports carry. Two things happen without a rep touching the dropdown. A custom source feed can drop every new lead from that source into a chosen status: open Lead Feeds Manager, open the feed and set Default Status for New Leads. And a step in Follow Up Processes can move the lead when it runs, using Change to status on the step, so a lead that finishes a drip without a reply can end in a Final Status of your choosing. The Follow Up Processes page covers the steps. #### If it did not work You picked Lost and the status did not change. A lead is not moved to Lost until the Mark Lead As Lost popup is completed with a reason and saved. If you closed the popup, the dropdown resets to Change and the lead keeps its old status. Pick Lost again, choose a reason and save. The status changed back on its own. Check whether the lead is in a Follow Up Process. A running process with Lead status changes to set on a step will move the lead when that step fires. Either edit the process or take the lead out of it. A custom status is missing from the dropdown. Custom statuses are per account, so a status added on one store in a dealer group does not appear on another. Add it on each account that needs it, or check that whoever added it saved the name rather than closing the filter. The pill shows Report to QC and the dropdown will not move it. The lead is with the Quality Control team. The status returns to New if the request is rejected, or moves to Bad Lead if it is approved; wait for the outcome. #### Related tasks Marking a lead lost has its own guide because of the reason popup, and so does reporting a bad lead. The lost reason tracking page explains what happens to the reason after you save it, and the lead replacement review page explains what the Quality Control team does with a report. Every guide for the CRM is in the Help Center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows how the lead list, the inbox and the calendar fit together. #### Tips from the floor Change the status the moment the thing happens, from whichever screen you are on, rather than at the end of the day from memory. Use a custom status for a real stage your store has and nothing else; a status called Left Voicemail is a note, not a stage. And let the feed defaults and follow up steps do the routine moves for you, so the dropdown is for the decisions a person actually makes. #### Questions and answers Q: Who can change a lead status? A: Any user who can open the lead, on the desktop CRM or in the mobile app. There is no approval step, which is why agreeing on what each status means matters. Q: Can we add our own statuses? A: Yes. Open the status filter at the top of Leads and use the add control at the bottom of the list. The new status appears in the dropdown on every lead for every user in the account. Q: Why does picking Lost open a popup? A: A lead is not moved to Lost without a reason. The Mark Lead As Lost popup collects the reason and an optional note, and the status changes when you save it. Q: Can a status change automatically? A: Yes. A custom source feed can set a Default Status for New Leads, and a Follow Up Process step can change the status when the step runs. ### How to Complete an Application with a Co-Applicant in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-complete-an-application-with-a-co-applicant Send the customer your apply link and have both people together before they start. On the first step, the application asks whether there is a co-applicant; answer yes and a matching set of screens opens for the second person. Both parties fill in their own details and both sign, and the joint application lands in your SecureWebX inbox as one record. Steps: 1. Send the link and set the expectation: Text or email the apply link, and say in the same message that this one is a joint application so both people should be together with their information ready. Two minutes of setting expectations saves the classic Saturday problem: the buyer finishes the form alone, then the co-applicant's employment and income have to be collected by phone that evening. 2. Let the primary applicant start: The first person works through personal, residence, employment and income. Nothing about a joint file changes those screens; the primary applicant is simply the person whose name the application opens with. An ITIN is accepted in place of a Social Security number, which matters more often than most floors expect. 3. Turn the co-applicant on: The application asks whether a second person is applying. Answer yes and a matching set of screens opens for them. A co-applicant is anyone applying jointly: a spouse, a parent, an adult child, a business partner. Nobody has to guess which box to use, because the form asks the question in plain language. 4. Fill in the co-applicant's own details: The second person enters their own name, residence, employment and income. When the two share an address, the same details carry across rather than being typed twice, and anything that differs gets typed once. Get the employment and income right here; an incomplete second income is the single most common reason a joint file goes back and forth. 5. Both people sign: Each party signs their own consent at the review step, with the e-signature and consent capture recording the exact version of the terms and disclosures each one agreed to. One person cannot sign for the other, which is how it should be, and the record shows it plainly if anyone asks later. 6. Open the joint record in the inbox: The submitted application appears in the inbox as one file. Use Open application from the list, or Open application profile for the full record, and you see the Applicant and the co-applicant side by side with their own employment, income and residence, plus the Application ID to quote when your finance office talks about it. 7. Ask for anything missing without starting over: If the second person left a field blank or the pay stub is unreadable, use Send notice to applicant from the application record rather than retyping the file yourself. The customer gets a message asking for the specific item, and what comes back attaches to the same application. #### Before you start You need an apply link and the SecureWebX console, both of which come with your LeadLocate account and open from the same login. The five step online credit application form supports a co-applicant out of the box, so nothing has to be switched on and no special link is required. If you want the joint path to ask for more, such as a second proof of income upload, that belongs in the customizer on the link. Two practical notes before you send. Both people should have their employment history, income and identification handy, because a joint application asks the second person for the same depth of detail as the first. And a joint application is savable step by step, so a couple who start at the kitchen table and finish after one of them gets home do not lose the work. Ask for a co-applicant when the deal needs one, and let the customer decide. A rep who leads with we will need your spouse on this before there is a reason has made the conversation about credit instead of about the car. #### What you should see On the customer's phone, a second set of screens that mirrors the first, clearly labeled so nobody fills in the wrong person's employer. On the review step, both parties are listed with their own consent to sign. On your side, one application record holding both people. The inbox row carries the primary applicant's name and the Application ID, and the record inside holds both sets of residence, employment and income along with any documents either person uploaded. Everything the finance office does from there works on the joint file: stipulations with upload to fulfill, worksheets, a secure share to a lender of your choosing, and an adverse action notice generated from the record when one is needed. The Credit application view is also what a manager opens months later, because archiving keeps records rather than removing them. The full audit log records who opened and shared the file, which is the sort of thing nobody thinks about until the day it matters. #### Does a joint application need its own apply link? No. Every apply link already supports a co-applicant, so your website link and your personal links all handle joint files. What a dedicated link buys you is extra questions on the joint path, and some stores want that. In the customizer, a section you add can be set with Optional co-applicant with the same details, which mirrors that section onto the second person instead of making you build it twice. That is how a store adds, say, a landlord reference or a second proof of residence and has it apply to both parties. The helper text under each field, the part labeled Shown under the field to guide the applicant in the customizer, earns its keep here: the second person is often the one who has never filled in a credit application at your store before. Everything else about building that link is on how to customize an apply link, and the Customize application screen is where those additions live. The wider picture of how a shared buyer record with a co-buyer works across the CRM is on co-buyer credit applications. #### If it did not work The co-applicant's section never appeared. The question was answered no, or skipped. The customer can reopen their application and answer yes; the form saves as they go, so nothing already entered is lost. Only one signature is on the file. Each person signs their own consent. Ask the customer to finish the review step with the second person present, and the record will show both. The second income is missing. Use Send notice to applicant and ask for the specific item. What comes back attaches to the same application instead of arriving as a text message photo on somebody's personal phone. Two separate applications came in for the same deal. They filled in the form twice rather than using the joint path. Work the complete one, and send the link again with a line explaining that the application asks about a co-applicant partway through. You need to send the same application to the customer again. Use Copy application URL from the record, or send the link from Public application URL on the apply link itself. #### Related tasks Getting the link into the customer's hands is on how to send an apply link by text. What the finance office does with the file once it arrives is on the credit application inbox page, and the paperwork trail around it is on credit application security. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the SecureWebX guides. A joint application behavior your store needs that the form does not already handle is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: How does the customer add a co-applicant? A: The application asks whether a second person is applying. Answering yes opens a matching set of screens for the co-applicant's residence, employment and income. Q: Do both people have to sign? A: Yes. Each party signs their own consent at the review step, and the record captures the version of the terms and disclosures each one agreed to. Q: Can the co-applicant finish later on a different phone? A: The application saves step by step, so the customer can reopen the link and continue where they stopped rather than starting the form over. Q: Does a co-applicant need their own apply link? A: No. Every apply link supports a co-applicant. A separate link is only worth making when the joint path should ask for extra documents or extra fields. ### How to Connect Google Calendar in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-connect-google-calendar You connect Google Calendar in LeadLocate CRM from the Calendar page. The Google Calendar Sync control has a Connect Google Calendar button; click it, sign in to your own Google account on the permission screen, approve access, and you are back on the Calendar page with the connection live. Each user connects their own calendar, and appointments already on the CRM calendar sync too. Steps: 1. Open the Calendar page: In the desktop CRM click Calendar in the main menu. This is your own calendar, My Calendar, with the appointments assigned to you. 2. Find the sync control: Near the top of the page is Google Calendar Sync, with a one line note that it syncs your appointments with your Google Calendar. If you have never connected, it shows one button. 3. Connect: Click Connect Google Calendar. The Google permission screen opens in the browser. Sign in to the Google account whose calendar you want the appointments on, which is usually the one on your phone. 4. Approve access: Approve the access request on the permission screen. Read it once; it is asking for permission to add and update events on that calendar, which is the whole point. The browser returns you to the Calendar page. 5. Confirm the connection: The Google Calendar Sync control now shows the connection is live, with Disconnect beside it. Your existing CRM appointments are flagged to sync, so the Google calendar does not stay empty until the next booking. 6. Test with one appointment: Use Add New on the Calendar page to set a test appointment a day out, then open the calendar app on your phone. The appointment appears within a few minutes with the customer's name. Delete the test from the CRM and watch it leave the phone too. #### Before you start You need your LeadLocate login and the password for the Google account whose calendar you want to use. Decide which account before you click: the connection is per user and goes to one Google calendar, so a salesperson connects the personal account that is already on their phone, not a shared store mailbox. Every user does this on their own login; a manager rolling it out to the floor tells each person to connect their own. Know what will and will not flow. Appointments on your LeadLocate CRM calendar go to Google, with the customer and the time, and follow when they move or are cancelled. The lead, the conversation, the vehicle and the deal stay in the CRM. The Google Calendar sync page covers the product side; this page is the clicks. #### What you should see On the Calendar page the Google Calendar Sync control reads as connected, with Disconnect next to it. On your phone, the calendar app shows each CRM appointment on the day and time it was booked, with the customer's name. A visit a customer books through your booking link on Thursday night is on your phone by the time you look at it Friday morning; a visit you move in the CRM moves on the phone; a visit you cancel disappears. The LeadLocate mobile app keeps showing the CRM calendar itself, so you have both views on the phone with nothing else to set up: the app for working the customer, the phone's calendar for knowing your day. #### If it did not work The page shows a Google Calendar error. Almost always the permission was denied: the Google screen was closed, or the request was declined. Click Connect Google Calendar again, sign in, and approve the request this time. If you have several Google accounts, make sure the one selected is the one on your phone. The control shows Reconnect. A connection that used to work has lapsed, which happens when a Google password changes or access is revoked from the Google side. Click Reconnect, go through the permission screen once more, and existing appointments are flagged to sync again. Connected, but nothing on the phone. The phone's calendar app is showing a different Google account, or that calendar is hidden in the app. Open the calendar app's account list and make sure the connected account is turned on. If the appointment is on the CRM calendar and the control says connected, give it a few minutes; then, if it is still missing, the Support entry in the top bar or the Feedback button on the dock files the question with a screenshot. #### Related tasks The sync is more useful when customers are booking the appointments themselves, so set your booking link and hours next; the appointment booking links page explains the personal and team links and the guide to setting your booking link walks through the popup. The floor's appointments, everyone's, live on the shared team calendar inside the CRM, which is where a manager looks rather than at a personal Google calendar. Every guide is in the help center. The store's advertising side has its own connection page for Google Ads, which is a separate thing from the calendar. #### Tips from the floor Connect the account that shares a calendar with your household, so the noon Saturday visit is visible to whoever is planning around you. Keep the CRM as the place you change an appointment; move it there and let the phone follow, rather than dragging it on the phone and wondering why the customer's confirmation still says the old time. And when you leave a store, click Disconnect on your way out; the CRM user is removed anyway, but it is a clean habit. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the Connect Google Calendar button? A: On the Calendar page in the desktop CRM, inside the Google Calendar Sync control near the top. Click it, sign in to your own Google account, approve access, and the control shows the connection with Disconnect beside it. Q: Do I connect one calendar for the whole store? A: No. Each user connects their own Google account from their own login, and only their CRM appointments flow to it. The whole floor is visible on the shared team calendar inside the CRM. Q: Will appointments I already have sync? A: Yes. When you connect, the appointments already on your CRM calendar are flagged to sync, and every new one follows. Moves and cancellations in the CRM update or remove the Google event. Q: How do I stop the sync? A: Click Disconnect in the Google Calendar Sync control on the Calendar page. Nothing further is sent. Reconnect from the same place whenever you want it back. ### How to Connect Inventory to the CRM in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-connect-inventory-to-the-crm Load your feed in Inventory Link, then open Inventory in the CRM menu. The same cars appear there, in Insert a vehicle from your inventory inside every text and email composer, and on the phone app. If the list reads Inventory is not connected yet, the feed has not finished loading on the Inventory Link side. Steps: 1. Check the feed in Inventory Link: Sign in to Inventory Link and look at the dashboard. Your feeds lists what the account is loading and Last refresh tells you when it last came in. If you have no feed at all, the portal can read the inventory straight from your own website instead, so a store with a website and no feed still ends up with a full list. 2. Open Inventory in the CRM: Sign in to the CRM and click Inventory in the menu. Your cars load with a Photo, the year, make and model, the stock number and the Price. Nothing here is typed by hand: what you see is what Inventory Link is holding for the store. 3. Find a specific unit: Use Search year, make, model, stock, VIN for a single car, or narrow the list with New, Pre-Owned and All. Search on the last six of a VIN when a customer sends you a window sticker photo and you want the exact unit rather than the trim. 4. Put a car in a message: Open a text or email to a customer and click Insert a vehicle from your inventory. Pick the unit and it drops into the message with its photo, year, make, model and price, so the shopper gets the car instead of a description of the car. The same button sits in the email composer. 5. Work a car from the lead screen: On an open lead, use Browse Inventory to attach the unit the customer is asking about, then Refresh inventory if a car sold this morning and you want the list current before you quote. The vehicle you attach travels with the lead into the deal. 6. Check the phone app: Open the LeadLocate app on your phone and go to the inventory section. The same cars, the same photos and the same search are there, which is what matters on the lot when a customer points at something and asks what it is. 7. Ask for a feed change if something is off: In Inventory Link, open Ask us to change a feed, pick Which feed, describe it in What needs to change and click Send request. Wrong prices, missing photos and units that should not publish are all handled there. #### Before you start You need a CRM login and Inventory Link on the same account, which is how every plan is set up. You also need one of two things on the inventory side: a feed from the provider who already publishes your cars, or a website of your own that the portal can import the inventory from. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required to run the platform, so a store that has neither still gets a working list by hand or from its site. It helps to have one stock number in mind before you start, ideally a car you know is on the ground today. Checking a single unit end to end is faster than reading the whole list, and it tells you the connection is real. The full picture of what the two products do together is on the automotive CRM with inventory integration page. #### What you should see In the CRM, Inventory opens a grid of your cars with photos, prices and stock numbers, filtered by New, Pre-Owned or All. In a text, Insert a vehicle from your inventory gives you the same list in a picker, and the message that goes out carries the photo and the price. On a lead, the car you attach shows on the record, so a manager reading the lead knows which unit is in play without asking. On the Inventory Link side, Your feeds shows the feed as Open with a time under Last refresh, and the vehicle count on the dashboard matches what the CRM shows. Those two numbers agreeing is the whole test. If your site also runs pages built in the portal, Show matching vehicles from your inventory puts the same cars in front of shoppers there too, which is why the count matters. #### If it did not work The CRM says Inventory is not connected yet. The feed has not finished its first load. Check Your feeds in Inventory Link: a feed that has never refreshed has no time under it. Open a request with Ask us to change a feed and our team gets it loading. A car you sold is still listed. Your list is a picture of what the feed last sent. Click Refresh inventory for the current set, and if the unit keeps coming back, it is still marked available in the source. Fix it at the source or tell us in What needs to change. A unit has no photo. The feed sent the car without images. The portal can fill the gap with stock imagery for the model so the listing still looks like a listing, and your photographer can replace it later. The price in the CRM is not the price on your site. Both read the same feed, so a difference means one of them is caching an older load. Refresh inventory settles it, and the feed change request handles a price that is wrong in the source. #### Why this connection earns its keep A salesperson who has to leave the CRM to look up a stock number will stop looking it up. That is the real cost of a disconnected list: generic answers, wrong prices quoted from memory, and a shopper who asked about one car getting a paragraph about none. With the list in the composer, the reply is the car, with the photo and the price, in about four seconds. It pays off again at the desk. The unit attached to the lead carries into the worksheet, so the numbers you pencil are the numbers for that VIN. And because everything lives in one login, the same list is on the phone in your pocket. Start at the platform overview if you want to see how the rest of it fits together. #### Related tasks Feeds, the feed editor, the website builder and the embeddable widget all live on the Inventory Link page. What the CRM does with a car once it is attached, from texts to worksheets, is on the LeadLocate CRM page, and the inventory search in your pocket is covered on the mobile app page. The LeadLocate Help Center has the neighbouring guides: sending a vehicle in a text, scanning a VIN on the lot, and importing inventory from your website when there is no feed to hand. An inventory connection your store needs that you do not see listed is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a feed to connect inventory to the CRM? A: No. Inventory Link imports the cars from your own website when there is no feed, and a store can also list units by hand. A feed and DMS access are not required on any plan. Q: How often does the inventory in the CRM refresh? A: It follows the feed, and the dashboard shows the time of the last refresh. Refresh inventory on the lead screen pulls the current set when you want to be certain before quoting. Q: Can I text a car to a customer from the list? A: Yes. Insert a vehicle from your inventory sits in every text and email composer and drops the unit into the message with its photo, year, make, model and price. Q: Who fixes a wrong price or a missing photo in the feed? A: Open Ask us to change a feed in Inventory Link, say which feed and what needs to change, and send it. Our team handles the feed side and you keep working the leads. ### How to Connect Your Ad Accounts in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-connect-your-ad-accounts Connecting your own ad accounts is the second path in Leads Manager inside LeadLocate CRM, beside the managed webXintel Ads Network. You open Ad Accounts from the campaigns list, find the network, authorize the account your store already holds, and it shows as connected. Our team then launches and manages every campaign in that account from the selections you make in Leads Manager. Steps: 1. Open Leads Manager: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM on the desktop and open Leads Manager, the area where your lead campaigns are listed. The campaigns list shows each campaign with its Ad Network and Network Status. 2. Go to Ad Accounts: Click Ad Accounts. The Connections screen opens and lists the networks the advertising library knows about, the status of each for your store, and any accounts already connected. Use Expand all to open every network at once or Find a network to jump to one. 3. Authorize the account: Open the network you hold an account with and start the connection. You are sent to the network to sign in with the store's own login and approve the connection, then returned to the CRM. Use the store's business login, not a personal one, so the account stays the dealership's. 4. Check the status: Back on the Connections screen the network shows as connected and the Network Objects for that account, such as the ad account and the page it advertises under, appear beneath it. Your token is stored encrypted and every action taken with it is written to an audit log. 5. Point a campaign at the account: Click Back to Leads Manager, open a campaign or click Create a New Campaign, and choose the connected account as its Ad account. Our team builds the campaign in your account from your selections, launches it and manages it from there, and the campaign list shows where it stands the whole time. #### Before you start You need a plan that includes leads; Leads Manager is where those campaigns are planned, and the pricing page lists the plans month to month. A Manager or Master Administrator role in LeadLocate CRM is required to connect an account. You also need the login for the advertising account the store already holds, and it should be the store's business login rather than a salesperson's personal one, because the account, its history and its billing relationship with the network stay in whoever's name signs in. Know which network the account is on. The integrations directory publishes a status per network, derived from the live adapters, so you can see before you start whether yours is live, being wired up, or available on request. A network your store wants that is not switched on yet is recorded on the Connections screen and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What you should see On the Connections screen the network you authorized shows as connected, with the Network Objects for the account listed beneath it. Back in the campaigns list, a campaign pointed at that account shows the network under Ad Network and its state under Network Status. From there our team takes the campaign the rest of the way: they build the creative and the lead form, run the final checks, launch it in your account and manage it from the zone and the offers you set. Once the campaign is running, leads land in the CRM inbox with the campaign as their source, brought in by our team as part of running it, and round robin, Automated Templates and Follow Up Processes take over as with any lead. Open the account in the network's own console and you will see the same campaign there, in your account, with your history untouched. The Reports dashboard shows what the connected account produced next to the managed network and every other source. #### If it did not work The network sent you back without connecting. The login used does not have permission on the ad account, which is common when a former agency or employee set the account up. Sign in to the network with a login that administers the account, or have that person add the store's business login, then authorize again from Ad Accounts. The network shows as connected but no objects appear under it. The account is connected but the ad account or page has not been selected yet, or the network is still being wired up for your store. Reopen the network on the Connections screen with Expand all and choose the objects; if the network is listed as available on request, our team finishes the wiring. You want to disconnect. It is a click on the same screen where you connected. Campaigns already created keep the credentials that created them, so nothing running is stranded. #### Related tasks With the account connected, plan the campaign itself: draw the zone, read the market scan and set the offers in Leads Manager. Give the campaign's leads their own feed in Lead Feeds Manager so they get their own first touch templates and their own line in Reports. A store that would rather have the media handled entirely for it uses the managed webXintel Ads Network instead, and many stores use both. The connect your own ad accounts feature page explains what changes when the accounts are yours. Every other walkthrough is in the help center, and the contact page reaches a person who will look at the accounts your store already holds with you. #### Tips from the floor Connect with a login the dealership controls, and write down who holds it. Most connection problems trace back to an account an agency created in its own name. Keep the campaigns you have always run yourself in your own account and use the managed network for the zone campaigns that bring in new buyers and sellers; both land in the same inbox and are judged by the same numbers. And remember that a financing campaign runs under fair lending rules on either path, so the targeting controls a financing campaign locks in Leads Manager stay locked whichever account it runs through. #### Questions and answers Q: Who owns the account after I connect it? A: You do. The account, its history and your billing relationship with the network stay in the store's name. Your token is stored encrypted, every action with it is logged, and you can disconnect on the same screen at any time. Q: Does connecting an account start spending? A: No. Connecting simply lets Leads Manager work inside the account you already hold. Our team launches and manages every campaign in it from the selections you make in Leads Manager, and you decide together when each one starts and stops. Q: Which networks can I connect? A: The integrations directory publishes a status per network. A network your store wants that is not switched on yet is available on request, and the Connections screen records the demand. Q: Is there a fee to connect an account? A: No. Connecting is included with the LeadLocate plans that include leads, month to month. Your media spend on a connected account remains your own arrangement with that network. ### How to Connect a Website Form to the CRM URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-connect-a-website-form Open Account Settings, click Lead Source Settings, then New Lead Source. Name it with a Feed Label, choose the Lead Assignment, click Save Feed and use Copy URL to copy your form intake link. Paste that link into your website form's settings where submissions are sent, publish, and send a test. Each submission then becomes a lead in LeadLocate CRM. Steps: 1. Open your lead sources: From the Billing and Admin menu, open Account Settings. In the Lead Sources section, click Lead Source Settings. This is the page where your own sources, your manager copies and the feeds LeadLocate delivers for you all sit together. 2. Start a new source for the form: Open the Add your own lead sources drawer and click New Lead Source. Type a Feed Label your team will recognize on a lead row, such as Website Trade-In Form or Contact Us Page. Give each form its own source if you want to see which form produced which lead. 3. Decide who gets the lead: Choose the Lead Assignment: Round Robin to rotate form leads across the floor, Single User to send them all to one person or your BDC, or Unassigned so the first rep can claim them. Set the Default Status for New Leads so form leads land in the status your team works first. 4. Choose the notifications: Tick the text alert for the assigned salesperson, the standard follow up messages and Manager copies if a sales manager should see every lead from this form. These boxes are per source, so the trade-in form and the contact form can follow different rules. 5. Save and copy your form intake link: Click Save Feed. The confirmation shows the source's intake email with Copy Address and its form intake link with Copy URL. Click Copy URL. That link is private to your account, so keep it for your website and the people who manage it. 6. Paste the link into the form: In your website builder, landing page builder or WordPress form plugin, open the form's settings and find where it asks where submissions should be sent. Paste the link there and save. Name the fields name (or first name and last name), phone, email and message so they map to the right places on the lead. 7. Send a test: Publish the form, fill it in from your own phone and press submit. Open Leads in the CRM and the test lead is there with your new label. The source's Activity Log shows the submission as well. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login that can open Account Settings, and access to the website or form tool where the form lives, or the name of the person who manages it. Decide one thing in advance: whether each form gets its own source or all forms share one. Separate sources cost nothing and give you a clean count per form at the end of the month, so most stores give the contact form, the trade-in form and each landing page a source of their own. Check first whether the form needs connecting at all. Forms built in LeadLocate are connected from the day they go live: your LeadLocate website, the personal salesperson websites and every page built in Lead Pages already send their submissions to your account. The steps here are for forms built anywhere else. The feature itself, and what it replaces, is described on send every website form straight to your CRM. #### What you should see Within moments of your test submission, a new lead appears in Leads carrying the Feed Label you chose. The name, phone, email and message from the form sit in their own fields on the lead, so the salesperson reads the customer's question instead of a raw email. The lead is assigned by the rule you picked, the salesperson's phone gets the text alert if you ticked it, and if a first message is set for the source, it goes out under the salesperson's name. On the Lead Source Settings page, the source row now shows a lead count and its last received time, and its Activity Log lists every submission. Managers on the source receive their copy by email and see the lead in the CRM beside the salesperson who owns it. #### Quick checks Match the field names. Forms map best when the fields are called name (or first name and last name), phone, email and message. A form with a name, a phone or an email creates a lead; one with all three gives the salesperson the most to work with. Paste the whole link. Copy it with Copy URL rather than retyping it, and paste it in the form's setting for where submissions are sent, not in a redirect or thank you page field. Keep the source switched on. A source marked Active takes leads; unticking Active pauses it without losing its history, which is handy when a seasonal landing page ends. Let your vendor handle it if you prefer. Send your website company the link and the field names above; our support team can walk them through it on a call. For a form that sends its data in an unusual shape, a custom connection is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### How to connect web forms from other tools The same link works for any tool that can send a form's submissions to an address, including a chat provider or a landing page tool your agency uses, so the steps above cover each of them. Ad platform lead forms follow their own route, described on the integration pages such as connect Meta Ads to your dealership CRM and connect Google Ads to your dealership CRM. Shoppers who would rather type a question than fill in a form are covered by live chat for car dealers. #### Related tasks Once the form is connected, write the first text and email for the new source in how to create automated templates, and tune the rotation in how to set up round robin. To put a sales manager on every form lead, follow how to send managers a copy of every lead. The way sources, default feeds and assignment fit together is on the Lead Feeds Manager page, and every other guide is in the LeadLocate Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do I find my form intake link? A: Open Account Settings, click Lead Source Settings and add a New Lead Source, or open one you already have. After Save Feed the confirmation shows the link with a Copy URL button. Forms built in LeadLocate use your account's form intake link automatically. Q: How do I connect a website form to a CRM without a developer? A: Paste your form intake link into the form's setting for where submissions are sent and name the fields name, phone, email and message. Most website builders and WordPress form plugins have that setting, so no code is involved. Q: Can each website form go to a different salesperson? A: Yes. Give each form its own lead source and set its Lead Assignment to Round Robin, a single user or unassigned. Each source keeps its own label, notifications and manager copies. Q: Do I need to connect forms on my LeadLocate website? A: No. Your LeadLocate website, the personal salesperson websites and every Lead Page are connected from the day they go live. ### How to Connect an Inventory Feed in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-connect-an-inventory-feed Ask whoever produces your store's inventory feed to send it to Inventory Link, then open the feeds page in the portal and confirm the first import: vehicle count, photos, prices and stock numbers. If a field lands wrong, use Ask us to change a feed and name it. No feed at all is fine too, because the platform imports from your website instead. Steps: 1. Decide what you are connecting: Most stores already have a feed going out to third party listing sites, and that same feed works here. If yours does not have one, you are not stuck: Inventory Link reads the inventory on the store's own website instead, and a broker with no lot uses brand offer pages. A feed and DMS access are not required to run the platform. 2. Have your provider send the feed to Inventory Link: The feed belongs to your store, not to the company that formats it, so this is a request you are entitled to make. Ask them to add Inventory Link as a destination with your full inventory, new and used, including photos, prices, mileage and stock numbers. Say full inventory out loud: a partial feed becomes a partial answer on every screen later. 3. Open the feeds page in the portal: Sign in to the Inventory Link portal and open the feeds page. Each Feed is listed with what it brought in and when it last ran. The dashboard shows the same counts, which is the number to compare against what you think is on the lot this morning. 4. Check the first import unit by unit: Open the inventory list and read the first twenty vehicles like a shopper would. Year, make, model and trim right, mileage and price right, photos attached, stock number matching the one on the window label. VIN decode fills in the build data, so most of what you see should already be correct. 5. Ask for a change when something is off: Use Ask us to change a feed, tell us Which feed it applies to, or choose Not specific to one feed when the change covers everything, then describe it plainly: prices excluding a dealer fee, a trim that imports blank, a batch of units that should never publish. A feed change your store needs is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. 6. Put the inventory to work: Once the list is clean, your vehicles are in the CRM inventory menu and on the phone app, the vehicle insert button drops a unit into any text or email, and the inventory website and widget publish from the same data. On a brand page lead form, Show matching vehicles from your inventory answers a shopper with the units you actually have. #### Before you start You need an Inventory Link login, the name of whoever produces your inventory feed today, and five minutes with a used car manager who knows what should be on the lot. That last one matters more than it sounds: the only way to judge a first import is against somebody's real count. Know the shape of your inventory before you look. New, used, certified, wholesale held back, units in transit, and anything the store never wants published. Those decisions drive the first change request. Inventory feeds explains what the platform accepts, and the older dealer inventory feed management guide covers the fields that decide whether a vehicle gets found once it is live. #### What if the store has no feed? Then you skip the provider entirely. Inventory Link imports inventory straight from the store's own website, with the store's permission, and it recognizes the platforms dealer websites are built on. A single point store that never bought a feed product is live the same day, and importing from your website is the guide for that route. Brokers and solo salespeople have a third road: no lot, no feed, and brand offer pages connected instantly so a customer still sees real vehicles and a real offer. The point is that nothing about getting started depends on a feed contract someone else controls. Start with what you have today, add the feed when it suits the store, and the screens your team uses never change. #### What you should see A vehicle count on the feeds page that matches your lot, each unit carrying its photos, its price and its stock number, and build data filled in from the VIN rather than typed by a person. Units that sold drop off on the next import, and new arrivals appear without anyone announcing them. Then the same inventory turns up everywhere your team already works. Salespeople insert a vehicle into a text from the composer, the way send vehicles by text describes. The inventory website and the embeddable widget publish from it. Your brand pages and lead forms answer shoppers with it. One import, every screen. #### If it did not work The count is short. The provider sent a filtered slice, usually used only or a single rooftop. Go back and ask for the full inventory across every rooftop you run, then compare the count again. Photos are missing on part of the list. Those units have not been shot yet, or the feed carries the photos at a size it will not share. Stock imagery covers a vehicle until your photographer gets to it, so a new arrival still looks like a listing instead of a grey box. Prices look wrong. Decide what the number in the feed means at your store, then tell us once with Ask us to change a feed. Stores handle dealer fees, reconditioning and internet pricing differently, and the fix belongs at the import, not in twenty places later. Stock numbers do not match the window labels. Overrides handle that without touching the feed, so the number your team says out loud on the lot is the number the system shows. #### Related tasks Adding a one off unit that is not in the feed yet, a dealer trade or a fresh trade in, is a separate guide, and it takes about a minute per vehicle. Build data, safety and efficiency information come from VIN decode and the vehicle database, which is also what makes a partial feed usable. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the Inventory Link guides, including importing from your website and adding a vehicle by hand. Once the feed is clean, the merchandising tools are the fun part: an inventory site, a widget for the store's own website, and offers on brand pages. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need an inventory feed to use LeadLocate? A: No. A feed and DMS access are not required. Inventory Link imports from the store's own website, and vehicles can also be added by hand when that is all a store needs. Q: Who do I ask for the feed? A: Whoever produces the feed your store already sends to listing sites. The data is yours, so adding Inventory Link as a destination is a normal request they handle every week. Q: How often does the inventory update? A: The feed imports on its own schedule and the list keeps up with it, so sold units drop off and new arrivals appear without anyone in the store retyping a vehicle. Q: Something in the feed is wrong. Who fixes it? A: Use the change request on the feeds page. Name the feed, or mark it as not specific to one feed, and describe what should be different. Our team makes the change at the import. ### How to Connect or Buy a Domain in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-connect-or-buy-a-domain Domains in LeadLocate CRM are handled from the Website menu. To buy one, open Domains, type the name into the search, pick an available version and purchase it on the store's account; it appears under My Domains. To connect a domain you already own elsewhere, add it under Domain Monitoring, or point it at the store site with POINT MY DOMAIN in the website editor. Steps: 1. Open Domains: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM on the desktop, open the Website menu and go to Domains. The screen has the search at the top and My Domains, the list of what the store owns through the CRM, below it. 2. Search for the name you want: In the field labeled Search for a domain, e.g. mydealership, type the name without the ending. The results show which versions are available and the price of each. Pick the one that reads best out loud; a listener has to remember it. 3. Buy it on the store account: Choose the available version and complete the purchase. The domain is registered on the dealership's account, not on a personal card, and it appears under My Domains a few minutes later. 4. Or connect a domain you already own: If the store's main domain is registered elsewhere, there is no need to move it. Under Domain Monitoring, in the field labeled Monitor a domain you own elsewhere, e.g. mybrand.com, enter the name and the CRM keeps an eye on it. To put that domain on the store's site, open the Website Editor, go to Branding and use POINT MY DOMAIN. 5. Put the domain to work: Open a lead page's Lead Page URL Setting screen and pick the domain under Choose Domain, or point it at a salesperson's personal site. For email, open the domain from My Domains and add the records the email domain setup lists in the DNS editor. #### Before you start Buying a domain and editing its records belong to the roles the store sets in User Management, usually a Manager or Master Administrator; every user with the right role can pick a domain for a page. Have the store's payment method on the account, because the domain is bought at its listed price when you choose it and registered on the dealership's account. The search, the purchase, the DNS editor and the monitoring are part of every plan on the pricing page. Know what the domain is for before you search. A short name for a radio spot, a name for a salesperson's personal site, or the store's main name for pages and email are different jobs. If the store's main domain is registered elsewhere, find out who holds the login; many dealerships discover a former marketing manager or an old agency does. Monitoring it from LeadLocate CRM is enough to start, and moving it in later is available on request. #### What you should see After a purchase, My Domains lists the new domain on the store's account. Open it and the DNS editor shows its records in a plain table with a save button; there is no separate control panel login and no second bill for editing a record. A domain added under Domain Monitoring shows in that list with its status, so the store knows if it stops resolving or is about to lapse. Once you pick the domain under Choose Domain on a lead page, the page opens at that address in a browser, usually within minutes of purchase. After POINT MY DOMAIN in the website editor, the store site answers on the connected name. After you add the records the email domain setup lists, the authentication check on that screen turns green and Bulk Email and Email Automation go out under the store's own name. #### If it did not work The page does not open on the new domain. A domain bought minutes ago can take a short while to resolve across the internet. Wait, then reload. If it still fails, open the Lead Page URL Setting screen and confirm the domain is selected under Choose Domain and the page was saved after you picked it. POINT MY DOMAIN has not taken effect for a domain owned elsewhere. The records at the company that holds the domain still point at the old site. Sign in there and set the records the branding screen shows, or move the domain into the CRM, which is available on request and our team handles for your dealership. The email authentication check stays red. A record was typed with a stray space or added to the wrong domain. Open the domain from My Domains, compare each record with the list on the email domain setup screen character by character, save, and give it time to propagate before checking again. #### Related tasks Put the domain on a lead page so every event and offer has a short address that feeds the inbox. Authenticate it for email on the email domain authentication screen so campaigns go out under the store's name. Point a name at a salesperson's personal site and keep the asset on the dealership's account. The custom domains and DNS feature page explains ownership, monitoring and the DNS editor in full. Every other walkthrough is in the help center, and if DNS is unfamiliar territory the contact page reaches a person who does this every week. Transfer out of a domain bought here is available on request, and our team handles it for your dealership; if you can take the domain with you, you own it. #### Tips from the floor Buy on the store's account, every time. A domain on a personal card leaves with the person. Pick names a listener can spell after hearing them once, and skip hyphens. Keep the main domain where it is until the store has time to move it properly, and monitor it from the CRM in the meantime so its renewal date is always in front of you. Write down which domain points where; a year from now the list under My Domains will be longer than you expect. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I buy a domain from inside the CRM? A: Yes. Under the Website menu, open Domains, search for the name, choose an available version and purchase it on the store's account. It appears under My Domains and can be used on lead pages, personal sites and email right away. Q: I already own my main domain elsewhere. Do I have to move it? A: No. Add it under Domain Monitoring and the CRM watches it. Point it at the store site with POINT MY DOMAIN in the website editor, and move it in later on request if you decide to. Q: Who owns a domain bought through LeadLocate CRM? A: Your dealership. It is registered on the store's account, listed under My Domains, and transfer out is available on request so you can take it with you. Q: Is there a fee to change DNS records? A: No. Searching, buying, editing records and monitoring are part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. The domain itself is bought at its listed price when you choose it. ### How to Create Automated Templates in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-create-automated-templates Automated Templates are the first touch LeadLocate CRM sends on its own when a lead is received: a text, an email, a first voicemail and a BDC Follow-Up Call task. You create them on the Automated Templates page under Billing and Admin, starting with the Company Default set that every new feed inherits, then overriding any feed that needs its own wording. Steps: 1. Open the Automated Templates page: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM on the desktop, open the Billing & Admin menu and click Automated Templates. The page opens on the Inbound Lead Automated Templates section with a row per lead feed. 2. Start with the Company Default row: Open Company Default (used to set up new feeds) first. The header changes to Editing templates for: followed by the feed name so you always know which set you are changing. Everything you write here becomes the starting set for every feed you create later. 3. Write the automated text: Type the text message the customer receives on lead receipt. Use the merge fields for the customer name, the vehicle of interest, the salesperson name and the dealership name so the message reads like a person wrote it. Click Save Automated Text. 4. Write the automated email: Fill in the subject and the body of the email that follows the text. If your card is designed, turn on the business card attachment so the email arrives from a person rather than a store. Click Save Automated Email. 5. Record the first voicemail: Under My Recording, record the short voicemail in your own voice that lands on the customer phone without ringing it. Keep it under twenty seconds and say your name, the store and the vehicle. 6. Turn on the follow up call task: Switch on BDC Follow-Up Call so the assigned user gets a call task on the Workspace the moment the lead lands. Each item on the page has its own switch, so leave off anything your store does not want to send. 7. Override the feeds that need their own wording: Open any feed row under Inbound Lead Automated Templates or Acquisitions Lead Automated Templates, change only what that source needs, and save. Feeds you do not touch keep inheriting the Company Default. Set the Unassigned Lead Templates so a lead nobody has claimed still hears from the store. #### Before you start You need a Manager or Master Administrator role in LeadLocate CRM; a User cannot edit the company set. Have at least one lead feed in place in the Lead Feeds Manager, because templates are stored per feed and the page shows a row for each one. A new account starts with a standard set already switched on, so you are editing wording rather than building from nothing. Decide the three things before you open the page: what the first text says, whether an email should follow it, and whether a person should be handed a call task. Write the text on paper first. It is the message every lead from that feed will read, and a manager should sign off on it once rather than each salesperson improvising it in a parking lot. If your business card is not designed yet, that is fine; you can come back and turn on the attachment later. #### What you should see When the set is saved, the Automated Templates page shows the feed rows with your wording in place and the switches on for the text, the email, the voicemail and the call task you enabled. The Automation switch in the header should be on; if it is off the whole page is greyed out and nothing sends for the account. Send yourself a test lead through the feed. Within a minute your phone gets the text, your inbox gets the email with the card attached if you turned that on, a voicemail arrives without a ring, and a BDC Follow-Up Call task appears on the assigned user's Workspace. Open the test lead in the CRM and the communications log lists the text, the email and the voicemail in order with a delivery status on each. That log is what you will use to answer any later question about what a customer was sent. #### If it did not work Nothing went out. Check the Automation switch in the page header. When it is off, every send path in the account is off, including the appointment confirmations, and the page is greyed to show it. Turn it on and resend the test lead. The text went out but the email did not, or the other way around. Each item has its own switch on the feed row. Open the feed you tested, confirm the email switch is on, and check that you clicked Save Automated Email after editing; the page saves the text and the email separately. The lead got the Company Default wording instead of the feed wording. The lead came in through a different feed than you edited. Open the lead, read the feed name on the record, and edit that row. A lead with no feed, or one that landed as unassigned, uses the Unassigned Lead Templates set. The message did not reach a number on the DNC list. That is correct behavior. A number on the blacklist is never texted by a template. #### Related tasks Automated Templates cover the first touch only. For everything after it, build a multi step drip on the Follow Up Processes page, which starts when a status changes or an appointment event happens. Templates are stored per feed, so if you add a source, create the feed in Lead Feeds Manager first and it inherits the Company Default set on its own. The Automated Templates feature page explains what each template does and how the account wide switch behaves. Every other walkthrough is in the help center, and if you would rather have someone build the set with you, the contact page reaches a person who does it every week. #### Tips from the floor Keep the first text short enough to read on a lock screen and put the salesperson's name in it. A customer who submitted three forms remembers the name that answered first. Record the voicemail standing up; it sounds like a person, not a system. Write one Company Default that would be acceptable for any source, then override only the feeds where the source really changes the conversation, such as a seller feed where the customer wants a number on their car rather than a test drive. Fewer overrides means fewer places to update when the store's phone number or hours change. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I have to create templates for every feed? A: No. Edit the Company Default set once and every feed inherits it. Override a feed only when that source needs different wording, such as a seller feed or a walk in feed typed by hand. Q: Can I turn everything off while we reorganize? A: Yes. The Automation switch in the Automated Templates header turns the whole set off for the account in one move and greys the page. Turning it back on restores the set as you left it. Q: What happens to a lead that has no salesperson yet? A: It uses the Unassigned Lead Templates, which speak for the store rather than a person until someone claims the lead. Set those the same way as any feed row. Q: Where do I see what was actually sent? A: On the lead record. The communications log lists every automated text, email and voicemail in order with a delivery status on each, next to the calls the salesperson made. ### How to Create a Lead Page in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-create-a-lead-page A lead page is a landing page built inside LeadLocate CRM whose form submissions become leads in your inbox. You create one from the Website menu: open the Lead Page Manager, click Create New Page, give it a title, fill in Page Details with the logo, text and at least one lead form, then choose a domain and set the address in the Lead Page URL Setting screen. Steps: 1. Open the Lead Page Manager: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM on the desktop, open the Website menu and go to the Lead Page Manager. It lists every page the store has with its ID, its title and its domain, and an Edit and Duplicate control on each row. 2. Create the page: Click Create New Page. Enter a Page Title that says what the page is for, such as Used Truck Event or the salesperson's name for a personal page. The title is what you will find the page by later. 3. Fill in Page Details: Open Page Details. Upload the Company Logo, write the contact text and the footer, and turn on Lead Form 1 for the main offer. Set the pop up labels that appear on the page and pick the inventory categories to show. Three form slots are available, plus slots for a form you already have elsewhere and a field for the free live chat widget code. 4. Set the address: Open the Lead Page URL Setting screen. Pick a domain under Choose Domain from those available to the store, including any bought through the CRM, and set the page's path. If the page should send visitors somewhere else, set a Forward URL Destination. 5. Save and open the page: Save, then open the page address in a browser. Read it on a phone as well as a desktop, since most visitors arrive from an ad on a phone. Submit the form yourself once as a test. 6. Route the leads: Open the Lead Feeds Manager and confirm the page has a feed of its own, then set the first text and email for that feed on the Automated Templates page. Every submission now arrives in the inbox with the page as its source, gets an owner, and hears from the store within the minute. #### Before you start Lead Pages is live for every LeadLocate CRM account, and any user with the right role can build a page; that is how a salesperson comes to have a page of their own. Have the store logo file ready and decide what the page is for before you open the builder: a sales event with a two week life, a single model that needs its own page for an ad, a credit rebuilding offer, or a personal salesperson page. Each is a page, each page has its own address, and each page's leads are labeled by that page. Decide the domain. A page can publish on a domain the store already has through the CRM or one you buy from the Website menu; the custom domains page covers that. Write the offer in one sentence and ask the form for what you need to respond well and nothing you would have to explain later. #### What you should see The Lead Page Manager lists your new page with its title and domain. Opening the address shows the logo, the headline, the contact text, the form you turned on and the footer, on desktop and on a phone. The inventory categories you picked show the store's live units. Your test submission lands in the lead inbox within seconds, labeled with the page as its source. If round robin is on, it already has an owner. If the feed's Automated Templates are set, your phone gets the first text and a task appears on the assigned user's Workspace. Open the lead and the communications log shows what was sent. From the Website menu the visitor analytics show the page's traffic once the ad or text pointing at it is live, so by Friday you know which page drew visitors and which one converted. #### If it did not work The address does not open. The page has no domain or path yet, or the domain chosen has not finished setting up. Open the Lead Page URL Setting screen, confirm a domain is selected under Choose Domain and the path is filled in, and save again. A domain bought a few minutes ago can take a short while to resolve. The form is not on the page. No form slot is turned on. Open Page Details and switch on Lead Form 1, then save. Submissions are not in the inbox, or land under the wrong source. Check the inbox filter first, since a source filter can hide them. Then open Lead Feeds Manager and confirm the page has its own feed; without one the lead lands under the default feed with the default templates. The page redirects somewhere else. A Forward URL Destination is set. Clear it if the page itself should show. #### Related tasks Put the page address on an ad in Leads Manager, in a bulk text through a trackable short link, and on a business card from Design Studio. Set the first touch for the page's feed on the Automated Templates page so a submission hears from the store before the rep has looked up. Duplicate the page from the Lead Page Manager to make a second version with a different headline for a different ad. The Lead Pages feature page covers the builder in full, and the personal salesperson websites page shows what a rep's own page looks like. Every other walkthrough is in the help center, and the contact page reaches a person who will build your first page with you. A layout or form field set the builder does not offer is available on request; our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor One page per offer, not one page for everything; a page that tries to sell trucks, financing and trade ins converts none of them. Keep the form short. Put the page on a short address a listener can remember from a radio spot. Duplicate rather than rebuild when the event changes, and check the visitor analytics on Friday so the page is edited from numbers, not from a feeling. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a web developer? A: No. The Lead Page Manager under the Website menu is a builder. A manager creates the page, fills in Page Details, turns on a form, sets the address and saves. Editing later is the same screen. Q: Where do the leads go? A: Into the lead inbox in LeadLocate CRM, labeled with the page as their source. From there round robin, the Lead Feeds Manager settings and Automated Templates treat them like any other lead. Q: Can the page use my own domain? A: Yes. The Lead Page URL Setting screen lets you choose from the domains available to the store, including ones bought through the CRM, and set a forward destination if needed. Q: Is there a limit or a per page charge? A: No. Build as many pages as your campaigns need. Lead Pages is included in every LeadLocate plan, month to month. ### How to Create an Apply Link in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-create-an-apply-link Open the SecureWebX console from the SecureWebX button in the CRM dock, go to Apply links, and click Generate apply link. Name the link for the job it does, save it, and use Copy link to put the branded application URL on your clipboard. Send it to a customer and the finished application lands in your inbox. Steps: 1. Open the SecureWebX console: Click the SecureWebX button on the dock at the bottom of the LeadLocate CRM. The console opens with your dealership already signed in, because the SecureWebX company and its users are created with your LeadLocate account. You can also open the console directly in a browser with the same login. 2. Go to the apply links page: Open Apply links in the console. Every link your store has is listed here with its public application URL and the actions that go with it. A store that has never made one sees No apply links yet and a single button, which is the right place to start. 3. Generate the link: Click Generate apply link. Give it a name that says what it is for, because you will be picking it out of a list later: website, special finance, weekend event, service lane. The name is for your team; the customer sees your dealership's branded application, not the label you typed. 4. Decide whether it belongs to the store or to a person: A Personal apply link belongs to one salesperson, so applications that come through it arrive tagged to them. Use personal links when reps text their own customers and you want credit where it is earned. Use a store link on the website, on printed cards and anywhere a customer arrives without a rep attached. Most dealerships run both. 5. Save it and copy the URL: Save the link and it appears in the list right away. Use Copy link to put the URL on your clipboard, ready to paste into a text from the CRM, an email, a landing page, a QR code on a window sticker or a card on the sales desk. The URL is stable, so a card you print stays good. 6. See what the customer sees: Click Open apply page in new tab and walk the application yourself before you send it to anyone. You get the same five step form your customers get: personal, residence, employment, income, review. Look at it on a phone too, because that is where most of them fill it in. 7. Switch it on or off when the job changes: Use Toggle apply link active state to retire a link without deleting anything. A weekend event link goes quiet on Monday, a rep's personal link goes quiet when the rep leaves, and every application that already came through either one stays exactly where it is in your records. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate login and the SecureWebX console, which every account gets when it is created. Nothing is installed and nothing is purchased separately, so the first link can be made the same day the store goes live. The console opens from the dock in the CRM with the same login you already use, and finance managers, sales managers and salespeople can each be invited with the role that fits what they do. Know two things before you click. First, what this link is for, because the name and the customizations follow from that. Second, who is going to send it, since a Personal apply link tags the application to a rep and a store link does not. If you are new to the idea, the apply links page explains what they are and what a dealership does with them, and the online credit application form walks the five steps your customer sees. #### What you should see After you save, the new link sits in the list on Apply links with its own public application URL, an active state you control, and the actions to copy it or open it. Click through with Open apply page in new tab and you get your dealership's branded application: your name at the top, the five steps across, a trade-in section, support for an ITIN as well as a Social Security number, and the e-signature and consent capture at the end. Send the link to a real phone and the completed application appears in the SecureWebX credit application inbox with a status, an assignee, notes and the documents the customer uploaded. Applications that arrived on a personal link show the rep they belong to. From there the finance office works it: stipulations, worksheets, a secure share to a lender of your choosing, and an adverse action notice generated from the record when one is needed. #### How many apply links should a store have? More than one, fewer than twenty. The reason to make a second link is that it needs to ask for something different or be tracked separately, not that it goes in a different text message. A typical floor runs a store link on the website and in the general inbox, a special finance link that asks for proof of income and proof of residence up front, personal links for the reps who text their own customers all day, and one event link that gets switched on for a sale and off again on Monday. Each one feeds the same inbox, and each application records the link it came from, so the manager can see at a glance which door the business came through. Resist the urge to make one per rep per campaign. The customizer is what makes a link different; the list is what you have to read on a busy Saturday. Keep the list short enough that anyone in the finance office can pick the right one without asking. #### If it did not work The apply links page is empty. That is No apply links yet doing its job on a store that has not made one. Click Generate apply link and you have your first one in under a minute. The link opens a page that is not branded like your store. The console holds your business name, logo and colors in the company settings. Fill those in once and every apply link picks them up, including the links you already made. You pasted the link and the customer got a page saying it is no longer available. The link was switched off. Open Apply links, find it, and use Toggle apply link active state to bring it back, or send a current link instead. Applications are arriving without a salesperson on them. They came in on a store link. Give each rep a Personal apply link and ask them to send that one from their own conversations. You want the link to ask for more than the standard form. That is the customizer, not a new link. Extra sections, custom fields, document uploads and disclosures are added to the link you already have. #### Related tasks Texting the link to a customer in the middle of a conversation is covered on text a credit application link, which is the fastest path from a phone call to a complete application. Everything the finance office does with what comes back is on the credit application inbox page, and the security around it, from two factor sign in to the full audit log, is on credit application security. The LeadLocate Help Center carries the rest of the SecureWebX guides. An apply link behavior your store needs that the console does not already offer is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do I find apply links in SecureWebX? A: In the dealer console, on the Apply links page. Open the console from the SecureWebX button on the CRM dock, and every link your store has is listed there. Q: What is the difference between a store link and a personal apply link? A: A personal apply link belongs to one salesperson and tags the applications that arrive through it to that person. A store link is for the website, printed cards and anywhere a customer arrives without a rep attached. Q: Can I print an apply link on a card or a window sticker? A: Yes. The URL is stable, so a printed card or a QR code keeps working. Use a store link for anything printed, and switch it off in the console if you ever retire it. Q: Does the customer need an account to use the link? A: No. They open the link, complete the five step application on their own phone or laptop, sign it and submit. Bot protection sits on the public form, and the data is encrypted once it is submitted. ### How to Customize an Apply Link in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-customize-an-apply-link In the SecureWebX console, open Apply links, pick the link you want to change, and open Customize application. From there you add sections, custom fields, document uploads and disclosures to the standard five step application. Preview with Open apply page in new tab, then send the link with Copy link. Steps: 1. Pick the link you are changing: Open Apply links in the console and find the one you want. Customizations belong to a single link, so the website link keeps the short, clean application while the special finance link asks for more. If the link you need does not exist yet, make it first with Generate apply link, then come back. 2. Open the customizer: Open Customize application on that link. You are looking at the standard five step application, personal, residence, employment, income and review, with the places you can add to it. Nothing you do here changes the other links, and nothing changes for applications that were already submitted. 3. Add a section where it belongs: A section is a group of your own fields attached to one step of the application. Give it a title the customer will understand, such as trade-in details or business information, and put it on the step where a customer would expect to answer it. Asking about a trade in the middle of employment history is how people abandon a form. 4. Add the fields you actually need: Inside a section, add fields one at a time. A field can be a plain text box, a dropdown with the options you type in, or a document upload for a file you need on this path. Each field takes a short note that shows under it to guide the applicant, and that note is worth writing, because it is the difference between a legible answer and a shrug. 5. Add the disclosures this link has to carry: Disclosures added to a link appear on that link's application, and you can require the customer to acknowledge one before they continue. Your state specific disclosures live in the company compliance settings and get pulled onto the links that need them, so you write each one once and reuse it. 6. Walk it like a customer: Click Open apply page in new tab and complete the application yourself on a phone, not just on the desktop. Count the taps. If a new section added six fields to a form a shopper is filling in at a stoplight, decide whether you need all six or whether two of them can be asked in the finance office. 7. Send it, and retire it when the job is over: Use Copy link to put the URL on your clipboard and send it the way you always send it. When a campaign or a season ends, Toggle apply link active state retires the link without touching a single application that came through it. #### Before you start You need the SecureWebX console, which opens from the SecureWebX button on the CRM dock with the login you already use, and at least one apply link. If you have not made one, how to create an apply link takes about a minute. Customizing is done by the store itself in the console, without a support ticket and without waiting on anybody. Decide what this link is for before you open the customizer. A link for the website is trying to get a serious shopper through a form on the first try. A link for the special finance desk is trying to arrive with proof of income already attached so the manager can work the deal that afternoon. Those two goals want different applications, which is exactly why customization sits on the link instead of on the store. The apply links page covers the wider picture of what a link is and where it gets used. #### What you should see Inside the customizer, the five standard steps with your additions shown on the step you attached them to. Every addition is yours to edit, reorder or remove, and the standard application underneath stays complete whether you add anything or not: personal, residence, employment, income, review, with co-applicant support, an ITIN accepted in place of a Social Security number, a trade-in section, e-signature and consent capture against versioned terms. Open the preview and you get the customer's view of exactly what you built, branded to your dealership. Submit a test application and it lands in the credit application inbox with your extra fields shown on the record and any uploaded documents attached to it. The inbox tells you which apply link each application came from, so you can see whether the link you customized is the one producing complete files. #### What should I add, and what should I leave alone? Add what you would otherwise have to chase by phone. Proof of income and proof of residence uploads on a special finance link save two days of back and forth. A trade section with a photo upload turns a maybe into an appraisal. A business information section on a commercial link stops a fleet deal from arriving as a personal application. A short event code field tells you which Saturday sale the business came from. Leave the standard form alone on your website link. The application already asks for everything a lender expects, and every extra field on a public form costs you applicants who were only half decided when they started. A store that adds nine custom fields to its website link and then wonders why the inbox went quiet has answered its own question. Write the helper note under any field a customer could answer three different ways. Upload your two most recent pay stubs gets pay stubs. A field labeled income proof with no note gets a photo of a bank card. The note takes ten seconds to write and saves the finance office a phone call on every file. #### If it did not work Your changes are not showing on the application. You are probably looking at a different link. Customizations belong to one link at a time, so open Apply links, confirm which one you edited, and preview that exact link with Open apply page in new tab. The customer says the form is too long. Count your own additions. Move anything that is not needed to decide the deal into the finance office, and keep the public link to the standard five steps. Customers are skipping the document upload. Put the upload on the step where they are already talking about that subject, give it a helper note that names the document, and say in your text message that the application will ask for it. Applications are savable step by step, so a customer who needs to go find a pay stub can come back to where they stopped. The disclosure you added is not appearing. Disclosures are attached per link. Add it to this link, or add it in the company compliance settings so it carries across the links that need it, then preview again. You want a field type the customizer does not list. It is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Related tasks The disclosures side of this job has its own guide, and the wider picture of per store disclosures, privacy notices and terms is on compliance disclosures and privacy notices. What the customer walks through, screen by screen, is on the online credit application form. What happens after they submit is on the credit application inbox page. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the SecureWebX guides, from creating the link to reviewing what comes back. Keep one habit: whenever you change a link, walk it yourself on a phone before the first customer sees it. #### Questions and answers Q: Does customizing one apply link change the others? A: No. Sections, fields, uploads and disclosures belong to the single link you edited. Every other link keeps the application it had, including the standard one on your website. Q: What kinds of custom fields can I add? A: A plain text field, a dropdown with the options you type in, or a document upload. Each one takes a short note that shows under the field to guide the applicant. Q: Will my changes affect applications that were already submitted? A: No. Submitted applications keep the exact form the customer filled in and signed, along with the version of the terms they agreed to. Q: Can a salesperson customize a link, or does it take a manager? A: It is done in the console by whoever has the role for it. Most stores keep customizing with the finance office and let salespeople send the links. ### How to Design a Business Card in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-design-a-business-card Design Studio is the design tool on the dock of LeadLocate CRM. To design a business card, open Design Studio, start a project at card size, add your name, title, the store logo and the tracking number the CRM assigned you, pick a stock image or upload your own, and export a print ready file you take to any printer. Every user has it. Steps: 1. Open Design Studio: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM on the desktop and click Design Studio on the dock at the bottom of the screen, between Referral Program and My Inventory. The studio opens with your projects and folders. 2. Start a card project: Create a new project, give it a name such as your own name and Card, and set the size and orientation for a business card. Landscape is the usual choice. Keep the store's card layout in a shared folder so the next rep starts from it rather than from a blank canvas. 3. Add your details: Use the text tool to add your name, your title and the dealership name. Add the tracking number the CRM assigned you, not a personal cell, so the calls and texts the card produces land in the store's system. Adjust the style, size and spacing until it reads cleanly at arm's length. 4. Add the logo and an image: Upload the store logo file with Upload, or pick a vehicle or background from the stock media library for the back of the card. Rotate, flip, scale and position each element on the canvas. 5. Export the print ready file: Save the project, then export the finished card. The file is produced at the size you set, which any printer accepts as is, from the office printer to a commercial shop. 6. Keep the card on your profile: Ask a manager to open User Management, open your user and upload the exported card into the Business Card slot. That copy is the one Automated Templates attach to the automated email when the attachment is turned on. #### Before you start Every user in LeadLocate CRM has Design Studio on the dock and keeps their own projects and folders, so a salesperson can build their own card on day one. Roles set in User Management decide who builds store wide pieces; uploading the finished card to a user's profile is a manager task. Have the store logo file on hand, and know the tracking number the CRM assigned you, because that number is what belongs on the card. Check with the office which printer the store uses and what size they expect. The studio exports at the size you set, so agree the size first and you will not redo the layout. If the store already has a saved card layout in a shared folder, open that rather than starting from nothing; the point of a saved layout is that every card in the building carries the same logo, the same colors and the store's number. #### What you should see Inside Design Studio your project appears on the canvas at card size, with your name, title, the dealership name, your tracking number and the logo in place, and the image you chose on the back if you built one. Saving keeps the project in your folder so it opens the same way next time and can be duplicated for the next new hire. The export is a single print ready file at the size you set. Open it on your screen; it should look exactly like the canvas, with nothing cut off at the edges. Send it to the printer the store uses. Once a manager has uploaded the card into the Business Card slot on your user in User Management, send yourself a test lead and the automated email arrives with your card attached, provided the attachment is switched on for that feed on the Automated Templates page. #### If it did not work The printer says the file is the wrong size. The project was created at a different size than the printer expects. Open the project, check the size and orientation you set, correct them, reposition anything that moved and export again. Agreeing the size with the printer before you design saves this round trip. The logo looks blurry or stretched. The uploaded file is too small or was scaled unevenly. Ask the office for the largest logo file the store has, upload it again with Upload, and scale it with the corner handles so the proportions hold true. The card did not attach to the automated email. Two things have to be true: the exported card is uploaded to your user's Business Card slot, and the attachment switch is on for the feed on the Automated Templates page. Check both and send another test lead. #### Related tasks Build the referral card next in the same studio, with the link from the Referral Program on the back; set up a sheet with rows and columns to print many cards on one page. Turn on the card attachment on the Automated Templates page so every automated email arrives from a person. The NFC card and the vCard, built in the same studio, put your contact details on a customer's phone with a tap. The Design Studio feature page covers every piece the studio makes. Every other walkthrough is in the help center, and the contact page reaches a person who will look at your card with you. Produced and shipped print pieces are available on request; our team puts that in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Put the tracking number on the card, never a personal cell. When the salesperson leaves, the customers who call that number still reach the store, and every text that follows is logged and honors opt outs. Keep the front simple: name, title, store, number. Use the back for a vehicle or the referral link. Save one store layout and have every new hire duplicate it; the cards on the desk should all look like they came from the same dealership because they did. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a designer or a separate design tool? A: No. Design Studio is on the dock of LeadLocate CRM for every user, with text tools, uploads, a stock media library and print ready export. You pay your printer for paper and ink and nothing else. Q: Does LeadLocate print the cards? A: The studio exports a print ready file you take to any printer. Produced and shipped pieces are available on request, and our team puts that in production for your dealership. Q: Which phone number should go on the card? A: The tracking number the CRM assigned you. Calls and texts to it land in the store's system with recording, logging and do not call controls in place, and the relationship stays with the dealership. Q: How does the card get attached to my automated emails? A: A manager uploads the exported card into the Business Card slot on your user in User Management, and the attachment switch is turned on for the feed on the Automated Templates page. ### How to Desk a Deal in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-desk-a-deal Desking a deal in LeadLocate CRM means building the cash, finance or lease structure for a customer on the EZ Desking worksheet, saving it against the lead, and printing or sharing the customer sheet. It starts from the Desking menu or from Start New Deal on a lead, with the customer and vehicle already filled in. It is included with every LeadLocate CRM plan. Steps: 1. Open the deal: From the main menu choose Desking and pick the deal, or open the lead you are working and use Start New Deal. The customer, co-buyer and unit come off the lead record, so the worksheet opens with the people and the vehicle already on it. 2. Confirm the vehicle: Type the VIN into Enter VIN to auto-fill vehicle info and click Decode VIN. Year, make, model and trim fill from the vehicle database. Enter the mileage and the selling price. 3. Pick the deal type: Choose the Cash, Finance or Lease tab for the structure the customer is asking about. The Finance Deal Summary, Cash Deal Summary or Lease Deal Summary on the right updates as you type. 4. Enter the money: Fill Selling / Cash Price, Down Payment / Deposit, the term and the rate. Sales tax, dealer fees and DMV fees start from the defaults in your Dealership Profile, and the tax comes from the 50 state matrix, so you change them only when this deal is different. 5. Add the trade: If the customer has a car to trade, click Add a Trade-In and enter the Trade Allowance and the Payoff Amount. The worksheet applies the trade credit by the method your state uses and taxes negative equity where it should. 6. Show the options: Expand the Multi-Pencil Grid to lay out several down payments across several terms and turn the screen toward the customer. When the customer names a payment, open Goal-Seek Desking, enter the Target Monthly Payment (required), and the solver tells you what price or down payment reaches it. 7. Save and set the status: Click Save Deal. Set the Deal Status, for example Negotiating, so the rest of the store can see where the deal stands. From here you print a customer sheet, share a pencil recap link or send the customer deal page. #### What do I need before I desk a deal? You need a LeadLocate CRM login with access to the Desking menu, which every user role has, and a lead or contact for the customer. A deal is always attached to a record, so if the customer is a walk in with no record yet, create the lead first or use Search existing customers on the worksheet to find the one that already exists. If there is a co-buyer, use Toggle to add a co-buyer / cosigner to this deal so both names carry onto the sheet. The one piece of setup that makes every pencil faster is the Dealership Profile. A manager enters the store's sales tax rate, dealer fees, DMV fees, loan defaults, lease defaults and the default tab once, and every new worksheet opens with them. If nobody has done that yet, do it before the first deal of the day, not during it. The EZ Desking worksheets page explains each default. #### What should I see when the deal is desked? A saved deal shows the customer and unit in the top bar, the structure on the active tab, and a summary block on the right with the amount financed, the taxes and fees, the trade credit and the payment. The Multi-Pencil Grid shows a real payment in every cell with its own rate row, and the Goal-Seek Desking panel shows the price or down payment that lands on the target you entered. The deal now appears in the Desking list with the status you set, and the lead record shows the deal in its history. The deal view also carries the customer chat panel, the Road to Sale checklist and the deal jacket on the same page, so the paperwork and the conversation stay with the numbers. The mobile app shows the same deal under Deal Tracker with its status, so a manager off the lot can check it from a phone. #### What if it did not work? The VIN did not decode. Check that all seventeen characters are there and that the letter O and the digit zero are not swapped; a VIN never contains the letters I, O or Q. Retype it and click Decode VIN again. If the unit is a specialty vehicle the decode does not carry, type the year, make, model and trim by hand and the worksheet still runs. The tax or fees look wrong. The worksheet starts from the Dealership Profile defaults. Open the profile, confirm the sales tax rate, the fee amounts and their taxable flags, and the Trade-In Tax Credit Method for your state, then reopen the deal. A deal that was saved with an old default keeps that default until you change it on the deal. The deal did not save. A required field is empty. The summary block turns the missing item visible when you click Save Deal; fill it and save again. Printing never submits the form, so you can print a worksheet at any point in the write up without a required field error. #### What do I do next? Once the deal is saved, the next tasks all start from the same deal view. Print the right customer sheet for the person in front of you, covered on print packets and mail. Send the customer a private page with the numbers, the documents and a signature, covered on customer deal pages with e-signature. Share a pencil recap sheet when the customer wants a link rather than paper. Capture the trade properly with the VIN scan and photos on the trade in capture page. The Help Center lists every task in order, the desking tool page covers the worksheet in depth, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where desking sits in the rest of the platform. #### Tips from the floor Desk from the lead, not from a blank worksheet. Start New Deal from the lead card carries the customer, the co-buyer and the unit the customer asked about, which removes the retyping that produces a misspelled name on a printed sheet. Set the grid defaults in the profile to the layout your desk presents most, three down payments by three terms for most stores, so the grid is ready the moment the customer asks for options. Save before you print, so the printed sheet and the saved deal always match. And set the status every time you touch the deal; a status the whole store can see is what keeps a second salesperson from pencilling the same customer an hour later. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I desk a deal without a VIN? A: Yes. Type the year, make, model and trim by hand and the worksheet runs the same way. The VIN decode saves typing and fills the trim exactly, but it is not required to save the deal. Q: Where do the tax rate and fees come from? A: From the Dealership Profile, where a manager sets the store defaults once, and from the 50 state tax matrix. You change them on a deal only when that deal is different from the store default. Q: Can I desk a lease? A: Yes. The Lease tab carries residual, money factor, annual mileage, excess mileage rate, fees, security deposit and three lease tax methods, with lease defaults set once in the Dealership Profile. Q: Can a salesperson desk from the phone? A: The LeadLocate mobile app shows every deal under Deal Tracker with its status, the deal jacket and the customer chat. The full worksheet with the pencil grid and goal seek is built for the desktop screen. ### How to Dictate a Message in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-dictate-a-message Open the composer you want to write in, click the microphone next to the box, and talk. The words appear in the box as you speak, so you read them before anyone else does. Click the microphone again to stop, fix the names, numbers and any VIN by hand, and send the message from the composer so it lands on the lead with its delivery status. Steps: 1. Open the box you want to fill: Dictation is not a separate screen. Open the thing you were going to type in anyway: a customer's text thread, an email, a note on a lead, a to-do on the Workspace, the feedback form. The microphone is a small icon next to that box, usually beside a second button that cleans up spelling and grammar after the fact. 2. Press the microphone and talk: Click it once. The button turns on and the box tells you it is listening, so you never wonder whether it heard you start. Talk the way you would talk to the customer, at a normal distance and a normal pace. Say the punctuation only if you want it; otherwise write the sentence short enough not to need any. 3. Watch the words land: The text appears in the box while you speak, first as a rough guess and then settled, which is the part that makes dictation usable at a dealership: you see the mistake as it happens rather than after you have sent it. Keep talking to add to what is there. Anything already in the box stays put, so you can type half a message and speak the rest. 4. Stop, then fix names, numbers and VINs: Click the microphone again to stop. Now read it. Dictation is good at sentences and unreliable at exactly the things a car deal runs on: a customer's last name, a stock number, a payment, a seventeen character VIN. Correct those by hand every time, because a message that says the wrong payment is worse than no message. 5. Clean it up if it needs it: The button beside the microphone tidies spelling, grammar and capitalization on what is in the box without changing what you meant. Use it on a long dictated paragraph, then read the result once more. Anything you would not say out loud to the customer, take out. 6. Send it from the composer, not from anywhere else: Send the text or the email from the composer you dictated into. That is what puts the message on the lead, gives the outbound bubble its delivery status, and drops the whole thing into the communications log where a manager or a teammate can read it. A message you dictated and then sent from a personal phone is a message the store does not have. 7. Use it on your own notes too: The Workspace is where dictation earns its keep quietly. Speak the to-do instead of typing it, speak the disposition note after a call while the call is still in your head, speak the completion note when you close it out. Two sentences spoken beat one sentence typed, and the record is better for it. #### Before you start Nothing to enable and nothing to install. Voice dictation is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, for every user. The first time you press a microphone, the browser asks for permission to use it; allow it once and it stops asking. Use a browser that supports voice input, such as Chrome, and a quiet enough spot that the assistant is not transcribing the showroom. Beyond that there is no setup. The AI writing assistant page covers the other half of this, which is having a draft written for you rather than speaking it yourself; the two are often used in the same message. #### Where the microphone is On the texting side, the composer on a lead and the thread view both carry it next to Type your message..., and it is there again when you start a New Text Message from the inbox. On the email side it sits next to Type your email message... in the composer. In both cases the message still goes out the ordinary way, from the store's number or the store's domain, with its delivery status. On the Workspace, every free text field has one. The mic on a to-do is titled Dictate with microphone and reads as Dictate to-do title or Dictate to-do notes depending on the field, the one on a task you are closing out is Dictate disposition note, and the one on a finished to-do is Dictate to-do completion note. The inline note box on a lead has one as well. It is also on the parts of the CRM people forget to write in. The feedback button on the dock invites you to Dictate your feedback instead of typing, and the same control on the phone menu is simply Dictate. Team Chat takes dictation in its message box, and Jax takes a spoken question from the ask box on the dock. #### What you should see The button showing it is on, the box saying it is listening, and your words arriving as you speak them. Stop and the text stays in the box, ready to edit, and nothing has been sent. That is worth saying plainly: dictation fills in a box, it never sends anything. A person still presses send. You should also see whatever you had already typed survive. Dictation adds to the box rather than replacing it, and it keeps your typed corrections if you edit in the middle of speaking. That is deliberate, because the real way people use this is a sentence typed, a paragraph spoken, and a number fixed by hand at the end. #### If it did not work Nothing happens when you press the microphone. The browser is holding the permission prompt, or it was declined once. Allow microphone access for the site in the browser's address bar and press the button again. The button says voice input is not available in this browser. Open the CRM in a browser that supports it, such as Chrome. The rest of the composer works either way, so you can type the message and use the cleanup button beside the microphone. It heard the room instead of you. Background noise on a Saturday floor is the usual cause. Step into an office, or dictate the outline and type the details. The name or the VIN came out wrong. Expected. Fix those by hand, every message, before you send. Dictation is for sentences; a VIN is for your eyes and the VIN scanner. You dictated into the wrong box. Nothing was sent, so select the text, cut it, and paste it where it belongs. Only the send button sends. #### Related tasks Most dictated messages are texts, so the LeadLocate Help Center guide on texting a customer is the natural next one, along with sending a vehicle in a text and sending a picture message. If what you actually want is the wording written for you, the writing assistant in the same composer drafts it and you edit it, which is faster than speaking a long message from scratch. Dictation is also the quiet half of call work. After a call, speak the disposition note instead of typing it, and let the call recording and the transcript carry the detail; the guide on reading a call transcript covers that side. A field your store wants to dictate into that does not have a microphone today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the dictation button in LeadLocate? A: It is the microphone next to the box you are typing in: the text composer, the email composer, the notes and to-dos on the Workspace, the feedback form, Team Chat and the Jax ask box. Q: Does dictating a message send it? A: No. Dictation fills in the box. You read it, fix the names and numbers, and press send yourself, which is what puts the message on the lead with its delivery status. Q: Can I dictate part of a message and type the rest? A: Yes. Speaking adds to what is already in the box, and your typed edits are kept, so a mixed message works exactly as you would expect. Q: Why did it get the customer's name wrong? A: Names, stock numbers, payments and VINs are where dictation struggles. Read every dictated message before sending and correct those by hand. ### How to Download Your Welcome Guide in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-download-your-welcome-guide Sign in to My LeadLocate, open Files & Documents and find the welcome guide in the list. Click Download and the PDF saves to your computer, ready to print or email to the team. The same guide also arrives by email during onboarding, and the copy in your file library never expires. Steps: 1. Sign in to My LeadLocate: Open your account portal and sign in with the email on the account. This is the same portal you use for invoices, add-ons and support tickets, and the same place you launch the CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX from. 2. Open your files: Click Files & Documents. This is your store's file library: the welcome guide, anything our team has sent you, and anything you have uploaded for us. Files that arrived recently are flagged New so you can spot them without hunting. 3. Find the welcome guide: Look for the welcome guide by name in the list. If your library has grown, sort by date and go back to the week the account opened; the guide is one of the first things put there. Every file shows what it is and when it arrived. 4. Click Download: Click Download on the row. The PDF saves to your computer in the usual place your browser puts files. Open it once to confirm it is the guide you expected before you send it anywhere. 5. Get it to the people who need it: Print a copy for the desk and email the PDF to everyone who will touch the platform: the sales floor, the BDC, the desk and whoever answers the phone at the front. A guide read by one manager does nothing for the store. 6. Use it alongside your onboarding: Your account also runs an onboarding sequence in the days after it opens, and the portal dashboard shows where you are. Account Snapshot gives you the current state of the account, and Account Timeline lists what has happened on it, so you can see which onboarding steps are already behind you. #### Before you start You need a My LeadLocate sign in. Every store gets one for the account admin when the account opens, and the admin can hand sign ins to anyone else in the building. There is nothing to install and nothing to unlock first: the file library is on the menu the moment you sign in. If you are brand new and have not signed in yet, do that first. The portal is also how you reach your plan, your invoices and your support tickets, and it is worth a walk through on day one. The My LeadLocate page covers every screen in it. #### What you should see A list of your store's files with names and dates, the newest first, with recent arrivals flagged New. Clicking Download on the welcome guide gives you a PDF you can print, forward or keep in your own shared drive. Nothing about the file changes when you take a copy, so you can come back and download it again for the next person you hire. The file library is also two way. Anything our team sends your store lands there instead of getting lost in one person's inbox, and anything you need to send us securely goes in the same place. That is why a store that uses the library rather than email stops losing documents between people. #### If it did not work You do not see Files & Documents on the menu. Your user has not been given that part of the portal. The account admin can add it under user access in a few seconds. The guide is not in the list. Sort by date and look at the first week of the account, or search the library by name. If it is genuinely not there, open a support ticket from the portal and we will put a copy in your library. The PDF opens as a blank page. The file finished saving but your reader opened it too early. Close it, open the saved file again from your downloads folder, and it will render properly. You want a copy for a new hire but cannot find the email. Skip the email. The library copy is the one that lasts, so send them the PDF you just downloaded, or give them their own sign in and let them get it themselves. #### Getting the team through the first week Treat the guide as the agenda for your first sales meeting on the platform rather than as reading homework. Sit the floor on the leads inbox, sit the BDC on the texting inbox, and sit the desk on the worksheet, and have each group do one real task while the guide is open. People learn a CRM by working a live customer in it, not by studying a PDF at home. Follow it with the two things that make the first week stick: give every person their own sign in so the history reads as who did what, and set the notification preferences so a reply reaches the right phone. The recorded demo is a good second session for anyone who joined after the launch, and the LeadLocate Help Center answers every question that comes after the guide. #### Related tasks The rest of the account portal, including invoices, receipts, the add-on shelf, credits, support tickets and the launch tiles for each product, is on the My LeadLocate page. The products the guide introduces are on the platform overview, starting with LeadLocate CRM. The Help Center has the guides your team will want next: setting up a profile, working the lead inbox, texting a customer and booking an appointment. A training document your store wants in its own words is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the welcome guide kept? A: In your file library in My LeadLocate, under Files and Documents. The copy there does not expire, so anyone with a sign in can download it long after the onboarding emails are gone. Q: Can I share the welcome guide with my whole team? A: Yes. Download the PDF and print or email it to anyone in the store. You can also give each person their own portal sign in so they pull their own copy. Q: I joined the store later. Can I still get it? A: Yes. Ask your account admin for a sign in, open the file library and download it. Nothing about the guide is tied to the person who opened the account. Q: What if the guide is missing from my files? A: Open a support ticket from the same portal and say which account it is for. Our team puts a copy in your library, and you keep the ticket as a record. ### How to Drop a Voicemail in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-drop-a-voicemail Dropping a voicemail in LeadLocate CRM means leaving a recording you made earlier instead of improvising a message on every call. You record it once under Voicemail Drop Files, then press Drop Voicemail on the softphone when a call reaches the customer's mailbox. The same library sends a recording to a whole list from Voicemail Drops under Marketing Tools. Steps: 1. Record the message once: Under Billing and Admin, open Voicemail Drop Files. Record in the browser, or choose Record your voicemail over the phone and dial the number shown to record from any handset. A file recorded elsewhere goes in with Upload audio file. Give it a name in Recording Name and press Save Voicemail; it appears under Saved Voicemail Recordings. 2. Place the call: Call from the phone number on the lead, or open Make a Call in the top bar and dial on the VoIP Phone. Calling from the lead is better: the call and the drop attach themselves to the customer's record. 3. Wait for the mailbox: Let the call ring through to the customer's voicemail greeting. Do not hang up when the greeting starts. 4. Press Drop Voicemail: Press Drop Voicemail on the softphone and pick the message from Select Voicemail Recording. The CRM plays it into the mailbox. You can hang up and dial the next customer while it plays. 5. Confirm it in the log: Open Calls. The row shows the call as a Voicemail Drop with the status Voicemail was successfully delivered, and the same entry sits on the lead's timeline. 6. Send one message to a list instead: For fifty people at once, open Marketing Tools on the dock, then Voicemail Drops. In the Bulk Voicemail Messenger: pick a saved list under Campaign: or paste numbers where it says Please enter one number per line, choose the recording, set a Schedule Time if you want it later, and press Send Voicemail Blast. The send is recorded under Bulk Voicemail History: with Sent By and Total Sent. #### Before you start You need a login to LeadLocate CRM and one saved recording. Any user who can place calls can drop a voicemail on a call; sending a blast to a list is normally a manager's job. Record the message in a quiet room, keep it under thirty seconds, and say your name, the store, one line about why you are calling and your direct number. A store can keep shared recordings for everyone and a personal one per salesperson in the same library. For a list send, run the numbers through the Phone Validator first and make sure the DNC Blacklist is current, because a voicemail delivered straight to a mailbox is still an outbound contact and the calling rules where your store operates apply to it. The voicemail drop feature page covers that in more depth. #### What you should see On a single call, the drop takes a second to start and the softphone is free as soon as you hang up. The call row on Calls reads Voicemail Drop rather than a call nobody answered, and the recording you left is named on the row, so a manager can see which message each salesperson is using. A customer who calls back reaches the number you said in the recording, and the return call lands on the same lead. On a list send, Bulk Voicemail History: gains a row the moment the blast is queued, with who sent it, how many numbers were on the list and the time. If you set a Schedule Time, the row waits with that time until it goes out. #### If it did not work The drop button is not there. The library is empty. Drop Voicemail needs at least one recording under Saved Voicemail Recordings; record or upload one and place the call again. The log reads Voicemail delivery failed. The far end hung up before the message finished, or the customer's mailbox is full or not set up. Both are the customer's side. A text to the same lead is the sensible next move, and the Voicemail Fallback status on a forwarded call means the store's own greeting caught it instead. The recording played but the customer heard only the tail of it. You pressed Drop Voicemail before the customer's greeting finished, so the first seconds played into the beep. Wait for the tone next time. If your greeting is the one that is cut, re-record it with a second of silence at the front. The support team can see the delivery status from the store's side if none of these fit. #### Related tasks The drop button lives on the VoIP softphone, and the same library serves the phone app, covered in how to use the mobile dialer. A drop is the outbound half of voicemail; the inbound half is the greeting a customer hears when they call your tracking number and nobody picks up, which is set as the Company Voicemail on the IVR settings and as My Voicemail per user. A list send pairs with Bulk Texting to the same list the same afternoon, because a customer who ignores one usually answers the other. Every task in the Help Center is written the same way as this one. #### Tips from the floor Make two recordings, not one: a general callback and one for the customer who visited and did not buy. Name them so the right one is obvious in a hurry. Re-record every month or so, because a message that mentions a sale that ended sounds like a machine, and the whole point is that it does not. And say your direct number twice, slowly, at the end; that is the part people replay. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I leave a voicemail without the phone ringing on the customer's end? A: Yes, that is what a list send from Voicemail Drops does: the recording is delivered straight to the mailbox. A single call drop happens after the call rings through to voicemail. Q: Can I delete a voicemail I already dropped? A: No. Once the recording is delivered it is in the customer's mailbox. You can remove a recording from your library so it is never used again. Q: Is a voicemail drop legal? A: It depends on where your store is, who is on the list and why. Treat a drop like any outbound call: scrub the list, honor the DNC Blacklist, and check the rules where you operate with your own counsel. Q: Does the drop cost anything per message? A: There is no per drop charge. Voicemail drop and list delivery are part of every LeadLocate plan. ### How to Edit Vehicle Photos in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-edit-vehicle-photos You edit vehicle photos in the Inventory Link dealer portal. Open the inventory list, find the unit, open its edit screen, upload your own shots, drag them into the order you want and save. Your first image becomes the lead photo on the inventory site, in the embeddable widget, in the CRM inventory list and on the vehicle card your salespeople text. Steps: 1. Open the inventory list: Sign in to the Inventory Link dealer portal, or open it from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM. The inventory list shows every unit you carry with a Photo column, so one look tells you which cars are still running on stand in imagery. 2. Find the unit: Use the search box above the list. It takes a year, a make, a model, a trim, a VIN or a stock number, so whatever the key tag says will get you there. If the car is not in the list yet, click Add vehicle and enter the Vehicle identification number first, so the decode fills the build before you start uploading. 3. Open the vehicle and its photos: Open the unit and go to its edit screen. Photos, mileage and the asking price all live there. On a phone the same screen is in the Inventory Link app, which is how a porter shoots and saves standing next to the car rather than back at a desk two hours later. 4. Upload your own shots: Add the store standard set: front three quarter, rear three quarter, both sides, interior, dash, odometer, engine bay, tires, and anything a shopper is going to ask about. Your pictures take the lead as soon as they are on the record, so the promo and stock imagery the unit arrived with steps out of the way. 5. Set the order and clear out the rest: Drag the shot you want first into the first slot. That one image is what appears in the inventory list, on the inventory site, inside the widget on your own website and on the vehicle card in a text message. Delete the duplicate frames, the blurry one and the picture of the key tag. 6. Save and look at the result: Save the vehicle, then open that listing the way a customer would, on a phone. You want the lead photo, the decoded build under it and the price all reading correctly on a small screen before you walk away from the car. #### Before you start You need a sign in to the Inventory Link dealer portal with rights to edit vehicles, and the unit has to be in your inventory. The portal opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on, so there is no second password to keep. Team roles decide who can do this: a porter can be set up to shoot and save photos on a unit without being able to move the price, and a manager can do both. Have the pictures on the device you are working from. If you are shooting the car right now, work from the phone, because the same edit screen is in the Inventory Link app and the shots go straight onto the record without anyone emailing a folder to the office. The lot walk and photo intake guide covers the whole walk around, VIN scan included. One thing to know before you upload. Every unit that arrives without pictures already carries promo photos and stock imagery so the listing is never a blank grey box, as the stock photos for listings page explains. Your own shots take the lead the moment they are on the record, so you are replacing a stand in, not starting from nothing. #### What you should see The unit in the inventory list now shows your first shot in the Photo column instead of the stand in. Open the vehicle and the whole set is there in the order you put it in, with the decoded year, make, model and trim beside it. Everywhere the platform shows that vehicle picks the same images up. The listing on the inventory site the portal publishes carries them, the embeddable inventory widget on the website your web vendor runs carries them, the Inventory menu in the CRM shows them, and the vehicle card a salesperson sends in a text or an email goes out with your lead photo, the mileage and the price on it. When a shopper asks about that unit, the lead detail in the portal names it under Vehicle so the rep answering knows exactly which car is on the table. Because every one of those surfaces reads the same inventory record, there is only one set of pictures to keep current. Change the order once and the change is on the site, in the widget and in the next text without anyone touching a second system. #### If it did not work The site still shows the old picture. The published site regenerates as the lot changes, so give it the regenerate and reload the page with a fresh query string. The vehicle record itself is the place to check first: if the new shot is on the record and in the first slot, the page will catch up. A stock image is still leading. Your photo uploaded but it is not first. Open the vehicle, drag your best exterior shot into the first slot and save. Only the first image is used as the lead photo in the list, in the widget and on the vehicle card in a text. There is no edit option on the vehicle. Your role does not include editing vehicles. A manager changes that on the team page in the portal, then sign out and back in. The photo will not upload. Almost always the file is enormous straight off a camera or the connection dropped partway. Shoot on the phone through the Inventory Link app, which sizes the image on the way in, or upload again on a better signal. The vehicle is not in the list at all. It has not reached the portal yet. Click Add vehicle, put in the Vehicle identification number, let the decode fill the build, then add the photos. Units that arrive by feed or by an import of your own dealership website land on their own. #### Tips from the floor Shoot the same set on every unit and your listings start to look like a store instead of a scrapbook: front three quarter, rear three quarter, both sides, interior from the driver door, dash with the screen on, odometer, engine bay, all four tires, and one close shot of whatever the unit is known for. Park the car so the sun is behind you and the lot line is not cutting through the roof. Lead with the front three quarter. It is the shot a shopper decides on in the list and the one that rides along in the text your salesperson sends. Then shoot the flaw on a used unit and put it in the set on purpose, because the customer who sees the curb rash online does not drive across town to be surprised by it, and the one who does not see it leaves angry. Finish the walk before you leave the car, save, and open the listing on your phone to see what the shopper will see. #### Related tasks The feature behind the stand in images is on the stock photos for listings page, and the walk around that gets a fresh trade on the site the same afternoon is on lot walk and photo intake. Where the finished listing goes is covered by the inventory website builder and the embeddable inventory widget. Once the pictures are right, use them. Send vehicles by text covers the button that drops the unit into a message with its photo and price, which is the fastest way to answer a shopper who asked about that exact car. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the Inventory Link tasks, from publishing a site to handling a visit request. A photo workflow your store wants that the edit screen does not offer is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: How many photos should a used vehicle have? A: Shoot the same set on every unit rather than chasing a number. Exteriors from all four corners, the interior, the dash, the odometer, the engine bay, the tires and a close shot of any flaw will answer most of the questions a shopper would otherwise call about. Q: Can I edit vehicle photos from my phone? A: Yes. The Inventory Link app opens the same vehicle screen, so you shoot, upload, order and save standing next to the car. That is the whole point of the lot walk: the unit is live before you reach the next row. Q: What happens to the stock image after I upload real photos? A: It steps aside. Stand in imagery only ever holds the place of a picture, so once your own shot is in the first slot it is the one that shows in the list, on the site, in the widget and in a text. Q: Do the photos update on my dealership website too? A: If your website shows inventory through the embeddable widget, yes, because the widget reads the same record you just edited. There is one set of pictures per unit, not a copy on every surface. ### How to Edit Your Website in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-edit-your-website You edit your website from the LeadLocate CRM desktop: open the Website menu, choose Website Editor, and work through the tabs for business details, branding, menu links, social profiles and inventory. Each tab saves on its own, and the site status switch decides whether visitors see the page or an offline notice while you work. Steps: 1. Open the Website Editor: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM on a desktop browser. Open the Website menu in the main navigation and choose Website Editor. The editor opens on the Business Info tab with the site's current values filled in. 2. Check your business details: On Business Info, confirm Business Name, Address and the phone number. Use Display Address, Display Phone and Display Website to decide which of them visitors see. Paste your store's site into Enter a Website if you want a link back to it, and fill Menu Hours so the hours block is right. 3. Set the look on the Branding tab: Open Branding. Type the Hero Title and Hero Subtitle that greet a visitor, pick a Theme Color, and upload a Header Image, a logo and a Profile Photo. The three module blocks each take a heading and a short description; use them for the three things you most want a shopper to do. 4. Build the menu and social links: On Menu Links, give each menu page a Menu label and the page it points to, and leave Vehicles on if you want the inventory page in the menu. On Social Media, paste the Destination URL for each profile you actually maintain and leave the rest blank; empty fields do not render. 5. Decide what inventory shows: Open Inventory. Turn Show Inventory on to list the units Inventory Link holds for your store, set the Inventory Heading, and use Hide Prices if your store prefers to quote by phone or text. The list comes from the same inventory record the CRM composers use, so there is nothing to upload here. 6. Set the site live and open it: Back on Branding, find Site Status and switch it to online. Copy the address shown under My URL, open it in a private browser window, and read the page as a customer would. If you have your own domain, POINT MY DOMAIN starts that process. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login and a desktop browser; the editor is a wide screen with six tabs and is not part of the mobile app. Any user can edit the personal website tied to their own profile. Editing the store's dealer website is a job for a Manager or Master Administrator, because the business details on it are the details that print on every customer facing page. Have the assets ready before you open the editor: a logo, a header image, a square profile photo, the store's hours, and the exact addresses of the social profiles you keep current. If you want a shopper to book from the site, have your booking link handy too; the Business Info tab has a schedule field that can be filled from your personal calendar link or the shared team calendar link. Units on the inventory page come from Inventory Link, so if inventory is not connected yet, start there. #### What you should see Each tab saves its own fields, and the editor confirms a save with a short banner rather than a pop up. When you reopen the editor the values you typed are still there, which is the quickest way to confirm the save took. With Site Status set to online, the address under My URL loads a page with your hero title over the header image, the three module blocks below it, the menu across the top, and the inventory page listing units with photos and prices unless you turned Hide Prices on. With Site Status set to offline, the same address shows a Website Currently Offline notice to visitors while you keep editing. That is the normal state for a first build: fill every tab, open the address once as a visitor, then flip the status. From then on, the Analytics tab starts filling with visits, sessions, devices and top pages for whatever Date range you pick, and the same numbers appear in the website visitor analytics views. #### If it did not work The page loads but shows old text. The tab was left before it saved. Go back to the tab, make the change again, and wait for the confirmation banner before moving on. A browser that blocks scripts on the CRM domain can also stop the save; allow the site and try again. The inventory page is empty. Either Show Inventory is off on the Inventory tab, or the store's inventory is not connected. Open the Inventory menu in the CRM: if it also reads that inventory is not connected yet, contact our team and we switch on the feed, or Inventory Link imports the units from your existing website. Visitors see the offline notice. Site Status is still set to offline on the Branding tab. Switch it to online and reload the address. Your own domain does not open the site. Domain changes take time to reach every network, and the records have to point at LeadLocate. The custom domains and DNS page shows the self service DNS editor; if the domain was bought elsewhere, our team can point it for you on request. #### Related tasks The website editor handles the site itself. Landing pages built for one campaign, with their own forms and URL settings, live under the same Website menu in the Lead Pages landing page builder, and every form on them drops into the lead inbox. Traffic questions are answered on the Analytics tab and on the visitor analytics page. A salesperson who wants a site of their own rather than the store's page follows the same steps from their own login; the car salesman personal websites page explains what that site includes. Every step by step guide for the platform is collected in the LeadLocate Help Center. If a layout or a field your store needs is not in the editor, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Write the Hero Title as the sentence a customer wants to hear, not the store's slogan. Keep the three module blocks to three real actions: browse inventory, get a payment, book a visit. Check the page on a phone before you announce it, because that is where most shoppers will read it. And put the site address on the business card and referral card you make in Design Studio, so the site and the card send people to the same place. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a web developer to edit my website? A: No. The editor is a set of form fields inside LeadLocate CRM. You type, upload and save. The hosting, the page layout and the inventory page are handled for you. Q: Can I edit my website from the mobile app? A: The editor is a desktop screen. The site it produces is built for phones, and the analytics it collects are visible on desktop under the Analytics tab. Q: Where do the vehicles on my website come from? A: From Inventory Link, the same inventory record the CRM uses in its texting and email composers. Turn on Show Inventory on the Inventory tab and the units appear with photos and prices. Q: Can I use my own domain name for the site? A: Yes. Use POINT MY DOMAIN on the Branding tab, then set the records in the self service DNS editor, or buy a domain through the CRM and it is pointed for you. ### How to Email a Lender From the SecureWebX Mailbox URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-email-a-lender-from-securewebx Open SecureWebX from the dock in LeadLocate CRM, choose Mailbox, then New message. Pick the lender from your Partner List or type the address in To, write the subject and message, attach any stips the lender asked for, and click Send message. The email goes out from the store's mailbox and the lender's reply comes back to the same thread. Steps: 1. Open SecureWebX from the CRM: In LeadLocate CRM, click the SecureWebX button on the dock at the bottom of the screen. The console opens with the login you already use, so there is no second password between you and the lender. 2. Open the Mailbox: Click Mailbox in the console menu. This is secure email with your partners and lenders: every conversation the store has had, with the correspondent, the subject and the date on each row, newest first. 3. Start a new message: Click New message. The top of the compose page shows the address the email is sending from, so you can see at a glance that the lender receives it from the store and never from a salesperson's personal account. 4. Choose the lender: Under Pick a partner, start typing in Search partners by name or email…. Lenders from your Partner List appear as you type; pick one and the To field fills with the right address. A lender you have never worked with can be typed straight into To. 5. Write the subject and the message: Give the Subject something the lender can file, such as an application reference and what the email is about. Then write the Message: what you are sending, what you need back, and by when. Short and specific gets a faster answer from a busy buyer. 6. Attach the stips: Click Attach files and add the proof of income, proof of residence, insurance card or whatever the lender asked for. Every file is scanned for viruses automatically on upload, which protects both sides of the conversation. 7. Send it and watch the thread: Click Send message. The conversation sits at the top of the Mailbox, and when the lender answers, the reply lands on the same thread with any attachments they sent back. #### What do you need before you start? You need a SecureWebX sign in, which is set up from your LeadLocate CRM users, and the lender's email address. The console opens from the SecureWebX button on the LeadLocate CRM dock with single sign on, and SecureWebX is also on iOS and Android for the finance manager who is away from the desk. It helps to have the lender on your Partner List first. A lender on the list comes up by name as you type, carries its contact details, and keeps every thread the store has had with it in one place. From the Partner List you can also click Email partner on any row that has an address, which opens a new message with the lender already in the To field. Have the documents ready as files. A clear PDF or a sharp photo of each stip saves the lender a second request, and a second request is a day lost on a deal a customer wants to drive home tonight. #### When should you email a lender, and when should you use Send to Lender? Use the Mailbox for the conversation around a deal: a question on a program, a stip the buyer asked for, a note that the customer brought more down, a funding follow up, or an introduction to a lender you want to start working with. It is ordinary business email, sent from the store and kept with the store. Use Send to Lender on the application for the credit application itself. That share is code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked, the lender answers in its own response portal, and the application record keeps who received it. The step by step is in how to send an application to a lender. The two work together: share the application, then use the Mailbox to talk about it. A customer's full application never has to travel as an email attachment. #### How do you send stips to a lender by email? Attach them to a Mailbox message with Attach files, as in the steps above. Name the application reference in the subject so the buyer can match the documents to the file without calling you. When the stip was recorded on the application, fulfil it there as well. Open the application and use Upload for this lender, so the document lands on the application and the stipulation shows as met for everyone working the deal. Then send the lender a short Mailbox note that the documents are in. How to add stipulations covers recording what a lender asks for, so the whole finance office sees what is still outstanding. For a lender that prefers paper, SecureWebX carries eFax with its own numbers per company and partner; how to send a fax walks through it. #### What should you see after you send? The Mailbox list shows the conversation with the lender as the correspondent, your subject and the time. Open it and you see the full thread: your message, your attachments, and each reply as it arrives. Replies come back to the store's Mailbox rather than to one person, so the desk manager can pick up a thread the finance manager started this morning. Everything in the thread sits behind the same two factor sign in and full audit log that protect the applications, so the record of what you sent a lender, and when, is part of the store's SecureWebX file. Use Back to mailbox to return to the list at any time. #### Quick checks Pick from the list rather than typing. A lender picked under Pick a partner fills the exact address on file, which keeps a typo from sending stips to a stranger. Read the sending address at the top of New message. It confirms the email leaves from the store's mailbox before you click send. Add a new lender to the Partner List once. After that it comes up by name in every message, in Send to Lender and in the rest of the console. Writing to the customer instead? Open the application and use Email this customer from your Mailbox, so the customer conversation sits on the same record as the lender's. Keep the reference in the subject. A consistent subject keeps the lender's reply on the right thread and makes the Mailbox searchable a month from now. #### Related tasks The rest of the finance office workflow lives in the same console. Push a deal from CRM desking to SecureWebX so the worksheet the lender sees matches the desk, and export a SecureWebX report to PDF when a manager wants lender decisions or document exchange on paper. The online credit application software page explains the application system end to end, and the LeadLocate Help Center lists every guide for SecureWebX, the CRM and Inventory Link. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the lender see my personal email address? A: No. The message goes out from the store's SecureWebX mailbox, and the sending address is shown at the top of New message before you send. Replies come back to that same Mailbox. Q: Can I send stips to a lender by email from SecureWebX? A: Yes. Attach the documents to a Mailbox message with Attach files, and if the stip is recorded on the application, upload it there too so the stipulation shows as met for the whole team. Q: Should I email the credit application itself? A: Use Send to Lender for the application. It is a code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked share with a lender response portal, and the Mailbox carries the conversation around it. Q: Where do lender replies go? A: Into the store's Mailbox, on the same thread as your message, with any attachments the lender sent. Anyone working the deal can open the thread instead of waiting on one person's inbox. ### How to Embed the Inventory Widget in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-embed-the-inventory-widget You embed the inventory widget from Builder in the Inventory Link dealer portal. Create a widget, which gets its own key, copy the embed code, and paste that one script tag into the page of your website where the vehicles should appear. The widget renders your live inventory there, with a request sheet under every unit. Steps: 1. Confirm the inventory is in the portal: Open the inventory list in the dealer portal before you do anything else. The widget renders whatever is on those records, so if the list is thin, connect the feed or run the website import first. Every unit should have its decoded build, a price and at least one photo. 2. Open Builder and create the widget: Choose Builder in the portal and create a widget. The portal issues it a key of its own, which is what tells the tag whose inventory to render. Make a separate widget for each place you plan to put one so you can tell later which page produced which lead. 3. Decide what the block shows: Turn on Show matching vehicles from your inventory so the block fills with the units you actually have rather than a static panel, and set Where the leads go with the addresses in Email the lead to so the right people hear about a request the moment it lands. 4. Copy the embed code: Open the Add it to your website panel and copy the Embed code. It is one script tag carrying the widget key. Copy the whole thing, including the closing tag, and do not retype it by hand. 5. Paste it into your website: Open the page where you want the inventory to appear in your own site editor and paste the tag into an HTML or embed block, not a rich text field, because rich text editors tend to strip scripts. Save the page and publish it the way your vendor site normally publishes. 6. Load the page and send yourself a test request: Open the page on a phone. The vehicles should render inside your own design. Tap a unit, let the request sheet rise from the bottom, fill it in and send it, then check that the request is in the portal under Requests and in the CRM as a lead with that vehicle attached. #### Before you start You need three things: vehicles in Inventory Link, a sign in to the dealer portal, and the ability to paste a line of HTML into the page where you want the cars to appear. That last one is usually a page editor your web vendor gave you, or a content block on the template. If somebody else edits the website for your store, send them the tag and tell them which page it belongs on. Get the inventory in first, because a widget with nothing behind it renders an empty list. Connect a provider feed under Feeds, or let the platform read the vehicles from your own dealership website, which the import inventory from your website page covers and which recognizes twenty eight website platforms. A broker with no lot switches on auto broker inventory mode. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. The portal opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on. Builder is where widgets are made, next to the inventory website builder. #### What you should see on the page Your vehicles rendered inside your own page, with your header, your navigation and your design around them. Each unit shows the decoded year, make, model and trim, the mileage, the price and the photos on the record, because the widget reads the same inventory the portal holds rather than a copy somebody uploaded in March. Tap a vehicle and a request sheet rises from the bottom of the screen on a phone rather than dropping a form into the middle of the page. The shopper asks about that unit, sends it, and the request arrives in the portal under Requests and in the CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached. The widget also carries a Visit our website link, so a shopper who found it on a salesperson page or a campaign page can get back to your store. New arrivals show up without anyone touching the page again. Add a trade in the portal this afternoon and it is in the widget on the website this afternoon, photos and all. #### Where do the leads from the widget land? Everywhere it should, and only once. A request from the widget lands in the dealer portal under Requests and in LeadLocate CRM as a lead carrying the vehicle the shopper was looking at, and the addresses you put in Email the lead to get told. Your team works it on the lead record, replies by text with the same unit attached, and the whole conversation stays in one place. That is the part stores usually get wrong with a website form. A generic contact form arrives as an email with no vehicle on it, somebody re-keys it into the CRM, and the reply asks the customer which car they meant. The widget request already knows. Because every widget you create has its own key, you can tell which page produced which lead: one key on the main site, another on a campaign page, another on a salesperson page. #### If it did not work Nothing rendered where you pasted the tag. The page editor stripped the script. Most vendor editors have a separate HTML or embed block for exactly this; move the tag into that block rather than the rich text area and reload. The widget renders but shows no vehicles. There is no inventory behind it yet, or the widget is filtered to something you do not stock. Open the inventory list in the portal and confirm the units are there, then check that Show matching vehicles from your inventory is on for the block you are rendering. Prices look wrong. They are the prices on the inventory record, so fix them once in the portal and every place the widget renders catches up. That is the reason to run one inventory instead of three. Requests are coming in but nobody is being told. Check Where the leads go and the addresses in Email the lead to, then check the notification settings in the CRM. The lead is on its record either way. You want the same inventory on a second site. Make a second widget. Each one gets its own key and its own tag, so a campaign page, a salesperson page and the main site can all run their own block from the same inventory. #### Related tasks The product page for this feature is embeddable inventory widget, and it covers what the widget replaces and what inventory display costs elsewhere. If you would rather have a site of your own than a block on someone else's, the inventory website builder publishes one from the same inventory, and the two work fine side by side. Once the widget is live, the things that make it earn money are covered elsewhere in the LeadLocate Help Center: the vehicle finder for the shopper who does not see what they want, the Schedule a Visit request for the one who does, and vehicle photos, because the listing a shopper stops on is the one with real pictures. A widget layout your site needs that the standard block does not cover is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Will the widget work on any website? A: It works anywhere you can paste a line of HTML, which covers the common dealer website platforms and most general site builders. The page stays in your web vendor editor with your design around it; only the inventory block comes from Inventory Link. Q: Can I run more than one widget? A: Yes. Each widget has its own key and its own tag, so the main site, a campaign page and a salesperson page can each carry a block from the same inventory and you can tell which one a lead came from. Q: How often does the widget update? A: It reads the inventory record, so a unit added or repriced in the portal shows the change on the next page load. There is nothing to re-upload and no export to schedule. Q: What happens when a shopper fills in the request sheet? A: The request arrives in the dealer portal under Requests and in LeadLocate CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached, and the addresses you listed are emailed. Your team replies from the lead record. ### How to Export Applications in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-export-applications Open Applications in SecureWebX, find the deal and click Open application. From the record, choose the export format the receiving side expects, standard XML, fixed width, CSV or JSON, pick how it travels, and send. The mapping is saved, so the next application to that lender goes out the same way. Steps: 1. Find the application: Open Applications from the console. Type a last name, a phone number or the Application ID into Search applications, or narrow the list from Applications by status on the dashboard when you are working a whole stage at once, like everything approved and waiting to be funded. 2. Open the record and check it is complete: Click Open application. Read the review section the way the lender will: applicant, co applicant, residence, employment, income, down payment and trade. An export sends what is on the record, so a blank employer field is a blank employer field on the other end and a call back to your store. 3. Pick the format the other side asked for: Choose the layout the receiving system expects. SecureWebX writes the standard STAR XML layout that DMS platforms read, fixed width for the older systems that still want it, and CSV or JSON for anything modern. If you do not know which one, the lender's implementation contact does, and it is a one line answer. 4. Pick how it travels: Then choose the transport: a secure file transfer drop, a REST or SOAP call into their system, encrypted email, a structured email their intake reads, or a secure portal the receiving side signs into. Each destination keeps its own pairing, so the store sets up a lender once. 5. Send it and confirm the handoff: Send the export and check the record. The application shows the export on its history with the time and the destination, and the audit log carries the user who sent it. If the far end needs a human to look at one deal instead of consuming a file, use Open the credit application to read it yourself and send a secure share instead. 6. Set the store default so it happens the same way every time: In the apply link settings, How do you want to receive applications? decides what the store gets the moment a customer submits, and the Receiving applications panel shows the destination in force. Set it once and every new application follows the same path without anyone remembering to push it. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login that can open applications, the submitted application itself, and one piece of information from the receiving side: which format and which transport they want. A lender's implementation sheet names both in a sentence. If your store is exporting into its own DMS, the DMS support desk has the same answer. It also pays to know what an export is for. It is the fastest way to hand a complete application to a system that consumes files. When a person on the other end just wants to read one deal, Send to Lender is better: a code gated, expiring, watermarked share with a response page they can answer from. Most stores use both, for different lenders, on the same day. #### Which format does the lender or DMS want? Four answers cover almost everyone. STAR XML is the layout most DMS platforms and a lot of lender intakes were built around, so it is the first thing to ask about. Fixed width shows up wherever an older mainframe is still doing the work, and it is exact about column positions, which is why the mapping template matters. CSV goes anywhere a spreadsheet or an import tool is the destination. JSON is what a modern API wants. The transport is a separate question from the format, and the pair is what you set up: a fixed width file over a secure file transfer drop, or JSON over a REST call, or a CSV inside an encrypted email. Lender and DMS export formats lists every combination the console supports. A format or a transport your lender uses that you do not see on the list is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What you should see The application record showing the export on its history, with the destination, the format and the time, plus the user who sent it in the audit log. On the receiving side, the deal appears in their intake within their normal window, carrying the same fields your customer typed: identification, residence, employment, income, down payment and trade, with the co applicant attached when there is one. Back in the console, the application inbox keeps its status, assignee, amount and notes, so the export does not move the deal out of your pipeline. Reports carry the same records into a PDF when a manager or an auditor wants the month on paper. #### If it did not work The search finds nothing. The list reads No applications found when the filter is tighter than you think, usually a status filter left on from earlier. Clear it and search by last name or by the application number from the customer's confirmation. The far end rejected the file. Nine times out of ten it is the format, not the data: they read fixed width and you sent CSV, or their mapping expects a field your store leaves blank. Ask them which record failed, then match the mapping template to their sheet and send it again. The application is missing pages the lender wants. Supporting documents and stipulation uploads live with the application; make sure the customer or the salesperson attached them before the deal goes out, so the funding package is complete on the first pass. Nothing is arriving automatically from new submissions. Open the apply link settings and read Receiving applications. The destination you expect is either not chosen there or points at an old address from a previous provider. #### Related tasks If the goal is a lender decision rather than a file transfer, read the secure share guide instead: the lender opens a watermarked copy, answers on their own page, and the decision comes back onto the deal. If the goal is a clean application in the first place, the apply link customization decides which sections and fields a customer fills in before any of this starts. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the SecureWebX guides, including sending a fax and managing who can open applications. Every export is written to the audit log, so a store that gets asked where an application went can answer with a record instead of a memory. #### Questions and answers Q: What formats can an application be exported in? A: Standard STAR XML for DMS platforms, fixed width for older systems, CSV for spreadsheets and import tools, and JSON for modern APIs, each with its own mapping template. Q: How does the file get to the lender? A: Pick the transport the receiving side uses: a secure file transfer drop, a REST or SOAP call, encrypted email, a structured email their intake reads, or a secure portal. Q: Can I export more than one application at a time? A: Yes. Filter the list by status or date range first, then export the set. Reports cover the same ground when a manager wants the month in a PDF rather than a data file. Q: Is exporting the same as submitting to a lender? A: No. An export hands a file to a system that consumes files. Send to Lender is the other route: a secure, expiring link with a response page the lender answers on. ### How to Export a SecureWebX Report to PDF URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-export-a-securewebx-report On the SecureWebX dashboard, find the Reports card above the pipeline. Choose a report from the Report list, set the From and To dates, and click Generate. The report is saved in the log under the card; click its PDF button, or open it and click Download PDF, and the file matches exactly what you saw on screen. Steps: 1. Open SecureWebX: Click the SecureWebX button on the dock in LeadLocate CRM. The console opens on the dashboard with the login you already use. 2. Find the Reports card: The Reports card sits directly above the pipeline on the dashboard, under the line that promises exactly what it does: track performance and ROI across your dealership. 3. Choose the report: Open the Report list. Reports are grouped by area, from applications and pipeline to lenders, compliance and an executive summary, and hovering an entry shows what it measures. 4. Set the date range: Set From and To. The card opens on the last thirty days ending today, which suits a monthly review; change it to a week for a sales meeting or a quarter for a lender review. 5. Generate it: Click Generate. SecureWebX builds the report from your live records and adds it to the log beneath the card, with the date range, who ran it and when. 6. Read it on screen: Click the row in the log. The report opens in a window over the dashboard, so you can check the headline numbers before anything goes on paper. 7. Export the PDF: Click the PDF button on the row in the log, or Download PDF at the top of the open report. The PDF is drawn by the same renderer as the screen view, so the file your managers read is the report you just checked. #### What do you need before you start? You need a SecureWebX user with a manager or administrator role. The Reports card is built for the people who run the store's numbers, so it shows for admins and managers on the dashboard; how to manage SecureWebX users covers setting a role. SecureWebX opens from the dock in LeadLocate CRM with single sign on, so nobody keeps a separate password for reporting. Decide the question before you pick the report. A general manager asking why approvals slipped wants a different report from a finance director preparing for a lender meeting, and choosing the right one first saves running four. #### Which SecureWebX reports can you export? Every report in the list exports the same way. The areas and a few of the reports in each: AreaReportsWhat it answers ApplicationsApplication Volume & Trends, Product Mix & Approval, OFAC Screening, Applicant GeographyHow many applications came in, for what, and from where PipelinePipeline Funnel & Conversion, Stage Velocity, Open Pipeline AgingWhere deals move fast and where they sit Leads and attributionLead Abandonment, Salesperson Performance, Apply Link PerformanceWhich people and which apply links bring in funded deals LendersLender Submission Activity, Lender Decisions, Document ExchangeWho received files, how fast they opened them, and how they decided Compliance and activityCompliance Snapshot, Team Activity & Audit, Sign-in ActivityThe record an auditor or owner asks for ExecutiveExecutive ROI SummaryThe headline numbers for the whole finance operation in one view Vehicle, partner and communication reports sit in the same list. Lead Abandonment is the one sales managers ask for most: it shows applications that were started and never submitted and where the applicant stopped, which pairs with the abandoned application feed that sends those shoppers back to the CRM for follow up. #### What should you see after you export? The log under the Reports card lists every report the store has run: the report name with its headline, the date range, By with the person who ran it, and Generated with when. Each row carries its own PDF button, so last month's lender review is a click away without running it again. The PDF itself opens with the report title and range and carries the same tables and figures as the screen. Attach it to a Mailbox message for a lender or partner, drop it in the deal meeting packet, or keep it with the store's compliance file. #### Quick checks Match the window to the question. A thin report usually means a short range; widen From to cover a full month or quarter and generate again. Compare like with like. When you put two months side by side, run both over the same number of days so the comparison is fair. Run a fresh report for fresh numbers. Each row in the log is a snapshot of the range it covered, which makes it a reliable record. Generate a new one when you want today's figures. Look for the card on the dashboard. The Reports card sits above the pipeline for managers and admins; a user who needs it gets a manager role from an administrator. #### Related tasks The CRM has its own Reports on the dock for lead, activity and management reporting; how to read your reports walks through those. To send application data to a lender or DMS in the format it expects, see how to export applications, and to send a finished PDF to a lender, email it from the SecureWebX Mailbox. Every other guide is in the LeadLocate Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: Who can export SecureWebX reports? A: Managers and administrators. The Reports card appears on their dashboard above the pipeline, and an administrator can give any user a manager role in SecureWebX user settings. Q: Does the PDF match what I see on screen? A: Yes. The screen view and the PDF come from the same renderer, so the tables and figures in the file are the ones you checked before you downloaded it. Q: Can I download a report I ran last month? A: Yes. Every report the store generates stays in the log under the Reports card with its date range, who ran it and when, and each row has its own PDF button. Q: Which report shows how lenders are deciding? A: Lender Decisions shows the approve, decline and information request mix and the approval rate by lender. Lender Submission Activity shows who received applications and how quickly they opened them. ### How to Handle a Schedule a Visit Request in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-handle-a-schedule-a-visit-request A Schedule a Visit request arrives in the Inventory Link dealer portal under Requests and in the CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached. Open it, confirm the unit is on the lot, text the customer back with that vehicle in the message, confirm the day and time they picked, and put the appointment on the shared calendar so the floor sees it. Steps: 1. Know what the shopper did: They tapped Schedule a Visit under a specific vehicle, picked a day and a time, entered their name and number and tapped Send my request. The sheet told them Your request has been received. So they are expecting to hear from you, and they are expecting you to already know which car. 2. Get the alert: Set your notification preferences in LeadLocate CRM so a new request reaches the right phone the moment it lands. A request that comes in at nine at night should be in front of somebody by the time the store opens, not discovered on Thursday. 3. Open the request: In the dealer portal, go to Requests or the inbox and click Open the request. Read the vehicle, the day and time, the contact details and the note. The same request is on a lead in the CRM with that vehicle attached, and that is where you will do the actual work. 4. Check the car is on the lot: Before you confirm anything, make sure the unit is physically where you think it is. A customer who drives out on a Saturday for a vehicle that went to auction on Thursday is a bad afternoon for everyone, and it is thirty seconds to check. 5. Reply with the vehicle and confirm the time: Text back from the lead and insert the vehicle so the customer gets a card with the photo and the price, not a paragraph. Confirm the day and time in plain words, give them your name, and tell them where to park and who to ask for. 6. Put it on the calendar: Set the appointment so it is on the shared team calendar and on the phone app the floor carries. An appointment nobody but the person who booked it can see is a promise riding on one memory. 7. Hand it off if it is not yours: If the request should belong to somebody else, use Email this request to send it to them, then fix the assignment on the lead so the record follows the work. Round robin assignment takes care of that for you on the next one. 8. Confirm again the morning of: One short text the morning of the visit, with the vehicle and the time in it, is the cheapest appointment insurance there is. Then mark the outcome on the lead when they show, so the store can see which pages are producing visits that turn up. #### Before you start Know what happened on the customer's end, because it changes how you answer. The shopper was on one of your pages, a brand page, the dealer page, an inventory site the portal published, or your own website through the embeddable inventory widget. They tapped Schedule a Visit under a specific vehicle, a sheet rose from the bottom of their phone, they picked a day and a time, typed their name and number and tapped Send my request. The sheet answered Your request has been received. and they went to bed. Widget pages also carry a Visit our website link back to your store, so some of these shoppers have already been around your site once. On your end you need two things ready. A sign in to the Inventory Link dealer portal, which opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on, and notification preferences set in the CRM so a request reaches a phone rather than a screen nobody is watching. The lead notifications and alerts page covers who gets told and how. Then treat it as what it is. This customer picked a car, picked a time and asked you to confirm. That is the cleanest contact a dealership gets all week. #### What you should see The request in the dealer portal under Requests and in the inbox, with the vehicle on it, the day and time the shopper chose, their name, how they want to be reached and whatever they wrote in the note. The same request is in LeadLocate CRM as a lead carrying that vehicle, which is where the work actually happens: the reply, the appointment, the follow up and the record of all three. Open it and you have everything you need to answer in one message. The unit with its decoded build and price, so you can confirm it is here, and the time, so you can confirm you will be here too. Nobody has to ask the customer which car they meant or what time they wanted, which is the failure mode of a generic website form that arrives as an email with neither. The communications log on that lead then carries the whole conversation, every text, call and email in one place, so a manager or the person covering Saturday can read what was promised without asking anyone. #### How fast should you answer? Now, or as close to now as the hour allows. A shopper who picked a time is at the top of their buying cycle and is usually asking two or three stores the same question. The store that confirms first is the store they show up at, and a reply that comes back within minutes of a request is a different conversation from one that comes back the next afternoon. The respond to internet leads in five minutes page covers how stores set that up. Answer with the car, not with an acknowledgement. Text them back from the lead with the vehicle inserted as a card, confirm the day and time in plain words, give them your name and tell them where to park. Then set the appointment on the calendar so the floor sees it, and confirm again the morning of. A visit request that nobody confirmed is a customer who assumed nothing was booked. #### If it did not work The request is in the portal but nobody was told. Notification preferences in the CRM decide who hears about a new lead and how. Set them, and put brand and inventory page leads on a routing rule so the request lands on a person rather than in a pile everybody assumes someone else is watching. It went to the wrong person. Use Email this request to send it to whoever should own it right now, then fix the routing so the next one goes straight there. Round robin assignment handles that permanently. The vehicle the customer picked just sold. Call rather than text, tell them straight away, and have two alternatives from your inventory ready before you dial. Check the unit is physically on the lot before you confirm anything, which is what In Store Now is for. The phone number is wrong or the shopper never replies. Work the email on the request, and check the record for a second contact. A shopper who booked a time and then went quiet is usually still interested and is usually just busy; a short confirmation the morning of the appointment brings most of them back. You cannot find the request again. It is on the lead in the CRM, permanently, with the vehicle attached. Search the leads list by the customer name or by the car, and the whole thread is there. #### Related tasks The product page for the sheet itself is Schedule a Visit requests, which covers where it appears and why every panel rises from the bottom on a phone. The pages it sits on are covered by brand offer pages and the inventory website builder. The tools that turn one of these into a sold car have guides of their own in the LeadLocate Help Center: texting the customer back with the vehicle attached, scheduling the appointment so the floor can see it, and setting notification preferences so the next request reaches somebody in a minute rather than a morning. If your store wants the sheet to ask a question the standard version does not ask, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where does a Schedule a Visit request arrive? A: In the Inventory Link dealer portal under Requests and in the inbox, and in LeadLocate CRM as a lead with the vehicle the shopper chose attached. The addresses your store listed are emailed as well. Q: Does the request tell me which vehicle the customer wants? A: Yes. The sheet sits under a specific vehicle, so the unit travels with the request, decoded build and price included. That is the difference between this and a generic website contact form. Q: What if the requested time does not work for the store? A: Reply with two times that do, in the same text, with the vehicle attached. Giving a customer a choice of two is faster than asking them to pick again from scratch. Q: Can somebody else take the request over? A: Yes. Email this request to the person who should own it and reassign the lead in the CRM so the record follows the work. Round robin assignment routes the next one automatically. ### How to Import Contacts in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-import-contacts You import contacts into LeadLocate CRM from the Import Contacts page under Contacts. Save the spreadsheet as a CSV, choose the file, start a new list with a clear name or pick an existing one, decide whether to spread the contacts round robin across the team, and upload. Headers are detected automatically and columns can be in any order. Steps: 1. Prepare the CSV: Export the contacts from wherever they live now, or save the spreadsheet as CSV. Keep one header row with names like first name, last name, phone and email in any order; the import reads the headers, so there is no template to match. 2. Open Import Contacts: In the desktop CRM click Contacts in the main menu and open Import Contacts. The page has the upload panel on one side and the Active Contact Lists table on the other. 3. Choose the file: Click Choose CSV and select the file. The panel shows the file name once it is picked; if it still reads that no file is selected, the file was not a CSV. 4. Name the list: Click Start a New List and give it a name your team will recognize in a month, such as the old system's name or the campaign the list is for. To append to a list you already have, pick that list instead. 5. Decide who gets the contacts: Tick Round Robin assignment to spread the contacts evenly across the users in rotation, so a list of past customers becomes a call list for the whole team. Leave it off to keep the list under one login. 6. Upload and check the list: Upload. The page confirms success and the new list appears in Active Contact Lists with its Records count and Date Updated. Use Add More on the row to append a second file later, or Rename contact list if the name needs fixing. 7. Validate and clean before you send: Run the Phone Validator and Email Validator over the list so the validity dots show which numbers and addresses are worth a message, run Merge Duplicate Records to catch customers already on file, and make sure the DNC Blacklist has your do not contact list loaded. #### Before you start You need the contacts as a CSV file with a header row, and a name for the list. Any user can import; a salesperson imports their own book of business the same way a manager imports the store's past customers. Know where the list came from before you import it, because a list on a spreadsheet carries no memory of how it was collected. Customers who bought from the store, or asked the store a question, are yours to contact; a list of unknown origin is not made consented by importing it. The contact import page describes the feature and what a store does with a list once it is in. This page is the clicks. If you are switching from another CRM, its customer export, with its own column names in its own order, is the file to use; there is no reformatting step. #### What you should see After the upload, the list sits in Active Contact Lists with a record count that matches the rows in your file, and each contact appears in the Contacts view like any other contact. Open one and the same tools apply: convert it to a lead, open it into a Customer Profile, text it, call it or email it. On the phone, reps see their contacts and reach them from the dock, so an imported book is workable from the lot the day it is loaded. With Round Robin assignment ticked, each rep in the rotation holds an even share, which a manager can see by user. The list is also a recipient list for bulk texting and bulk email on the Marketing Tools dock, which is where most imported lists end up being used. #### If it did not work The file was refused. It was not a CSV. A spreadsheet saved in its native format, or a multi sheet workbook, needs to be saved as CSV first, one sheet at a time. If the old system only exports in an unusual format, describe it on the contact page; converting it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The record count is lower than the file. Rows without a name, phone or email did not load, and blank rows at the bottom of a spreadsheet are common. Open the CSV, remove empty rows, and use Add More on the list to append the fixed file rather than importing a second copy of everything. Names came in with the wrong columns. The header row was missing or the first row was data. Put the header row back at the top, with a name in every column you want read, and import again into a new list; then delete the wrong one. #### Related tasks Import is the beginning. Run the Phone Validator and Email Validator so the validity dots tell reps which contacts are reachable, load the store's do not contact list through the DNC Blacklist so a customer who asked you to stop is not on the first campaign, and merge duplicates so the past customer who came in as a lead last month has one record. Then set up lead feeds so new customers arrive the same way. Every guide is in the help center. #### Tips from the floor Name the list for what it is and when it came in, not Sheet1; a year from now nobody remembers what Sheet1 was. Import a rep's personal book as its own list under their name, so it survives a lost phone and the store has continuity when the rep moves on. And validate before the first text goes out, every time, because a bulk text to a list of dead numbers costs the same as one to live ones. #### Questions and answers Q: What file format does the import accept? A: A CSV with a header row. Headers are detected automatically and columns can be in any order, so an export from a previous CRM or a spreadsheet loads without reformatting. Save the spreadsheet as CSV and choose it on the Import Contacts page. Q: Where is the Import Contacts page? A: Under Contacts in the main menu of the desktop CRM. Choose CSV, Start a New List or pick an existing list, tick Round Robin assignment if you want the contacts spread, and upload. The list appears in Active Contact Lists with its record count. Q: Can I split an imported list across my salespeople? A: Yes. Tick Round Robin assignment at upload and the contacts are divided evenly across the users in the rotation, so a list of past customers becomes a call list for the whole team. Q: Can I add to a list later? A: Yes. Each list in Active Contact Lists has Add More, which appends another CSV to it, and Rename contact list if the name needs changing. ### How to Import Inventory from Your Website in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-import-inventory-from-your-website Put the store's site on your profile under Website and point us at the page that lists your vehicles. Inventory Link recognizes the platform the site is built on and imports the units with their photos, prices and mileage. Check the first import against the lot, fill any gaps, and the same inventory is then live in the CRM, your texts and the widget. Steps: 1. Find the page that lists your vehicles: Open your dealership website and go to the inventory results page, the one a shopper lands on after clicking used cars. Copy that address. If new and used live on separate pages, copy both. This is the page the import reads, so it should show every unit the store wants published. 2. Put the site on your Inventory Link profile: In the portal, open your profile and enter the store site under Website. Use the address customers type, including the www if that is how it resolves. Then tell us the inventory page from step one so the import starts in the right place. 3. Let the import run and confirm the platform was recognized: Dealer websites are built on a couple of dozen common platforms, and Inventory Link knows them. The first pass brings back the vehicle list with photos, prices, mileage and whatever detail the site publishes, and the VIN fills in build data the site left out. Nothing is copied from anywhere but your own site, with your permission. 4. Check the first import against your lot: Open the inventory list and read the first page the way a shopper would. Count against what is on the ground this morning. Any unit you want to compare side by side opens on the source page with Open on your website, which is the fastest way to settle whether a bad price came from the import or from the site. 5. Fill the gaps: Fix what the website never published. A missing stock number gets an override so it matches the window label. A unit with no photographs gets stock imagery until your photographer catches up. A dealer trade that is not on the site yet gets added by hand in about a minute. 6. Publish it back where your team sells: Now use it. Vehicles appear in the CRM inventory menu and on the phone app, the vehicle insert button drops one into any text or email, and Add it to your website gives you a widget to put the same inventory back on the site in a better looking grid. On a lead form, Show matching vehicles from your inventory answers a shopper with real units. #### Before you start You need an Inventory Link login, the address of your dealership website, and the authority to say yes to reading it. That last part is the whole legal question: this is your store's own inventory, published by your store, imported with your permission into your own account. Also decide what belongs in the published list. Wholesale units you never advertise, vehicles in transit, and anything with a price the store is still arguing about should either stay off the website or be flagged once they land. That decision is easier to make now than to unwind after the inventory is live on a store inventory site and in a hundred text messages. #### Which websites does this work with? The common ones, and that covers most single point stores and most groups. Inventory Link recognizes more than two dozen of the platforms dealer websites are built on and reads the vehicle listings the way a shopper's browser sees them. You do not need a developer, a plugin, or a change to the site. A store that also has a data feed can use both: the feed as the source of truth and the site for anything the feed leaves out. Inventory feeds covers that path, and it is worth reading if a feed already exists somewhere in the building. A website platform we have not seen before is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What you should see An inventory list in the portal that matches the vehicles on your site, each one carrying its photos, price, mileage and build data. Units that come off the website come off the list, and new arrivals published to the site show up here without anyone retyping them. From there the inventory spreads to the places that sell. Salespeople insert a vehicle into a message from the composer, as send vehicles by text describes. The widget publishes the same units on any page you drop it into. Brand pages and lead forms answer shoppers with units your store actually has, and the vehicle finder locates the one a customer is describing in their own words. #### If it did not work The count is short. Your site is paging the results and the import read the first page, or part of the inventory lives on a second page you did not send. Give us the other addresses and the list fills in. Photos are missing. Some sites publish thumbnails a shopper can see but nothing larger. Stock imagery keeps those units presentable, and stock photos for listings explains how a vehicle still looks like a listing while it waits for your photographer. A price looks wrong. Open the unit on the source page and compare. If the site is right and the list is not, tell us; if the site itself is carrying a stale price, fix it there and the next import follows. Details are thin across the board. That is a website that publishes very little per vehicle. VIN decode fills in the build, and anything still missing is quicker to correct on a handful of units by hand than to argue about with a website provider. #### Related tasks If a feed does arrive later, connecting it is its own short guide and the screens your team uses do not change. Adding a single vehicle by hand covers the dealer trade, the fresh trade in and the unit that sold before it ever reached the website. The LeadLocate Help Center has both, plus the merchandising guides. When the list is right, the embeddable inventory widget is the fastest win: the same vehicles, in a grid that looks current, on the website you already own. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a data feed to get my inventory into LeadLocate? A: No. Inventory Link imports the vehicles published on your own dealership website, with your permission. A feed and DMS access are not required to run the platform. Q: Will this work with my website provider? A: More than two dozen of the platforms dealer sites are built on are recognized, which covers most stores. A platform we have not seen is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: How often does the import run? A: It keeps pace with your site, so vehicles you publish appear and vehicles you take down disappear. Nobody in the store retypes a unit to keep the two in step. Q: What about vehicles that are not on the website yet? A: Add them by hand. It takes about a minute with the VIN, and that unit behaves like every other one in texts, on lead forms and in the widget. ### How to Issue an Adverse Action Notice in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-issue-an-adverse-action-notice Record the decision on the credit application under Action, then open Notice on the same record. The applicant details carry over from the application, so you mark whether a credit report was used, name the bureau that supplied it, review the language your counsel approved, and click Send notice to applicant. The notice stays on the file with the audit trail. Steps: 1. Record the decision on the file: Open the application in the SecureWebX console and record what happened under Action: declined, or approved on terms other than the ones the applicant asked for. When the answer came back from a lender through a share, the decision is already on the record and you are confirming it, not typing it twice. 2. Open the notice on the application: Go to Notice on the same application. The notice screen is part of the deal record, which is the point of the feature: a declined file and its notice are one thing, not a file here and a form in a drawer somewhere else. 3. Check the applicant details that carried over: Name, address and contact details come straight from the application the customer signed, so read them rather than retype them. A co-applicant on the file is part of the same record. Retyping a name and address into a legal document is where errors get introduced, so the screen is built to avoid it. 4. Say whether a credit report was used: Mark whether the decision relied on a credit report and name the bureau that supplied it, with its contact details, from the list or by typing another bureau. Credit reporting rules require the applicant to be told where the report came from and how to reach that bureau, and the report is pulled on your store's own bureau account. 5. Review the language your counsel approved: Read the notice before it goes. The stated reasons, the wording and your store's policy on when a notice goes out belong to your compliance counsel; the console builds the notice from the record and sends it. Fix anything that does not read the way counsel wrote it. 6. Send it and keep the copy: Click Send notice to applicant. The notice goes to the applicant and the copy stays on the application with the decision it reports, and the audit log records who issued it and when. Records are archived, never deleted, so the copy is still there when a question about this deal arrives much later. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login with a role that works finance files, and an application with a decision on it. An adverse action notice is the written notice a consumer receives when credit is denied, or offered on terms less favorable than the ones they asked for. Fair lending and credit reporting rules place that duty on creditors, and a store that takes and works credit applications is squarely in that conversation, which is why SecureWebX builds the notice where the decision is recorded. Have two things settled before the first notice goes out. Your compliance counsel decides the language and the store's policy on timing. And your bureau details should be to hand, because the notice names the bureau that supplied the report and tells the applicant how to reach it. The adverse action notices feature page covers what the notice carries and where each part comes from. #### What you should see The notice screen on the application, already carrying the applicant's details, the decision you recorded and the bureau fields waiting for you. After you send, the notice sits on the file next to the decision, the lender shares, the stipulations, the documents and the audit log entry naming you and the time you issued it. That is the whole reason to do this on the record rather than in a template on somebody's desktop. When a question comes back months later, you open the deal and the answer is there: what was decided, whether a report was used, which bureau, what the applicant was told and who told them. Nothing to reconcile, nothing to reconstruct from memory. #### How the timing works The clock starts at the decision, not at the moment somebody remembers the paperwork. That is why the first step of this guide is recording the decision on the file: a declined application shows as declined, with a notice screen attached to it, and a file waiting for a notice is visible to a manager reading the inbox rather than invisible in a drawer. Your counsel sets the window your store works to and the policy for who issues the notice. The console's job is to make the notice a one screen task off a record that already holds every fact it needs, and to keep the copy afterward. The credit application inbox is where a manager watches for files that have a decision and still need one. #### If it did not work A detail on the notice is wrong. Fix it on the application, since the notice is built from that record. A misspelled street on the application produces a misspelled street on the notice, and correcting the source corrects both. The bureau is not in the list. Type its name and contact details instead. Stores work with more than the largest bureaus, and the notice has to name the one that actually supplied the report on this applicant. The decision came from a lender and is not on the file. Record it. A lender's answer through a share posts to the application on its own, but a decision given by phone or by the store itself is recorded by you before the notice screen has anything to report. Something on the screen is not behaving. Open a support ticket from the console and use Describe the issue you're having * to say what you did and what you expected. Tickets carry a reference number, and our support team can see your screen with you and fix it on the call. #### Related tasks Where the decision usually comes from is covered on the Send to Lender page, since a lender's decline arrives on the application through the response portal and the notice follows from that record. The language a store shows applicants in the first place, the privacy notice, the terms and the state disclosures, is managed in compliance disclosures and privacy notices. The LeadLocate Help Center holds the rest of the finance office guides. Notice language or a workflow step your counsel wants is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: What is an adverse action notice at a car dealership? A: The written notice an applicant receives when credit is denied, or offered on terms less favorable than they asked for, because of their application or their credit report. Fair lending and credit reporting rules place the duty on creditors, and a store that works credit applications issues them. Q: Where does the notice get its information? A: From the application record. Applicant details come from the file the customer signed, the decision comes from what you recorded on it, and the bureau name and contact details are captured on the notice screen. Q: Does SecureWebX decide what my notice says? A: No. The wording, the stated reasons and your policy on when to send belong to your compliance counsel. The console builds the notice from the record, sends it to the applicant and keeps the copy on the file. Q: How long is the notice kept? A: Records are archived, never deleted. The notice, the decision it reports, the date it went out and the audit log entry naming who issued it stay with the application for as long as your store needs them. ### How to Launch Your Apps from My LeadLocate in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-launch-your-apps-from-my-leadlocate Sign in to My LeadLocate and the applications your store holds are listed on the launch page. Click one and it opens already signed in, so LeadLocate CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX all open from the same place. User Access controls which of your people can launch which application. Steps: 1. Sign in to My LeadLocate: Go to your account portal and press Sign In with your work email. If you would rather not type a password, ask for the sign in link sent to your email or the code sent to your mobile, or press Use a passkey if you set one up on this login. Either way you land on the account dashboard. 2. Read the dashboard first: Account Snapshot at the top tells you what the store has: the plan, the applications on the account and anything that needs attention. It takes five seconds and it saves you looking for an application your store has not added yet. 3. Open the launch page and click an application: The launch page lists the applications your store holds. Click the one you want and it opens already signed in, in its own window. No second password, no second set of users to keep straight, and no waiting while somebody finds the right link in an old email. 4. Check what is on the account: If an application you expected is not on the launch page, open Products & Subscriptions. That page lists the plan and every add on attached to it, so you can see in one look whether the store holds the application or whether it is something to add. 5. Set who can launch what: Open User Access to see every person on your account and which applications each one can open. Press Add a User to bring someone new in, give them only the applications their job needs, and their access starts the moment they accept. Taking an application away from someone is the same page and the same two clicks. 6. Sign in once across the products: Open My SSO Profile to see how your single sign on identity is set for the account. One identity is what lets a manager move from the CRM to the website tools to the file library without stopping at a login screen in between. 7. Do the same thing from your phone: On a phone, install the LeadLocate mobile app and sign in with the same email. The applications your store holds show up the same way, and a salesperson standing in the lane opens the CRM on the phone with the credentials they already use at the desk. #### Before you start You need your work email and a login on My LeadLocate. Every person at the store gets one, from the dealer principal to the newest salesperson, and what it opens is set by the access your account admin gives it rather than by having a separate account per product. You do not need to install anything on a desktop or a laptop. The applications open in a browser, on whatever machine the person is sitting at, which is why a manager can cover the desk from home on a Saturday without a technician being involved. The one install worth doing is the mobile app on the phones, because a phone in a lane is a different job from a screen at a desk. #### Which applications launch from here? The ones your store holds. LeadLocate CRM is the desk: leads, texting, calling, the calendar, credit applications, desking and reporting. Inventory Link is the inventory side: your live vehicle data, the listing pages and the widgets that put your units in front of shoppers. SecureWebX is the secure document and file side, for the paperwork a deal produces and the files a customer or a lender needs to receive safely. Each one is its own application under one login, which is what makes the launch page useful rather than decorative. Your store adds what it needs, your people open what they are allowed to open, and the list on the page is always the truth about what the account holds today. Anything your store wants on that list that is not there is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What you should see A dashboard with Account Snapshot at the top, and a launch page listing the applications on the account. Clicking one opens it signed in, with your name already on it and your permissions already applied, so a salesperson lands in their own pipeline and a manager lands in the whole store's. On User Access you should see every person on the account with the applications each one can open beside their name. That page is worth reading once a quarter. A store that keeps it current keeps its customer list where it belongs, and a store that never opens it eventually has a former employee on the list. Adding someone with Add a User takes a name, an email and a mobile number, and removing an application from someone takes less than that. #### If it did not work The sign in link expired. These links are deliberately short lived. Press Request a new link and a fresh one arrives, or sign in with your password instead. An application you expected is missing. Either it is not on the account, which Products & Subscriptions will tell you, or your login has not been given it, which User Access will. Ask your account admin, and if the store wants to add it, the products page is where it starts. It opens and asks you to sign in again. Your browser is blocking the window or a second profile is signed in as somebody else. Allow the window, or open a clean browser profile and sign in once. A new hire cannot get in. Check the email on User Access character for character; a typo in an email address is the most common reason an invitation never arrives. Re send it from the same page. Somebody is stuck and you are on the phone with them. Ask your rep to join. Our support team can see your screen with you and fix it on the call rather than trading screenshots for an afternoon. #### Related tasks The My LeadLocate page covers the rest of the portal: invoices and receipts, the payment method on the account, service credits, add ons, the file library and support tickets. The LeadLocate Help Center has the guides for adding users and roles, setting up your profile and getting the mobile app onto a phone. If you are new to the account and want to see how the applications fit together before you hand logins out, the platform page walks the whole product line in order, and your rep will walk it with your managers on a call. #### Tips from the floor Bookmark the account portal, not the individual applications, and every person at the store has one link to remember. Give a new hire access on their first morning and take it back on their last, both from the same page. Give your controller a billing login and nothing else, and give your salespeople the CRM and nothing else; access that matches the job is the easiest security a store ever gets. And put the mobile app on the phones during the meeting where you announce it, because the salespeople who install it that week are the ones who use it in month two. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a separate login for each LeadLocate product? A: No. One login opens the account portal, and the applications your store holds launch from there already signed in. Each product is its own application under one login. Q: Which applications can I launch from My LeadLocate? A: The ones on your account. For most stores that is LeadLocate CRM for the desk, Inventory Link for the vehicle data and listing pages, and SecureWebX for secure files and documents. Q: How do I give a new salesperson access? A: Open User Access, press Add a User, enter their name, work email and mobile number, and give them only the applications their job needs. Their access starts as soon as they accept. Q: Can I open the same applications on my phone? A: Yes. Install the LeadLocate mobile app and sign in with the same email you use on the desktop. A salesperson in the lane works the same records as the desk does. ### How to Log in Without a Password in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-log-in-without-a-password Open the My LeadLocate sign in page and ask for a one time link instead of typing a password. The link arrives by email, or as a text message to the mobile number on your user record, and opening it signs you straight in. Use a passkey does the same thing with the phone or laptop already in your hand. Steps: 1. Go to the sign in page: Open the My LeadLocate sign in page on the device you want to be signed in on. That last part matters: start on the phone if you want to end up signed in on the phone, because a link opened on the wrong device signs that device in instead. 2. Ask for a one time link: Choose the passwordless option instead of typing a password, and give the email address on your user record. The portal sends a single use link to that address. Nothing about your password changes, and you can go on using it later if you prefer. 3. Or have it sent as a text: If your user record carries a mobile number, ask for the sign in by text message instead. It lands in the same place your customers text you from, which is usually the fastest route when you are standing on the lot rather than sitting at a desk. 4. Open the link: Tap the link in the email or the text and it signs you in. The link is good once, and only for a short window, so open it while it is fresh rather than saving it for later in the day. 5. Use a passkey if your device has one: On a device that supports it, click Use a passkey and confirm with the same face, fingerprint or device code you already use to unlock it. Nothing is typed and nothing is emailed, which makes it the quickest route of the three on a phone you carry all day. 6. Get a fresh link if the old one is stale: If the link has already been used or has aged out, the portal shows Unable to sign in. Click Request a new link and a fresh one arrives; there is no need to start over or call anyone. 7. Set a password when you have a minute: Once you are in, use Reset Password to set a password you will actually remember, so you have both routes available. Then launch the CRM, Inventory Link or SecureWebX from the same screen and get back to work. #### Before you start You need a user on the account and access to the email address or the mobile number on that user record. That is the whole requirement. If the email on file belongs to somebody who has left the store, the account admin sets you up with a user of your own first, because the link goes where the record says. Keep your own record current for exactly this reason. A correct mobile number on your user is what makes the text route work, and it is the same number the store uses to reach you about a hot lead. The My LeadLocate page covers the rest of what the portal holds, from invoices to your file library. #### What you should see After you ask for the link, the page tells you it has been sent and to check that inbox or that phone. The message itself is short: one link, nothing to copy out by hand. Tapping it drops you on your account dashboard, signed in, with the launch tiles for every product you are allowed to open. If you used Use a passkey, there is no message at all. Your device asks you to confirm it is you and the portal opens. Either way you land in the same place, and what you can reach is decided by your user access rather than by how you signed in. #### Why a link beats a password on the wall Every store has had the same sticky note on a monitor, and every store has had the moment a person leaves and nobody is sure what they still have access to. A one time link removes both. It works once, it goes to a person rather than to a shared inbox, and the account admin can see which users exist and change what each one reaches. It is also faster on the floor. A salesperson with a customer in front of them is not going to stop and hunt for a password, and what they do instead is borrow somebody else's login. That is what costs a store its lead history. Give every person their own sign in, tell them the link route exists, and the shared login habit disappears on its own. Security your store actually uses is the security that protects it. #### If it did not work The email never arrived. Check the junk folder first, then confirm the address on your user record is the one you are watching. A store that routes everything through one shared inbox often finds the link sitting there rather than in a personal one. The link says it is no longer valid. It has already been used or has aged out. Click Request a new link on the Unable to sign in screen and use the fresh one straight away. The text never came. Your user record has no mobile number on it, or has an old one. Ask your account admin to put the current number on your user, then try again. You are signed in but the product you want is not on the screen. That is user access rather than sign in. The account admin decides which apps each person can launch and can add yours in a few seconds. #### Related tasks Which users exist, which apps each one can launch and who the account admin is are all handled in the portal, described on the My LeadLocate page. One sign in reaches every product, so the same visit launches LeadLocate CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX from one screen. The LeadLocate Help Center has the guides that pair with this one: managing account access, opening a support ticket if an address on a record is wrong, and setting up your profile once you are in. A sign in arrangement your group needs that you do not see here is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I sign in if I forgot my password? A: Ask for a one time sign in link by email or text message from the My LeadLocate sign in page. It signs you straight in, and you can set a new password afterwards with Reset Password. Q: Can I get the sign in link as a text message? A: Yes, when your user record carries a mobile number. That is usually the fastest route on the lot, because the message lands on the phone already in your pocket. Q: How long is the sign in link good for? A: It works once and only for a short window. If it has aged out, the portal shows Unable to sign in and Request a new link sends you a fresh one immediately. Q: What is a passkey and do I need one? A: It is the face, fingerprint or device code you already use to unlock your phone or laptop. You do not need one, but it is the quickest of the three routes when your device supports it. ### How to Log in with a Quick Access PIN in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-log-in-with-a-quick-access-pin A Quick Access PIN is a four digit code set on each user record in LeadLocate CRM. A manager sets it under Access Control on the user, the rep signs in once on the phone the normal way, and after that the phone opens to Quick Access PIN and four taps put them back in the CRM. Steps: 1. Open the user record: On the desktop CRM, go to User Management and open the person who needs the PIN. A manager or a master administrator can open anyone; a user can open their own record. New hires get their PIN the same day they are created with Add a User, which saves a second trip through the user list. 2. Set the four digits: Scroll to Access Control on the user record and type four digits into 4 digit PIN for mobile quick access. Pick something the rep will remember and nobody else would try first, which rules out repeated digits, a birth year and any run of numbers in order. Save the user record and the PIN is live. 3. Sign in once the long way on the phone: On the phone, open the LeadLocate app or the mobile pages in the browser and sign in with the email address and password as usual. That first sign in is what ties the phone to the user, and it is the only time the rep types the whole thing. Biometric sign in is offered on the phone app at the same moment, and a rep can use a face or a fingerprint instead of the PIN if the phone supports it. 4. Use the PIN from then on: The next time the rep opens LeadLocate on that phone, the screen asks for the Quick Access PIN instead of the full sign in. Four digits and the CRM opens on the same screen they left. That is the whole point: a rep walking back in from a test drive gets to the text thread in about two seconds, one handed, without squinting at a password field. 5. Fall back to the full sign in when you need to: Tap Use Email Instead on the PIN screen to sign in with the email address and password again. Use that on a borrowed phone, after a password change, or any time the PIN is not working and the rep has a customer waiting. Nothing is lost by signing in the long way; it is the same account either way. 6. Confirm it took: Open Login & Activity Log on the desktop and look for the sign in you just made from the phone. The log records who signed in, when and from where, so a manager can see that the new PIN is being used and that it is being used by the person it belongs to. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login and a phone. Setting or changing a PIN for somebody else takes a manager or a master administrator role, since the PIN sits on the user record next to the rest of that person's access. Your own role is printed as Access Level: in the header of the desktop CRM if you are not sure which one you have. A PIN is per user, not per store, so four reps on the same floor have four different PINs and every sign in is still recorded as that person. It is a shortcut into an account that already exists, not a second account and not a shared code. The user roles and permissions page covers what each role can open once they are in, and single sign on explains how the one login carries the rep across the CRM, Inventory Link, SecureWebX and the account portal. #### What you should see On the phone, a keypad with four empty slots and the words Quick Access PIN above them, with Use Email Instead underneath as the way back to the normal sign in. Type the four digits and the CRM opens straight to the workspace, with the dock across the bottom for Text, Call, New Lead, Email and Team. On the desktop, the PIN shows as four digits on the user record under Access Control, where a manager can change it or clear it. Sign ins from the phone appear in Login & Activity Log beside desktop sign ins, and IP Access History: on the same page shows where the account has been used. Nothing about the PIN changes what the rep can do once they are inside; the role does that. #### Who should have a PIN, and how to keep it yours Anyone who works the lot. Salespeople in and out of the showroom all day, a BDC agent who steps away from the desk, a manager who wants the deal on the phone while standing at the desk of a customer. The rep who has to type an email address and a password every time is the rep who stops using the CRM on the floor and writes the note on a business card instead, which is how a lead goes missing. Treat the four digits like the code to the key box. It is yours, it is not written on the back of your phone case, and it is not the same as the code you use for the dealer plate cabinet. Change it from the user record whenever you want, and have a manager clear it the day a phone is replaced or an employee leaves. Because every action inside the CRM is logged against the person who signed in, a PIN that stays private keeps the activity report honest, which matters on the day a manager is deciding who actually worked a lead. Stores that run a shared floor phone should still give it to one named user rather than passing a PIN around. The LeadLocate mobile app holds one signed in user at a time, and the sign in record is what makes the numbers on the activity report mean something. #### If it did not work The phone asks for an email address, not a PIN. Either the PIN has never been set on that user record, or this phone has not signed in the long way yet. Set the four digits under Access Control, then sign in once with the email address and password on the phone itself. The PIN is refused. Confirm the four digits on the user record with a manager, since a PIN typed in a hurry on a desktop is the usual culprit. Tap Use Email Instead to get in now, then correct the PIN and try again. You changed your password and the PIN stopped opening the app. Sign in once with the new password using Use Email Instead. That re-establishes the phone, and the PIN works again from the next launch. A rep left and still has the app on a personal phone. A manager clears the PIN and the user record in User Management the same hour. Access ends everywhere the rep used the account, and Login & Activity Log shows the last time it was used. The rep wants a face or fingerprint instead. The phone app offers biometric sign in on devices that support it; turn it on in the app after the first full sign in and keep the PIN as the backup. #### Related tasks Creating the user in the first place, choosing the role and setting the notification toggles is covered on how to add users and roles. Your own name, photo, signature and hours are on how to set up your profile. What the phone app puts on the bottom dock, from the dialer to Quick Schedule, is on the mobile app page. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the phone guides, including the mobile dialer and quick scheduling from the lot. A sign in method your store wants that is not on this list is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the Quick Access PIN set? A: On the user record in User Management, under Access Control, in the field for a four digit PIN for mobile quick access. A manager or a master administrator can set or change it. Q: Does every user need their own PIN? A: Yes. The PIN belongs to one user, and every action in the CRM is recorded against the person who signed in, so the activity report stays accurate. Q: What if I forget my PIN on the lot? A: Tap Use Email Instead on the PIN screen and sign in with your email address and password. A manager can read or reset the four digits on your user record afterward. Q: Can I use a fingerprint or face instead? A: Yes, on the LeadLocate phone app, on devices that support it. Sign in fully once, turn on biometric sign in, and keep the PIN as your backup. ### How to Make a Call from the CRM in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-make-a-call-from-the-crm You make a call from LeadLocate CRM by clicking the phone number on a lead or contact, or by opening Make a Call in the top bar, which brings up the VoIP Phone. The call dials from the store's tracking number through your headset, your own phone or the mobile app, and the recording and transcript land on the lead when you hang up. Steps: 1. Open the lead and click the number: Open the customer's record and click the phone number. The softphone opens with the number loaded and dials. For a number that is not on a record, click Make a Call in the top bar, type it under Phone Number on the keypad, and press Call. Use Delete digit to fix a typo. 2. Allow the microphone the first time: The browser asks once for microphone permission when the VoIP Phone first opens. Allow it, and the headset or the computer's microphone becomes the phone. That single click is the whole setup for a headset user. 3. Or use your own phone as the handset: If you would rather talk on your desk phone or cell, pick that phone as the source the first time you trigger a call. The CRM rings your phone first, then connects the customer, and the call still leaves from the store's number and is still recorded and logged. 4. Turn recording on: Check Record this call on the softphone before or during the call. Tell the customer the call is recorded where your state requires it. The recording, and a transcript, attach to the lead when the call ends. 5. Leave a voicemail if nobody answers: When the call goes to voicemail, click Drop Voicemail and pick a recording under Select Voicemail Recording. The pre recorded message plays into their voicemail and you move to the next call. 6. Write the note and set the next step: Back on the lead, type what was said; the record autosaves. Set the status and schedule the follow up. The call itself is already in the communications log with its length, recording and transcript. 7. Find it later in Call Logs: Open Call Logs from the main menu to see every call the store made and received, with playback. In the mobile app, Call Log lists your calls and Search calls... finds one by name or number. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login, a headset or a phone to talk on, and a customer with a number on the lead. A tracking number is provisioned for the store when the account is created and the softphone is enabled for every user; there is nothing to install. The number the customer sees on the call is that tracking number, so when they call back it rings the store's line and is logged on their lead. A rep who wants their own office number to show instead runs the caller ID verification once, covered on the caller ID and contact validation page. Check the validity dot on the number before you dial; the Phone Validator marks dead numbers so you do not spend the morning on them. Numbers on the store's DNC Blacklist are refused. If you make calls from your desk and from the lot, the LeadLocate mobile app has the same dialer on its bottom dock, dialing from the same store number. #### What you should see The VoIP Phone is a small panel with a keypad, the Phone Number field, a Leads tab that lists your leads so you can dial one without typing, and a Calls tab with your recent calls. When the call connects, the timer runs and Record this call shows whether recording is on. When you hang up, the call appears in the lead's communications log within a few seconds with its length, and the recording and transcript follow once they are processed. A customer who calls the store back rings the ring list a manager built under call forwarding, and the inbound call shows the caller's name from the caller ID lookup and the lead it matches, so you answer knowing who it is. Missed calls show in Call Logs with the number to return. #### If it did not work The browser will not dial, or you hear nothing. Microphone permission was denied. Click the lock or site icon in the browser's address bar, allow the microphone for the CRM, and reload. A headset plugged in after the page loaded also needs a reload to be picked up. Your own phone never rang. The phone chosen as the source is wrong or the number on your profile has a typo. Open your profile, check the number, and trigger the call again. A phone set to reject unknown callers may block the connecting call; allow the store's number. The call connected but there is no recording. Record this call was off, or the call was too short to keep. Turn it on before dialing; a manager can set recording to default on for the store. The call recording and transcription page covers playback and the transcript view. The customer sees a number they do not recognize. That is the store's tracking number, by design. If your store wants its main line as the caller ID on outbound calls, run the caller ID verification for that number. #### Related tasks The three ways to place a call and what the softphone replaces are on the VoIP softphone and click to call feature page, and the customer facing view of recording is on the automotive CRM with call recording page. Texting a customer, working the lead inbox and setting notification preferences, including Notify me when I get a NEW CALL, each have a guide in the LeadLocate Help Center. Voicemail greetings for the store and for each user are recorded in the browser, and the voicemail drop library is filled the same way. A calling setup your store needs beyond this is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Text first, then call the ones who replied; a call that follows a text gets answered. Dial from the Leads tab on the softphone when you are working a list, so every call is logged on the right record without typing a number. Use the voicemail drop on the third unanswered call, not the first. And listen to one of your own recordings a week; it is the cheapest coaching a salesperson ever gets. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a desk phone to call from LeadLocate? A: No. The VoIP Phone runs in the browser with a headset or the computer's microphone. If you prefer your desk phone or cell, the CRM can ring it first and then connect the customer. Q: What number shows when I call a customer from the CRM? A: The store's tracking number, so call backs ring the store and land on the lead. A rep can verify their own number to show it as the caller ID instead. Q: Are calls from the CRM recorded? A: Yes, when Record this call is on. The recording and a transcript attach to the lead, and a manager can set recording to default on for the store. Q: Can I make calls from the mobile app? A: Yes. Call is on the app's bottom dock, dialing from the same store number, with the same logging, recording and Call Log. ### How to Manage Account Access in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-manage-account-access Sign in to My LeadLocate as the account admin and open User Access. The list shows every person on the account and which apps each one can launch. Use Add a User to invite somebody, set what they can open, and remove access the day a person leaves. Every change takes effect on their next sign in. Steps: 1. Sign in as the account admin: Open your account portal and sign in. Managing users is an account admin job, so if the screen is not on your menu you are signed in as a regular user and need the admin to either make the change or give you the access. 2. Open User Access: Click User Access. You get the roster: who is on the account, what each person can launch, and when each of them last signed in. Read it out loud once a month. Most stores find at least one person on that list who left in the spring. 3. Add the people who are missing: Click Add a User and fill in First name, Last name, Email address, Job title and Mobile phone (US), then click Send Request. Use the person's own work email, never a shared one, because that address is how the platform knows who did what. 4. Decide what each person can open: For each user, choose which applications they can launch: the CRM, Inventory Link, SecureWebX. A receptionist does not need the deal desk and a lot porter does not need billing, and a short list is easier for a new hire to learn than a full one. 5. Take access away the day somebody leaves: Remove the user from the same screen. The portal asks Are you sure? and you click Confirm. Do it on their last day rather than at the end of the month; their leads, texts, calls and notes all stay on the account, because the history belongs to the store. 6. Keep the account contacts current: Open Account Settings and use Edit account information to check Account Admin, Account Admin Email and Account Admin Phone. That is who we reach for anything about the account, so it should be a person who is still at the store and still answers. 7. Check your work: Look at Account Timeline for what has changed on the account, and have one of the users you just added sign in and open My SSO Profile to confirm they see the apps you meant to give them. #### Before you start You need the account admin sign in for My LeadLocate. Decide two things before you open the screen: who is genuinely still at the store, and what each of those people needs to do their job. A roster you have not read in six months is the most common reason a store has more users than employees. Have the new people's work emails and mobile numbers ready. Each user gets their own sign in, which is what makes the lead history readable: who texted the customer, who took the call, who booked the appointment. The My LeadLocate page covers the rest of the portal, and the platform overview lists the applications you are handing out. #### What you should see User Access lists every user with a name, a job title and the applications they can launch, and the invited ones show as waiting until they set their own password. A new hire who has accepted the invite can sign in and see exactly the tiles you gave them, and nothing else. Each person can open My SSO Profile to see their own list. Access is per person and per application, so one login covers the whole platform without giving anybody the whole platform. That is the part that matters for compliance: customer records, credit applications and secure files are reached by named people whose access you can review any time, and the store can prove who had what. Building that in from the start is cheaper than reconstructing it later. #### Who should have what Salespeople need the CRM and the phone app: leads, texting, calls, appointments, inventory. BDC agents need the same plus the inboxes they work. Sales managers add the desk, the reports and the ability to see the whole floor. Your office manager usually needs billing and the file library and no CRM seat at all. Two rules save a lot of trouble. Give every person their own sign in rather than one login the desk shares, because a shared login makes the lead history useless and takes a real customer conversation out of the record. And review the roster on the first of the month with your general manager: it takes four minutes, it catches the person who transferred to service, and it is the single best habit a store can build around LeadLocate CRM. #### If it did not work User Access is not on your menu. You are signed in as a regular user. Ask whoever is listed as Account Admin to make the change or to give your user the access. The invite never reached the new hire. Check the address you typed in Email address, then have them look in junk mail. If the email is genuinely wrong, remove the user and add them again with the right address. Somebody sees an app you did not mean to give them. Open their user, take the application off the list and save. They will see the change on their next sign in, and you can confirm it by having them open My SSO Profile. A person left and you want their work kept. Remove their access and keep the records. Leads, conversations, appointments and notes stay on the account under the store, so a manager can reassign the customers to whoever takes the desk next. #### Related tasks Signing in without a password, paying an invoice, adding an add-on and downloading your welcome guide all happen in the same portal, described on the My LeadLocate page. Roles inside the CRM itself, which decide what a user sees once they are in, are a separate layer on top of this one. The LeadLocate Help Center carries the neighbouring guides, and if something on the roster does not look right, open a support ticket from the portal and our team will sort it with you. An access arrangement your dealer group needs that you do not see here is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Who can manage user access? A: The account admin. Any other user can be given the access, but by default the admin is the one who adds people, decides which apps they launch and removes them when they leave. Q: How do I give a new hire access? A: Open User Access, click Add a User, fill in their name, work email, job title and mobile number, and send the request. They set their own password from the invite. Q: What happens to a person's leads when I remove them? A: Everything stays on the account. Their leads, texts, calls, notes and appointments belong to the store, and a manager can reassign the customers to whoever picks up the desk. Q: Can one person have the CRM but not billing? A: Yes. Access is set per person and per application, so a salesperson can have the CRM and the phone app while the office manager has billing and the file library. ### How to Manage SecureWebX Users in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-manage-securewebx-users Open Users in SecureWebX, click Add a User for someone at your store or Invite user to send an invitation, then give that person the role that matches their job. They accept the terms on first sign in and answer a code sent to their mobile. Removing access is one click on the same list. Steps: 1. Open the user list: From SecureWebX home, open Users. You get every person who can reach this store's applications, their role and their status. A brand new store reads No users yet until the first manager is added, and people already working in LeadLocate CRM arrive here through the same onboarding rather than being typed in twice. 2. Add the person or send an invitation: Use Add a User when you are creating the account yourself with their name, work email and mobile number. Use Invite user when you would rather they set their own password: they get an invitation at their work email and finish the setup themselves. Either way, use the work email, never a shared front desk mailbox. 3. Give them the role that matches the job: Pick the role before you save, not later. A finance manager working deals all day needs the application inbox, the worksheets and the lender shares. A salesperson who only hands out the apply link needs far less than that, and a receptionist who never touches a credit application needs no access here at all. 4. Have them accept the terms on the first sign in: Every user ticks I have read and accept the SecureWebX Terms of Service. before the console opens. It is not a formality anyone should click past: the SecureWebX Terms of Service link on that screen is what your store is agreeing to about handling application data, and acceptance is recorded per user. 5. Confirm the first sign in worked: Watch them do it once. They enter email and password, a single use code goes to the mobile number on their record, and the dashboard opens. If no code arrives, the number on the user record is wrong; open that User and correct it, then try again. 6. Close access the day someone leaves: When a person leaves the store, remove their access from the same user list, that morning, before anything else on your list. Their work stays where it is: applications, notes, worksheets and the audit trail keep the name attached, because records here are archived rather than deleted. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login with user administration, each teammate's work email and mobile number, and a decision about what each of them should be able to open. Five minutes of thinking about roles before you add ten people saves an afternoon of cleanup later. Keep one rule: one person, one login. A shared login means the sign in code goes to one phone, the audit log shows a desk instead of a person, and the store loses the ability to answer a simple question about who opened a customer's application. The user roles and permissions page explains how roles work across the platform, and the same thinking applies here. #### Which role does each person need? Start from what the person does on a Saturday. Finance staff work submitted applications end to end, so they need the inbox, the stipulations, the worksheets and the ability to send a deal to a lender. Sales managers usually want to see the pipeline and the worksheet without handling documents. Salespeople mostly need to get a customer into the application, which is the apply link, not the console. Give the smaller role when you are unsure. Raising someone a level takes ten seconds once they ask, and every access change is written to the audit log with who made it. That log is one of the protections described on credit application security, along with encryption of application data at rest, a code on every sign in and a watermarked viewer that gates printing. #### What you should see The new teammate on the user list with their role, and, once they have signed in, a record of that sign in in the security log. Their name starts appearing as an assignee on applications, in notes, and on anything they send out. They should also be able to get here without a second password. Each product is its own application under one login, so the SecureWebX button on the CRM dock carries a signed in user straight into the console, as described on single sign on. If a new hire is already working in the CRM, that one click is usually how they will open SecureWebX every day. #### If it did not work The invitation never arrived. Check the address on the user record first, then the store's spam folder. A personal mailbox typed in by mistake is the usual answer; correct it on the User record and send the invitation again. They signed in but half the console is missing. That is the role doing its job. Decide whether the work really calls for more access, then raise the role rather than handing them somebody else's login. Two people are sharing one account. The code goes to the phone on that record, so the second person is stuck at the code screen. Add them their own user; it fixes the sign in and the audit trail in the same move. Nobody at the store can get in to fix it. Our support team can see your screen with you and sort it out on the call, so keep working the deal and call us while the customer is still in the box. #### Related tasks Handing customers a way to apply is the other half of this setup, and apply links covers the branded links a store can customize with its own sections, fields, document uploads and disclosures. Users open what comes back; apply links decide what comes in. The LeadLocate Help Center has the neighboring guides, including setting up the sign in code, exporting an application and opening a support ticket. A permission split your store needs that you do not see in the roles today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Do my CRM users automatically become SecureWebX users? A: Store onboarding brings your team across so nobody is typed in twice, and the SecureWebX button on the CRM dock opens the console for a signed in user. You still choose each person's role here. Q: How many users can a store have? A: Add the whole team. One login per person is the goal, since sign in codes, assignments and the audit log all key off the individual user rather than a desk. Q: What happens to a person's work when I remove them? A: It stays. Applications, notes, worksheets and the audit trail keep their name on them, because records are archived rather than deleted, which is what a compliance review expects to find. Q: Can a lender or an outside partner have a login? A: Add them as a partner rather than as a user, and invite them to set themselves up. They get their own credentials and your user list stays your team. ### How to Mark a Lead Lost with a Reason in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-mark-a-lead-lost-with-a-reason To mark a lead lost in LeadLocate CRM, open Leads, open the status dropdown on the lead's row and pick Lost. The Mark Lead As Lost popup opens; choose a Reason, add a note if there is one, and click Save & Mark Lost. The status changes and the reason is written to the lead's history. Steps: 1. Open the lead: Click Leads on the desktop CRM and find the lead, or tap it in the LeadLocate mobile app so the row expands. The status dropdown sits beside the status pill on the row. 2. Pick Lost: Open the dropdown and choose Lost. Instead of changing the pill straight away, the CRM opens the Mark Lead As Lost popup. Closing the popup leaves the lead in its old status. 3. Choose the reason: Open the Reason list, which starts at Select a reason..., and pick the one that fits: the credit, bought the same brand elsewhere, bought a different brand elsewhere, no agreement reached, out of market, no intent to buy, shopping out of area, Bad or No Contact Information, Test Lead, and the rest of the store's list. A reason is required. 4. Add a note: Type one line in Custom comment (optional) on the desktop or Add a short note (optional) on the phone: the other store's payment, the trade payoff that killed it, the date they said to call back. The note is what makes the reason useful later. 5. Save: Click Save & Mark Lost. The pill on the row changes to Lost, and the reason and the note are written to the lead's timeline as a note. #### Before you start Any user who can open the lead can mark it lost, on the desktop CRM or in the mobile app, and nothing has to be turned on. The reason list is managed by the store's master administrator, so if a reason your store needs is missing, ask them to add it before the floor starts using the popup. The lost reason tracking page explains what the default reasons cover and why a lead is not allowed into Lost without one. Decide first whether the lead is lost or bad. Lost is for a real customer who did not buy: they went elsewhere, the credit did not work, they changed their mind. A lead with a wrong number and a bouncing email, where nobody could be reached, is a bad lead, and it goes to the Quality Control team through the Report to QC pick on the same dropdown rather than to Lost. The Bad or No Contact Information reason exists for the case where the store chooses to close a lead out itself rather than report it. #### What you should see After Save & Mark Lost, the popup closes and the row's status pill reads Lost. Open the lead and the timeline shows a note with the reason you picked and the comment you typed, stamped with your name and the time. The lead drops out of the working filters and shows under Lost when you filter the list by status, and the same reason shows on the lead in the mobile app. A Follow Up Process can do the same job without a rep. A step in Follow Up Processes can be set to Move to Lost with reason with a Lost Reason chosen on the step, so a drip that ends with no reply closes the lead out with a reason such as no intent to buy. Reports then read the reasons whether a person or a process wrote them. The Follow Up Processes page shows how the steps are built. #### If it did not work The lead is still in its old status. The popup was closed before Save & Mark Lost, or the Reason was left at Select a reason.... The CRM refuses a move to Lost without a reason, on the screen and on the server, so there is no way around the popup. Pick Lost again and complete it. The reason you need is not in the list. The list is per store. Ask the master administrator to add it. Until then, pick the closest reason and put the real one in the comment so the history is still honest. You marked the wrong lead lost. Open the lead, open the status dropdown and pick the status it should have. The lost note stays in the timeline as a record, which is fine; add a note saying it was marked in error so the next reader is not confused. The customer came back. Change the status from Lost to wherever the conversation is now. Nothing about a lost lead is locked, and the earlier reason becomes useful context for the second attempt. The lost lead reactivation page covers working the Lost list on purpose. #### Related tasks Changing any other status is covered in its own guide, and reporting a bad lead has one too. The lead replacement review page explains what the Quality Control team does with a report and how the outcome shows on the lead. For reading the reasons across a month, the reports count leads by status and the lost reasons sit on each lead's timeline. Every guide for the CRM is in the Help Center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows how statuses, follow ups and reports fit together. #### Tips from the floor Write the note. A reason of bought the same brand elsewhere tells a manager what happened; a note that says the other store was twenty a month lower on a longer term tells them what to do about it. Mark the lead lost the day you learn it, not at month end, so the calendar and the follow up steps stop working a customer who is gone. And read your own Lost list once a month; the reasons are the closest thing to a customer telling you why they left. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I mark a lead lost without a reason? A: No. The Mark Lead As Lost popup requires a reason before Save & Mark Lost is accepted, and the server rejects a move to Lost that skips the popup. The comment is optional. Q: Where does the reason go? A: It is written to the lead's timeline as a note with the comment, your name and the time, and it shows on the lead on the desktop and in the mobile app. Q: Who manages the list of reasons? A: The store's master administrator. The defaults cover credit, bought elsewhere, no agreement, out of market, no intent to buy, bad contact information and test leads, among others. Q: Can a lost lead be reopened? A: Yes. Change its status from Lost to wherever the conversation is now. The earlier reason stays in the timeline as context. ### How to Merge Duplicate Leads in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-merge-duplicate-leads To merge duplicate leads in LeadLocate CRM, open the newest lead for the customer in Leads, click the merge button on the lead, and wait for Merge Duplicate Records to scan by name, phone and email. The newest record is marked as the keeper; tick the other rows that are the same person and click Confirm Merge. The history lands on the keeper. Steps: 1. Open the newest lead: Go to Leads on the desktop CRM and open the most recent record for the customer. The scan treats the newest matching record as the one that survives, so starting from it keeps the customer's latest phone and email on top. 2. Start the scan: In the lead's button row, click the merge button. The Merge Duplicate Records overlay opens and scans the account for other records that match this lead by name, phone or email. The scan takes a moment on a large account. 3. Read the match list: Matches appear in a table with the ID, the match type, name, phone, email, status, date and who it is assigned to. The row marked as the keeper is the newest record and is preserved. Phone and email matches are strong matches and come pre-ticked; name only matches are listed but left unticked for you to judge. 4. Tick the rows that are the same person: Check every row that is truly this customer and untick any that are not. Two people with the same name at the same store happen more often than you would think, so read the phone and email columns before you trust a name only match. 5. Confirm: Click Confirm Merge. The ticked records fold into the keeper, the overlay reports that the merge is complete, and the lead reloads as one record. #### Before you start Merging is done on the desktop CRM from the lead itself. Any user who can open the lead can run it; there is no separate permission and nothing to turn on, because Merge Duplicate Records is on every lead and contact from the day the account is created. Have the customer's phone number or email handy so you can tell a true duplicate from a namesake in the match list. Know what the merge keeps. The keeper is the newest matching record, and it keeps its own name, phone, email, status and assignment. The notes, texts, emails and calls from the merged rows attach to the keeper, and the merged rows are retired rather than erased. If the older record carried the better phone number, write it down before you merge and update the keeper afterward. The Merge Duplicate Leads feature page explains what a strong match is and why the newest record wins. #### What you should see While the scan runs, the overlay says it is scanning for duplicates and checking name, phone and email matches. When it finishes you see either a count of matching records with the table beneath it, or a message that no duplicates were found, in which case the lead is left alone and there is nothing to confirm. After Confirm Merge, the overlay reports the merge is complete and the lead reloads. Open the lead's history and you should find the notes and the communications log from the merged rows on this one record, in date order. The merged leads no longer appear in Leads or Contacts, so the salesperson who owned one of them now sees the customer only if they own the keeper. Tell them, or reassign the keeper, before they go looking. A good follow up is to run the Phone Validator and Email Validator on the keeper so the surviving number and address carry a validity dot. The Phone Validator page shows what the dots mean. #### If it did not work The scan found nothing, but you can see the duplicate in the list. The scan matches on name, phone and email exactly as they are stored. A number typed with a different format, a misspelled name or a work email versus a personal one will not match. Fix the phone or email on one of the records so the two agree, then run the scan again from the newest one. The keeper is the wrong record. The keeper is always the newest matching record, and it is not something you pick in the overlay. If the older record is the one you want to survive, cancel, open the newest record, copy anything unique from it onto the older one, and delete the newest record before merging the rest. The trash bin keeps deleted leads with a restore option if you change your mind. The overlay reports a connection error. Nothing was merged. Close the overlay, reload the lead and run the scan again. If it repeats, send a ticket from the account portal with the lead ID and our team looks at the account. #### Related tasks Most duplicates arrive through a contact import, because a book of business usually contains customers who are already in the CRM from a lead, and through customers who submit forms on more than one site. Round robin assignment is why two reps end up with the same person, so a merge is often followed by a reassignment. Every guide for the CRM is in the Help Center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows how leads, contacts and the customer profile fit together. #### Tips from the floor Merge from the newest record every time; it is the one with the customer's current details. Do the merge before you text, not after, so the conversation is on the record that survives. After any sizable import, expect to merge a handful. And make it a rule that the rep who spots the duplicate merges it on the spot rather than emailing the manager, because a duplicate that sits for a week has two people texting the same customer about two different cars. #### Questions and answers Q: Which record survives a merge? A: The newest matching record, which the overlay marks as the keeper. It keeps its own contact details, status and assignment, and the notes and communications from the merged rows attach to it. Q: Are the merged leads deleted? A: They are retired rather than erased. They stop appearing in Leads and Contacts, and their history now lives on the keeper. Q: What counts as a strong match? A: A phone or email match. Those rows are pre-ticked in the list. A name only match is shown but left unticked, because two different customers can share a name. Q: Can I merge contacts as well as leads? A: Yes. Merge Duplicate Records is available on contacts as well as leads and runs the same scan. ### How to Open a SecureWebX Support Ticket in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-open-a-securewebx-support-ticket From SecureWebX home, open Support and click Contact Support. Describe one issue, name the application it happened on, and submit. The ticket comes back with a reference number, sits at Open while it is worked, and every reply lands on the same thread so nothing gets lost in a personal inbox. Steps: 1. Gather the details while you are still on the screen: Before you leave the page, note what you clicked, what you expected and what happened instead. If it is about one deal, use Open application profile and copy the application number. A ticket with the application number attached gets answered on the first reply instead of the third. 2. Open the support area: Go to SecureWebX home and open Support. Some screens carry a Get support shortcut right where you are working, which saves the trip back to the dashboard when you are mid deal. 3. Start the ticket: Click Contact Support. Give the ticket a subject a stranger would understand, then write the body: one issue, the application number, the user it happened to, and the time. Two unrelated problems in one ticket slow both of them down, so open two. 4. Attach what proves it: A screenshot of the screen you were on is worth a paragraph of description. If the trouble is a document that will not display, name the file and use Open the secure viewer to confirm what you are seeing before you send, so the ticket says what the viewer shows rather than what you assume it shows. 5. Submit it and keep the reference number: Send the ticket. It comes back with a reference number, and that number is what you quote to a teammate or a manager who asks about it later. Write it on the deal jacket if the customer is waiting. 6. Follow the thread and close the loop: Use Open conversation to read replies and answer on the same thread. Keep the whole exchange in the ticket rather than a private email, because the next person who touches the deal can read it there. When the fix lands, say so on the thread so it closes clean. #### Before you start You need your own SecureWebX login, the application or screen the issue happened on, and a clear sentence about what you expected. That sentence does most of the work. Tickets that say what should have happened get answered faster than tickets that only say something is wrong. Decide first whether it is a question, an issue or a request. A question about where a control lives is often already answered in the LeadLocate Help Center. An issue with one deal belongs in a ticket with the application number. A request for something the console does not do yet is also welcome as a ticket: it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What belongs in a ticket, and what is faster on the phone Put it in a ticket when there is a record to point at: an application that will not export, a document that will not open, a lender share the lender says is blank, a user who needs access changed. The written trail with its reference number is worth having, and it survives shift changes. Pick up the phone when a customer is sitting in the box right now. Our support team can see your screen with you and fix it on the call, which beats typing at each other while somebody waits on a chair in your showroom. You can still open a ticket afterward so the fix is on the record. Billing, add ons and subscription questions have their own home in My LeadLocate. #### What you should see A confirmation with a reference number as soon as you submit, and the ticket on your list at Open. When someone replies you get an email pointing you back to the thread, and Open message takes you to the reply itself. The exchange stays in one place with your original description at the top, so nobody has to reconstruct the story. While the ticket is open, work the deal normally. Applications keep arriving in the application inbox, worksheets keep saving and lender shares keep going out, because a ticket is a conversation about one thing rather than a hold on your store. #### If it did not work You cannot find the support area. Go back to SecureWebX home first; the shortcut on a deep screen is easy to walk past when you are concentrating on a deal. You submitted it and heard nothing. Check the email address on your user record, then look at your ticket list rather than your mailbox. The thread in the console is the copy of record, and replies are there whether or not the email reached you. The answer did not fix it. Reply on the same thread with what you tried and what you saw, and keep the reference number rather than opening a fresh ticket. A second ticket about the same problem starts the story over. It is urgent and a customer is waiting. Call us and keep the ticket as the paper trail. Contact us lists the ways to reach the team. #### Related tasks Access problems are usually faster to solve yourself: the guide to managing SecureWebX users covers adding a teammate, changing a role and correcting the mobile number a sign in code goes to. Export trouble has its own guide, and it usually comes down to the format the receiving side expects. The help center holds the rest of the step by step guides for SecureWebX, from sending a fax to exporting an application. Feature requests filed as tickets carry the same reference number treatment as issues, so your store can follow one from the idea to the day it shows up in the console. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the support form in SecureWebX? A: Open Support from the console home. Some screens also carry a get support shortcut so you can file the ticket without leaving the deal you are working. Q: What should I include in a support ticket? A: One issue, the application number it happened on, the user it happened to, the time, and what you expected to happen. A screenshot of the screen usually replaces a paragraph. Q: Do I get a reference number? A: Yes. Every ticket comes back with one, and replies stay on that thread so a manager or the next shift can read the whole exchange without asking you. Q: Can I ask for something the console does not do yet? A: Yes. File it as a ticket. It is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership, with the same reference number to follow it by. ### How to Open a Support Ticket in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-open-a-support-ticket Sign in to My LeadLocate, open Support Requests and click Create Support Request. Describe what you need in Support Request Message *, attach a screenshot if you have one, and click Submit Ticket. The ticket opens as a thread you can reply to, and the whole conversation stays on your account where anyone you authorize can read it. Steps: 1. Sign in to My LeadLocate: Open your account portal and sign in with the email on the account. Tickets live in the same portal as billing, the add-on shelf and your file library, so the request is tied to your store rather than to one person's inbox. 2. Open Support Requests: Click Support Requests. You get the list of everything your store has asked for, open and closed, with the newest at the top. Read it before you write a new one; somebody at your store may already have asked the same thing this week. 3. Start a new request: Click Create Support Request. The form asks for your name, your company, the email and the phone number to reach you on, so put the number of the person who actually has the screen open, not the main switchboard. 4. Say exactly what you want: Write it in Support Request Message *. Name the product, the screen, the user it happens to and the exact steps you took, then what you expected and what appeared instead. One request per ticket keeps the thread readable and gets each one answered on its own. 5. Attach what you are looking at: Use the attachment control to add a screenshot, a photo of the screen from your phone, or the file you are trying to send. A picture of the screen removes the first two rounds of questions almost every time. 6. Submit it: Click Submit Ticket. The portal confirms it is in and the request appears at the top of your list with a reference on it. Keep the tab open if you want to watch for the first reply. 7. Reply in the thread: Open the Ticket and answer in the same thread rather than by separate email, so everything stays in one place. If our team needs to see what you see, they can watch your screen with you and fix it while you are on the call. 8. Close it when it is sorted: Click Close this ticket - I figured it out and the portal asks Close this ticket? to be sure. Answer Yes, close ticket when you are done, or No, keep open if you want to test it for another day first. #### Before you start You need a My LeadLocate sign in. Anyone at the store can have one, and a ticket opened by a salesperson is handled the same as one opened by the dealer principal. Have the details in front of you: which product, which user, which store if you run more than one rooftop, and what you were doing when you decided to write. It also helps to know what you actually want. Tickets fall into three groups: a question about how something works, a change you want made to your account, and something on screen that does not match what you expect. Say which one you have in the first line and the rest of the ticket writes itself. If it is a plan question rather than a product question, pricing may answer it before you write, and the LeadLocate Help Center covers most day to day tasks step by step. #### What you should see The new request appears at the top of Support Requests with the date and a reference. Opening it shows the message you sent, any attachments, and each reply underneath in order. You reply in the same thread, so there is no chasing a message that went to somebody's personal inbox. The whole conversation prints. That matters more than it sounds: when a manager wants the history of a change your store asked for, or an owner wants to see what was agreed, one page carries the request, the answers and the dates. Closed tickets stay on the list, so a question you asked last quarter is still there when the same thing comes up. #### How to write a ticket that gets handled fast Lead with the outcome you want. "I want texts from the used car line to ring the BDC phones" gets moving faster than "texting is not working". Then give the specifics: the user, the number, the lead, the time it happened. If it happened to one person and not another, say so, because that single detail usually points straight at the answer. Send one request per ticket. A ticket that carries four unrelated questions gets one of them answered first and the other three wait for the thread. Four short tickets are handled in parallel. And put a phone number on it that somebody will pick up; the fastest tickets are the ones where our team can see your screen with you and settle it on the call rather than in writing. #### If it did not work You do not see Support Requests on the menu. Your user has not been given that part of the portal. The account admin can add it under user access, or open the ticket on your behalf. The form will not submit. A required field is still empty; Support Request Message * and the contact fields marked with a star all need values. Fill the blank one and submit again. Your attachment was refused. The file is too large or is a type the form does not take. Send a screenshot instead, or put the file in your file library and name it in the ticket. You closed a ticket too early. Open a new one and reference the old ticket by its number. The closed thread is still on your list, so nothing you wrote is lost. #### Related tasks The portal that holds your tickets also holds your invoices, receipts, add-on shelf, credits, file library and the launch tiles for every product. It is all described on the My LeadLocate page, and the product lineup itself is on the platform overview. Before you write, check whether the task already has a guide. The Help Center covers the common ones: paying an invoice, adding an add-on, managing who can reach which app, and the everyday CRM tasks your floor asks about most. If you would rather talk to a person, contact us and we will call you back. #### Questions and answers Q: Who at my store can open a support ticket? A: Anyone with a My LeadLocate sign in that includes support. A ticket from a salesperson is handled the same way as one from the dealer principal, and the whole store can read the thread. Q: Can I attach a screenshot to a support ticket? A: Yes, and you should. A picture of the screen you are looking at usually removes the first two rounds of questions and gets the request handled in one pass. Q: Can I print the conversation? A: Yes. Every ticket prints as one page with the original request, each reply and the dates, which is what a manager or an owner usually wants to see. Q: How do I close a ticket once it is sorted? A: Open the ticket, click Close this ticket, and confirm with Yes, close ticket. Choose No, keep open if you want to test the fix for another day before closing it. ### How to Pay an Invoice in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-pay-an-invoice Sign in to My LeadLocate, open Invoices in billing and click the one you owe. Choose Pay Online to pay by card, or Pay with Prepaid Balance when the account carries Service Credits. Confirm the payment and the receipt appears at once, with the invoice number on it for your controller. Steps: 1. Sign in to My LeadLocate: Go to your account portal and sign in with the email on the account. Billing lives in the same place you launch the CRM, Inventory Link and SecureWebX from, so an office manager who only handles the money never needs a seat in the CRM to do this job. 2. Open your invoices: Click Invoices. Each line shows the amount, the date it was issued and whether it is still open. Open the invoice you want to pay; the detail view lists what the charge covers, so you can check it against the plan and any add-ons before a dollar moves. 3. Pick how you want to pay: Click Pay Online to pay by card, or Pay with Prepaid Balance if the account carries a balance. The prepaid route is the quicker one when your store keeps credits on file, and it needs no card entry at all. 4. Confirm the card: If a card is already saved under Payment Method on File, type the Last 4 Digits of Credit Card so the portal knows it is really you, then Confirm Your Payment. If you are paying with a different card, use the secure checkout and enter it there. 5. Read the receipt: The portal writes a PAYMENT RECEIPT the moment the payment clears. It carries Invoice: with the number, Receipt Date:, Reference: and the service address the charge belongs to. Print it or save the page for the file. 6. Check it landed: Go back to Invoices and confirm the line no longer shows as open, then look at Transactions for the full history. Everything your accountant asks for at month end is on that one screen, in date order. #### Before you start You need a My LeadLocate sign in for an account that is allowed to see billing. Not every user is: a store can give a salesperson the CRM and nothing else, and give the office manager billing without a CRM seat. If the billing screens are not on your menu, the account admin can add them under user access in a few seconds. Have the card or the account's prepaid balance ready, and know which invoice you are paying. Your plan is what it is on pricing, so an invoice that looks unfamiliar is usually an add-on somebody on the team ordered. The My LeadLocate page walks through everything else the portal does, from products to files to support. #### What you should see After you confirm, the invoice stops showing as open and a receipt appears on screen with Invoice:, the amount, the payment method and a reference. The same receipt is reachable later from Transactions, so you never have to keep a copy in your own inbox to find it again. Print it straight from the page when your controller wants paper. If you paid with credits, Service Credits drops by the amount of the invoice and the receipt says the payment came from the balance rather than a card. Referral credits and service credits both land in that balance, which is the tidiest way for a store to run: earn the credit once, spend it against the next invoice without a purchase order. #### If it did not work The card was declined. The issuing bank refused it, usually for a limit or an address mismatch. Check the billing address saved in your settings matches the one the bank has, then try again or use a different card in the secure checkout. You do not see Pay Online at all. Your user does not have billing on its menu. Ask the account admin to give you access, or ask them to pay it; both take a minute. The prepaid balance did not cover it. Pay with Prepaid Balance only clears an invoice the balance can cover in full. Pay the invoice by card and keep the credits for the next one, or top the balance up first. The receipt did not print the way you want it. Print the receipt page itself rather than a screenshot of the list; it is laid out for paper, with the invoice number, the reference and the service address where a bookkeeper expects them. #### Keeping the billing side tidy Three habits save a lot of email. Keep the billing contact and the account admin as two separate people if your store has two, because the person who signs for the plan is rarely the person who pays the bill. Keep a working card saved under Payment Method on File so a renewal never depends on somebody being at their desk. And use Transactions at month end rather than digging through email for receipts. If your store is on a month to month plan and wants to pause rather than pay, the renewal and Skip A Month controls live in the same portal, and turning renewal off is treated as a cancellation that takes effect at the end of the subscription. Read that screen before you click it, then call us if you would rather talk it through. #### Related tasks Everything the account portal handles, from invoices and receipts to add-ons, credits, files, support tickets and the launch tiles for each product, is on the My LeadLocate page. What each plan includes is on pricing, and the whole product lineup sits on the platform overview. The LeadLocate Help Center has the neighbouring guides: adding an add-on to an active subscription, opening a support ticket, and managing which users can reach which screens. A billing arrangement your store needs that you do not see here, such as a purchase order workflow, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I pay an invoice with a credit card? A: Open Invoices in My LeadLocate, open the invoice and click Pay Online. Confirm the saved card by its last four digits, or enter a different card in the secure checkout. Q: Can I pay an invoice online without a card? A: Yes, if the account carries a balance. Pay with Prepaid Balance clears the invoice from your service credits, and the receipt shows the payment came from the balance. Q: Where do I find the receipt afterwards? A: Under Transactions in billing. Each entry opens the full receipt with the invoice number, reference, payment method and service address, ready to print for your controller. Q: Who in the store can pay an invoice? A: Any user whose access includes billing. A store usually gives it to the account admin and the office manager, and nobody needs a CRM seat to pay a bill. ### How to Preview Sample Ads and Custom Offers URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-preview-sample-ads Open your campaign in Leads Manager, go to Offers & Notes and click See Samples. A popup shows your ads exactly as shoppers see them on your dealer pages, and tapping any card shows the lead form behind it. Add your own promotions in Custom Offers, click Save, and our team builds and runs the campaign from those selections. Steps: 1. Open your campaigns: In the CRM top bar, open Menu controls and choose Lead Feeds Manager. That opens Leads Manager with the list of your store's campaigns. Click a campaign's name to open its zone editor. Starting fresh, click Create a New Campaign, pick Inbound Campaign or Acquisitions Campaign, then Continue to Zone Setup. 2. Go to Offers and Notes: In the zone editor menu, click Offers & Notes. The section opens with examples of live creative our team builds for dealers, and a note on how your ads are written around what your website already advertises, using your inventory and your brand. 3. Click See Samples: Click See Samples, the green button under Your Offers. A large popup titled Watch what your shoppers see opens over the editor and deals a grid of ad cards, such as lease, finance and cash programs alongside the evergreen offers that bring shoppers in. 4. Tap a card to see the lead form: Tap any card. The offer opens the way it does for a shopper, with the lead form beside it. The form is greyed out in the preview so you can read every field and question without sending anything. Close the card to return to the grid. 5. Deal a fresh set, then close the popup: Click the round Refresh samples button in the popup header to shuffle the cards and see more formats. When you are done, click Close samples, press Escape, or click outside the popup to return to the editor. 6. Add your Custom Offers: Click Custom Offers in the editor menu, then Add Offer. Each offer takes an image, a headline and the details, for example a trade bonus when a shopper mentions the ad or a weekend lease special. Add as many as you like. 7. Review and save: Open Review to see every selection in one snapshot, including a Custom offers row with a second See Samples button under it. Click Save. Our team builds and runs the campaign from these selections. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate plan that includes leads and a CRM login that can reach Leads Manager. The account admin controls which menus each user sees, so if Leads Manager is missing from your menu, the admin can switch it on for you in a minute. Have your current promotions to hand: the trade bonus, the manager special, the event this weekend. Anything already on your website is picked up for you, so Custom Offers is for what only the store knows about. If you have not built a campaign yet, the guide to building a lead campaign walks through the zone, the audience and the lead form first. Running shoppers and owners together is covered on the buyer and seller leads page. #### What you should see The Watch what your shoppers see popup shows your store's ad cards exactly as a shopper sees them on your dealer pages. A store with dealer pages sees its own deck under its own name, with the programs for the makes it carries. Cards come in several footprints, from a single offer to a full photo card, which is the point: a shopper scrolling past sees variety, and so do you. RV and marine stores see cards built for their units. While the first set loads, placeholder tiles hold the grid so the popup never opens empty. Tapping a card shows both steps a shopper moves through, with every control disabled. In Custom Offers, each card you add shows the image, the headline and the details, and the section gets a green tick in the editor menu once it holds an offer. #### Quick checks Look for See Samples in two places. It sits under Your Offers in Offers & Notes and again under the Custom offers row in Review. Both open the same popup. Save after you add offers. Images upload as you add them, and Save is what sends your new offers to our team with the rest of the campaign's selections. Write offers the way you would say them. Our team turns each one into finished ad copy, tuned for results and kept compliant with financing ad rules, so a clear headline and plain details are all it takes. Want a person to walk it with you? A live training session is a good time to open the samples popup together; the training guide shows how to book one. #### What happens after you preview Our team builds and runs every campaign from the selections you make in Leads Manager: the zone, the audience, the lead form questions and your Custom Offers. It runs in the managed webXintel Ads Network that comes with every plan, or in the dealership's own ad accounts. Every lead the campaign brings in lands in LeadLocate CRM, delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture with the questions you chose and backed by a replacement review. #### How do managers get the most from See Samples and Custom Offers? The samples popup is the fastest way to see your campaign the way a shopper does, and a few habits make every campaign stronger. - Preview before every change. Open See Samples whenever you adjust a campaign, so the whole desk agrees on what shoppers see before the selections go to our team. - Keep Custom Offers current. Add a new offer each time the store runs a weekend event, a trade bonus or a manager special. Our team writes each one into finished ad copy, so the campaign matches what the showroom is saying this week. - Read the lead form as a shopper would. Tap a card and read every question on the greyed out form. If an answer you want before the first call is missing, add it to the prescreening questions in the campaign so every lead arrives with it. - Give every offer a strong image and a plain headline. A clear photo and a headline a salesperson would say out loud do the heavy lifting; the details carry the rest. - Show the samples to the floor. Salespeople who have seen the offer answer the first text with confidence, because they know exactly what the shopper tapped. After you click Save, watch the leads that arrive in LeadLocate CRM. The source on every lead shows where it came from, and the offers that bring in the most appointments are the ones to keep in your Custom Offers. #### Related tasks Once leads arrive, the lead inbox guide covers the first reply and the call. A lead that is clearly wrong goes through the bad lead report. Every other guide is in the LeadLocate Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: Are the sample ads what my shoppers actually see? A: Yes. The popup shows your ads exactly as shoppers see them on your dealer pages, in the same card formats and under the same offers. Tapping a card opens the lead form greyed out, so you see every field without sending anything. Q: How many Custom Offers can I add? A: As many as you like. Each one carries an image, a headline and the details, and our team writes them into finished ad copy alongside what your website already advertises. Q: Who launches the campaign after I preview it? A: Our team builds and runs every campaign from the selections you make in Leads Manager, in the managed webXintel Ads Network or in your dealership's own ad accounts. Q: Can my salespeople see the samples too? A: Anyone whose login includes Leads Manager can open See Samples. The account admin decides which users see that menu. ### How to Print a Deal Packet in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-print-a-deal-packet Printing a deal packet in LeadLocate CRM starts from the Print menu on the deal view under Desking. You choose one of five one page Customer View sheets or the Dealer View, add the one page profit and loss worksheet and the reservation confirmation if you need them, and print each from your own printer. Every sheet reads the same numbers the customer sees online. Steps: 1. Open the deal: From the main menu choose Desking and open the deal. Save any change to the structure first with Save changes to this deal, so the printed sheet and the saved deal match. 2. Open the Print menu: Click Print on the deal view. The menu lists the customer versions and the dealer copy. Printing never submits the form, so a worksheet prints at any point in the write up without a required field error. 3. Choose the customer sheet: Pick the version for the buyer in front of you: v1: Customer View 3 payment options for a payment buyer, v2: Customer View Detailed breakdown for a first time buyer who wants it narrated, v3: Customer View Payment range options for a budget conversation, v4: Customer View Details with payment ranges for the analytical buyer or the finance turnover, and v5: Customer View Details Simplified for the four square. 4. Print the dealer copy: Choose Dealer View Full detail, internal use only for the store copy. It prints everything the screen shows, including the rate spread, the capped trade credit and the pencil grid with its rate rows, with a manager notes box that grows to fill the page. It is labeled for internal use and is not meant to leave the building. 5. Add the manager and customer extras: Click Print a one-page Deal P&L worksheet for the sales manager and Print customer reservation confirmation for a buyer who has put a vehicle on hold. Each prints on its own page. 6. Print and file: Send each sheet to your printer from the browser print dialog. The deal history records the print, and the packet goes to the desk or the finance office with the deal jacket. #### What do I need before I print a deal packet? You need a saved deal in LeadLocate CRM, a desktop browser and a printer. Printing is a desktop job from the deal view or the EZ Desking popup; the mobile app carries the deal but not the print engine, and the shared link is the phone's version of paper. Any user who can open the deal can print it. Two settings shape every sheet and are worth checking once. The Worksheet disclaimer is the store level text printed on every customer sheet after the standard line that the sheet is not a contract and all figures are estimates until final lender approval. The store logo and colors come from the website editor Branding tab. Both live in your Dealership Profile and website settings, and a manager sets them once. The print packets and mail page explains each of the five customer versions in detail. #### What should I see on the printed sheets? Every customer version is one page and shares the same header, footer and disclaimer, with different guts. The three option sheet shows three columns with the middle one featured and detail held back. The detailed breakdown walks numbered steps from customer information through vehicle, pricing, trade, down and rebates, taxes and structure, with the payment last. The range sheet shows a payment band with no committed rate and room to write below it. The details with ranges version puts the range grid on top of the full itemized ledger. The simplified sheet is the four square. Odometer figures carry a footnote marker on every customer sheet, and the finance grid honors per cell rate ranges where the desk set them. The Dealer View Full detail, internal use only copy shows the whole structure including the lease upfront tax itemization and the lender per grid row. The one page profit and loss worksheet shows the front and back for the manager. The reservation confirmation names the customer, the unit and the hold. What prints is what the customer's deal page and any shared pencil recap sheet show, to the penny, because all three read the same deal. #### What if it did not work? The sheet printed with old numbers. The deal was changed after the last save. Click Save changes to this deal, then print again. A sheet always reads the saved deal. The sheet runs onto two pages. The browser print dialog has scaling or margins set for another job. Set the scale to fit the page and the margins to default, and print again. Every customer version is designed to fit one page at normal settings. The disclaimer or logo is missing. The Worksheet disclaimer is empty or the Branding tab has no logo. Fill them in once in the profile and the website editor, and every sheet printed afterward carries them. #### What do I do next? When the customer is not in the building, the same sheet becomes mail. Envelope templates lay the address where a #10 window envelope shows it after a tri fold, and First Class postage is bought inside the software and printed on the sheet as an indicia; both are set up on request and covered on print packets and mail. For a customer who reads a phone better than paper, send the customer deal page instead and collect the signature there. Two more packets print from the scanners on a lead: the identity packet from the driver license scanner and the trade packet from trade in capture. The Help Center lists every deal task in order, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where printing sits in the platform. #### Tips from the floor Print one customer sheet, not all five. The version is the close: three columns for the payment buyer, the range board for the couple who cannot agree on a budget, the detailed ledger for the engineer. Keep the Dealer View Full detail, internal use only copy on your side of the desk; the menu says internal use for a reason. Print the profit and loss worksheet for the manager after the customer leaves, not while the customer is reading the sheet. And save before you print every time, so the sheet in the folder is the deal in the system. #### Questions and answers Q: Which customer sheet should I print? A: Three payment options for a payment buyer, the detailed breakdown for a first time buyer, the payment range sheet for a budget conversation, details with payment ranges for the analytical buyer or the finance turnover, and the simplified four square for the manager who works that way. All five print on one page. Q: Do the printed numbers match the deal page? A: Yes. The print engine, the pencil recap share and the customer deal page all read the same saved deal, so the paper, the link and the page show the same figures. Q: Can I print from my phone? A: Printing is a desktop job from the deal view or the EZ Desking popup. From the phone, share the pencil recap link or the deal page; it shows the same sheet. Q: Is printing extra? A: No. The five customer versions, the dealer copy, the profit and loss worksheet and the reservation confirmation are part of every LeadLocate CRM plan. Postage for mailed packets is bought at the postal service rate from a balance the store funds. ### How to Publish Your Inventory Site in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-publish-your-inventory-site You publish an inventory site from Builder in the Inventory Link dealer portal. Pick the template, write the headline and supporting line or edit the drafted copy, choose the address, set where the leads go, build the site and look at it on a phone. Then publish. Nothing a shopper can reach changes until you do. Steps: 1. Open Builder in the dealer portal: Open the Inventory Link portal from the My Inventory button on the CRM dock, or sign in to it directly, and choose Builder. It sits next to the dashboard, the inventory list, the inbox and Requests, and it reads from the same inventory the CRM and the text and email composers read from. 2. Check the inventory first: Open the inventory list before you build anything. The site is assembled from those records, so whatever is in there is what a shopper will see. If units are missing, connect the feed or run the website import now rather than after you publish. 3. Pick the template and write the top of the page: Choose the template, then fill in the Headline and the Supporting line. Say what your store actually is: the town, the makes, the thing you are known for. The drafted copy underneath gives you a starting point for the rest; read it and change the parts that do not sound like you. 4. Choose the address: Take the Direct link the portal issues if you want to be live in the next five minutes, or use Create a new address and point a domain of your own at the site. Most stores start on the direct link, send it to a few people and move to a domain once they like what they see. 5. Say where the leads go and what the pages show: Set Where the leads go and fill in Email the lead to with the addresses that should be told, usually the sales desk and the BDC. Turn on Show matching vehicles from your inventory so a shopper reading an offer sees the units on your lot that fit it rather than a promise with no cars behind it. 6. Build it and look at it: Build the site, then open How it looks and check it on a phone and on a desktop. Walk it like a customer: front page, finder, a vehicle, the request sheet. Fix what you find and build again. This is the cheap part of the job, so do it twice. 7. Publish, then regenerate as the lot changes: Publish when the site reads the way you want it to read. From there, regenerate whenever you want the site to catch up with the lot, and new units arrive with their photos, their decoded build and their price already in place. Use See the leads to watch what the site brings in. #### Before you start Two things have to be true before you open Builder. Your vehicles have to be in Inventory Link, and you have to know where you want the site to live. The inventory arrives one of three ways: a provider feed connected under Feeds, an import that reads the vehicles from your own dealership website, which the import inventory from your website page covers, or units added by hand in the portal. A broker with no lot switches on auto broker inventory mode instead. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required in any of those cases. The portal opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on. Builder sits beside the dashboard, the inventory list and Requests. You do not need your web vendor for any of this, and you are not replacing the site they run for you; this is a second, lighter site built from your actual cars. Give yourself twenty minutes and a phone on the desk next to you. You will want to look at the built site on a small screen before anything goes live, because most of your shoppers will. #### What you should see after you publish A front page with your headline, your supporting line and the vehicle finder on it. A listing page with every unit in your inventory, each one carrying the decoded year, make, model and trim, the mileage, the price and the photos on the record. A page per vehicle with the full build, the government safety and efficiency figures the automotive database attached, and a Schedule a Visit sheet that rises from the bottom of the screen on a phone. The address is whatever you chose: the direct link the portal issues, or a domain of your own. Load it on the phone you left on the desk and walk it the way a shopper would, from the front page to a vehicle to the request sheet. From that point the site keeps up with the lot on its own. A unit that arrives overnight by feed is on the site after the next regenerate, decoded, described and photographed, and a unit that sells comes off it the same way. Nothing a shopper can reach changes until you publish, so you can build, look, change your mind and build again with no one watching. #### Can every salesperson have one? Yes, and it is the same template, which is what makes it worth doing. Every salesperson in the store can have an inventory site built from the one you just published, showing the store inventory under their own name, photo and contact details. The store controls how the sites look and what they say, because they all come from one template, and a change to the template is a regenerate away from being on every one of them. The reason to bother is the link. A salesperson who texts a customer a link to their own inventory site is sending that customer to a page that says call me, not to a page that says call the store and hope you get me. When the customer picks a vehicle and sends a request, it arrives with the salesperson's name on it. The car salesman personal websites page covers that side as a selling tool. #### If it did not work The site built with no vehicles on it. The inventory has not reached the portal yet. Open the inventory list first; if it is empty, the feed is not connected or the website import has not run. Fix the inventory and build again, because the site is assembled from the inventory record and nothing else. The address does not open. If you pointed a domain of your own at the site, the name has to resolve before the page will answer, and that takes a little time after the records are set. Use the Direct link in the meantime; it works immediately. The custom domains and DNS page covers the records. The copy is not what you want. The drafted text is a draft, and you are meant to edit it. Rewrite the Headline and Supporting line in your own words, change the body where it does not sound like your store, and build again. Nothing reaches a shopper until you publish. A lead came in and nobody got it. Check Where the leads go and Email the lead to, then check your notification preferences in the CRM. The lead is on its record either way, so nothing was lost; it just did not reach the right phone. A sold unit is still on the site. Regenerate. The rebuild takes the current inventory, so the sold car drops off and anything that came in overnight goes on. #### Related tasks The product side of this task is on the inventory website builder page, which covers build, publish and regenerate in more detail and explains what it replaces. If you already have a website you are happy with, the embeddable inventory widget puts the same live inventory on it with a single line of HTML instead. The pieces that ride along with the published site have guides of their own in the LeadLocate Help Center: the vehicle finder on the front page, the Schedule a Visit request that arrives when a shopper picks a time, and the manufacturer offers that appear on the brand pages for the makes you carry. A layout, a second rooftop site or a campaign specific template beyond what Builder ships with is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Does publishing this site replace my dealership website? A: No, and it is not meant to. Your web vendor keeps running the main site. This is a lighter inventory site you control, useful for a campaign, for a second rooftop or for a salesperson who wants a page of their own. Q: How does the site stay current when cars sell? A: Regenerate rebuilds the site from the inventory record, so sold units drop off and new arrivals go on with their photos, decoded build and price. The site is never a snapshot of last week. Q: Where do leads from the site end up? A: In the dealer portal under Requests and in LeadLocate CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached, plus an email to the addresses you listed. Your team works it from the lead record like any other. Q: Can I use my own domain name? A: Yes. Create a new address in Builder, point your domain at it, and the site answers on your name. The direct link keeps working the whole time, so you are never waiting to be live. ### How to Push a Desked Deal to SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-push-a-deal-to-securewebx Desk the deal in the LeadLocate CRM, then click Push to SWX in the save bar at the bottom of the deal. The structure and the vehicle land in SecureWebX as a new worksheet, and the CRM shows a confirmation number, the Worksheet ID. The finance manager finds it by that ID and attaches it to the customer's credit application. Steps: 1. Desk the deal in the CRM: Open the deal and build the structure in the desking worksheet: cash, finance or lease, the vehicle, the trade and the numbers you want finance to work. The desk autosaves as you go, and the push sends exactly what is on your screen. 2. Click Push to SWX: In the save bar at the bottom of the deal, click Push to SWX, right beside the save button. The button appears on every deal once your store is connected to SecureWebX. 3. Note the confirmation number: A Sent to SecureWebX window confirms the deal is now a worksheet in your store's SecureWebX and shows the confirmation number, which is the Worksheet ID, with a link to open the worksheet. The ID leaves out the letters I and O, so it reads cleanly over the phone to your finance manager. 4. Find the push in the SecureWebX History Log: Every push is listed on the deal in the SecureWebX History Log, newest first, with who pushed it, the date and time, and the Worksheet ID. Anyone with a SecureWebX login clicks the ID to open the worksheet; everyone else can still read it. 5. Open the worksheet in SecureWebX: The finance manager opens Worksheets in the SecureWebX console and types the ID into Search Worksheet ID, vehicle, VIN, stock #, name…. The worksheet name carries the vehicle and a push number, so a reworked deal is easy to tell from the first one. 6. Attach it to the credit application: On the customer's application, go to the Deal worksheets panel, pick the structure from Choose a deal structure… and click Attach to this deal. The numbers freeze on the application, and Deal recap opens the recap PDF. 7. Send it to the lender: When you send the application with Send to Lender, choose the worksheet under Deal worksheet (optional: the structure the lender sees). The lender's view shows it as the Proposed deal structure, with Open lender deal recap (PDF) beside it. #### Before you start You need a desked deal in the LeadLocate CRM and a store connected to SecureWebX. SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account and your users sync across from the CRM, so for most stores the connection is already in place and the Push to SWX button is already on every deal. The finance manager who picks the worksheet up needs a SecureWebX sign in; the salesperson who pushes it only needs the CRM. If you are new to desking in the CRM, start with how to desk a deal. The worksheet in SecureWebX runs the same cash, finance and lease math as EZ Desking worksheets in the CRM, which is why the structure arrives intact rather than rebuilt. #### What you should see After the push, the confirmation window shows the Worksheet ID and a link to open it, and a new row appears at the top of the SecureWebX History Log on the deal. In SecureWebX, the Worksheets list has a new worksheet named for the vehicle, with the selling price, the payment, the down payment and the term already filled in. The push carries the deal structure and the vehicle, and nothing else. The customer's name and address stay in the CRM, and so do the store's cost, pack, holdback, reserve and commission splits. The worksheet is a clean structure for the finance office to map to the credit application, and anything a lender eventually sees comes from that structure alone. #### Reworking a deal and pushing it again Every push creates a new worksheet. It never overwrites the last one, which is exactly what a finance office wants when a bank asks for more down or a shorter term: the sales manager reworks the numbers and pushes again, and both structures sit side by side in SecureWebX. Before any push after the first, the CRM asks Send another worksheet? so a second structure is always a deliberate choice. The worksheet name ends in the push number for that deal, so the finance manager picking a structure to attach sees which one is the latest. Tell him which Worksheet ID to use, and the history log on the deal keeps the full list of what was sent, by whom and when. #### Quick checks Look for the button in the save bar. Push to SWX sits at the bottom of the deal beside the save button, on stores connected to SecureWebX. Ask our team to connect your store and it is set up for you. Open the worksheet from the log. Anyone with a SecureWebX login for your store clicks the Worksheet ID in the history log and lands on the worksheet, straight after signing in if the session has ended. Point finance to the ID. Search Worksheets by the Worksheet ID from the confirmation window rather than by name. Numbers look different in SecureWebX? Check that the push was made after the last change to the deal, then push again to send the current structure. #### How do sales and finance use Push to SWX every day? The push turns the handoff between the desk and the finance office into one click and one number. Here is how a deal moves through a store that uses it on every sale. At the desk. The salesperson or the sales manager builds the structure in the CRM while the customer is at the table, clicks Push to SWX and reads the Worksheet ID to finance. Nobody retypes a price, a trade figure or a term, so the numbers the customer agreed to are the numbers finance works. In the finance office. The finance manager searches the ID, attaches the worksheet to the customer's credit application and opens the deal recap PDF. The worksheet runs the same cash, finance and lease math as the CRM, so the structure is ready to go out as soon as the application is complete. Stipulations and supporting documents are collected on the same application. With the lender. Send to Lender shares the application securely with the lender the store chooses, with the proposed deal structure beside it, and the lender's response comes back to the same application. When a lender asks for more down or a shorter term, the sales manager reworks the deal in the CRM and pushes again, and the new worksheet sits beside the first. At the end of the day. The SecureWebX History Log on each deal shows every structure that went to finance, who sent it and when. A manager reviewing the day's deals sees the full path from the desk to the lender in one place. #### Related tasks The LeadLocate Help Center carries the guides that follow this one. Attaching a worksheet to an application covers the SecureWebX side in more detail, and running a title, stolen or warranty check documents the unit on the pushed worksheet before it goes to a lender. Sending an application to a lender finishes the job. #### Questions and answers Q: What does Push to SWX send to SecureWebX? A: The deal structure and the vehicle: price, trade, down payment, term, rate and the unit being financed. The customer's personal details and the store's cost, pack, holdback, reserve and commissions stay in the CRM. Q: What happens if I push the same deal twice? A: Each push creates its own worksheet, so reworked structures sit side by side in SecureWebX. The CRM asks you to confirm before every push after the first, and the worksheet name carries the push number. Q: Where do I find the Worksheet ID after a push? A: It appears in the confirmation window as the confirmation number, and it stays on the deal in the SecureWebX History Log with who pushed it and when. Users with a SecureWebX login can click it to open the worksheet. Q: Does the salesperson need a SecureWebX login to push? A: No. The push runs from the CRM deal. The finance manager who opens and attaches the worksheet signs in to SecureWebX, and the salesperson can read the Worksheet ID to him over the phone. ### How to Read Your Reports in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-read-your-reports You read your reports from the Reports button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM. Pick a date range, read the Overview and Funnel first, then leads by source and by status, then activity by user. Every number comes from leads, texts, calls, emails and deals the team already logged, so nothing is entered twice. Steps: 1. Open the Reports dashboard: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM on a desktop browser and click Reports on the dock along the bottom of the screen. The dashboard opens on Overview for the current period, scoped to My Company. 2. Set the period and the grain: Use Quick date presets to jump to this week, this month or last month, or type the dates. Set Granularity to Daily for a week you are reviewing closely and to weekly or monthly when you are comparing periods. Every chart on the page follows the same range. 3. Read the Overview and the Funnel: Overview shows the headline counts: new leads, contacts made, appointments, deals. Funnel puts those counts in order, so the drop between one stage and the next is visible. Read the funnel before any other chart; it tells you which stage the rest of the review should focus on. 4. Break leads down by source and status: Open Leads Over Time to see the trend, then By Source to see which feed from Lead Feeds Manager produced the volume, and By Status or Status Breakdown to see where those leads sit right now. If the statuses on the chart do not match how your store works a deal, fix the custom statuses first; the chart is only as good as the statuses your team uses. 5. Read what each person did: Activity by User (Calls, SMS, Email) lists every user with the calls, texts and emails they made in the period, and Per User Scoreboard ranks them. Call Volume, SMS Volume and Email Volume show the store's totals by day. A rep with many leads and few touches is the coaching conversation for the week. 6. Check deals and save the report: Deals shows desked and tracked deals by status, and Recent Deals (up to 200 rows) lists them so you can open any one. When the review is done, click Download PDF to keep a copy of the range you were reading. 7. Get the numbers sent to you: For a daily summary without opening the dashboard, open Account Settings, find End of Day System Report, enter the addresses under Send Report To, and press Send Report Now once to confirm it arrives. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login on a desktop browser. Every user can open Reports and read their own activity. The store wide views, the per user comparisons and the Company (Admin) scope are for a Manager or Master Administrator. An owner who runs more than one rooftop also sees Per Company Snapshot, which lines the stores up side by side. Reports read what the team logs, so the useful preparation happens before the review, not during it. Give every lead source its own feed in Lead Feeds Manager so By Source can tell them apart. Set the store's custom lead statuses to match the real stages of a deal, and leave the lost reason popup on so the reasons get captured. Keep call recording on, so any number in the activity view can be checked against the actual conversation. #### What you should see The dashboard is one page of cards, each a chart or a table, all bound to the same date range. Changing the range at the top redraws every card. Overview holds the counts, Funnel the stages, Leads vs Communications Over Time the relationship between leads arriving and the team responding, and Communications the volume of each channel including Voicemail Volume from voicemail drops. The management report page works differently: it is a form with date from and date to under Account Reporting:, and Pull Report builds a table for that window with per user rows you can print. The End of Day System Report email is a plain summary of the day's leads and activity, sent to the addresses you listed. If you pressed Send Report Now, that first copy arrives within a few minutes and looks exactly like the nightly one. #### If it did not work The charts are empty or nearly empty. Check the date range first; a preset for last month on the second day of a new store shows nothing. If the range is right, the activity is not being logged: texts and calls made from personal phones instead of the CRM never reach the report. Have the team text from the inbox and call from the softphone. By Source shows one big bucket. The leads are arriving through a single default feed. Open Lead Feeds Manager, create a feed per source, and point each provider at its own feed address; from then on the chart separates them. Older leads keep the feed they arrived on. The end of day email never arrives. Confirm the address under Send Report To has no typo, press Send Report Now, and check the junk folder. A store whose mail server rejects automated senders needs the address allowed on that side. A user is missing from the scoreboard. The user has no logged activity in the range, or was added after the range began. Widen the range or check notifications to make sure new leads are actually reaching them. #### Related tasks The full description of each reporting module is on the Reports dashboard feature page. Traffic to the store's hosted site and landing pages is a separate view under the website editor's analytics tab, covered by website visitor analytics, and the two are kept apart on purpose: one counts visitors, the other counts leads and the work done on them. Reading the numbers usually leads to three follow up tasks: fixing statuses, splitting feeds, and coaching from call recordings. Each has its own guide in the LeadLocate Help Center. Any additional report your store wants built is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Read the funnel before the leaderboard. A store with plenty of leads and few appointments has a response problem, not a lead problem, and the scoreboard alone will send you after the wrong person. Compare a rep to their own last month before comparing them to anyone else. And download the PDF at the end of every month; a year of those tells you more about the store than any single dashboard view. #### Questions and answers Q: Where are the reports in LeadLocate? A: On the Reports button on the dock at the bottom of the desktop CRM. The management report form and the End of Day System Report email are reached from Account Settings. Q: Can I see reports for one salesperson only? A: Yes. Activity by User and the Per User Scoreboard list every user for the chosen range, and a user opening Reports on their own login sees their own activity. Q: Why do my reports not match my lead provider's count? A: The provider counts what it sent; the CRM counts what arrived on a feed and how it was worked. Make sure each provider has its own feed in Lead Feeds Manager, then compare By Source for the same dates. Q: Can I get the report by email instead of logging in? A: Yes. Turn on End of Day System Report in Account Settings, list the recipients under Send Report To, and press Send Report Now to confirm delivery. ### How to Read a Call Transcript in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-read-a-call-transcript A call transcript in LeadLocate CRM is the written text of a recorded call, opened from the call's row on the Calls page or from the lead's timeline. It opens in a lightbox over the page you are on, so a manager reads a twelve minute call in two minutes without leaving the log. The task starts on the desktop CRM. Steps: 1. Open the call log: In the desktop CRM, choose Calls from the main menu. Every inbound and outbound call the store made is a row with its direction, Caller ID, the salesperson, its Duration and its outcome. On the phone app, Open call logs on the Workspace shows the same calls. 2. Find the call: Narrow the list to the salesperson and the day you want, or open the lead and scroll its timeline to the call instead. A call reached from the lead is the same row, just filtered for you. 3. Check that the call has audio: A transcript comes from a recording, so the row needs a Play control. A row whose outcome reads Customer did not answer or Line was busy has nothing to transcribe. A row that reads Connected with a duration has audio behind it. 4. Open the transcript: Click the transcription control on the row. The lightbox opens over the call log. The first time anyone opens a given call, the transcript is produced on the spot and takes a moment; after that it is stored with the recording and opens instantly for the next reader. 5. Read it with the audio beside it: The lightbox header tells you whether the call was inbound from or outbound to the customer's number and when, and the Conversation Text: block holds the words. Press Play on the row if a line reads oddly; a transcript is a working copy, and the recording is the record. 6. Act on what you read: Open the lead, add a note about what was promised, and set the follow up. If the call is worth a coaching conversation, keep the lightbox open and have it with the salesperson at the screen. #### Before you start You need a login to the desktop LeadLocate CRM and at least one recorded call. Any user can open the transcript of a call they can see; a Manager or Master Administrator sees every call at the store, and a salesperson sees their own. Recording is what makes a transcript possible, and it is a switch on the softphone: Record this call on the VoIP Phone, reached from Make a Call in the top bar or from the phone number on a lead. Inbound calls to the store's tracking numbers that are forwarded to a salesperson run through the same recorded path, so a customer who called in has a row with audio too. Your store sets its own policy on announcing that a call is recorded; the call recording and transcription page covers the compliance side. #### What you should see The lightbox sits over the call log, and the log is still there when you close it. The header names the direction, the number and the time. Below it, the transcript reads as the conversation happened, from the greeting to the goodbye, long enough to scroll on a long call. Names, dollar figures and vehicle descriptions are the lines worth checking against the audio, because they are the lines a customer will remember. The same call also sits on the lead's timeline, in order with the texts, pictures, emails and voicemails around it, so a manager reading a lead from the top sees the phone conversation where it happened rather than in a separate system. Nothing is charged per transcript and there is no separate account to open; every plan on the pricing page includes it. #### If it did not work There is no transcript control on the row. The call was not recorded. Look at the outcome: Customer did not answer, Line was busy and Caller Hung Up have no audio, and a connected call placed with Record this call switched off has none either. Turn the switch on for the next call; a store that wants every call recorded leaves it on. The lightbox opens but stays empty. The transcript is still being produced. This happens on the first open of a long call. Give it a moment and open it again; the second open is instant because the text is now stored with the recording. The words are wrong in places. Background noise on a lot, two people talking at once and a customer on speaker all cost accuracy. The recording is the record; play the passage and trust your ears. If a whole call transcribes as noise, the audio itself is poor, and a headset on the salesperson's side is the fix. Anything else, the support team can open the same call from the store's side. #### Related tasks Transcripts start with recorded calls, and recorded calls start with the VoIP softphone, where the recording switch lives; the mobile version of the same phone is covered in how to use the mobile dialer. A call that rolled to voicemail shows in the same log as a Voicemail Drop when the salesperson left a recorded message, which is its own task. Managers who read transcripts to coach usually pair them with the reports dashboard, where activity by user counts the calls the transcripts explain. Every guide in the Help Center is written the same way as this one. #### Tips from the floor Read transcripts by pattern, not by call. Pick one salesperson, read five of their calls in a row, and the habit shows itself: the payment quoted before the trade is discussed, the appointment set without a time, the question the customer asked twice. One pattern found in twenty minutes of reading is worth more than an hour of listening. And keep the lightbox open when you have the conversation with the rep. A transcript on the screen between two people is a fact; a memory of a call is an argument. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I get a transcript of a call that was not recorded? A: No transcript exists without audio. Turn on Record this call on the softphone before dialing, and inbound calls forwarded through the store's tracking numbers are recorded on the same path. Q: How long does a transcript take to appear? A: It is produced the first time anyone opens it, usually a few seconds, longer for a long call. After that it is stored with the recording and opens instantly. Q: Who can read a salesperson's transcripts? A: The salesperson, and any Manager or Master Administrator on the account. Roles are set in User Management. Q: Is there a charge per transcript? A: No. Recording, storage and transcription are part of every LeadLocate plan. ### How to Record a Voicemail Greeting in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-record-a-voicemail-greeting Recording a voicemail greeting in LeadLocate CRM takes two forms. The Company Voicemail greeting, set on IVR Settings under Account Settings, plays when nobody on the ring list picks up; you record it over the phone or upload a file. Each user records a personal greeting under My Voicemail, on the desktop or from the mobile app, for calls meant for them. Steps: 1. Open the Company Voicemail section: Sign in as a Master Administrator. Open Billing & Admin, then Account Settings, then Phone & IVR and IVR Settings. Scroll to Company Voicemail. The card shows the current greeting and explains that it plays when nobody can take the call. 2. Record the store greeting over the phone: From any phone, dial the recording line printed on the card, press 3 when prompted, then enter the Voicemail code shown beside it. Speak the greeting after the tone: the store's name, that you are with customers, and that a call back is coming. Hang up and the recording becomes the current greeting. 3. Or upload a recording: If the store produced a greeting elsewhere, press Upload Greeting and choose the file. A WAV or MP3 works. If you ever want the default back, Use Standard restores the standard greeting so a caller never hears silence. 4. Record your personal greeting on the desktop: Open User Management, open your record with Edit User and find My Voicemail. Record the greeting in the browser or over the phone the same way. This greeting plays on calls that were meant for you, such as a customer who dialed your line after hours. 5. Or record it from the mobile app: In the LeadLocate app open Voicemail Recordings. Use Record your voicemail over the phone, which shows the account phone to dial, then press Save Voicemail. Your recordings are listed under Saved Voicemail Recordings, and Reset clears one you do not want. 6. Test the greeting: Call the store's tracking number from a cell phone that is not on the ring list, let it ring out, and listen. Leave a short message. It appears on the Calls page with a transcript, and on the mobile app under Call Logs. #### What do you need before you start? The store greeting needs a Master Administrator login, because Company Voicemail is part of IVR Settings under Account Settings. A personal greeting needs only your own login: every user has My Voicemail on their record and the recorder in the mobile app. Have a quiet room and a script of two or three sentences. A greeting that runs past twenty seconds loses callers before the tone. Nothing needs to be bought or installed. A new account starts with a standard greeting, so callers already hear something sensible; this guide replaces it with the store's own voice. Greetings and the messages callers leave are built to keep the store selling: a caller always hears the store's own voice, the message is saved the moment it is left, and it lands on the record with the caller's number and the time, ready for whoever works the callback. #### What should you see when it works? On IVR Settings the Company Voicemail card shows your recording as the current greeting rather than the standard one. When a caller rings the tracking number and nobody on the ring list picks up, they hear it, and a message they leave lands on the Calls page with a recording and a transcript, not in a personal carrier mailbox that nobody at the store can open. If the caller is a known lead, the message also sits on that lead's timeline with the texts and emails around it. A personal greeting behaves the same way for calls that were meant for one user. On the mobile app the recording appears under Saved Voicemail Recordings as soon as you press Save Voicemail. The messages that arrive after that carry the caller ID and the name looked up from it, so the rep who signs in the next morning knows who to call back before pressing play. #### What if it did not work? Callers still hear the standard greeting. The phone recording never completed, usually because the Voicemail code was entered wrong or the call was ended before the tone. Dial the recording line again, press 3, enter the code from the card exactly, and speak after the tone. If you uploaded a file, confirm it is a WAV or MP3 and press Upload Greeting again. Callers hear a rep's personal cell phone voicemail. The call was answered by a carrier voicemail box before the store's greeting could play. Turn on the press 5 confirmation under Call Handling on IVR Settings, so a voicemail box counts as unanswered and the caller reaches the Company Voicemail instead. The greeting plays during business hours when someone could have answered. The Forward Calls To list is empty or out of date, so no phone rang. Fix the list on the same page and test again. #### Which related tasks come next? The greeting is what a caller hears when forwarding runs out, so the list it sits behind matters as much as the recording. The call forwarding and ring lists page covers the Forward Calls To list and the press 5 confirmation, and the voicemail drop and greetings feature page explains how greetings and the drop library fit together inside LeadLocate CRM. Once your greeting is in place, the same recording skills make a voicemail drop: a message recorded once and left with one button from the softphone whenever a call reaches a customer's mailbox. Those recordings live under Voicemail Drop Files, and the VoIP softphone page shows where the drop button sits. A store that wants a caller greeted and asked what they need before any phone rings should read about the virtual receptionist. Every other guide is on the help center. #### Tips from the floor Say the store's name first, then what happens next. A caller who hears the name knows they dialed the right place, and a caller who hears that the call comes back today is more likely to leave a number. Skip the hours in the recording itself; hours change, and the store's schedule on IVR Settings already routes after hours calls. Record the personal greeting on your first day and again whenever you change desks or roles. A greeting that names a department you no longer work in costs a callback. A greeting that changes by time of day, or a separate recording for one tracking number, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Ask through contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: Which greeting does a caller hear, the store's or mine? A: A call to the store's tracking number that nobody answers gets the Company Voicemail greeting. A call meant for one user, such as a customer who reached your line, gets that user's own My Voicemail greeting. Q: Can I record the greeting from my cell phone? A: Yes. Dial the recording line shown on the Company Voicemail card, press 3, and enter the Voicemail code. On the mobile app, Record your voicemail over the phone does the same for your personal greeting. Q: Where do the messages callers leave show up? A: On the Calls page in the main menu with a recording and a transcript, on Call Logs in the mobile app, and on the lead's timeline when the caller's number matches a lead. Q: How do I go back to the default greeting? A: Press Use Standard on the Company Voicemail card. The standard greeting returns immediately, and you can record or upload a new one at any time. ### How to Report a Bad Lead in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-report-a-bad-lead To report a bad lead in LeadLocate CRM, open the lead in Leads, open the status dropdown and choose Report to QC. The Report Lead To Quality Control form opens; describe which calls, texts and emails you tried and click Submit Request. The Quality Control team approves or rejects the request, and the lead's status shows the outcome. Steps: 1. Work the lead first: Call, text and email from the CRM before you report, because the request is judged on what was tried. A text that shows a failed delivery status on the bubble, a call log that shows no connection and a bounced email are the evidence, and they are already on the lead's communications log. 2. Open the lead and pick Report to QC: In Leads on the desktop CRM, open the status dropdown on the lead's row and choose Report to QC. In the LeadLocate mobile app, tap the lead to expand it and pick the same option from its status dropdown. 3. Describe the problem: The Report Lead To Quality Control form opens with a prompt asking why this lead should be reviewed as a bad lead and which methods of contact you tried. On the phone the same form is titled Report Lead to Quality Control and the box reads Describe the problem with this lead.... Write three plain lines: what is wrong, what you tried, when. 4. Submit: Click Submit Request. The form closes, the lead's status pill changes to Report to QC, and the request is filed with the lead's data and its communications log attached. Use Cancel if you change your mind before submitting; nothing is filed. 5. Watch the status: The Quality Control team reviews the request. If it is approved, the lead's status becomes Bad Lead. If it is rejected, the lead returns to New so it is worked again. Either way the outcome is visible on the lead without anyone emailing you. #### Before you start Any user can report a lead; the option is on every lead's status dropdown from the day the account is created, for every role, because the person who worked the lead is the one who knows it was bad. What you need is the attempt record. Make the calls and send the texts and emails from LeadLocate CRM, not from a personal phone, so the delivery status, the call log and the bounce are on the lead where the reviewer can see them. The lead replacement review page explains how the Quality Control team reads a request and what approval and rejection mean. Know the difference between a bad lead and a lost one. Bad means the person could not be reached or the information was wrong: a disconnected number, an email that bounces, a name that does not match. Lost means a real customer who did not buy, and that goes through the Mark Lead As Lost popup with a reason instead. A customer who simply did not answer three calls in one afternoon is neither; keep working them. #### What you should see After Submit Request, the lead's status pill reads Report to QC in a distinct style, and the status holds there while the request is open. The request itself is logged with the lead, the company, the user who filed it, the phone, the email and the reason, and the Quality Control team sees it on their Lead Quality Control Requests queue with the lead's communications log beside it. The reviewer opens the request, reads what you tried, and clicks Approve or Reject, with an optional Resolution Note for the audit trail. On approval the lead's status changes to Bad Lead and it drops out of your working list. On rejection the lead goes back to New, which is the team's way of saying the attempts were not enough yet; the note tells you what they want to see. Managers can review the month's requests and outcomes on the printable report described on the reports dashboard page. #### If it did not work The request was rejected. Read the Resolution Note on the lead. The usual cause is a thin attempt record: one call and nothing else, or attempts made from a personal phone that left no trace on the lead. Work the lead again from the CRM so the log fills in, then report it again with the dates. The status went to Report to QC but you meant Lost. Ask the Quality Control team to reject the request, which returns the lead to New, then pick Lost from the dropdown and complete the Mark Lead As Lost popup with a reason. You do not see Report to QC in the dropdown. The option sits at the bottom of the list after the custom statuses; scroll the list. If the lead is already in Report to QC, its request is already in review, and the option returns once that request is resolved. You want an update on a request. Open a support ticket from the account portal with the lead ID, or use the contact page. Every request stays safely in the review queue until it is resolved, and a ticket gets you a direct answer. #### Related tasks Reporting is the last step of working a lead, not the first. The what to expect from car sales leads page sets out what a normal lead looks like and how many attempts a real one takes, and the automotive lead benchmark report gives the wider picture. Marking a real customer lost has its own guide. Every guide for the CRM is in the Help Center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows how the lead list, the inbox and the communications log fit together. #### Tips from the floor Report from the lead the same day, while the attempts are fresh and the log is right there. Write the request the way you would explain it to a manager standing behind you: called twice on Tuesday and Wednesday, straight to a disconnected tone; texted from the CRM, bubble shows failed; emailed, bounced. That is an approval. And do not report a lead because the customer was rude or said not now; that is a lost lead with a reason, and the reason is worth more to the store than a replacement request that gets rejected. #### Questions and answers Q: Who reviews a bad lead report? A: The Quality Control team. They read the reason you wrote and the lead's communications log, then approve or reject the request with an optional note. Q: What happens when a report is approved? A: The lead's status changes to Bad Lead and it drops out of your working list. The outcome shows on the lead itself. Q: What happens when a report is rejected? A: The lead returns to New so it is worked again, and the Resolution Note tells you what the team wanted to see. Work it from the CRM and report again if it is still bad. Q: Can I report a lead from the mobile app? A: Yes. Expand the lead, pick Report to QC from its status dropdown, describe the problem in the Report Lead to Quality Control popup and tap Submit Request. ### How to Respond to an Application as a Lender in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-respond-to-an-application-as-a-lender Open the link the dealership sent and enter the access code. The credit application opens in a watermarked viewer, where Open the credit application and Open lender deal recap (PDF) give you the file and the proposed structure. Then answer in the same portal: approve with a call sheet, decline, or request more information. Your answer lands on the store's application in SecureWebX. Steps: 1. Open the share and enter your code: The link and the access code travel separately, so have both. Entering the code opens the lender response portal, a view built for one application and one decision. There is no account to create and nothing to install, and the store can end the access when the deal is placed. 2. Read the application: Use Open the credit application to read the file the applicant signed: identity, residence, employment, income, the amount requested, the co-applicant if there is one, and the supporting documents the store attached. Note the Application ID for your own notes, since that is the number the desk will use when you call. 3. Read the structure the store is proposing: When the dealership shared a worksheet, Open lender deal recap (PDF) lays the deal out the way a buyer reads it: the vehicle, the term, the structure, the book-out and the title, stolen, sales, auction and warranty checks the store ran on the unit. A share without a recap is an application only, and you can ask for the structure. 4. Make the call: Answer in the portal, not by email. Approve the deal and attach your call sheet so the store works from your conditions. Decline it and the store has your answer on the record. Or request more information and list exactly what you need before you can decide. 5. Send your response to the dealership: Submitting the response puts the decision and any attachment onto the store's application. The desk sees it on the file they are already working, next to the documents and the notes, so nobody is refreshing an inbox waiting for a forwarded message. 6. Watch for what you asked for: A request for more information becomes a stipulation on the dealership's file, with Upload the requested document and share it with the lender next to it. What they upload appears inside this same view, under the same code and expiry. You do not get a new link and they do not send attachments. #### Before you start You need the link the dealership sent, the access code that came with it, and a browser. That is the whole list. The store controls how long the window stays open and can end it when the deal is placed, which is why nothing about this share asks you to register. Have your program in front of you as well. The dealership's finance desk keeps your buying rules on their side under Lender Guidelines, so a store that has worked you before usually sends a structure already inside your advance and term rules. SecureWebX is the credit application system the dealership uses; this share is how a single file reaches you from it. #### What you should see One application, with the documents the store attached and, when they shared it, the deal recap. Everything opens in a secure viewer that carries a watermark, with print and download gated, because the store is responsible for where a customer's credit application ends up. You read it, you answer it, and the copy stays with the dealership. If the store attached a worksheet, the recap shows the structure the desk quoted the customer: cash, finance or lease, the vehicle with its confirmed build and options, the book-out, and the checks run against that unit. The credit application worksheets page describes how the dealership builds it, which is worth knowing if you would rather see the pencil before you price the deal. #### How your answer reaches the desk Through the same portal you reviewed in. The decision and outcome post onto the dealership's application, so the file carries your answer alongside the application, the documents and the store's notes. An approval can carry your call sheet, a decline is recorded as a decline, and a request for more information turns into a tracked item on the store's side instead of a line in an email somebody has to remember. That last part is the one most worth knowing. The items you list become stipulations on the stipulations workflow, the store uploads each document against the request that asked for it, and the upload made for you appears in your view of the application. One thread, one file, one copy. #### If it did not work The code is rejected. Codes belong to one share. If you have worked with the store before, you may be holding the code from an earlier deal. Ask the desk to send this deal's code. The link says access has ended. Shares expire by design, and a store can also close one when the deal is placed. Ask the finance manager for a fresh share; it takes them a moment from the application. You want to print or save it. The viewer is watermarked with print and download gated. Ask the store for what you need for your file, such as the deal recap, and they send it under the same controls. It is the wrong deal. Tell the desk and the share is revoked from their side immediately. The Send to Lender page describes the code, the expiry, the revoke and the watermark from the dealership's point of view. #### Related tasks Dealers reading this from the other side: sending the file, choosing what the lender sees and setting the window is the same feature, described on the Send to Lender page. Lenders who want to be easier to find by the stores in their market are listed in the Verified Partners directory by category. The LeadLocate Help Center holds the finance office guides, and a response workflow your institution needs is available on request, with our team putting it in production for the dealerships you buy from. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need an account to review the application? A: No. You open the link the dealership sent, enter the access code, and review the file in the lender response portal. There is nothing to install and nothing to register. Q: What can I do besides approve or decline? A: Request more information and list what you need. Those items become stipulations on the dealership's application, and each document they upload for you appears inside the share you are already using. Q: Why can I not download the application? A: The viewer is watermarked with print and download gated, because the store is accountable for where a customer's credit file travels. Ask the desk for what your credit package needs and they send it under the same controls. Q: How long will my access last? A: The dealership chooses when it sends, commonly three to thirty days, and can end access sooner once the deal is placed. If you are still working the file, ask for a fresh share. ### How to Restore a Deleted Lead From the Trash Bin URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-restore-a-deleted-lead Open Menu controls, choose Account Settings and click Trash Bin Records under Deleted Records Archive. Filter the list to leads, find the record by name, phone, email or ID, then click Restore and Confirm. The lead returns to its original place in the CRM as the same record, with its appointments. Managers see every deleted record, and each user sees their own. Steps: 1. Open Account Settings: In the CRM top bar, open Menu controls and choose Account Settings. The Trash Bin sits on this page for every user, whatever their role. 2. Open the Trash Bin: Scroll to Deleted Records Archive and click Trash Bin Records. The list opens with every deleted record you are allowed to see, newest first, with its Type, the Record name, Deleted By, Deleted At and its Status. 3. Filter to deleted leads: Set the type filter to Leads and the status filter to Deleted. Narrow the dates with Date From and Date To if you know roughly when it happened, type a name, phone, email, note or ID into the search box, and click Apply. 4. Check it is the right lead: Click View on the row. The Archive Record panel shows a snapshot of the lead exactly as it was when it was deleted, with a journal of who deleted it and when. Two leads with the same name are easy to tell apart here. 5. Restore it: Click Restore in the row's actions. A confirmation asks whether to restore the record to its original location. Click Confirm. A notice reads Record restored, and the row's status changes to Restored. 6. Open the lead: Go back to Leads and search for the customer. The lead is back as the same record, assigned where it was, and any appointments that were deleted with it are back on the calendar. #### Before you start You need a login to LeadLocate CRM. What you see in the Trash Bin follows your role: Managers and Master Administrators see every deleted record in the store, and each User sees their own. If a teammate deleted the lead you are looking for, a manager can restore it in a few seconds. It helps to know one detail about the customer, such as a name, a phone number or an email, because the search box reads all of them. The Trash Bin keeps far more than leads: contacts, appointments, notes, File Library files, DealTracker deals and documents, Deal Jacket files, identity scanner documents, trade info documents, and SMS and email conversations all land there when deleted and restore the same way. #### What you should see After you confirm, the row's status reads Restored and the lead is live in the inbox again, as the same record rather than a copy, so its details, assignment and appointments are where they were. The journal on the archive record now shows who restored it and when, beside who deleted it, which gives a manager a complete trail for every record that ever left the inbox. Appointments deleted on their own sit in the same list with the reason picked when they were deleted, such as a duplicate appointment or one made by accident, so the manager sees why each one went and can bring it back just as quickly. #### Quick checks Widen the status filter. Set the status to All Statuses and click Apply. A row marked Restored means someone already brought the lead back, so search the inbox for it. A row marked Purged was permanently cleared by a Master Administrator. Search by phone. Names get mistyped on the way in; a phone number or email finds the record every time. Ask a manager. Managers see every deleted record in the store, including the ones other users deleted. Look for a duplicate first. If the customer came back in as a new lead, restoring the old one and then using merge duplicate leads keeps one clean record with the full history. #### Why the Trash Bin makes deleting safe Deleted leads, appointments and every other record type above go through the Trash Bin first, so a rep cleaning up the inbox at the end of a long Saturday never costs the store a customer. Each record keeps a snapshot and a journal, which means a manager can answer who deleted a lead, when, and what it looked like at that moment. Purging is reserved for the Master Administrator and is recorded in the journal too. Records are always safe, and the store decides when anything leaves for good. #### What are the best habits for deleting and restoring leads? The Trash Bin works best when the whole store follows a few simple habits. A manager who sets them once spends a minute or two a week on deleted records, and the inbox stays clean without a single customer going missing. - Delete only what should never have been a lead. A test submission, a spam number or a record entered twice belongs in the Trash Bin. A real customer who bought elsewhere or stopped answering gets a lost reason instead, so the reason feeds your reports and the customer stays on file for follow up. - Merge duplicates rather than deleting them. When the same shopper comes in twice, merging keeps one clean record with the full history, so every call, text and note stays in one place. - Review the Trash Bin once a week. Filter to Leads and Deleted, set Date From to the start of the week and click Apply. A quick look down the Deleted By column shows who is cleaning up their inbox and which records deserve a second look. - Restore before you recreate. When a customer calls back about a lead that was deleted, restore the original rather than typing a new one. The details, the assignment and the appointments come back as they were, and the salesperson picks up the conversation where it left off. - Leave purging to the Master Administrator. Purging clears a record for good and is recorded in the journal, so the store decides when anything leaves for good. With these habits in place, managers get a tidy inbox and a complete, restorable record of every customer the store has worked. #### Related tasks Once the lead is back, the lead status guide puts it in the right stage and the lost reason guide is the right route for a lead that is finished rather than wrong. Every other guide is in the LeadLocate Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I restore a deleted lead in the CRM? A: Open Account Settings from the top bar menu, click Trash Bin Records, filter to Leads with the Deleted status, then click Restore on the row and Confirm. The lead returns to the inbox as the same record. Q: Who can restore a deleted lead? A: Managers and Master Administrators see and restore every deleted record in the store. Each User sees and restores their own. Purging a record for good is reserved for the Master Administrator. Q: What else can I restore from the Trash Bin? A: Contacts, appointments, notes, File Library files, DealTracker deals and documents, Deal Jacket files, identity scanner and trade info documents, and SMS and email conversations. Each one restores the same way as a lead. Q: Should I delete a lead or mark it lost? A: Mark it lost when the customer bought elsewhere or went quiet, so the reason feeds your reports. Delete is for records that should not be in the inbox at all, and the Trash Bin keeps them ready to restore. ### How to Review Applications in the Inbox in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-review-applications-in-the-inbox Open the SecureWebX console from the dock in the CRM and go to Applications. The dashboard shows Applications by status and Recent applications; click Open application on the one you want. Read the file, set the status and the assignee, request what is missing, and work it from there. Steps: 1. Open the applications list: Click the SecureWebX button on the dock in the LeadLocate CRM and go to Applications. This is the store's whole credit pipeline in one place, not one salesperson's view, so whoever is on the desk sees everything that has come in and what shape it is in. 2. Read the board before you read a file: The dashboard opens with Applications by status and Recent applications. Thirty seconds here tells you where the day is: what came in overnight, what is sitting in a status nobody has touched, and what is waiting on a document. Work the board from the top, oldest untouched file first, because an application that has been ignored since yesterday is the one about to buy somewhere else. 3. Open the application: Click Open application from the list, or Open application profile for the full customer record. You get the personal, residence, employment and income detail, the co-applicant if there is one, the trade section, any documents the customer uploaded, the apply link it arrived on and the Application ID to quote when your team talks about it. 4. Put a name and a status on it: Set the assignee and move the status the moment you open the file. An application with an owner gets worked; an application sitting in the pipeline with nobody's name on it is everybody's job, which means it is nobody's. Add a note saying what you did, because the next person to open this file will be reading that note at eight on a Saturday morning. 5. Ask for whatever is missing: Use the notice on the application record to request the item you need instead of texting from your own phone. Stipulations take an upload to fulfill, so a pay stub or a proof of residence comes back attached to the application rather than living in somebody's camera roll. Screening runs on every application, and OFAC results sit with the record. 6. Work it toward a structure: Attach a worksheet and pencil the deal in cash, finance or lease at parity with the CRM desking engine, then share the application with the lender you choose. The share is code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked, and the lender answers in their own portal page, so nothing about the file leaves your control. 7. Find an older application when you need it: Use Search applications to pull a file up by name, email or reference. If the list comes back with No applications found, widen the search before you assume it is gone; archiving keeps records rather than removing them, so old files are still there to be found. 8. Decide how your store gets told: In the apply link settings, How do you want to receive applications? and Receiving applications control how a new submission reaches your people. Set it so the desk knows within seconds, because the store that opens the file while the customer is still on the couch is the store that sells the car. #### Before you start You need the SecureWebX console and a role that can see applications. The console opens from the dock in the CRM with the login you already use, and every sign in uses two factor authentication, so a file full of customer credit information is never one stolen password away from being open. Users are invited with roles, so salespeople can send links and the finance office can work what comes back. You also need applications, which means at least one live apply link. If nothing has arrived yet, how to create an apply link and how to send an apply link by text are the two guides that fill this inbox. The wider picture of the pipeline itself is on the credit application inbox feature page. #### What you should see A dashboard with live counts, a status board and the recent arrivals, then a list you can search. Each row carries the applicant, the status, the assignee and the Application ID. Open a row and the whole file is on one page: the five steps the customer completed, the co-applicant, the uploaded documents, the notes your team has left, the apply link it came from, and the signed consent showing the exact version of the terms and disclosures the customer agreed to. Documents open in a viewer that is watermarked with print and download gated, and every upload is virus scanned before anyone in your store touches it. Application data is encrypted at rest, and a full audit log records who viewed, edited, shared and exported the file. None of that is a setting somebody has to remember to switch on; it is how the console works on the day it is created. From the open file you can attach worksheets, raise stipulations, share securely with a lender, generate an adverse action notice from the record, and export to your lender or DMS in the format it expects. #### How should a finance office work the inbox? Set a rule that nothing sits unassigned past the hour it arrived. The single biggest difference between stores that convert credit applications and stores that collect them is not software, it is whether a person's name goes on the file the day it shows up. Work oldest untouched first, then newest. Call before you email, and email before you wait. When an application is missing something, say exactly what you need in the notice: your two most recent pay stubs, not proof of income. Write a note on the file every time you touch it, even when the note is that you left a voicemail, because that note is what lets the manager pick the deal up on your day off. Keep the statuses honest. A pipeline where everything is in one middle status tells you nothing on a Monday morning. A pipeline where each file is where it actually is lets a manager look at Applications by status and see the week coming. Watch which apply link the business arrives on. If the personal links are producing and the website link is quiet, that is a message about your website, not about your reps. #### If it did not work The list is empty. If you see No applications found, the filter or the search is too narrow. Clear it and look at Recent applications. If the store genuinely has none yet, send an apply link to your own phone and submit a test file so the desk knows what to expect. You cannot find a file the customer says they sent. Search by email address rather than name, since people apply under a formal first name they never use. Check whether they started and stopped instead of submitting; a started application comes back to the CRM as follow up for the salesperson. Two files for the same customer. They filled it in twice. Work the complete one, note the other, and move on. A document will not open. The viewer is deliberately gated, so print and download are controlled by your role. Ask a manager to open it or to adjust your access rather than asking the customer to send it again. Nobody knows a new application arrived. That is the setting under How do you want to receive applications? on the apply link. Point it at the people who work the desk and the problem goes away. #### Related tasks Requesting and clearing documents has its own page at stipulations workflow. Sharing the file safely is on send to lender, structures are on credit application worksheets, and the notice you generate from the record when a deal does not go through is on adverse action notices. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the SecureWebX guides, from creating apply links to handling a joint application. A pipeline view your store wants that the console does not already offer is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the application inbox in SecureWebX? A: In the dealer console, under Applications. The dashboard shows applications by status and the recent arrivals, and the list underneath is searchable. Q: Can I see which apply link an application came from? A: Yes. Every application records the link it arrived on, so you can tell whether the website link, a personal link or an event link produced the file. Q: Who in my store can open a credit application? A: Whoever you invite with a role that allows it. Every sign in uses two factor authentication, and the audit log records who viewed, edited, shared and exported each file. Q: Are old applications deleted? A: No. Records are archived rather than removed, so a file from an earlier season is still searchable when you need to show what a customer was given. ### How to Run a Book Value in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-run-a-book-value Open the worksheet on the deal in the SecureWebX console, put the right vehicle on it by VIN decode or stock number, and open Vehicle book-out. Run Kelley Blue Book QuickValues, read the Kelley Blue Book values for the unit, and the figure lands in the pencil. Keep the Kelley Blue Book Report with the deal record. Steps: 1. Open the worksheet on the deal: In the SecureWebX console, open the application and then the worksheet attached to it, or create the worksheet if the deal does not have one yet. Book values belong to the pencil, because the number you are about to pull is the number your advance and your trade allowance lean on. 2. Put the right vehicle on the worksheet: Decode the VIN into year, make and model, or look the unit up by stock number against your own inventory so the price, mileage and equipment come from your records. For a trade, enter the VIN and the mileage the customer's unit actually shows, not the mileage from the appraisal three weeks ago. 3. Confirm the build and the options: Have a manager confirm the factory build, the packages, the options and any dealer added equipment from the window sticker, and mark it confirmed. Equipment moves a book figure, so a unit booked as a base model when it is not is a conversation with the lender you did not need to have. 4. Open the book-out: Use Vehicle book-out on the worksheet. The book-out sits in the same panel as the VIN decode and the confirmed build, so the whole vehicle side of the deal is documented in one pass. 5. Run the values: Run Kelley Blue Book QuickValues for the unit and read the Kelley Blue Book values that come back. Pick the figure that matches the job in front of you: the trade figure when you are appraising, the retail book when you are testing what a lender will advance. 6. Put the figure to work in the pencil: With the book on the worksheet, your loan to value line reads against a real figure instead of a number somebody remembered from last month. Your store's Max LTV vs retail book (%) guideline for each lender is kept in the console, so the desk structures to the program before the file leaves. 7. Keep the report with the deal: Open the Kelley Blue Book Report and keep it on the record. When the file is shared with a lender, the book-out shows in the deal recap alongside the structure and the vehicle details, which is one fewer question on the callback. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login with a role that works deals, and a worksheet on the deal you are pricing. The console opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account, so the book-out is in the worksheet from your first pencil. Have the vehicle facts in front of you: the VIN, the true mileage, and the window sticker or the confirmed build for the equipment. A book value is only as good as the unit it describes, which is why the deal vehicle section comes first on this page and in the worksheet. Attaching that worksheet to the customer's application is covered on credit application worksheets. #### What you should see The values for that unit, in the worksheet, next to the structure they govern. No second tab, no copying a figure across a desk, no screenshot in a group text. The report is kept with the deal, so a manager or a lender reading the file later sees the same book the desk read when the number was quoted. The vehicle panel around it carries the rest: the decoded VIN or the stock lookup and the manager confirmed build and options, with title, stolen, sales history, auction history and warranty checks set up for your dealership on request; our team puts them in production. A finance manager who learns about a branded title before the lender does is running the deal, not reacting to it. #### Trade or retail, which figure to use Use the trade figure when you are deciding what to put in a customer's unit. Use the retail book when you are testing the deal against a lender's advance rules, because that is the number their program is written against. The store's guideline for each lender, including Max LTV vs retail book (%), is kept in the console so the desk is not guessing at the ceiling. Either way, book the unit as it sits. Mileage and equipment move the number, a confirmed build settles the equipment argument before it starts, and a unit booked the way it sits is a unit that funds without a second look. The desking tool page covers the same math on the CRM side, and both run at parity, so the floor and the finance office quote one payment. #### If it did not work The values look wrong for the unit. Check the vehicle first, not the book. A missing package, the wrong trim from a mistyped VIN or last month's mileage will each move the figure. Confirm the build from the window sticker and run it again. The VIN is not at hand. Look the unit up by stock number against your inventory instead, or enter the year, make and model and confirm the build by hand. The VIN decode and vehicle database page covers what the decode returns. The lender is working from a different number. Send them yours. When the file is shared, the book-out travels in the deal recap with the structure and the vehicle details, so the conversation starts from one document instead of two. Send to Lender covers the share. You need the book on a unit that is not on the deal yet. Build a worksheet with the vehicle on it anyway. A wish list structure holds the numbers for a unit that has not landed, and the book-out runs against it the same way. #### Related tasks Everything the worksheet holds, cash, finance and lease at parity with the desk, the deal vehicle, the book-out and the deal recap PDF, is on the credit application worksheets page. Putting that worksheet on the customer's file and choosing what a lender sees is covered in the LeadLocate Help Center, alongside the rest of the finance office guides. Any other book source or vehicle check your store relies on is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where does the book-out run? A: Inside the worksheet on the deal, in the vehicle panel with the VIN decode and the confirmed build. The figure lands in the pencil and the report stays on the record. Q: Which book values are available? A: Kelley Blue Book QuickValues, run against the vehicle on the worksheet. The values come back for that unit with its confirmed build, and the report can be kept with the deal. Q: Why does my book figure look low? A: Usually the vehicle, not the book. A mistyped VIN, a missing factory package or stale mileage each move the number. Confirm the build from the window sticker, correct the mileage and run it again. Q: Does the lender see the book-out? A: When you share the file with the worksheet attached, yes. The book-out shows in the deal recap alongside the structure and the decoded vehicle, which usually saves a round of questions. ### How to Run a Title, Stolen or Warranty Check on a Deal URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-run-a-vehicle-check Open the deal's worksheet in SecureWebX, put the vehicle on it by VIN or stock number, and load its specifications for factory warranties and open recalls. Confirm the build from the window sticker, then run the title and stolen vehicle checks from the same deal vehicle area. Each result is saved on the worksheet and goes to the lender with the deal. Steps: 1. Have vehicle checks set up for your store: Title, stolen vehicle, sales history, auction and warranty checks are set up per dealership. Ask our team for the checks your store wants and we put them in production for your dealership, together with the VIN decode and the book-out, so every worksheet carries the full set. 2. Open the deal's worksheet: Open Worksheets in the SecureWebX console, or click the SecureWebX button on the CRM dock to get there under the same login. Type into Search Worksheet ID, vehicle, VIN, stock #, name… to find the deal, then open it. A deal pushed from CRM desking arrives here with the vehicle already on it. 3. Put the deal vehicle on the worksheet: Enter the 17 character VIN in the VIN field and click its lookup button, or type the stock number and use Look up the vehicle by stock number to pull the unit from your own inventory. The card at the top shows the photo and Vehicle (year / make / model / trim). If the wrong unit landed, use Remove vehicle and add the right one. 4. Load the specifications for the VIN: In the specifications section, the read only field marked Specifications load for the deal vehicle's VIN already holds the deal VIN. Click Load specifications. The decode fills in the trim, original MSRP, packages, safety ratings, open recalls and, whenever the manufacturer data includes them, the factory warranties. 5. Confirm the build from the window sticker: The VIN gives you the standard trim. Open the confirmed build section, pick the actual transmission, tick the factory packages the unit carries, note any dealer added equipment, and save. The lender later sees this as the Confirmed vehicle build, with who confirmed it and when. 6. Run the title and stolen vehicle checks: From the same deal vehicle area, run the title check and the stolen vehicle check against the deal VIN, and the sales history, auction or warranty check when the deal calls for it. Each one posts a one line summary with a clear or alert marker, saved with the time and your name. 7. Send the checked file to the lender: Attach the worksheet to the credit application and send it with Send to Lender. The lender's view shows Vehicle history & checks with every result, next to the Vehicle book-out and the proposed deal structure. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX sign in with permission to edit worksheets, and a worksheet for the deal. If the sales desk structured the deal in the CRM, it is already there: the push from CRM desking creates the worksheet with the vehicle on it. Otherwise create a worksheet in SecureWebX and add the unit yourself. Have the VIN or the stock number to hand, and the window sticker if you intend to confirm the build. Vehicle checks are set up per dealership, so if your store is new to them, ask our team first and we put the checks your store wants in production for your dealership. What each check covers, and why it belongs in the worksheet, is on the vehicle checks in the deal worksheet page. #### What you should see After the specifications load, the section shows a Loaded badge, the vehicle name, the time the decode ran and the user who ran it, with the full factory detail beneath: overview, original pricing, performance, dimensions, fuel economy, factory colors, safety ratings, recalls, features, packages, warranties, the maintenance schedule and repair cost estimates. Open recalls are shown prominently with the remedy. Each vehicle check adds a line to the worksheet with its summary and its marker. A clear marker means the check found nothing to act on, such as no salvage or brand records on the title. An alert marker means the result deserves a read before the deal goes further. Run the same check on the same VIN again and the worksheet reuses the saved result and keeps the date it was first run, so the file always shows when the store actually checked. #### How to read a VIN title check, a stolen vehicle check and a VIN warranty check The title check reads the title history for salvage and brand records. A branded title changes what a lender will advance on the unit, so read it before you set the amount financed. The stolen vehicle check reads reported theft records for the VIN; a clear result is the one every store wants in the file before a car leaves the lot. The warranty check reports factory coverage for the year, make and model, and the decode's Warranties section adds whatever the manufacturer data carries for this exact VIN. The sales history and auction checks round out the picture: prior listings and sales, and auction lane records. Together with the book value from the same panel, they give the finance manager the whole vehicle side of the deal in one pass. #### Quick checks Put the vehicle on first. Specifications and checks read the deal VIN, so add the unit by VIN or stock number before you load anything. Use the full VIN. Seventeen characters, no spaces. The stock lookup is the fastest route when the unit is in your own inventory. Check your role. Running checks needs permission to edit worksheets. Your SecureWebX admin sets that under users and roles. Want another check on the menu? Tell us which ones your store wants and our team puts them in production for your dealership. Want a fresh result? A saved result keeps its original date. Use the refresh option on the specifications when you want the decode run again. #### Related tasks The LeadLocate Help Center carries the guides around this one. Attaching a worksheet to an application puts the checked vehicle on the credit application, and sending an application to a lender delivers the file with the results in it. On the CRM side, scanning a VIN gets the number off the car without typing it. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I run a vehicle title check on a deal? A: Open the deal's worksheet in SecureWebX, put the vehicle on it by VIN or stock number, and run the title check from the deal vehicle area. The result posts with a clear or alert marker and is saved on the worksheet with the time and your name. Q: Where do I run a stolen vehicle check? A: In the same deal vehicle area of the worksheet, against the deal VIN. The result travels with the worksheet, so the lender sees it under Vehicle history and checks when the application is sent. Q: Does the VIN decode show warranty coverage? A: Yes, whenever the manufacturer data includes it. The decode lists factory warranties in their own section, next to open recalls, the maintenance schedule and repair cost estimates, and the warranty check adds factory coverage for the year, make and model. Q: Who can run vehicle checks? A: Any SecureWebX user with permission to edit worksheets. Checks are set up per dealership by our team, and your SecureWebX admin decides which users get worksheet access. ### How to Run an OFAC Check in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-run-an-ofac-check Open the credit application in the SecureWebX console and run OFAC screening from the record. The applicant is checked against the sanctions list maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the result shows on the application, and the audit log keeps who ran it and when. Your store's policy decides what happens on a potential match. It is part of every plan. Steps: 1. Open the application you are screening: In the SecureWebX console, open the deal from the application inbox. Running the check from the record is the whole point: the name that gets screened is the name the applicant entered and signed, not a name retyped into a separate site by somebody in a hurry. 2. Read the applicant details first: Check the spelling, the middle name and the date of birth on the application before you screen. A name entered three ways produces three different afternoons, and the file in front of you is the one the customer filled out. 3. Run the screening from the record: Use OFAC screening on the application. It takes seconds, and it happens on the deal rather than in a tab you then have to screenshot and staple into a jacket. A co-applicant is part of the same file, so screen the people on the deal from the deal. 4. Read the result on the file: The result shows on the application next to the consent, the disclosures, the documents, the stipulations and the lender shares. The audit log records that you ran it and when, alongside every other action taken on that deal. 5. Follow your store's policy on a potential match: A potential match is not a decision. Your store's counsel wrote the policy for this, and the record is built to support it. Hold the deal, work the policy, and record what you saw and who you called on the file so the sequence is documented. 6. Screen before the file leaves the store: Make the check part of the routine before an application is shared with a lender, so the screening, the result and the share sit in order on one record. A manager reading the deal later sees what was done and when, without asking anyone. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login with a role that works finance files, and a submitted application. The console opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account, so the screening is on the record from your first application. You also need your store's written policy. OFAC screening checks a person against the sanctions list the Office of Foreign Assets Control maintains, and what a store does with a potential match is a compliance question your counsel answers, not a setting in software. Stores usually screen every applicant, before the file goes anywhere, and the OFAC screening feature page describes how that fits the rest of the record. #### What you should see A result on the application, and an audit log entry naming you and the time. That is what a screening is for: not the click, but the record of the click. Records are archived, never deleted, so a check run on a deal years ago is still on that deal when somebody asks about it. The result sits with everything else the file holds, which is what makes it useful later. The applicant's consent against versioned terms, the disclosures they were shown, the supporting documents, the stipulations, the lender shares and the decision are all on the same record in the credit application inbox. One file answers the whole question of what your store did on this deal, in order. #### If it did not work You cannot find the screening on the application. Check your role with a manager. Console users are invited with roles, and a store decides who works finance files, so the action shows for the people whose job it is. The name on the application is spelled oddly. Screen what the applicant signed, then note any variation you are aware of on the file. Correcting a customer's own entry silently is the wrong instinct on a document they signed. A potential match came back. Stop and work the policy. Hold the deal, record a note on the application with what you saw, the time, and who you escalated to. Your counsel decides the outcome, and the file documents the sequence. You need to prove the check was run. Open the application and read the audit log. It carries the screening with the user and the time, and documents open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated, so the record travels on your store's terms. #### Other checks that live in the same console While you are in a compliance frame of mind, two neighbors are worth knowing. In the lender directory, an unfamiliar institution's record can be looked up with Check the FDIC record or Check the NCUA record, which is a quick way to know who you are about to send paper to. The Verified Partners directory lists lenders and vendors by category. On the vehicle side, the worksheet runs its own checks against the unit on the deal: title, stolen, sales history, auction history and warranty. A finance manager who learns about a branded title before the lender does is having a better week. Those are covered on the credit application worksheets page. #### Related tasks What the screening is, why a dealership does it, and how it sits with the rest of the record is on the OFAC screening page. How the application is protected end to end, from two factor sign in to encryption at rest and the watermarked viewer, is on credit application security. The LeadLocate Help Center holds the rest of the finance office guides. Any additional screening step your compliance program wants is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: What is an OFAC check, and why does a dealership run one? A: It checks a person against the sanctions list maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Dealerships that extend or arrange credit screen applicants as part of their compliance program, and counsel sets the store's policy. Q: Where do I run it? A: On the credit application itself, in the SecureWebX console. The name screened is the name the applicant entered and signed, and the result stays on that record with the audit log. Q: Does it screen a co-applicant too? A: A co-applicant is part of the same application, so the people on the deal are screened from the deal rather than from two separate searches in two separate places. Q: What happens if a potential match comes back? A: Your store's policy decides. Hold the deal, record a note on the application with what you saw and who you escalated to, and follow the steps your counsel wrote. The file documents the sequence. ### How to Scan a Driver License in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-scan-a-driver-license Scanning a driver license in LeadLocate CRM starts from Scan ID and insurance cards on the deal view, or from the license scan in the mobile app. A phone camera photographs the front and back of the card, the scanner reads the card and the barcode, and the name, address, date of birth and license details are applied to the customer record with the images stored on the deal. Steps: 1. Open the deal: From the main menu choose Desking and open the customer's deal, or expand the lead card. The scanner lives next to the deal jacket on the same panel. 2. Start the scanner: Click Scan ID and insurance cards. On the desktop a QR code appears; scan it with any phone and a private single use page opens in the phone browser. In the LeadLocate mobile app the license scan opens the camera directly. 3. Shoot both sides: Photograph the card into the ID front and ID back slots. The back matters, because the barcode there is what the scanner reads most reliably. Use Replace Front if the first shot is blurry. 4. Add the insurance card: While the customer has a wallet open, photograph the insurance card into Insurance front and Insurance back. The finance office asks for it later anyway. 5. Apply the details: The scanner extracts the name, address, date of birth, license number and expiration and offers to apply them to the customer record. Check the fields against the card and apply them. The images stay on the deal as the identity packet. 6. Confirm the record: Use Open the shared master customer record to see the Customer Profile with the scanned details in place. A co-buyer's license is scanned into the same profile so both names carry through to the worksheet and the credit application. #### What do I need before I scan a license? You need a lead or deal open in LeadLocate CRM and a phone with a camera. There is no hardware scanner, no card reader and nothing to enable; the scanner is live in every account from the first login. On the desktop, any phone scans the QR code, the customer's own included. On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app asks for camera permission the first time, and that is the whole setup. Any user who can open the deal can run the scan. A walk in with no record yet can start from the license itself. From the New Lead popup, Take Picture photographs the license, the CRM reads it and sorts it into the identity scanner, and the extracted name, phone and email land on the new record. On the phone, New Lead on the bottom dock opens the same popup. The driver license scanner page describes what the scanner reads and where the data goes. #### What should I see when the scan is done? On the deal, the identity packet shows the front and back of the license and the insurance card as images you can preview, with the extracted fields listed beside them. On the Customer Profile, the legal name is spelled the way the state spells it, the address reads as printed, and the date of birth has no transposed digit. Those fields flow onto the worksheet and the printed pencil, so the sheet prints with the correct name the first time, and into the SecureWebX credit application when the deal is financed. The images stay with the deal as a record that identification was checked, with a timestamp. Personal information on the Customer Profile is stored encrypted. A scan you remove goes to the trash bin under Identity Scanner Documents, where it can be restored, so an accidental delete is not a lost document. The Customer Profile page covers the one shared record for buyer and co-buyer. #### What if it did not work? The fields came back empty or wrong. The barcode on the back was not readable. Retake the ID back shot square on, in good light, with the whole card in the frame and no glare across the barcode, and apply again. A cracked or worn card sometimes reads from the front only; correct the field by hand before you apply. The QR code expired before the phone scanned it. The code is good for sixty seconds until a phone opens it. Click Scan ID and insurance cards again for a fresh code and scan it right away. The details went to the wrong person. Every card for a customer shares one profile, so check which lead was open. If the buyer and co-buyer were swapped, open the profile with Open the shared master customer record and move the fields; the images stay on the deal either way. #### What do I do next? With the person on the record, capture the car. The how to scan a VIN guide reads the vehicle the customer arrived in with the same phone, and how to capture a trade in takes the registration, title and payoff letter by QR. Any other document goes into the deal jacket, covered on how to upload deal documents by QR. When the deal is desked, the scanned name and address are already on the sheet. The Help Center lists every task in order, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where the scanner sits in the platform. #### Tips from the floor Scan before the test drive, not after. The license image on the deal is the store's record that identification was checked before the keys came out, and the customer is standing at your desk anyway. Shoot the back first; the barcode is what reads cleanly, and the front confirms it. Scan the insurance card in the same minute, because the wallet is already open and the finance office will ask. And remember what the scanner is: it reads what the card says and puts it where the deal is. Confirming that the person matches the card is still your job, exactly as it was before. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a hardware license scanner? A: No. The phone camera is the scanner. It reads the front and the barcode on the back of the license and writes the details into the customer record. On the desktop the same tool opens from the deal view through a QR code any phone can scan. Q: Does it read insurance cards too? A: Yes. The same scanner has slots for the insurance front and back, and the card is stored with the deal so the finance office has identification and insurance on file before delivery. Q: Is this an identity or age verification tool? A: No. It reads what is printed on the card and puts it in the record. Confirming that the person matches the card, and any verification your store requires, remains a step your people perform. Q: Can I scan a co-buyer's license into the same deal? A: Yes. The Customer Profile holds the buyer and co-buyer on one record, so both licenses are scanned into the same profile and both names carry through to the worksheet and the credit application. ### How to Scan a VIN in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-scan-a-vin Scanning a VIN in LeadLocate CRM reads the seventeen characters through a phone camera, from the trade row on a lead card, from the VIN lookup in the LeadLocate mobile app, or from a scanned document. Every scan ends with a required odometer reading, and the VIN decodes to year, make, model and trim on the lead, the deal and the EZ Desking worksheet. Steps: 1. Open the lead or the deal: Expand the lead card under Leads, or choose Desking and open the deal. A trade is scanned from the Trade-In row on the lead card; a unit for sale is decoded on the worksheet. 2. Start the camera: On the lead card, use the camera control on the Trade-In row. On the desktop a scanner window hands the camera to a phone through a QR code; in the LeadLocate mobile app the camera opens directly. Point the phone at the VIN plate in the door jamb or at the base of the windshield and hold still until the VIN reads. 3. Enter the odometer: The scanner asks for the Odometer reading before it finishes, because a VIN without miles is not enough to value a car. Type the digits only. 4. Check the decode: The trade row now shows the year, make, model and trim with the miles beside it. On the deal, click Load trade vehicle details from this VIN to confirm the decode; on the worksheet, type or paste a VIN into Enter VIN to auto-fill vehicle info and click Decode VIN for the unit being sold. 5. Fix a bad read: If a character came through wrong, use Edit VIN, correct it and decode again. A VIN never contains the letters I, O or Q, so a zero or a one is the usual fix. Use Update mileage if the miles were typed wrong. 6. Save: Save the lead or click Save changes to this deal. The decoded vehicle is now on the record, on the worksheet and on the customer's deal page. #### What do I need before I scan a VIN? You need a lead, contact or deal open in LeadLocate CRM and a phone with a camera. Nothing is installed beyond the LeadLocate mobile app if you scan from the phone, and on the desktop any phone scans the QR code the scanner window shows. There is no hardware scanner and nothing to enable; the VIN scan is live in every account. Know the three places a VIN enters. The camera scan on a lead card's Trade-In row is for the car the customer arrived in, and there are two rows, so a household with two trades gets both. Enter VIN to auto-fill vehicle info on the EZ Desking worksheet is for the unit being sold, with Decode VIN filling the vehicle from the database. And document reading picks a VIN off a scanned registration or title, which is how the trade scanner fills the trade without anyone typing. The trade in capture page describes the scan flow in full, and the VIN decode and vehicle database page covers what the decode fills. #### What should I see when the scan is done? On the lead card, the trade row reads the year, make, model and trim with the odometer beside it, and the mobile app shows the same row. On the deal view, the trade section carries the VIN with Load trade vehicle details from this VIN beside it, the Odometer reading, and the fields the desk fills next: allowance, payoff and lienholder. On the worksheet, a decoded unit shows year, make, model, trim, body, engine, drivetrain and transmission as the VIN encodes them, and the deal view carries a VIN History link for the unit. The miles are stored as digits only, so the manager valuing the car from the VIN and mileage pair always has both. A decoded VIN that was edited can be validated again from the deal. The customer's deal page shows the same vehicle, and the printed customer sheet carries the odometer with a footnote marker so a printed mileage is never read as a certified disclosure. #### What if it did not work? The camera will not read the plate. Glare and angle are the usual causes. Move so the light is not reflecting off the plate, fill the frame with the seventeen characters, and hold the phone square to the surface. The door jamb sticker often reads more cleanly than the windshield plate through glass. The decode filled the wrong trim or nothing at all. One character is wrong. Open Edit VIN, compare the read against the plate character by character, and decode again. If the unit is a specialty vehicle the database does not carry, type the year, make, model and trim by hand; the record and the worksheet still work. The scanner will not finish. The Odometer reading is empty. The step is required on every VIN scan, so enter the miles and the scan completes. #### What do I do next? With the vehicle on the record, finish the trade. How to capture a trade in covers the allowance, the payoff, the tax credit method and the title and payoff documents by QR. Scan the customer's license with the same phone, covered on how to scan a driver license. Then desk the deal, covered on how to desk a deal, where the decoded unit and the trade are already on the worksheet. To find a unit already in stock, the mobile app's Inventory list has Search year, make, model, stock, VIN, and the worksheet has its own inventory search by VIN and stock number. The Help Center lists every task in order, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where the VIN scan sits in the platform. #### Tips from the floor Scan the trade in the parking lot while the customer is still getting out of it, and take the odometer photo at the same time so the miles you type are the miles on the dash. Prefer the door jamb sticker over the windshield plate; it is closer to eye level and there is no glass in the way. Never retype a VIN from a windshield photo, which is how a store ends up appraising the wrong trim. And treat the odometer step as the point, not a nuisance: a VIN and mileage pair on the record at capture time is what the used car manager needs to value the car and what the finance office needs later. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need a barcode scanner to scan a VIN? A: No. The phone camera reads the VIN, from the trade row on a lead card through a QR handoff on the desktop or directly in the LeadLocate mobile app. A VIN can also be typed and decoded on the worksheet. Q: Does the scan capture the mileage? A: Yes. Every VIN scan ends with a required odometer reading, stored as digits, so the manager always has the VIN and mileage pair the valuation depends on. Q: What does the decode fill in? A: What the VIN encodes: year, make, model, trim, body, engine, drivetrain and transmission, from the vehicle database. A specialty unit the database does not carry can be typed by hand. Q: Can a VIN be read from a document instead of the car? A: Yes. Document reading picks the VIN off a scanned registration or title, which is how the trade scanner fills the trade vehicle from the paperwork the customer photographs. ### How to Schedule Live Training URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-schedule-training In LeadLocate CRM, open Menu controls in the top bar and choose Schedule Training. A booking calendar opens inside the CRM; pick a day and time and confirm your details. When the session starts, click Join a Live Meeting on the dock. On the phone app, tap Schedule Live Training under Video Training. Live training is included with every plan. Steps: 1. Open Schedule Training: In the CRM top bar, open Menu controls. Schedule Training is the first item on the menu and every user has it, whatever their role. Click it and the booking calendar opens in a popup inside the CRM, so you never leave the screen you were on. 2. Pick a day and a time: Choose a day, then one of the open times shown for it. Pick a slot when the floor is quiet and the people who need the session can sit with you, such as a weekday morning before the first appointments. 3. Confirm your details: Enter your first name, last name and email, and use the notes to say what you want to cover, such as the lead inbox, texting, desking or Leads Manager, so the session starts on what matters to your store. Confirm the booking. 4. Or book from your phone or your account portal: In the LeadLocate app, open Video Training and tap Schedule Live Training under Do you need more training?. In My LeadLocate, when your settings page shows an Assigned Representative card, its Schedule a Call button opens your representative's calendar. 5. Join the session: At the booked time, click Join a Live Meeting on the dock at the bottom of the CRM; the button reads Join a Meeting. The meeting room opens in a new tab and your trainer walks the CRM with you on screen. #### Before you start You need a login to LeadLocate CRM, the LeadLocate app or My LeadLocate. Any of the three books a session. Live training is included with every plan, alongside the video training library, so there is nothing to buy first. Decide who should be on the call. A new store usually starts with the manager who will run the CRM and the people who answer leads first, then books a second session for the rest of the floor once the basics are in place. Write down the three things you most want to see working, because a session that starts from your questions ends with your team using the tools that afternoon. #### What you should see After you confirm, a confirmation screen shows the day and time you picked, and a confirmation email with the details is sent to the address you entered. At that time, Join a Live Meeting on the dock takes you straight into the meeting room, where the trainer shares the screen and walks the CRM with you, from the lead inbox to the tools your store uses most. Between sessions, training stays one click away. More Options on the dock carries Live Training, which opens the live training site, and Support Tickets for anything that needs a person. On the phone app, Video Training holds the video library for the moments on the lot when a salesperson wants a quick refresher. #### Quick checks Use the top bar first. Schedule Training is on the menu for every user, so it is the fastest route for anyone on the team. Check the time zone. The booking calendar shows its times in the time zone selected on the page; set it to your store's before you pick a slot. Book one session per group. The managers and the floor learn different things; two focused sessions beat one long one. Join from the CRM. Opening the meeting from Join a Live Meeting on the dock puts you in the right room with one click. Need help before the session? Open a ticket from Support Tickets and the support ticket guide covers the rest. #### How do stores keep the team sharp after the first session? The first session gets the team working. The stores that get the most from LeadLocate keep training going as a habit, and every plan includes everything it takes. - Book a session for every new hire. When a salesperson joins, point them to the video library on the phone app for their first days, then book a live session from Schedule Training once they have worked a few leads. The trainer starts from the questions they bring. - Book a session when the store adds a tool. Starting desking, credit applications in SecureWebX, bulk texting or a new campaign in Leads Manager is the right moment for a focused session on that one tool, with the people who will use it. - Keep a running list of questions. A manager who notes what the floor asks during the week can put the whole list in the booking notes, and the next session covers all of it in one sitting. - Use the video library between sessions. A salesperson on the lot opens Video Training on the phone for a quick refresher on a text, a call or an appointment, and is back with the customer in minutes. - Send ideas through Feedback. The Feedback button on the dock files a feature request with a screenshot attached, so a good idea from the floor reaches our team exactly as the salesperson saw it. Training that runs a little at a time keeps every user on the tools that turn leads into appointments. Sessions are included with every plan, so book the next one as soon as the team has new questions. #### How to plan training for a dealership team Plan it the way you would plan a sales meeting: short, specific and built around what happens on the floor tomorrow. The first session covers the lead inbox, the first text and the call, because those decide whether a new lead becomes an appointment. The second covers the calendar, follow up and the tools your store leans on, whether that is desking, credit applications or inventory. A manager session covers reports, lead feeds and Leads Manager, where the sample ads preview shows exactly what your shoppers see. New salespeople do well with the video library on the phone app in their first week and a live session once they have worked a few leads of their own. The lead inbox guide and the Trash Bin guide are good reading between sessions, and every other guide is in the LeadLocate Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: Is live training included with my plan? A: Yes. Every plan includes Live Training sessions, the video training library, Schedule Training in the CRM top bar and Join a Live Meeting on the dock. Q: How do I schedule training from my phone? A: Open Video Training in the LeadLocate app and tap Schedule Live Training under Do you need more training. The same screen has a button to open a support ticket. Q: How do I join the session when it starts? A: Click Join a Live Meeting on the dock at the bottom of the CRM. The meeting room opens in a new tab and your trainer shares the screen with you. Q: Can I book more than one session? A: Yes. Book one for managers and one for the sales floor, and come back to Schedule Training whenever a new question comes up. ### How to Schedule a Text or Email for Later URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-schedule-a-text-or-email Yes, you can schedule a text or an email in LeadLocate CRM. Open the customer's conversation in Messaging or the Email Inbox, click the clock button (Schedule TEXT Follow-up or Schedule Email), write the message or pick a template, choose a date and time in Schedule, and click Save and Schedule. The message goes out at that time from the store's number or address. Steps: 1. Open the customer's conversation: For a text, click Messaging in the main menu and open the customer's thread. For an email, open the Email Inbox from the Email menu and open the customer's conversation. You can also start from the lead and open its text or email thread from there. 2. Click the schedule button in the conversation header: In a text thread, click the clock button marked TEXT, whose tooltip reads Schedule TEXT Follow-up. In an email conversation, click the clock button marked Email, whose tooltip reads Schedule Email; on the single email view the same button reads Schedule Email Follow-up. A scheduling window opens with the customer's number or address already in To. 3. Write the message: Pick a saved template to fill the message, or type your own. For an email, fill in the Subject as well. The vehicle button drops a unit from your inventory into the message with its photos and price, and the AI writing assistant can draft or tidy the wording for you. 4. Choose the date and time: Click into Schedule and pick the day and time the customer should receive the message. Use the time the customer asked for when they gave you one, and a reasonable hour of their day when they did not. 5. Save and schedule it: Click Save and Schedule. A confirmation appears and the window closes. The message waits and goes out at the time you chose, from the store's texting number or email address, and lands on the customer's thread and timeline when it sends. 6. Schedule a voicemail the same way: In a text thread, click the phone button marked Voicemail, whose tooltip reads Schedule Voicemail. Choose one of your recorded voicemails, set the time in Schedule:, and click Save and Schedule. The recorded message is left for the customer at that time. #### Before you start You need a login to the desktop LeadLocate CRM and a customer with a mobile number for a text, an email address for an email, or both. Scheduling works from the same conversation screens you already use: the two way texting inbox under Messaging and the email inbox and composer under Email. For a scheduled voicemail, record your voicemail first in the Voicemail Drop library so it is ready to choose; how to drop a voicemail covers the recording. Saved templates make scheduling faster. If your store has written its follow up messages as templates, pick one in the scheduling window and adjust a word or two. The car sales follow up templates for call, text and email page is a good place to borrow wording from. #### Can you schedule a text or an email in a CRM? In LeadLocate CRM, yes, and it is built into the conversation rather than hidden in a separate tool. A rep who hears try me Thursday morning schedules the text while the customer is still on the line, and it goes out Thursday morning whether the rep is at a desk, on the lot or off that day. Texts, emails and voicemails can all be written now and scheduled for a later date and time. Scheduling a message for one customer is different from a drip that runs on every lead. For a multi step sequence by lead type, use Follow Up Processes; for the text that fires the moment a lead arrives, use Automated Templates, both described on the Text Automation page. Use a scheduled send when a person promised a person something at a particular time. #### What you should see After Save and Schedule, a short confirmation appears and you are back in the conversation. When the scheduled time arrives, the message goes out and appears in the thread like any other message you send: a text with its delivery status under the bubble, an email in the email conversation. It also lands on the lead's communication timeline, so anyone who opens the lead sees what was sent and when. If the customer replies, the reply arrives in the same thread and your normal reply alert tells you. #### Quick checks Check the number and address in To before you save. The window fills them from the conversation, so starting from the right thread is the whole trick. Pick a time the customer will welcome. The time the customer asked for is always right. Otherwise choose a normal hour of their day, and remember that a customer in another time zone reads the message on their clock. Give emails a subject. A scheduled email with a clear Subject gets opened; one that says follow up gets filed. Keep the message current. Prices and availability can change between today and the send date. Mention the vehicle and invite the conversation, and let the rep who answers the reply confirm the numbers. For anything else, our support team can open the same screen with you and sort it out on the call. #### Related tasks Sending a text right now is covered in how to text a customer, and a vehicle in a message in how to send a vehicle in a text. Messages to a whole list at once are covered in how to send a bulk text and how to send a bulk email. Managers who want the phone side flagged as well can set call alert keywords. Every other guide is in the Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: Can you schedule a text message in LeadLocate? A: Yes. Open the customer's thread in Messaging, click the clock button with the tooltip Schedule TEXT Follow-up, write the message, pick a date and time and click Save and Schedule. It goes out at that time from the store's texting number. Q: How do I schedule an email to send later? A: Open the conversation in the Email Inbox and click the clock button with the tooltip Schedule Email. Add a subject and message, choose the date and time in Schedule, and click Save and Schedule. Q: Can I schedule a voicemail too? A: Yes. In a text thread, click Schedule Voicemail, choose one of your recorded voicemails, set the time and click Save and Schedule. The recording is left for the customer at that time. Q: Where does a scheduled message show after it sends? A: In the customer's text or email conversation, like any message you send, and on the lead's communication timeline, so the whole team sees what went out and when. ### How to Schedule an Appointment in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-schedule-an-appointment Scheduling an appointment in LeadLocate CRM means adding a dated visit to a lead so it shows on the salesperson's calendar, on the store's shared calendar and on the Workspace for the day, with a text and email reminder to the customer. You start it from Add Appointment on the lead or from Calendar in the main menu. Steps: 1. Start from the lead: Open the customer's lead and choose Add Appointment. Starting here means the customer's name, phone and email are already filled in and the appointment attaches itself to the right record. The Calendar page in the main menu adds one the same way when you are not on a lead. 2. Pick who and when: Set the salesperson in Schedule appointment with*, check Customer Name*, Phone* and Email*, and set Date and Time*. Pick a time inside the hours that salesperson works, which the calendar's booking hours already know. 3. Add the context: Write the vehicle, the trade and anything promised in Optional notes about this appointment. Whoever greets the customer reads this line first. 4. Turn on the reminders: Leave Send Text Reminder and Send Email Reminder on. The customer gets a confirmation now and a reminder before the visit, worded by the store's Appointment Confirmation Templates. 5. Save it: Press Save. The appointment shows as Scheduled on the lead, on the salesperson's calendar, on the shared calendar and under Today's Appointments on the Workspace when the day comes. 6. Work it on the day: Mark it Confirmed when the customer confirms, In Store Now when they walk in, or No Show if they do not. To move it, choose Reschedule, set the New appointment date & time and press Save New Time; the customer gets the new time by text. 7. Or let the customer pick the time: Send your Personal Link in a text and the customer books themselves from your hours; the appointment lands on your calendar exactly as if you had set it. The store's Team Link does the same for a customer who has no salesperson yet. #### Before you start You need a login to LeadLocate CRM; any salesperson can schedule for themselves, and a Manager or Master Administrator can schedule for anyone. Have the lead open, or at least the customer's name and mobile number, because the text reminder goes to that number. It helps if each salesperson has set their booking hours once, from the Settings popup on the Calendar, so the time picker offers hours the person actually works; the appointment booking links page walks through that popup. If the store hands out appointments round robin from the shared calendar, a BDC agent sets the appointment on the team calendar and the routing does the rest, which the shared team calendar page explains. #### What you should see After Save, the appointment sits on the lead's timeline with its date, its salesperson and its status, and the customer's phone buzzes with the confirmation text within a minute. On the day, the Workspace shows it under Today's Appointments with the note you wrote, and the salesperson's calendar shows it in its slot. If the salesperson has connected their Google Calendar, the same appointment appears there too, on whatever phone they carry, because the Google Calendar sync writes CRM appointments through. A customer who books from a link shows up the same way, with the source noted. When the customer arrives and someone marks In Store Now, the whole floor can see who is physically at the store and who they belong to. #### If it did not work The customer got no confirmation text. The mobile number on the lead is wrong or is a landline, or the customer has opted out of texts from the store. Check the number, run it through the Phone Validator if in doubt, and use Send Email Reminder as the backup. The time I want is missing from the picker. It is outside the salesperson's booking hours. Either pick a time inside them, or have the salesperson widen the hours in the Settings popup on the Calendar and try again. The appointment landed on the wrong salesperson. Schedule appointment with* was left on the default. Open the appointment and correct the salesperson (when the time is also changing, use Reschedule as well), then save; the customer gets one corrected confirmation. Two appointments for the same customer. Delete the extra one with Delete Appointment and pick the duplicate reason when the CRM asks why; the customer is not messaged about a deletion. Anything else, the support team can see the appointment from the store's side. #### Related tasks Booking links let the customer do this step themselves, and the appointment booking links page covers the personal and team links and their hours. On the phone app, Quick Schedule mirrors your personal booking link so you can send it with one tap from the lot. A visit that ends with numbers on paper becomes a deal in DealTracker, where Appointment Set is one of the milestones on the road to sale. And the reminder wording, the confirmation and the follow up if the customer does not show are all set once under Automated Templates, so the same customer hears the same store voice every time. Every guide in the Help Center is written the way this one is. #### Tips from the floor Set the appointment while the customer is still on the phone or in the text thread, not after, so the confirmation arrives while they are still thinking about it. Write the vehicle and the trade in the note every time; the greeter should know why the customer is there before they say hello. Mark In Store Now the moment they arrive, because a manager who can see the customer is on the lot is a manager who can walk over. And when a customer cancels, reschedule rather than delete; a customer with a new date is still a customer. #### Questions and answers Q: Can the customer schedule the appointment themselves? A: Yes. Send your Personal Link, or the store's Team Link, and the customer picks a time from your booking hours; the appointment lands on the calendar exactly as if you set it. Q: Does the customer get a reminder? A: Yes. With Send Text Reminder and Send Email Reminder on, the customer receives a confirmation when the appointment is saved and a reminder before the visit. Q: Will the appointment show on my phone's calendar? A: Connect your Google Calendar once from the Calendar page and every CRM appointment is written through to it. Q: What if the customer does not show up? A: Mark the appointment No Show. The store's automated templates can send the follow up, and the lead stays open for the next attempt. ### How to Send Managers a Copy of Every Lead URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-managers-a-copy-of-every-lead Open Account Settings, click Lead Source Settings and open Default Manager Copies. Enter the managers' emails in Manager Email Addresses, separated by commas, and click Save Default. Click Apply to All to put them on every feed, or use Manager Copies beside a single feed. Each lead then reaches the manager by email and in the CRM. Steps: 1. Open your lead sources: From the Billing and Admin menu, open Account Settings. In the Lead Sources section, click Lead Source Settings. Manager copies, your own lead sources and the feeds LeadLocate delivers for you are all on this page. 2. Set the store wide default: Open the Default Manager Copies drawer. In Manager Email Addresses, type each manager's email, separated by commas, in the same shape as the hint e.g. manager@dealer.com, gm@dealer.com. Click Save Default. The default covers leads that arrive without a feed, such as a lead a salesperson adds by hand. 3. Put the same managers on every feed: If the same people should see every lead, click Apply to All. It saves the default and places those recipients on every feed on the page in one step. Skip this step if different feeds should copy different managers. 4. Choose managers for one LeadLocate feed: Open the Your LeadLocate Feeds drawer. Each feed shows who it copies today. Click Manager Copies beside the feed you want, enter the managers' email addresses and click Save Manager Copies. 5. Add managers to a source you created: For a lead source your store added, such as a website form or a third party provider, open the source, tick Manager copies, enter the recipients in the fields that appear and click Save Feed. New sources start with the box ticked, so all you add is the list. 6. Check the next lead: When the next lead arrives on a feed you changed, the managers receive their copy by email and can open the lead in Leads, beside the salesperson who owns it. A test submission on a website form source is the quickest way to see it. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login that can open Account Settings, and the email address of every manager who should receive copies. Decide who should see what before you type anything. Some stores copy the general manager on every lead; most copy the sales manager on the feeds the sales floor works, the used car manager on trade-in and acquisition feeds, and the BDC manager on website forms. Copies are set per feed, so each of those is a few seconds of work. Copies go to managers without changing who owns the lead. The assigned salesperson still works it, and the customer still hears from one person. What the feature does and how stores use it day to day is on Manager Lead Copies, and how feeds and sources fit together is on the Lead Feeds Manager page. #### What you should see After Save Default, the Default Manager Copies drawer shows the recipients you entered. After Apply to All or Save Manager Copies, each feed row in Your LeadLocate Feeds lists its managers next to the feed name, so you can read the whole setup on one screen without opening anything. From the next lead on, every manager on that feed receives a copy by email and sees the lead in the CRM, on desktop and on the LeadLocate phone app. LeadLocate's default feeds carry manager copies, so a store that applies its recipients to every feed on day one has its managers on every lead LeadLocate delivers from the very first one. #### Quick checks Separate addresses with commas. Several managers can sit on the same feed; a comma between each address is all it takes. Remember that a feed's own list comes first. A feed with its own recipients uses those, and the default covers leads that arrive without a feed. Use Apply to All when you want everything to match again. Update the list when a manager changes. When someone joins or leaves, change the recipients here and every feed is current the same minute. Nothing lives in a personal mailbox rule that walks out the door with them. Ask for any feed you want added. If a feed should copy managers and its row shows no Manager Copies button, our support team switches it on for that feed on request. #### How do I cc a manager on new leads from my website? Connect the form as its own lead source, then tick Manager copies on that source. Every submission then reaches the assigned salesperson and the managers at the same moment. The full setup, from the form intake link to the first test lead, is in how to connect a website form to the CRM, and the feature behind it is send every website form straight to your CRM. Forms built in Lead Pages arrive the same way. #### How do managers use lead copies every day? A lead copy gives the manager the same view of a new customer that the salesperson has, at the same moment. The sales manager reads the copy as it arrives, opens the lead in Leads and sees who owns it, so a fresh internet lead gets a fast first reply even when the floor is busy with walk ins. On a full Saturday, that is the difference between a reply in minutes and a reply after lunch. Most managers build three habits around their copies: - Watch the first response. Open the lead a few minutes after the copy lands and read its timeline. Every call, text, email and voicemail with that customer sits on one timeline on the lead record, so the manager sees whether the salesperson has reached out without asking anyone. - Step in where it counts. A copy that mentions a trade or a payment question tells the manager where to spend time at the desk, and the lead already carries the customer's vehicles of interest and trade lines. - Coach from real leads. Copies give the weekly sales meeting real material: how fast each lead was answered, what the first text said and which follow up turned into an appointment. Pair lead copies with Call Alerts, where a manager picks the words that matter on transcribed calls, such as "trade in" or "payment", and chooses All Calls or Alert Calls Only. Between the two, the manager sees every new lead and every call that needs attention while the salespeople keep working their own customers. #### Related tasks To give managers the Manager role so they can act on what they receive, follow how to add users and roles. To decide how each salesperson hears about a new lead, see how to set notification preferences, and to change who owns new leads, see how to set up round robin. Every other guide is in the LeadLocate Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I make sure the sales manager gets a copy of every lead? A: Enter the manager's email in Default Manager Copies, click Save Default, then click Apply to All. The manager is then on every feed and on leads that arrive without a feed. Q: Can different feeds copy different managers? A: Yes. Click Manager Copies beside any feed in Your LeadLocate Feeds, or open a source you created, and set its own recipients. A feed with its own list uses that list. Q: Does copying a manager change who owns the lead? A: No. The assigned salesperson keeps the lead and works it. The manager receives a copy by email and sees the lead in the CRM beside that salesperson. Q: How many managers can receive copies? A: As many as the store needs. Separate each email address with a comma in the recipient field. ### How to Send a Bulk Email in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-a-bulk-email A bulk email in LeadLocate CRM is one message sent to an entire recipient list from Bulk Email under Marketing Tools on the dock. You pick or paste the addresses, set a subject, choose a template or write the message, attach a file if you want one, and press Send Bulk Email. Every blast is recorded in the history table below the form. Steps: 1. Open Bulk Email: Click Marketing Tools on the dock at the bottom of the CRM, then Bulk Email, the tile that reads one blast, every inbox. The page opens on the Bulk Email Messenger: form. 2. Choose the recipients: Pick a saved list in the Campaign selector, or paste addresses into the recipients box where it says Please enter one Email per line. Saved lists live under Bulk Email Recipients, so a list you will mail again is built once. 3. Write the subject: Type the Subject: the way a customer will read it in a crowded inbox: the store's name or the vehicle, then the reason to open. Nine words or fewer reads whole on a phone. 4. Pick the template or write the message: Choose a saved email in Template: and change the line that needs it, or write in Message:. A vehicle from your inventory can be inserted with its photos and price from the composer, and your Email Signature is appended for you. 5. Attach a file if you want one: Add the flyer or the price sheet in Attachment. Keep it to one file a phone can open; a picture or a short PDF is right, a print file is not. 6. Read it once and send: Read the whole thing as a customer, then press Send Bulk Email. Scroll to Bulk Email History: and the new row shows who sent it, how many addresses were on the list and the status of the send. Replies arrive in the email inbox on each customer's own thread. #### Before you start You need a login to LeadLocate CRM with a role that can see the dock, a list of customers who expect mail from the store, and a message. Two checks come first. Run any list older than a few months through the Email Validator, the neighboring tile in the same menu, so dead addresses are gone before they bounce against your sending domain. And make sure the store's sending domain is authenticated, which is a one time setup that lets the blast go out from the store's own domain rather than a shared one; the Bulk Email feature page explains why that decides whether next month's blast lands in the inbox. A template approved by a manager, saved once, keeps every send looking like the store. #### What you should see As soon as you press Send Bulk Email, a row appears under Bulk Email History: with the sender, the count and the status. The messages go out from the store's authenticated domain with your signature at the bottom, one email per address, so no customer sees another customer's name. The Bulk Email Recipients page keeps the list you used, and the list view carries the opened and clicked totals for the campaign so you can see how the blast did without a separate reporting tool. Over the next day the replies land in the email inbox, each on the thread of the customer who wrote back, in front of the salesperson assigned to that lead, and the lead's communications log shows the blast next to the texts and calls around it. #### If it did not work The count is lower than the list. Addresses that fail validation or are typed without a domain are dropped before the send. Paste one address per line, run the list through Email Validator first, and send again to the cleaned list. The blast landed in spam, or bounced. The sending domain is not authenticated, or the list was full of dead addresses and the receiving servers noticed. Authenticate the domain, validate the list, and keep the next few sends small while the domain's reputation recovers. The send button does nothing. The recipients box is empty and no list is chosen in Campaign, or the Subject: is blank. Fill in whichever is missing. The attachment did not arrive. The file is larger than mail servers accept. Attach a phone sized image or a short PDF, or put the file in the file library and send the link instead. Anything else, the support team can read the send status from the store's side. #### Related tasks Cleaning the list is its own short task, how to validate an email address. The same audience is often worth a text as well, since a short text on the morning of a sale and an email with the flyer the night before carry different weights; how to send a bulk text follows the same steps. For the messages that should reach one customer at the right moment rather than everyone at once, Email Automation, the tile beside Bulk Email, runs the drips. Every guide in the Help Center is written the way this one is. #### Tips from the floor Send to yourself first. Open it on a phone, not a monitor, because that is where most customers will read it, and fix whatever does not fit. Put one call to action in the email, and make it a reply or a booking link rather than a phone number, so the response lands in the CRM on the customer's thread. And have the salespeople watching the inbox for the hour after the send; an emailed question answered the same morning is an appointment. #### Questions and answers Q: Do recipients see each other's addresses? A: No. Each address gets its own email. There is no group message and nothing to hide in a blind copy line. Q: Can I send from the store's own domain? A: Yes. Email domain authentication is a one time setup, after which every blast and every one to one email goes out from the store's domain. Q: Where do replies go? A: Into the email inbox in the CRM, on the thread of the customer who replied, in front of the salesperson assigned to that lead. Q: Is there a per email charge? A: No. Bulk Email is part of every LeadLocate plan. A sending schedule or a throttle for very large lists is available on request. ### How to Send a Bulk Text in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-a-bulk-text A bulk text in LeadLocate CRM is one message sent to a list of customers at once from Bulk Texting under Marketing Tools on the dock. You pick or paste the recipients, choose a template, add an attachment if you want one, and press Send Bulk TEXT. Every send is logged with who sent it and how many went out. Steps: 1. Open Bulk Texting: Click Marketing Tools on the dock at the bottom of the CRM, then Bulk Texting. The page opens on the Bulk TEXT Messenger: form. 2. Choose the recipients: Pick a saved list in the Campaign field, or paste phone numbers into the recipients box, one number per line. Saved lists are kept under Bulk TEXT Recipients, so the second send to the same customers is a click rather than a rebuild. 3. Write or pick the message: Choose a saved text in Template: and edit the line that needs it, or write the message in Outgoing TEXT message:. Keep it short, say who the store is in the first line, and put the offer and the way to reply in the last. 4. Add an attachment if you want one: Use Attach File to add a flyer, a coupon or a photo. It goes out as a picture message, so the customer sees the image in their messaging app rather than a link. 5. Read it once more and send: Read the message the way a customer will read it on a phone, then press Send Bulk TEXT. The page confirms the blast is queued. 6. Check the history: Scroll to Bulk Text History:. The new row shows Sent By, Total Sent and the time. Replies arrive in the texting inbox on each customer's own thread. #### Before you start You need a login to LeadLocate CRM with a role that can see the dock, a list of customers who have agreed to hear from the store by text, and the message itself. Bulk texting is the activity texting law was written about, so do the two checks before you open the tool. Run the list through the Phone Validator two tiles down in the same menu; it flags dead numbers and marks the ones you must not call. Then make sure the DNC Blacklist is current, because the store's opt outs are applied before anything leaves. Build the list from customers the CRM already knows, not from a spreadsheet of strangers. A saved template approved by a manager is worth setting up once, so the wording that goes out is the wording the store agreed on. #### What you should see The moment you send, the page confirms the blast is queued and a row appears under Bulk Text History: with who sent it and how many numbers were on the list. The messages go out on the store's own tracking numbers, so a customer who has texted the store before sees a thread they recognize. Each message reaches phones that support rich messaging as a rich message and everyone else as a plain text, automatically, per handset. Over the next hour the replies land in the two way texting inbox, each on the thread of the customer who sent it, where the salesperson assigned to that lead answers them one at a time. A customer who answers with a stop word is opted out on the spot, added to the blacklist and told so, and any campaign they were on is listed in the confirmation. If the message carried a link, the short link's click stats tell you afterward how many people opened it. #### If it did not work Some numbers on the list were skipped. They are on the DNC Blacklist or have opted out, and the tool honored that. This is the tool working, not failing. Open the blacklist if you want to see which ones. The count under Total Sent is lower than the list. Numbers that fail validation or arrive in the wrong format are dropped. Paste ten digit US numbers, one per line, and run the list through Phone Validator first so the dead ones are gone before you send. The attachment did not arrive as a picture. The file is too large for a picture message or is not an image type phones display. Resize the flyer to a phone width image and attach that instead of a print file. The send button does nothing. The recipients box is empty and no list is chosen in Campaign. Pick one or the other. If it still will not send, the support team can see the queue from the store's side. #### Related tasks The full picture of the tool, including what it replaces and the compliance side, is on the Bulk Texting feature page. Cleaning the list first is its own short task, how to validate a phone number, and the do not call scrub and blacklist page explains the list the tool checks before it sends. A recorded message to the same list from Voicemail Drops, in the same menu, reaches the customers who ignore texts. For email to the same audience, how to send a bulk email follows the same steps with a subject line. Every guide in the Help Center reads like this one. #### Tips from the floor Send at a time a person would text, not at six in the morning. Put one thing in the message, not three. Text on Saturday morning for a Saturday sale and email the flyer the night before, so the two channels carry different weights. And have the salespeople at their desks when the blast goes out, because the replies start within minutes and a reply answered in two minutes is an appointment while a reply answered in two hours is a customer who moved on. #### Questions and answers Q: Does each customer see the other recipients? A: No. Every message is a separate text to one phone, on the store's tracking number, and each reply lands on that customer's own thread. Q: Can I send a picture with a bulk text? A: Yes. Attach a file with Attach File and it goes out as a picture message to every recipient. Q: What happens when someone replies stop? A: They are opted out automatically, added to the blacklist, told so, and skipped on every future send. A help word gets a reply that names the store and how to reach it. Q: Is bulk texting an extra charge? A: It is part of every LeadLocate plan. A dedicated marketing number or a throttle for very large lists is available on request. ### How to Send a Deal Page for E-Signature in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-a-deal-page-for-e-signature Sending a deal page for e-signature in LeadLocate CRM takes three moves from the deal view: turn on Require a signature, share the customer link by text or email, and wait for the signed snapshot to land on the deal. The customer unlocks the page with a one time passcode texted to the number on the deal, reviews the numbers and signs from a phone. Steps: 1. Open the deal: From the main menu choose Desking and open the deal. Confirm the structure is the one you want signed, because the customer signs a snapshot of what the page shows at that moment. 2. Turn on the signature: In the deal view set Require a signature. The customer page now carries a signature step, and the Signature area on the deal stays empty until the customer signs. 3. Check who gets the link: The page unlocks with a passcode texted to the buyer or co-buyer mobile number on the deal, so confirm the number is right before you send. Turn on Assigned salesperson Send SMS alert if you want a text when the customer acts. 4. Share the link: Open Share. Use Generate a new customer link if the deal has none yet, then Send to Customer by text or by email to the contact details on file. The Customer tracking link is short enough to read next to a dollar figure in a text. 5. Let the customer sign: The customer taps the link, chooses Text Me a Verification Code, enters the 6 digit verification code and taps Open My Deal. The page walks through Your deal steps, and the signature step is where the customer signs with a finger on the phone screen. 6. Confirm on the deal: Back in the deal view, the Signature area shows the signed snapshot with the sheet it was applied to. Set Deal Status to Deal Sent when the page goes out and move it forward when the signature lands. #### What do I need before I send a deal page? You need a desked deal in LeadLocate CRM and a correct mobile number on the buyer or co-buyer record, because the passcode goes to that number and nowhere else. Any user who can open the deal can send the page; the store's logo and colors on the page come from the website editor Branding tab, which a manager sets once. If the deal has a co-buyer, add them with Toggle to add a co-buyer / cosigner to this deal before you send, so the co-buyer number can unlock the page too. Decide what you want signed. The signature is applied to a frozen snapshot of the sheet the customer is looking at, so finish the structure first. If the numbers are still moving, send the page without the signature switch, answer the questions in deal chat, and turn on Require a signature when the deal is where you want it. #### What should I see when the customer signs? On the customer side, the page opens under your store's branding, shows the vehicle, the trade, the payment options and the documents still needed, and lists the signature as one of Your deal steps. When the customer signs, the step is checked off and the customer is told the signature was received. On your side, the deal view shows the signature in the Signature area with the sheet it was applied to, the deal history records when the page was shared and when it was signed, and the salesperson gets a text if Assigned salesperson Send SMS alert is on. The signed snapshot is frozen from further changes; a later edit to the worksheet produces a new version and a new link, and the old signed copy stays on the record as what was agreed. The customer deal pages page describes revisions, share and revoke in full. #### What if it did not work? The customer never got the passcode. The code goes to the buyer or co-buyer mobile number on the deal. Open the customer record, correct the number, and have the customer tap Text Me a Verification Code again. A landline or an email address on the mobile field is the usual cause. The link opens an expired notice. Somebody used Revoke All Links Void every link shared for this deal, or the link was reset when a new one was generated. Open Share, use Generate a new customer link and send it again; the stored snapshots survive on the record. There is no signature step on the page. Require a signature is off on the deal. Turn it on, save with Save changes to this deal, and the customer sees the step the next time the page loads without needing a new link. #### What do I do next? With the signature on the deal, the paperwork side takes over. Collect the documents the customer still owes through the review slots on the same page, or show the QR code on the desk, covered on how to upload deal documents by QR. Print the packet for the file from print packets and mail. If the deal is financed, the credit application goes through SecureWebX with the same numbers. The Help Center lists every deal task in order, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where the deal page sits in the platform. For a signature on a single worksheet rather than the whole page, share a pencil recap sheet; the customer taps Sign this worksheet, signs under Sign here and taps Apply signature, and the sheet shows Signed. #### Tips from the floor Send the page while the customer is still in the store, and watch them open it. A customer who has unlocked the page once knows how to do it again from home, and the first question about a number gets answered in person instead of by text that night. Send by text rather than email when you can; the passcode arrives on the same phone the link is on, so the whole unlock takes a few seconds. And say out loud that the page is not a contract and the figures are estimates until final lender approval, which is exactly what the sheet says in print; the signature records what was shown, and the finance office paperwork does the rest. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the customer need an app to sign? A: No. The link opens in the phone browser, the passcode arrives by text, and the customer signs with a finger on the screen. Nothing is installed. Q: What exactly does the customer sign? A: A frozen snapshot of the sheet on the page at that moment. The signature is stored on the deal with that snapshot, and later edits produce a new version rather than changing what was signed. Q: Can I take the link back after I send it? A: Yes. Revoke All Links on the deal voids every link shared for that deal at once. Revoked links show an expired notice, the stored snapshots stay on the record, and a fresh link can be sent. Q: Is the e-signature legally usable? A: The tool records who signed what and when, on a snapshot that cannot change afterward. Whether a given document in your state needs a wet signature is a question for your compliance counsel; the deal keeps the record either way. ### How to Send a Fax in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-a-fax You fax from inside SecureWebX, so there is no machine and no separate fax account. A manager assigns the store a line under Assigned fax numbers and switches on Outbound (send faxes). After that, any user sends a document from the application it belongs to and reads the result under Recent fax activity. Steps: 1. Open the fax area of the console: Sign in to SecureWebX and open the fax settings for your store. The panel at the top is Assigned fax numbers. If it reads No fax numbers yet, nobody has set a line up for this store and step two is where you start. 2. Assign the store a fax number: Click Assign fax number. Give the line a name a teammate will recognize; the field shows the hint e.g. Main fax line, F&I fax, and those are good names. A store with a busy finance office usually keeps the F and I line separate from the one the front desk hands out. 3. Enter the number in full international form: Type the line into Fax number (E.164) *. That format is the plus sign, the country code, then the number, with no spaces, brackets or dashes. A number typed the way you would read it out loud is the single most common reason a new line will not save. 4. Switch on outbound faxing: Turn on Outbound (send faxes) for that line. A line can take faxes in without sending them out, which is what you want for a published number the public uses, so this switch decides which of your lines the store sends from. 5. Pick the document on the application: Open the application you are working. Anything already on the record can go out: the credit application itself, a supporting document a customer uploaded, a stipulation, or the deal recap from the worksheet. If the page you need is not on the record yet, upload it there first so the fax and the file stay together. 6. Send it and read the status: Enter the destination fax number, confirm the document, and send. The fax appears under Recent fax activity with its destination and a status that moves from sending to delivered. A lender who would rather click a link than read a fax gets Send to Lender instead, which is a code gated, expiring share of the same application. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login that can reach the store's settings, the destination fax number, and the document sitting on the application you want to send. Fax numbers are assigned per store and per partner, so a group with four rooftops gives each rooftop its own line and each line its own name. Have the destination number written the way the field wants it before you open the form: plus sign, country code, then the digits. Everything you send stays attached to the application it came from, which is the point of faxing from SecureWebX rather than from a machine down the hall. Three months later, the record still shows what left the store, when, and to which number. #### Can you send a fax without a fax machine? Yes, and that is the normal way to do it here. The fax leaves from the browser you are already signed in to, on a desktop in the tower or a phone in the drive. There is no machine to feed, no toner, no dedicated phone line in the back office and no separate fax service with its own bill and its own password. People search for how to send a fax from a computer, from a phone, or through email because the old answer was always a piece of hardware. The eFax feature page covers how numbers are assigned per store and per partner, and what inbound faxes look like when they arrive. What you need to know at the desk is simpler: the store's fax number lives with the credit application tools, and you send from the record. #### What you should see The fax you just sent listed under Recent fax activity, with the destination number, the document name and a status. Refresh the page and the status advances as the far end answers and accepts the pages. Before your store's first fax, that same panel reads No fax activity yet, which is a fresh store rather than a problem. Faxes that come in to the store's number land in the same activity list, so a lender's stipulation sheet or an insurance certificate is in the console next to everything else on that deal. The application record keeps the fax alongside the uploaded documents, the stipulations and the worksheet, and the audit log carries who sent it. #### If it did not work The number will not save. It is not in the form the field asks for. Re dial it mentally: plus sign, country code, then every digit with nothing between them. No parentheses around the area code, no dashes. You cannot send from a line the store owns. That line takes faxes in only. Open it and turn on Outbound (send faxes), then send again. The lender says the pages were blank or unreadable. A fax renders in black and white at low resolution, so a paystub photographed on a phone in a dark office arrives as a grey square. Send that one as a secure link with Send to Lender, which shows the original file in a watermarked viewer, and keep the fax for clean, typed pages. The document you want is not on the list. It has not been uploaded to the application yet. Add it as a supporting document first; the fax picker reads from the record, which is what keeps the sent copy and the stored copy identical. #### Related tasks Getting a whole application to a lender or into the store's DMS in the layout it expects is a different job, and lender and DMS export formats covers it: the standard XML layout, fixed width, CSV and JSON, delivered the way the receiving side asks for it. For a lender who wants to look at one deal right now, the secure share beats both. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the SecureWebX guides, including exporting applications and managing who on your team can reach them. A fax workflow your store needs that you do not see in the console is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I send a fax from my computer without a fax machine? A: Yes. Faxing happens in the browser you are already signed in to. There is no machine, no toner and no dedicated phone line in the back office, and the sent copy stays on the application record. Q: Can the store have more than one fax number? A: Yes. Numbers are assigned per store and per partner, and each one gets a name. Most stores keep the finance line separate from the number they publish to customers. Q: Do faxes sent to us show up in SecureWebX? A: Yes. Inbound faxes land in the same activity list with their status, so a stipulation sheet a lender fires back is in the console rather than in a tray by the copier. Q: Is faxing the only way to get an application to a lender? A: No. Send to Lender shares the application as a code gated, expiring, watermarked link, and the export formats deliver a full application in the layout a lender or DMS asks for. ### How to Send a Picture Message in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-a-picture-message You send a picture message from the text composer in LeadLocate CRM: open the customer's thread or start a New Text Message, click Attach file (MMS), choose the photo from your computer, your phone or the store's File Library, add a line of text and send. The picture goes out as an MMS from the store's number and shows in the thread with a delivery status. Steps: 1. Open the customer's thread: From the lead record, open the text conversation, or go to Messaging and pick the thread in the texting inbox. For a customer you have not texted yet, click Send a Text in the top bar or New Text Message in the inbox and fill in the number. 2. Click the attach button: Click Attach file (MMS) next to the message box. A picker opens with three sources: Upload from Computer, Upload from Mobile Device and Choose from File Library. 3. Pick the picture: Choose Upload from Computer and select the photo, or Choose from File Library to reuse a photo or PDF the store already keeps, such as a brochure or a price sheet. In the mobile app, Add photo/file from device opens the phone's camera roll, which is the fastest way to send a picture you just took on the lot. 4. Add more if you need them: Click + Add More to attach another photo before sending. Several photos in one message arrive together on the customer's phone, in order. If the file is one you will send again, use Save to Folder so it is in the File Library next time. 5. Write one line and send: Type a short line in the message box saying what the picture is, then press Send Text or Send (Enter). The photo appears as a bubble in the thread with the text under it. 6. Check the status: Watch the status under the bubble move to delivered. A picture message takes a few seconds longer than a plain text because the carrier moves the file, so give it a moment before you resend. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login on desktop or the mobile app, a customer thread or a mobile number to start one, and the picture itself. Any user can send an MMS from the store's tracking number; there is nothing to turn on. Photos from a phone camera are the right size as they are. A document goes as a file attachment the customer opens from the message; a PDF of the window sticker or a price sheet works well. If the picture is a vehicle in your inventory, you usually do not need to attach anything: the Insert a vehicle from your inventory button drops the unit into the message with its photo, year, make, model and price from Inventory Link. Use the attach button for the pictures inventory does not have, such as a close up of the interior the customer asked about, the odometer, or a walkaround shot you took on the lot a minute ago. #### What you should see The picture shows as a bubble in the thread with the text you typed beneath it and a status that moves from sent to delivered. On the customer's phone it arrives as a picture in their normal messaging app, not as a link to a portal, and they reply to it the way they reply to any text. Pictures the customer sends back, the trade in, the insurance card, a screenshot of a competing quote, render in the same thread, and the whole exchange sits on the lead record in the communications log. On a phone that supports rich messaging the picture arrives in that format automatically, at full quality; on a phone that does not, it goes as a standard MMS, and you never have to pick. The two way texting inbox page shows what the thread looks like with pictures both ways. #### If it did not work The status says failed. Most often the number is a landline or a line that blocks pictures from business numbers. Check the validity dot on the lead and run the Phone Validator on the number. If plain texts deliver and pictures fail, the customer's plan is blocking MMS; send the photo as a link from the File Library instead. The file was refused by the picker. The file is too large or in a format the carrier will not carry. Send a photo as a JPEG or PNG straight from the camera roll, and a document as a PDF. Videos are better sent as a link. The picture arrived but looks small. Carriers compress MMS pictures. For a photo the customer needs at full size, upload it to the File Library and send the secure share link, which also tells you when they opened it. The picture is not on the lead. The thread belongs to a contact that is not linked to this lead. Merge the duplicate records and the thread moves to the surviving lead. #### Related tasks The full loop of writing, sending and reading status is in the guide on texting a customer, and the vehicle button has its own guide on sending a vehicle in a text, both in the LeadLocate Help Center. The File Library under the Files menu is where the store keeps the brochures and price sheets you will attach again and again, and its share links track opens. The LeadLocate mobile app is the tool for pictures taken on the lot: open the thread, add the photo from the device, send. Picture messages to a list of customers at once run through Bulk Texting under Marketing Tools on the dock, with the same attach control. Anything your store needs beyond that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Send the picture the customer asked for, not the gallery. One clear shot of the thing they doubted, the tires, the back seat, the odometer, closes more questions than ten glamour shots. Write the caption as an answer: this is the driver seat you asked about. Take the photo in the app and send it from the thread while you are still standing at the car; a picture ten minutes later reads as an afterthought. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I send a picture in a text from LeadLocate? A: Yes. Click Attach file (MMS) in the text composer, pick the photo from your computer, phone or the File Library, and send. It goes out as an MMS from the store's number. Q: Can I send more than one picture in the same message? A: Yes. Use + Add More in the attach picker to add photos before you send; they arrive together on the customer's phone. Q: Can customers send pictures back? A: Yes. Pictures a customer sends render in the same thread and are saved on the lead record with the rest of the conversation. Q: Do I have to attach a photo to send a car? A: No. Insert a vehicle from your inventory drops the unit into the message with its photo and price. Use the attach button for pictures inventory does not have. ### How to Send a Vehicle in a Text in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-a-vehicle-in-a-text You send a vehicle in a text from the composer in LeadLocate CRM: click Insert a vehicle from your inventory, search the unit by year, make, model, stock number or VIN, and pick it. The inventory comes from Inventory Link, and the message goes out with the vehicle's photo attached and its details and price in the body. Steps: 1. Make sure inventory is connected: Open Inventory in the CRM main menu, or My Inventory on the dock. If the list shows your units with photos and prices, you are ready. If it reads Inventory is not connected yet, contact our team; Inventory Link connects your feed or imports the units from your website. 2. Open the text composer: From the lead record, open the text conversation, or click Send a Text in the top bar, or open Messaging and click New Text Message. On the phone app, Text is on the bottom dock and the same vehicle button is in the composer. 3. Click the vehicle button: Click Insert a vehicle from your inventory next to the message box. The picker opens on the store's inventory with a photo, year, make, model, stock number and price on each unit. 4. Find the unit: Type in Search year, make, model, stock, VIN to narrow the list. Stock number or the last digits of the VIN gets you to one unit fastest when the customer asked about a specific car; a make and model shows every match when they asked what you have. 5. Pick it and write one line: Click the unit. The composer fills with its details and the photo attaches. Type a short line above it, such as the answer to what the customer asked, and keep the vehicle details as they are so the price the customer sees is the price in inventory. 6. Send and watch the status: Press Send Text or Send (Enter). The message shows as a bubble with the photo, and the status moves from sent to delivered. The customer sees the picture and the details in their messaging app and replies in the same thread. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login, a customer with a mobile number, and inventory flowing into Inventory Link for your store. A store with an inventory feed connects it in the Inventory Link portal; a store without one gives our team the address of its website, and Inventory Link imports the units from there, covered on the import inventory from your website page. A feed and DMS access are not required to use the platform. Any user can send a vehicle once inventory is connected; there is nothing to enable per user. Check that the unit is in inventory before you promise it. The picker shows exactly what Inventory Link holds, with the photo and price from the store's record. A unit that just landed and is not in the feed yet can be added by hand in the Inventory Link portal with Add vehicle, with a photo from your phone, and it appears in the picker on the next refresh. Units without a photographer's shots can use the promo photos and stock imagery tools in Inventory Link so nothing goes out as a blank card. #### What you should see In the composer, after you pick the unit: the vehicle's year, make, model, trim, stock number and price in the message body and the photo attached above your text. In the thread, after you send: a bubble with the photo and the details, with a delivery status that moves to delivered. On the customer's phone: the picture, the details and the price in their normal messaging app, as an MMS or in the richer format if their phone supports it, with nothing to download and no portal to log in to. The message is logged on the lead in the communications log with the unit named, so the next person who opens the record sees which car the customer was sent. The same picker serves the email composer, and on the LeadLocate mobile app the inventory list opens a detail sheet for the unit and the picker sits in the text composer. #### If it did not work The picker says inventory is not connected. Inventory Link has no units for the store yet. Contact our team; we connect the feed or import from your website, and the picker, the Inventory menu and the app fill from the same record. The unit is not in the picker. It is not in inventory yet, or it sold and dropped out of the feed. Check the Inventory menu; if the car is on the lot and missing, add it in the Inventory Link portal with Add vehicle, or if the store uses a feed, ask whoever manages it to include the unit. The photo did not go through but the text did. The customer's line blocks MMS, or the number is a landline. Check the validity dot on the lead and run the Phone Validator. Send the store website's page for the unit as a link instead. The price in the message is wrong. The price came from inventory. Fix it in the Inventory Link portal, or in the feed if that is where prices come from, and resend; editing the price by hand in a text is how a customer ends up quoted two numbers. #### Related tasks The full description of the button, what goes out and what it replaces is on the send vehicles by text feature page. The texting side, thread view, pictures and status is on the two way texting inbox page. Guides for texting a customer, sending a picture message and working the lead inbox are in the LeadLocate Help Center. A store that wants shoppers to find units themselves points them at the vehicle finder or the inventory website Inventory Link builds; a broker with no lot gets brand offer pages instead. Anything beyond that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Send the car the customer asked about first, then one alternative, not five. Search by stock number when you are looking at the car; it beats scrolling. Let the details in the message stay as inventory wrote them, so the customer's screenshot matches the window sticker. And send it while the customer is still on the phone or texting; a vehicle that arrives during the conversation gets opened, one that arrives an hour later gets scrolled past. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the button to send a vehicle in a text? A: In every text and email composer in LeadLocate CRM, on desktop and in the mobile app: Insert a vehicle from your inventory. It opens the picker on the units Inventory Link holds for your store. Q: Do I need an inventory feed to send vehicles? A: No. A feed and DMS access are not required. Inventory Link connects a feed if you have one or imports the units from your website, and you can add a unit by hand in the portal. Q: What does the customer receive? A: The vehicle's photo attached to the message with the year, make, model, trim, stock number and price in the body, in their normal messaging app, from the store's tracking number. Q: Can I send more than one vehicle in a text? A: Send one per message so each gets its own photo and the customer can reply to a specific car. Send the best match first and the alternative in the next text. ### How to Send an Application to a Lender in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-an-application-to-a-lender Open the application in the SecureWebX console and click Send to Lender. Choose the bank or credit union with Select a Lender, decide whether they see your deal worksheet or the documents only, set how long access lasts, and send. The lender opens a code gated, watermarked view and answers through the lender response portal, and the answer lands on the file. Steps: 1. Open the application: Find the deal in the SecureWebX inbox and click Open application. Read it once before you send it: applicant and co-applicant, residence, employment, income, the amount requested, the documents attached. This file is the lender's first impression of your store, so fix a blank field now rather than after a callback. 2. Start the share: On the application, click Send to Lender. The share panel opens on the same record, so the deal never gets copied into another tool to move it. Everything you choose next is recorded on this application. 3. Choose the lender: Pick the bank, credit union or finance company with Select a Lender. Your store's partner list fills that menu, so add the lenders you actually use once and they are there on every deal after that. Hunting for a new source, use Search the lender directory to browse lenders by category. 4. Decide what the lender sees: Deal worksheet (optional: the structure the lender sees) controls whether your pencil travels with the file or the lender reviews the application and documents alone. Send the worksheet when you want them looking at your structure. Send documents only when you want their number first. 5. Set the window and send it: Choose how long access lasts, three, seven, fourteen or thirty days, add a short message if the deal needs context, and send. The share goes out with an access code, so a forwarded link on its own opens nothing. 6. Watch for the answer: The lender reviews in a watermarked viewer and responds through the lender response portal: an approval with a call sheet attached, a decline, or a request for more information. The response lands on this application, and a request for more information becomes a stipulation on the file. 7. Fulfill, then close the share: Upload what the lender asked for with Upload for this lender and it appears inside the same share, under the same code and expiry. When the deal is placed, revoke any share you no longer want open. Access ends at once and the application records it. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login with a role that can share a file, and an application worth sending. The console opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and applications arrive in the credit application inbox as customers submit them. If your store is new to the console, SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account and the finance office is invited into it with roles. Two things make the send faster. Put your lenders on the partner list before the first deal, so choosing one is a click rather than a hunt. And fill in the deal structure if you intend to share it, since a lender reading a bare application has to invent the numbers you already know. #### What you should see The share listed on the application with the lender's name, when it was sent, when it expires, and its current state. The lender receives a link and enters the access code before anything opens. You see whether they have opened it, and you can revoke it from the application at any point, which ends access immediately whether the deal went elsewhere or the file went to the wrong desk. When the lender answers, the decision and outcome appear on this same application: approved with a call sheet, declined, or more information requested with the items listed. A request for more information arrives as a stipulation, so the next thing to do is on the file rather than in your memory of the call. The Send to Lender feature page covers the code, the expiry, the revoke and the watermark in full. #### What the lender sees on the other side No login into your console, and no account to create. The lender lands in a response portal built for one job: review this application and answer it. Inside it they open the credit application and the supporting documents in a secure viewer, and, when you attached a structure, Open lender deal recap (PDF) lays out the deal the way a buyer wants to read it, with the vehicle, the book-out and the checks your store ran. That recap comes from the worksheet on the application, which is why a deal with a worksheet usually gets a faster answer than one without. The credit application worksheets page covers building one and attaching it. Your store's own buying rules, the ones you hold each lender to, live in the console as Lender Guidelines, so the desk structures to the program before the file ever leaves. #### If it did not work The lender says nothing arrived. Check the address on that partner record first, since one wrong character sends the notice nowhere useful, then send the share link straight to the loan officer you deal with. The code travels separately, which is the point. The code will not open it. Codes are per share. A lender holding an older code from a previous deal has the wrong one. Send a fresh share and give them that code. Access expired mid deal. Expiry is a feature, not a fault: it closes the file without anyone remembering to. Send a new share with a longer window when a lender is still working the deal. It went to the wrong lender. Revoke the share from the application and their access ends immediately, then send it where it belongs. The revoke is on the record along with who did it. The lender still wants paper. Some desks do. Send it as a fax from the console instead; the eFax page covers your store's fax numbers and inbound status. #### Related tasks Clearing what a lender asked for is on the stipulations workflow page, since a request for more information becomes a stip and the upload for that lender lands back inside the same share. When a deal goes the other way, adverse action notices are generated from the same application record. The LeadLocate Help Center holds the rest of the finance office guides. A lender workflow your store runs differently is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Which lenders can I send an application to? A: Any lender your store chooses, including regional banks and credit unions that are on no portal at all. They need a browser and the access code. Add the lenders you use to your partner list and pick one when you send. Q: How long does the lender keep access? A: You choose when you send: three, seven, fourteen or thirty days. Access ends at expiry, or immediately when you revoke the share from the application. Q: Should I send the deal worksheet with the application? A: Send it when you want the lender responding to your structure, and hold it back when you want their number first. The choice is on the share panel each time, so it can differ by lender and by deal. Q: Where does the lender's decision show up? A: On the application you sent. The approval, decline or request for more information lands on that record with the call sheet or the item list, and a request for more information becomes a stipulation you can fulfill by upload. ### How to Send an Apply Link by Text in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-an-apply-link-by-text Copy your dealership's apply link from Apply links in the SecureWebX console with Copy link. Open the lead in LeadLocate CRM, start a text, write one line about why you are sending it, paste the link and send. The customer applies on their phone and the application lands in your inbox. Steps: 1. Copy the link you want to send: Open the SecureWebX console from the dock in the CRM, go to Apply links, and use Copy link on the link that fits this customer. A salesperson texting their own customer should copy their Personal apply link, so the application arrives tagged to them. A special finance customer gets the link that asks for proof of income up front. 2. Open the customer's thread in the CRM: Go back to the CRM, open the lead, and start a text from the record. The customer's number is already filled in and the message will be logged on their lead with the rest of the conversation. Send it from the thread you are already in rather than from a blank composer, because context is what makes the next message easy to write. 3. Write one line before the link: Never send a bare URL. Say who you are, what it is for, and how long it takes: your name, the store, the vehicle they asked about, and that the secure application takes a few minutes on the phone. A customer who is expecting the link opens it. A customer who gets an unexplained URL from a number they half recognize does not. 4. Paste the link and send: Paste the URL at the end of the message and send it from the store's tracking number. Links in a text are shortened automatically, so the message stays short and the clicks are recorded against the lead. You do not have to shorten anything yourself or paste a tracking parameter. 5. Use email when the customer prefers it: Some buyers want it in writing on a laptop, especially commercial and out of state customers. Click Send an Email in the top bar of the CRM, paste the same link into the body, and it behaves the same way on the other end. Plenty of stores send both and let the customer pick. 6. Watch the delivery status and the click: The outbound bubble carries a delivery status that moves from sent to delivered, and a failed status means the number never took the message. When the customer opens the link, the click is recorded on the lead, which tells you they are looking at it right now. That is the moment to be available, not two days later. 7. Work the application when it lands: A submitted application appears in the SecureWebX inbox with a status, an assignee, notes and whatever documents the customer uploaded. A customer who starts and stops turns into follow up for the salesperson instead of silence, so nobody has to guess whether the link was used. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login, a lead with a mobile number on it, and at least one apply link in the SecureWebX console. Both open from the same login, and the console opens from the dock in the CRM, so this whole job happens without a second password. If your store has not made a link yet, how to create an apply link covers it in a minute, and how to customize an apply link covers making one ask for proof of income. Text customers who asked to hear from you: a shopper who submitted a form, a buyer who called or texted first, a customer you are already working. The store's DNC Blacklist stops messages to numbers on it, and the validity dot on the lead tells you whether the number is a mobile before you write. Sending a credit application link to someone expecting it is good business and good compliance at the same time. #### What you should see Your message as a bubble on the right of the thread with the shortened link in it, a delivery status underneath, and the customer's reply on the left when it comes. On their end, a branded application page with your dealership's name on it, five steps to work through, and a save as they go, so an interrupted customer picks up where they stopped instead of starting over. On the lead record, the text, the click on the link and the application that follows all sit in the same communications log, which means a manager or a teammate can read the whole story without asking you what happened. The finished application appears in the credit application inbox with the apply link it came from, so you can tell at a glance whether the personal links are producing. #### What should the text actually say? Short, specific, signed. Three sentences beats a paragraph. Name yourself and the store in the first line, because a tracking number is not in their contacts yet. Say what the link does in plain words: this is our secure credit application, it takes about five minutes on your phone. Then say what happens next, because that is the part that gets it opened: once it is in, I will have numbers for you today. Do not quote a payment you cannot stand behind, and do not promise an approval. Say what you will do with the application, not what a lender will decide. Buyers are used to being told anything to get them in the door, and the rep who keeps the message honest is the one who gets the return text on Saturday. Send it while the conversation is warm. The best time to text an apply link is ninety seconds after the customer said they want to know what payments look like, not the following morning. If the customer goes quiet, schedule a text follow up in the thread rather than trying to remember. #### If it did not work The bubble says failed. The number is a landline, is out of service, or does not take messages from business numbers. Check the validity dot on the lead, run the phone validator on it, and call instead if it is a landline. The customer says the link does not open. Confirm the link is still switched on in Apply links, and check it yourself with Open apply page in new tab. A retired link shows a page saying it is no longer available, which is the console telling you to send a current one. The application arrived with no salesperson on it. You sent the store link. Copy your Personal apply link instead and the credit follows you. The customer started and stopped. That is ordinary shopping behaviour, and it is the strongest buying signal you will get all day. A started application comes back to the CRM as follow up, so call them, answer the question that stopped them, and the link reopens where they left it. They never opened it. The message was probably a bare URL. Send it again with one line of context and your name on it. #### Related tasks The full texting loop, from the composer to the delivery status, is on how to text a customer. The workflow version of this task, with the wording and the timing laid out, is on text a credit application link. Click stats on every link you send are covered on trackable short links. The LeadLocate Help Center has the rest of the guides for the credit side, including creating and customizing links and reviewing what comes back. A sending path your store wants that is not here is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: What number does the apply link text come from? A: The store's tracking number, the same one the rest of your texting goes out on. Replies land in the texting inbox and on the lead, not on anyone's personal phone. Q: Should I send the store link or my personal apply link? A: Send your personal apply link when you are texting your own customer, so the application arrives tagged to you. Store links are for the website, printed cards and general inbound traffic. Q: Can I tell whether the customer opened the link? A: Yes. Links in a text are shortened automatically and the click is recorded on the lead, so you know when they are looking at the application. Q: What if the customer would rather get it by email? A: Use Send an Email in the top bar of the CRM and paste the same link into the body. It works the same way and lands in the same inbox when they submit. ### How to Send an RCS Message in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-send-an-rcs-message You send an RCS message in LeadLocate CRM the same way you send any text: open the customer's thread or New Text Message, write the message, add a picture or a vehicle if you want, and press Send Text. The platform sends it as RCS when the customer's phone and carrier support it and as a standard SMS when they do not, automatically, in the same thread. Steps: 1. Open the text composer: From the lead record, open the text conversation, or click Send a Text in the top bar, or open Messaging and click New Text Message. There is no separate RCS screen; the ordinary composer is the RCS composer. 2. Pick the customer: If the number is not filled in, type it in To or search by name with Contact Lookup. The message is logged on the lead you pick. 3. Write the message: Type in Write your message... or pick a saved message under Select a Template. Write it as you would any text; what changes is how it renders on the customer's phone, not what you type. 4. Add the rich part if you want one: RCS earns its keep with pictures and vehicles. Click Insert a vehicle from your inventory to drop a unit in with its photo and price, or Attach file (MMS) for a photo or document. On a phone that takes RCS the picture shows full size; on one that does not, the same message goes as MMS. 5. Send it: Press Send Text or Send (Enter). The platform checks whether the destination accepts RCS and picks the format. You do nothing different. 6. Read the status: The bubble shows the same status either way: sent, then delivered, or failed. You will not see a format label on the bubble, and you do not need one; the customer's phone decided, and the reply comes back into the same thread. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login on desktop or in the mobile app and a customer with a mobile number. RCS with SMS fallback is part of the texting stack from the first message on the store's tracking numbers; there is nothing for the store or the user to enable. Whether a given message goes as RCS depends on the customer's side: their phone, their messaging app and their carrier. That is not something you check before sending, because the fallback covers the case where it is not supported. The rules for who you text are the same as for any text: leads who asked to hear from you, customers who contacted the store first, buyers you are working. The DNC Blacklist applies, a STOP reply stops the thread regardless of format, and the message is logged on the lead either way. The RCS messaging with SMS fallback page explains why the fallback matters more than the format. #### What you should see On your side: a bubble in the thread with a status that moves to delivered, exactly like a plain text. On the customer's side, one of two things. A phone that supports RCS shows the message in the richer format: a larger picture, the vehicle card with its photo and price, and read and typing indicators inside their messaging app. A phone that does not shows the same words as a standard SMS, and the same picture as an MMS. Either way the customer replies in their normal messaging app and the reply lands in your thread and on the lead. Nothing about the thread splits by format. The conversation is one thread per customer, the delivery status is one status, and the communications log on the lead is one log. The two way texting inbox page shows the thread view with pictures and status. #### If it did not work The customer says it arrived as a plain text. Their phone, app or carrier did not accept RCS for that message, so the fallback sent SMS. That is the feature working. The words, the picture and the delivery record are the same; only the rendering differs. There is nothing to fix on your side. The bubble says failed. The number rejected the message in every format, which usually means a landline, a disconnected line or a wrong number on the lead. Check the validity dot, run the Phone Validator, and call if it is a landline. The picture looks small on the customer's phone. The message fell back to MMS and the carrier compressed the image. For a photo the customer needs at full size, share it from the File Library as a link, which also records when it was opened. You want a specific RCS sender configuration for your store. That is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership; ask through contact us. #### Related tasks The step by step guides on texting a customer, sending a picture message and sending a vehicle in a text are all in the LeadLocate Help Center, and every one of them goes out as RCS with SMS fallback without a change to the steps. Texting a list at once runs through Bulk Texting under Marketing Tools on the dock with the same delivery logic. The LeadLocate mobile app sends from the same tracking numbers with the same fallback. #### Tips from the floor Do not ask a customer whether they have RCS; they mostly do not know, and it does not change what you send. Put the vehicle in the message, because that is where the richer format shows. Keep the words short so they read well either way. And judge a conversation by the reply, not the rendering: a customer who answers a plain SMS in thirty seconds is a better lead than one who reads a rich card and says nothing. #### Questions and answers Q: Is there an RCS button in LeadLocate? A: No, and you do not need one. Send a text the normal way and the platform delivers it as RCS when the customer's phone supports it and as SMS when it does not. Q: How do I know if my message went as RCS or SMS? A: The thread shows one delivery status either way. The format is decided by the customer's phone and carrier at send time, and the words, picture and record are the same. Q: Does RCS cost extra or need setup? A: It is part of the texting stack on every LeadLocate plan from the first message. A store that wants a specific RCS sender configuration can request it and our team puts it in production. Q: What happens if the customer's phone does not support RCS? A: The same message goes out as a standard SMS, with any picture as MMS, in the same thread with the same status. Nothing is lost and nothing is resent. ### How to Set Business Hours in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-business-hours Business hours in LeadLocate CRM tell the phone system when your store is open, so calls to your tracking numbers inside those hours reach your team and calls outside them follow your After Hours handling. They live under Phone & IVR in Account Settings. A new account is set to Open 24 hours; this guide turns that off and sets a real week. Steps: 1. Open the phone settings: In the desktop CRM open Account Settings, then My Account Settings, and choose Phone & IVR. The IVR Settings page holds the Virtual Receptionist and everything about how inbound calls are handled. 2. Find the hours: Under Call Handling click Edit Hours. A new account shows Open 24 hours switched on, which means every call is treated as a business hours call. 3. Set each day: Switch off Open 24 hours and set the open and close time for each day of the week. Mark a day closed if the store is dark that day. Use the hours the phone should ring the floor, which are usually the showroom hours, not the service hours. 4. Pick the time zone: Choose the store's zone, Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska, Hawaii or Arizona. Hours are read in this zone, so a wrong zone shifts every call by an hour or more. 5. Decide what happens after hours: Under After Hours choose the handling for calls outside the hours: Company Voicemail with a Greeting you record in the browser or add with Upload Greeting, or an Answering Service number if the store uses one. Save the page. 6. Test it: Call your tracking number from a cell phone during hours and confirm it rings the floor, then call again after close, or set the close time to five minutes from now, and confirm you reach the after hours handling. Put the real close time back. #### Before you start You need to be the Master Administrator or a Manager, because Account Settings is theirs. Have the store's real showroom hours for each day, the time zone, and a decision about after hours: voicemail, or a messaging service with a number to hand calls to. If you plan to record the voicemail greeting yourself, do it from a quiet office; the recorder runs in the browser and takes about a minute. It helps to know how your inbound calls flow before you set the hours. Calls to the tracking numbers ring the users on the Forward Calls To list, and the Virtual Receptionist can answer first with press 5 call screening. Business hours sit underneath both: they decide whether a call is a business hours call at all. The call forwarding and ring lists page explains who rings and in what order. #### What you should see During the hours you set, a call to a tracking number rings the floor the way it did before. After close, the caller hears the company voicemail greeting or is handed to the answering service number you entered, and the store is not ringing an empty showroom. Each call, including the after hours ones, appears in Call Logs and in the customer's communications log, and a voicemail left after close is on the lead in the morning with its recording and transcript, so the first call of the day goes back to the customer who called last night. Every call is also written to the LeadLocate CRM lead record whatever the hour, so a manager can see how many calls arrive after close and decide whether the hours, or the staffing, need to move. #### If it did not work Calls still ring through after close. Open 24 hours is still on, or the time zone is wrong. Open Edit Hours, confirm the switch is off and each day has a close time, and check the zone matches the store. Then look at Call Handling on the same page: hours are read by the receptionist flow, so if the Virtual Receptionist and After Hours settings are not what you expect, correct them there. Callers hear nothing after close. After Hours is set to voicemail but no greeting exists. Record one under Greeting or add a file with Upload Greeting, and listen to it once before saving. Customers book visits for hours the store is closed. Those are booking hours, not business hours, and they are set separately on the calendar. The appointment booking links page shows where; the guide to setting your booking link walks through the grid. #### Related tasks Once the hours are right, turn on the Virtual Receptionist if you want calls screened before they ring, and record the per user voicemail greetings so an after hours call to a rep's number sounds like the rep. Set the calendar booking hours to match, or deliberately not match, the phone hours. The help center lists every guide, including the one for turning on the Virtual Receptionist, and the tracking phone numbers page explains the numbers the hours apply to. #### Tips from the floor Set the close time fifteen minutes after the doors lock, because the last customer of the day calls back from the parking lot. Keep Sunday closed if nobody is there, rather than open with no one answering; a voicemail with a promise to call back at nine beats eight rings. And when the store changes to holiday hours, change them here the same day; the phone does not read the sign on the door. #### Questions and answers Q: Where are business hours set in LeadLocate CRM? A: Under Account Settings, My Account Settings, Phone & IVR. On the IVR Settings page, Edit Hours under Call Handling holds the weekly hours, the Open 24 hours switch and the time zone; After Hours holds what happens outside them. Q: What is the default for a new account? A: Open 24 hours, with the Virtual Receptionist off, so every call rings the Forward Calls To list until you set real hours. Switch Open 24 hours off and set each day to change that. Q: Are booking hours the same as business hours? A: No. Business hours govern the phone. Booking hours govern the times a customer can pick on your booking link and are set per calendar in the calendar Settings popup, so a store can take bookings for hours that differ from when the phone is answered. Q: What happens to a call after hours? A: It follows the After Hours handling you chose: the company voicemail greeting, with the recording and transcript on the lead in the morning, or the answering service number you entered. Either way the call is logged. ### How to Set Call Alert Keywords URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-alert-keywords Open Account Settings from the menu controls at the top of LeadLocate CRM, find the Call Alerts card and click Alert Settings. Type a word or phrase into Add a keyword and click Add Keyword. It joins the Alert Keywords table, and every transcribed call that contains it is flagged as an alert on Call Logs. Steps: 1. Open Account Settings: Click the menu controls button at the top of the CRM and choose Account Settings. The My Account Settings page opens with your profile and CRM settings grouped in cards. 2. Open Alert Settings from the Call Alerts card: Scroll to the Call Alerts card, which reads choose the words and phrases to watch for on your calls, and click Alert Settings. The Alert Settings page opens. 3. Review the Alert Keywords already on the list: The Alert Keywords table lists every word the store watches for, with the Keyword itself, the date it was Added and a Delete control. Use the search box above the table to check whether a word is already there before you add it. 4. Add a word or phrase: Click into Add a keyword, type the word or short phrase, for example trade in, and click Add Keyword. The new keyword appears in the table straight away with today's date. Add one keyword at a time, and add each form a customer might say, such as cancel and cancelled, as its own entry. 5. Remove a keyword you no longer need: Find the row and click Delete. The keyword leaves the list, and calls from then on are checked against the words that remain. 6. See the flagged calls: Open Call Logs under Calls in the main menu. In the toolbar, change the alert filter from All Calls to Alert Calls Only. The log now shows only the calls whose transcripts contain one of your keywords, each with its recording and transcript on the row. #### Before you start You need a login to the desktop LeadLocate CRM. Alert keywords are read from call transcripts, so the feature works on the calls your store records and transcribes through the CRM: inbound calls to your tracking numbers and outbound calls from the softphone. The call recording and transcription page covers how those calls are captured. Have a short list ready before you open the page. Three groups work well: words that signal a problem (cancel, refund, complaint), words that signal money (trade in, payoff, financing, cosigner) and words that help you coach (a competitor's name, payment, monthly). The Call Alerts feature page explains how stores use each group day to day. #### How do I set up keyword alerts for my calls? Keyword alerts for calls work like a news alert for your phones. You write the words once, and the CRM watches for them on every transcribed call. The list belongs to the store rather than to one user, so the same Alert Keywords are checked on every salesperson's calls, and a manager filtering Call Logs sees the whole floor. Phrases work as well as single words. Trade in, down payment and take me off your list are all good entries. Keep each entry to the words a customer would actually say out loud, the way a transcript would write them, rather than an abbreviation your team uses internally. #### What you should see On Alert Settings, each keyword you add appears as its own row in the Alert Keywords table, with the date in the Added column. The table sorts and searches like every other list in the CRM, so a long list stays easy to manage. On Call Logs, a call whose transcript contains one of your words carries an alert marker in its row. Switch the alert filter to Alert Calls Only and the log narrows to those calls; switch it back to All Calls to see everything. Open the transcript from the row to find the exact sentence that raised the flag, and play the recording to hear the tone behind it. The same call sits on the customer's record in the communication timeline, beside the texts and emails. #### Quick checks Pick words customers say, in the way they say them. A transcript writes speech as speech. Trade in finds more calls than the abbreviation on your desk sheet, and adding both cancel and cancelled catches both forms. Give new keywords a day of calls. A keyword added this morning flags the calls transcribed from then on, so the alert view fills up as the day's calls come in. Use the other filters with the alert filter. Pair Alert Calls Only with the user filter to coach one salesperson, or with the call type filter to review inbound calls alone. Keep the list current. Review it every month. Remove words that flag ordinary calls and add the ones this month's promotions and inventory make important. For anything else, our support team can look at the page with you and sort it out on the call. #### Related tasks Once calls are flagged, the next job is reading them: how to read a call transcript walks through the transcript lightbox. A flagged call often ends in a follow up text, covered in how to text a customer, or in a message timed for the next morning, covered in how to schedule a text or email for later. A customer who asks the store to stop calling belongs on the blacklist, covered in how to blacklist a number. Every other guide is in the Help Center. #### Questions and answers Q: Where are call alert keywords set? A: On the Alert Settings page. Open Account Settings from the menu controls at the top of the CRM, find the Call Alerts card and click Alert Settings. Add words with Add a keyword and Add Keyword. Q: Is a call keyword alert like a Google Alert for keywords? A: It works on the same idea, applied to your phone calls. You list the words once, and every transcribed call that contains one is flagged on Call Logs, where a manager filters to Alert Calls Only. Q: Can I add phrases as well as single words? A: Yes. Short phrases such as trade in, down payment or take me off your list work as keywords. Add each one as its own entry, the way a customer would say it. Q: Does each salesperson have a separate keyword list? A: No, and that is the point. The list belongs to the store, so every salesperson's calls are checked against the same words and a manager reviews the whole floor from one filtered view. ### How to Set Notification Preferences in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-notification-preferences Notification preferences in LeadLocate CRM decide how you hear about a new lead, a text reply, a call or an email: a text to your phone, a sound in the browser, or both. Each is a switch on your user record under User Management, and the plain language toggles under My Account Settings do the same job for your own login. Steps: 1. Open the Notifications tab: In the desktop CRM open Billing & Admin, choose User Management, open the user with Edit User and click Notifications. A Manager or the Master Administrator can open any user; this is where a new hire's alerts are set before the first shift. 2. Choose the text alerts: Under Text Notifications switch on each event you want texted to the mobile number on the record: a new lead assigned to you, a customer's text reply, an inbound call, a new email, a signed worksheet. Leave off what you would rather only see at the desk. 3. Choose the sounds: Under Notification Sounds pick what chimes in the browser: Play New Lead sound, Play Text Message sound, Play Email sound, Play Team Chat sound, Play Deal Tracker sound and Play System Message sound. Each is its own switch. Save the record. 4. Set your own alerts from Account Settings: Any user, whatever the role, opens Account Settings, then My Account Settings and Alert Settings. Under SMS Notification Settings: the toggles read in plain language: Notify me when I get a NEW LEAD, Notify me when I get a NEW TEXT, Notify me when I get a NEW CALL, Notify me when I get a NEW EMAIL. 5. Add alert keywords if you want them: On Alert Settings, under Alert Keywords, use Add Keyword to list words that should get your attention when a customer's message contains them, such as trade in. Then use Back to My Account Settings to return. 6. Set the per feed copy: For alerts that follow a lead source rather than a person, open Lead Feeds Manager and switch on SMS Notify on the feed. Allow Manager Copies sends a manager a copy of every lead from that feed without assigning it to them. 7. Test it: Use Add New Lead to enter a test lead assigned to yourself, or have a teammate text your tracking number. You should get the text on your phone and hear the sound at your desk within seconds. #### Before you start You need the cell number you actually carry on your user record, and a browser that is allowed to play sound on the CRM tab. A new user already has the important alerts on, so if you have done nothing you still get new lead alerts and the sounds; this guide is about tuning them to how you work. Who can do it: every user sets their own alerts under My Account Settings. A Manager or the Master Administrator sets any user's alerts from User Management, which is how a store decides that a BDC agent gets new lead texts and a finance manager gets signed worksheet texts. Per feed SMS Notify lives in the Lead Feeds Manager and is a manager's job. The lead notifications and alerts page describes every alert type and what each one carries. #### What you should see When a new lead is assigned to you, a text arrives from the store's CRM number with the customer's name, what they asked about and a link that opens the lead. At the desk the New Lead sound plays and a toast slides in at the corner of the screen. A customer's text reply does the same on the text reply alert and the Text Message sound. The LeadLocate mobile app carries the same alerts and adds an inbound call alert screen, so you see who is calling the tracking number before you answer. A manager with Allow Manager Copies on a feed sees every lead from that source land, without owning any of them. That is the split most stores want: the rep hears about their leads, the manager hears about the source. #### If it did not work No text arrived. Check the mobile number on the user record is a cell, with no extension, and that the event is switched on under Text Notifications. If that number ever replied with a stop keyword, it is blocked from alerts on that channel, the same way a customer's number would be, until it opts back in. No sound at the desk. Browsers block sound on a tab until you have interacted with the page, and a muted tab or muted computer plays nothing. Click somewhere in the CRM, check the tab is not muted, and confirm the sound toggle is on under Notification Sounds. The on-screen toast shows even when sound is off, so if you see the toast the alert fired. The whole floor got the alert. Assignment decides who is notified. If a feed is set to Unassigned, nobody owns the lead and the notify list hears about it instead. Set the feed to round robin or a single user in the Lead Feeds Manager; the round robin lead assignment page covers the rotation. #### Related tasks Notifications tell you something happened; the settings around them decide what happens next. Set up your profile first so the mobile number and PIN on your record are right. Set up lead feeds so each source has the assignment and SMS Notify it needs. Add users and roles if you are configuring alerts for the team. Every guide is in the help center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where notifications sit among the rest of the platform. #### Tips from the floor Reps who live on the lot turn on text alerts for new leads and text replies and leave email off; managers who live at the desk keep the sounds on and the texts off, and put themselves on manager copies for the feeds they run. Turn on the Team Chat sound only if you are the person people wait on. And keep the signed worksheet alert on for whoever desks deals, because that text is the one that gets a customer into finance before they cool off. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do I change my notification settings? A: Two places. Your own login: Account Settings, My Account Settings, Alert Settings. Any user's record: Billing & Admin, User Management, Edit User, then the Notifications tab, which a Manager or the Master Administrator uses to set alerts for the team. Q: Can I get a text for new leads but not for emails? A: Yes. Every alert type is its own switch under Text Notifications, and every sound is its own switch under Notification Sounds, so a rep can be texted for new leads and replies while emails only chime at the desk. Q: How does a manager get copied on every lead from one source? A: Open the feed in the Lead Feeds Manager and switch on Allow Manager Copies, or use SMS Notify on the feed. The manager sees each lead land without being assigned any of them. Q: Do the alerts reach the phone app? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app carries the same alerts, opens the lead from the link, and shows an inbound call alert screen with the caller before you answer. ### How to Set Your Booking Link in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-your-booking-link Your booking link in LeadLocate CRM lives in the Settings popup on the Calendar page. The My Calendar tab holds your personal link and your weekly booking hours; the Team Calendar tab holds the store's link and hours. Set the hours, save, copy the link, and put it in your signature, your texts and your website. Customers then pick the time themselves. Steps: 1. Open the calendar settings: In the desktop CRM click Calendar in the main menu, then Settings in the page header. One popup opens with a tab per calendar. 2. Pick the calendar: Choose My Calendar for your personal link, which shows your name and photo and books the visit to you. A manager chooses Team Calendar for the store link, which shows only the company and lands bookings on the shared calendar unassigned. 3. Set the hours the link offers: Each day of the week has an on or off switch and a start and end time. Switch off your days off, shorten the days you leave early, and save the hours. A customer opening the link only sees times inside this grid. 4. Copy the link: Click Copy Calendar link to clipboard. The link itself is copy only; you do not edit its address. If you want the calendar on a page you control, the same tab carries the embed code. 5. Put the link where customers are: Paste it into your Email Signature on your user record, into the texts you send when a customer asks to come in, and on your personal website: in the website editor's Business Info tab the Schedule URL field has Pre-fill with your personal calendar link and Pre-fill with the shared team calendar link buttons so you do not retype it. 6. Send it from the phone: In the LeadLocate mobile app the calendar view carries Calendar booking links with Personal Link and Team Link one tap away, and Quick Schedule mirrors your personal link so you can text it mid conversation. #### Before you start You need your LeadLocate login and a clear idea of the hours you actually take visits, which are not the hours the store is open. A salesperson who is off Mondays and leaves at four on Wednesdays sets exactly that; a link that offers a slot you then have to cancel costs more than a link that offers fewer slots. Have your photo on your profile first, because the personal link shows it. Any user sets their own personal link and hours. The team link and team hours are a manager's job, and the team grid is independent of any one person's hours and of the phone system's business hours, so the store can take bookings for hours that differ from when the phone is answered. The appointment booking links page explains the two kinds of link; this page is the clicks. #### What you should see Open your personal link in a private browser window and you see what the customer sees: your name and photo, a calendar, and only the days and times inside your grid. Book a test visit and it appears on your LeadLocate CRM calendar with the customer attached, on the Workspace under the day's appointments, and, if you have connected it, on your Google Calendar. When the appointment confirmation templates are switched on in Automated Templates, the confirmation text and email go out on booking. The team link shows the store rather than a person, and a booking through it lands on the shared team calendar unassigned, ready for a BDC agent to hand to whoever is free. Several customers can pick the same Saturday morning on the team link, because the store staffs it; the personal link blocks a slot once it is taken. #### If it did not work The link offers no times. Every day in the grid is switched off, or the hours were not saved. Open Settings, switch the working days on, check each has a start and end time, and save the hours again. The link shows the wrong name or no photo. The personal link reads your user record. Add the photo under Profile and Signature and confirm the name on the record; the guide to setting up your profile covers it. Customers booked but nobody was confirmed. The appointment confirmation templates are off. Open Automated Templates and switch on the appointment confirmation text and email, and add the reminder step to your Follow Up Process so the customer hears from you the morning of the visit. #### Related tasks Connect Google Calendar so a booking shows on the calendar you already carry; the guide is in the help center beside this one. Set the phone system's business hours separately, because the two grids are independent on purpose. If you run a BDC, the BDC appointment setting page describes how the team link, the shared calendar and round robin fit together. A printed business card or referral card from Design Studio can carry the link as a QR code, which is the fastest way to get it in front of a customer on the lot. #### Tips from the floor Send the personal link to a customer you are already talking to and the team link to everyone else; a customer who has been texting with you should not be handed to a generic company page. When a customer on the phone says they need to check with their spouse, text the link during the call, and the visit gets booked that night instead of never. And leave a fifteen minute buffer at the end of your day in the grid, because a 5:45 visit on a 6:00 close is a visit you will rush. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do I find my booking link? A: Calendar, then Settings, then the My Calendar tab. The link is there with Copy Calendar link to clipboard beside it, and the same tab holds your booking hours and the embed code. On the phone, Calendar booking links in the app carries the Personal Link and Team Link. Q: Where do I set the hours the link offers? A: In the same popup, on the My Calendar or Team Calendar tab: one on or off switch and a start and end time per day. Save the hours and the link only offers times inside that grid. Q: What is the difference between my link and the team link? A: Your personal link shows your name and photo, uses your hours and books the visit to you. The team link shows only the store, uses the team hours, does not block slots, and lands bookings on the shared calendar unassigned for a BDC agent to route. Q: Can I put the booking calendar on my website? A: Yes. The tab carries an embed code for a page you control, and the website editor's Business Info tab has a Schedule URL field with a button to pre-fill it with your personal or the shared team link. ### How to Set up Auto Broker Mode in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-auto-broker-mode Auto broker mode is how Inventory Link works for a broker with no lot. Sign in, fill in Store details, and skip the feed: your brand offer pages come online under your own name right away. Then set Where the leads go so every request reaches the person who answers it, in the CRM and in the inbox. Steps: 1. Open Inventory Link: Sign in to My LeadLocate and launch Inventory Link from the same place you launch the CRM. A broker signs in with the same login a franchise store uses, so there is nothing separate to buy and nothing to install on a computer. The portal opens on the dashboard. 2. Fill in your store details: Open Store details and enter Store name exactly as shoppers know you, then the number you actually answer in Phone. If you already have a site of your own, put its address in Website. These fields are what your public pages are built from, so spell the name the way it should appear in print. 3. Leave the feed alone: On the dashboard, Your feeds stays empty. That is broker mode: an inventory feed and DMS access are not required to run the platform, which is exactly why a broker with no lot can work here the day the account opens. Nothing is waiting on a feed to be built. 4. Check your brand offer pages: Open the brand pages the account created for you and read one the way a shopper would. Each page carries the make, the offer cards, and a request form under them. A shopper picks the brand, describes the unit they want, and the finder goes and locates it. Send the link to yourself and fill the form in once so you see the confirmation the shopper sees. 5. Point the leads at the right person: In the builder, set Where the leads go and put the address that should get the alert in Email the lead to. Use See the leads to open the list and confirm your test request is sitting at the top with the phone number and the notes on it. 6. Put the pages on your own site: If you run a site of your own, take the direct link or the Embed code and drop it in. Leave Show matching vehicles from your inventory switched off while you have no units of your own; turn it on the day you start listing cars you hold, and the same page starts showing them. 7. Add the people who answer: Open the team area and use Add a User for each person who works your requests, with their Email address and a Role. Everyone gets their own sign in, so the lead history reads as who did what rather than as one shared login. #### Before you start You need a My LeadLocate login with Inventory Link on the account. A broker signs up the same way a rooftop does, so there is nothing extra to arrange first. You do not need a lot, a feed, a DMS connection or a photographer, and you do not need a developer to put anything live. Have three things in front of you: the name shoppers know you by, the phone number you answer on a Saturday, and the email address that should receive a request. If you already own a website, have its address handy too. Everything else on the page is filled in for you. If you want the business case before the setup, read the auto broker lead generation page first, then come back here for the clicks. #### What you should see The moment Store details is saved, your brand offer pages read as yours: your name, your number, your offers. Each make gets a page, each page carries offer cards and a request form, and the whole thing works on a phone with the panels rising from the bottom of the screen the way a shopper expects. On the dashboard, Your feeds shows nothing and Vehicles reads zero. That is right. What fills up instead is the request list: who asked, what they are looking for, how they plan to pay, and how to reach them. The same person is a lead record in LeadLocate CRM, with the texting thread, the call button and the follow up process already attached, so a broker works a request exactly the way a store works a lead. #### What a broker does differently A franchise store starts from a feed and merchandises what is on the ground. You start from a brand and a buyer. The page does the shopping for you: the finder takes a description in plain words, the make, the model, the budget, the trade, and turns it into a request you can quote. Your job is the sourcing, so the software carries the part that used to be a spreadsheet and three phone tabs. Two habits pay off fast. First, answer with the unit, not with a question; a request that gets a real quote inside the hour is the one that closes. Second, keep every conversation in the CRM instead of your personal phone, because a broker who changes phones should never lose a buyer. Both are covered on the LeadLocate Help Center. #### If it did not work No brand pages appear. Store details is not saved. Open it again, confirm Store name and Phone both carry values, and save. Your pages are built from those two fields and stay blank until they are filled. Your test request never arrived. Check Email the lead to for a typo and check Where the leads go points at the right place. The request is still in the list either way, so open See the leads and you will find it even when the alert went to the wrong address. The page shows no vehicles. That is broker mode doing its job. Show matching vehicles from your inventory stays off until you list units you hold yourself, and a shopper still gets offers, a brand page and a form without it. A teammate has no way in. They have not been invited yet. Use Add a User, send the invite, and have them set their own password from the email. Roles decide what each person sees. #### Related tasks Everything Inventory Link does for a store with a lot, from feeds to the website builder to the embeddable widget, is on the Inventory Link product page. The CRM side, where the request becomes a worked lead with texts, calls and appointments, is on the LeadLocate CRM page, and the month to month plans are on pricing. The Help Center carries the step by step guides for the tasks that come next: importing inventory from your website the day you start holding units, setting your follow up process, and connecting a calendar so a shopper books their own appointment. A broker workflow you need that you do not see here is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I need an inventory feed to use auto broker mode? A: No. Broker mode is built for a broker with no lot: the brand offer pages, the finder and the request forms all work with no feed and no DMS access on the account. Q: Where do my broker leads land? A: In the Inventory Link request list and in LeadLocate CRM as a lead record, with the shopper's notes, phone number and budget attached, so you can text or call from the same screen. Q: Can I add my own vehicles later? A: Yes. The day you start holding units, list them or import them from your website, then switch on Show matching vehicles from your inventory and the same pages start showing your cars. Q: Can my whole team work the requests? A: Yes. Add a User invites each person with their own sign in and role, and every text, call and note is recorded against the person who made it. ### How to Set up Brand Pages in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-brand-pages Brand pages are built for you. Once your vehicles are in Inventory Link, the platform builds a page for each make you carry plus a dealer page for the store. Fill in Profile so the pages show the right phone number, hours and address, open the brand chooser to review each page, then point your advertising at the brand hero page for the make you want to push. Steps: 1. Get the inventory into the portal: The platform decides which brand pages to build from the makes in your inventory, so connect a provider feed, run the import that reads your own dealership website, or add units by hand. A broker with no lot switches on auto broker inventory mode and gets the pages connected anyway. 2. Fill in Profile: Open Profile in the dealer portal and enter the store name, the phone number a customer should call, the hours, the address and your website. Every brand page, hero page and the dealer page pull from there, so this is the one place where a wrong number costs you a week of calls. 3. Open the brand chooser and pick a make: Use Pick your brand to open the page for one of your makes. Do this for every franchise you carry, one at a time, and keep the links as you go; those are what your advertising, your email signature and your text messages will point at. 4. Read each page the way a shopper would: On a phone, from the top. The current offers should be there in the right card shapes, the lead form should sit beside them, the inventory under them should be cars you actually have, and the Schedule a Visit sheet should rise from the bottom of the screen when you tap a vehicle. 5. Point your advertising at the right page: Send a campaign for one make to that make brand hero page rather than to your home page, because a shopper who clicked an offer should land on the offer. Use the dealer page as your everywhere link, the one on the business card and in the signature. 6. Watch what comes back: Requests land in the dealer portal under Requests and in the CRM as leads with the vehicle attached. The leads list pages through them with Page of, so after a campaign you can walk the whole run and see which make and which offer actually produced names. #### Before you start Brand pages are built for you, so setting them up is mostly a matter of telling the platform who you are and what you sell. Two inputs do that. The first is your inventory, because Inventory Link works out which makes you carry from the vehicles in the portal. Connect a provider feed under Feeds, run the import that reads the cars off your own dealership website, or add units by hand. A broker with no lot switches on auto broker inventory mode and gets brand offer pages connected without a vehicle to their name. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. The second is Profile in the dealer portal: the store name, the phone number, the hours, the address and your website. Every brand page and the dealer page draw from there, so one correct entry puts the right number under every offer. The portal opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on. Know the difference between the two page types before you look at them. The brand page is the standing page for a make, with the offers and the inventory under them. The brand hero page is the one you point advertising at, built to land a shopper on a single make with a single reason to raise their hand. #### What you should see on each page A page for every make on your lot, with the manufacturer's current programs on it in cards built for the kind of offer each one is, so a lease reads as a lease, a rate reads as a rate and customer cash reads as cash. Six card formats cover the shapes an offer comes in, and every form on the page lands on one shared confirmation, so a shopper always knows their message went somewhere. Under the offers sit the vehicles from your inventory that the offer applies to, each with photos, the decoded build, the mileage and the price. Every vehicle carries a Schedule a Visit sheet, and on a phone that sheet rises from the bottom of the screen instead of shoving the page out of the way. The dealer page gathers the whole store in one place: your makes, your offers, your inventory and the vehicle finder, under your name and your phone number from Profile. That is the link to put on a business card, in an email signature and at the end of a text. #### Where the leads from a brand page go Every offer form and every visit request from a brand page arrives in the dealer portal under Requests and in LeadLocate CRM as a lead carrying the vehicle or the offer the shopper was looking at. The leads list in the portal shows them in order with Page of at the bottom, so you can walk back through a week of them after a campaign and see what the pages actually produced. These are inbound, opt in leads: a shopper chose an offer, typed their own contact details and asked you to get in touch. Answer them the way you would answer a customer standing on the lot, with the vehicle in the reply, and set the appointment in the same conversation. The what to expect from car sales leads page is worth reading with a new salesperson before they start working them. #### What these pages do for search A page per make, carrying real inventory with decoded trims and real prices, is also the shape of page that search engines and answer engines can read and quote. A shopper searching for a make and a town is asking a question that a brand page at your store answers directly, which is more than a generic home page can do. The same logic applies further down, on the vehicle pages themselves. Our SEO for used car inventory pages guide covers what makes an inventory page worth finding, and the pages the platform builds follow it: one unit per page, the decoded build, the mileage, the price, real photos and a way to ask about it without leaving. #### If it did not work A make you carry has no page. The pages come from the makes in your inventory, so the units for that franchise have not reached the portal yet. Open the inventory list, and if that make is missing, check the feed or the website import before anything else. A page opens on This page is not available. You are on a link for a make your store does not carry, or on an address that changed. Go back to the brand chooser, use Pick your brand to get the current link, and update whatever you pasted the old one into. The phone number or hours are wrong. They come from Profile in the dealer portal, not from the page. Fix them once in Profile and every brand page, hero page and dealer page picks the change up. The offers are there but no cars are under them. The matching inventory setting in Builder is off, or those units are not in the portal. Turn it on and confirm the vehicles are there, because an offer with no car under it sends a ready shopper to another store to find one. Leads are arriving but nobody is reacting. Set your notification preferences in the CRM so a new request reaches a phone, and put the pages on a routing rule so the lead lands on a person rather than in a pile. #### Related tasks The product page for this is brand offer pages, which covers the six offer card formats, the shared confirmation and the dealer page in more detail. The offers themselves come from the incentives engine, covered on the OEM Incentives Showroom page, and the same programs appear on the unit at the desk. The rest of the setup has its own guides in the LeadLocate Help Center: showing the manufacturer offers, publishing an inventory site, embedding the widget on the site you already run, and handling the Schedule a Visit request when a shopper picks a time. If you want a page presented differently from the automatic build, or an offer shape the six card formats do not cover, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I have to build a brand page for each make myself? A: No. The platform builds a page for every make in your inventory and a dealer page for the store. Your part is keeping the inventory current and the store details in Profile correct, then reviewing each page and pointing traffic at it. Q: What is the difference between a brand page and a brand hero page? A: The brand page is the standing page for a make, with the offers and the inventory under them. The brand hero page is built to be landed on from an advertisement, focused on one make and one reason to raise a hand. Q: Can a broker with no lot use brand pages? A: Yes. Auto broker inventory mode connects the brand offer pages for a broker who does not stock vehicles, so the offers and the forms work from day one. Q: Where do the offers on the page come from? A: From the incentives engine inside Inventory Link, which carries manufacturer programs for more than twenty makes. The same programs show on the unit in the deal view, so the page and the desk quote the same thing. ### How to Set up Call Forwarding in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-call-forwarding Call forwarding in LeadLocate CRM sends every inbound call on your tracking number to a Forward Calls To ring list built from your own users. You manage it on IVR Settings under Account Settings, where you edit the list, set store hours, and decide whether whoever answers presses 5 to accept. A new account already forwards to its users; this guide tunes it. Steps: 1. Open IVR Settings: Sign in as a Master Administrator. Open Billing & Admin, then Account Settings, then Phone & IVR and IVR Settings. Forwarding lives in the Call Handling section, which applies to every forwarded call whether or not a custom call flow is on. 2. Edit the Forward Calls To list: The Forward Calls To field holds the phone numbers that ring when a customer calls. A new account fills it from the store's users. Separate numbers with commas to ring several phones at once, and write an extension after the number with a hash sign. Add a desk line, remove a rep who moved to service, and keep the list to phones a person answers. 3. Keep user mobiles current: Open User Management and check the Mobile phone (US) on each salesperson. The ring list is only as accurate as the user roster it is built from, so a rep who changed phones needs the new number on their record. 4. Choose whether to ring the assigned salesperson: Under Call Handling there is a checkbox that rings the assigned salesperson when a customer the CRM already knows calls in, while everybody else rings the numbers on the list. Turn it on if your reps own their customers; leave it off if the whole floor answers every line. 5. Decide on the press 5 confirmation: The last checkbox in Call Handling makes whoever answers press 5 to accept the call, so a personal voicemail box is treated as unanswered and the rest of the list keeps ringing. Turn it on once the list is all cell phones and desk phones. Turn it off if a number on the list is a phone tree, because a switchboard does not press buttons. 6. Set store hours, save and test: Tick Open 24 hours or use Edit Hours to enter the real schedule, so calls after close hear the Company Voicemail greeting instead of ringing an empty showroom. Save with the bar at the bottom of the page, then call the tracking number from a cell phone and confirm the right phones ring. #### What do you need before you start? You need a Master Administrator login, because the Call Handling controls on IVR Settings are read only for anyone else. You need the mobile numbers of the people who should answer, already entered on their records in User Management, and a decision about whether calls should ring everyone at once or reach the assigned salesperson first. Nothing needs to be turned on. When the account is created, a tracking number is provisioned, the Forward Calls To list builds itself from the store's users, the line is open around the clock and the press 5 confirmation is off, so the first call simply rings through. This guide is for the store that wants something different: a desk line on the list, real business hours, or a confirmation that keeps a carrier voicemail box from ending the call. #### What should you see when it works? A call to the tracking number rings every phone on the Forward Calls To list at the same time. With the press 5 confirmation on, the person who answers hears a short prompt, presses 5, and is talking to the customer; a phone that rolled to its own voicemail never presses 5, so that leg is treated as unanswered and the others keep ringing. If nobody accepts, the caller hears the Company Voicemail greeting and the message lands on the call log with a transcript. Every forwarded call shows on the Calls page with who answered, how long it lasted and the recording, and on the lead's timeline in order with the texts and emails around it. On the LeadLocate mobile app the same list is under Call Logs, and the inbound call alert screen shows the caller's name before the rep answers. After close, a caller gets the after hours handling you set instead of four phones ringing in an empty building. #### What if it did not work? Nobody's phone rings. The Forward Calls To list is empty, holds a number with a typo, or the page was never saved. Reopen IVR Settings, check each entry against the Mobile phone (US) on the user records, and save again. If Answering Service is handling your calls, the list is replaced by the service and is read only until the service is turned off. A caller reaches a rep's personal voicemail greeting. The press 5 confirmation is off, so the carrier's voicemail answered the call. Turn the confirmation on in Call Handling, and make sure no entry on the list is a phone tree. Phones ring at night. Open 24 hours is ticked. Clear it and use Edit Hours to enter the store's real schedule; the team calendar and anything that answers the phone for you follow the same hours. #### Which related tasks come next? Forwarding is the middle of the phone stack, between the number a customer dials and the person who answers. The call forwarding and ring lists feature page explains what the list does on a normal Saturday, and tracking phone numbers covers the lines that ring it. When the store wants a greeting or a menu before a phone rings, the virtual receptionist and the IVR call flow builder sit on the same page. What a caller hears when the whole list is busy is the greeting on Company Voicemail, covered on the voicemail drop and greetings page. To make a missed call a text to the right person, turn on Call Alerts in your notification preferences. The rest of the guides are on the help center. #### Tips from the floor Keep the list made of your own users for as long as you can. While it is, it keeps rebuilding itself from the roster, so a new hire rings on their first day and a departed rep stops ringing the day they leave. The moment you add a number that is not one of your users, such as an office line, the list becomes yours to maintain by hand. Test after every change by calling from a phone that is not on the list, and listen for the press 5 prompt. A ring order instead of all at once, or a different list for one tracking number, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Ask through contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I forward calls to a desk phone as well as cell phones? A: Yes. Enter the desk line in the Forward Calls To field alongside the mobiles, separated by commas, and add an extension after the number with a hash sign if the line needs one. Q: Why does whoever answers have to press 5? A: So a personal voicemail box is never mistaken for a person. A carrier's voicemail cannot press 5, so that leg is treated as unanswered, the rest of the list keeps ringing, and if nobody accepts the caller hears the store's own greeting. Q: What happens to calls after we close? A: Business hours set with Edit Hours decide it. After close a caller gets the after hours handling instead of ringing the list, the message lands on the call log, and the first rep to sign in the next morning sees it on the lead. Q: How dependable is forwarding once it is switched on? A: It is built so your store keeps selling. The ring list travels with the tracking number itself, so a customer who dials it rings every phone you listed, the press 5 confirmation keeps the call away from voicemail, and the call, its recording and its outcome land on the lead record for a manager to review. ### How to Set up Lead Feeds in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-lead-feeds You set up lead feeds in LeadLocate CRM from Account Settings, under Lead Sources. The LeadLocate feeds that deliver your exclusive local leads are already there, and you choose who gets manager copies on each. To add a website form or a third party provider, create a New Lead Source with a Feed Label and an assignment, then hand the source its intake email or its form intake link. Steps: 1. Open your lead sources: In the desktop CRM open the Billing and Admin menu, choose Account Settings and click Lead Source Settings. The Your LeadLocate Feeds drawer lists the feeds that deliver your exclusive local leads, and the list under it shows the sources you add yourself. The Lead Feeds Manager item in the same menu opens Leads Manager, where your zone and campaign selections live. 2. Set manager copies on your LeadLocate feeds: Open Your LeadLocate Feeds and choose who receives Manager Copies on each feed, by text and by email; their assignment across the floor is set up for you when the account goes live. Under Default Manager Copies, list the managers who should also get leads that arrive without a feed, click Save Default, and use Apply to All to put them on every feed at once. 3. Add your own source: Open the Add your own lead sources drawer and click New Lead Source, or pick the provider from the list so its name is filled in for you. Type a Feed Label your team will recognize on a lead row, such as the provider's name or the website form it represents. 4. Choose routing and status: Set Lead Assignment to Round Robin, Single User or Unassigned (everyone can claim), and for a single user pick the person under Assigned User. Pick a Default Status for New Leads so leads from this source land in the status your team works first. 5. Set what happens on arrival: Under Notifications and Automation, tick the text alert so the assigned rep's phone buzzes and the follow up messages so your standard messages run on every lead from this source. Tick Manager copies and add the Manager Email Addresses and Manager Phone Numbers that should see every one. Leave Active checked and click Save Feed. 6. Hand the source its address: The confirmation shows the source's Intake Email with Copy Address and its form intake link with Copy URL. Give the intake email to a provider that sends lead emails, paste the form intake link into a website form or tool that sends its submissions to a link, and use Copy Message for a ready to send request to the provider. Copy intake email on the source's row copies the address again any time. Whichever the source supports is the one it gets. 7. Write the first message: Open Automated Templates. Under Inbound Lead Automated Templates the Company Default (used to set up new feeds) set is what a new feed starts with; write the first text and email for this feed so the customer hears from a named salesperson the moment the lead lands. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login that can open Account Settings, where Lead Sources lives. Have a list of every place a lead can come from: the website forms, each third party provider, the chat widget, landing pages, any list you load by hand. Each is a feed. Decide for each one who should own its leads and whether a manager should be copied; the round robin lead assignment page explains the rotation if you have not set one before. For a provider, find out whether it sends leads by email or can send them to a link; most send email. For your own website, find out from whoever built it whether the form can email an address or send its submissions to a link. The Lead Feeds Manager page describes every intake route and what each is for. #### What you should see Every lead, from every feed, arrives as a row in the same Leads view of the LeadLocate CRM with its feed label on the row, so a rep knows what the customer asked for and where. The assigned rep gets the text alert, the first message goes out under the rep's name, and every manager on Manager Copies sees the lead land. A custom feed keeps an Activity Log of what it received, so the first lead from a new provider is visible there within moments of the provider sending it. A month later, the Leads view filtered by feed tells you what each source sent, which is the number you need at the provider's renewal call. The lead source attribution page covers that side. #### If it did not work The provider's leads are not arriving. Open the feed's Activity Log. Nothing there means the provider is still sending to the old mailbox; resend the intake email address and ask them to confirm it is live. An entry marked Parse failed or Intake unknown means the message arrived but did not read as a lead, usually because the provider changed its format; describe it on the contact page and the source is set up to read its new format for you, usually the same day. Leads arrive with nobody on them. The feed's assignment is Unassigned, or the user it points at is no longer active. Set Round Robin or a live single user and save the feed. The feed shows Feed inactive. The Active box on the feed was unchecked, which pauses it without losing its history. Check it again and save. #### Related tasks A feed without a first message is a lead without a first text, so write the templates for each feed in Automated Templates and let a Follow Up Process take over after that. Add users and roles first if the people you want in the rotation are not on the account yet, and set notification preferences so the assigned rep actually hears the text. For lists you load by hand, the import contacts guide covers the CSV route. Every guide is in the help center. #### Tips from the floor Label feeds the way your reps talk, not the way the provider's invoice reads. Give every third party provider its own feed even if two of them go to the same people, because the label on the row is the only way to know which one earned its money. Tick Manager copies on a new provider's source for its first month and untick it once you trust it. And when you drop a provider, uncheck Active on its feed rather than deleting it, so the history of what it sent stays for the next renewal argument. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do I manage my lead feeds? A: In Account Settings, under Lead Sources, where your own sources, Default Manager Copies and the feeds LeadLocate delivers for you sit together. The Lead Feeds Manager item in the Billing and Admin menu opens Leads Manager, where your zone and campaign selections live. Q: What are the default feeds? A: The permanent feeds through which LeadLocate delivers the exclusive local leads included in the Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions and Buyers and Sellers Hybrid plans. They appear under Your LeadLocate Feeds, where you choose the manager copies; their assignment is set up for you, and they behave like any other feed in the Leads view. Q: How do I get a third party provider into the CRM? A: Add a New Lead Source with a Feed Label and an assignment, save it, and give the provider the source's intake email address or its form intake link. Their leads then create records in the Leads view labeled with that feed. Q: Can different sources go to different people? A: Yes. Each feed has its own assignment: round robin, a single user, or unassigned so everyone can claim. Custom source feeds add a Default Status for New Leads and manager copies per feed. ### How to Set up Round Robin in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-round-robin Round robin in LeadLocate CRM rotates each new lead through your sales team automatically, one feed at a time. You set it in Lead Feeds Manager under Billing and Admin, decide which users take turns in User Management, and every lead that arrives on a rotating feed lands on the next salesperson with a notification before anyone has read it. Steps: 1. Open Lead Feeds Manager: Sign in as a Manager or Master Administrator. In the main menu open Billing & Admin, then Lead Feeds Manager. Every lead source your store receives is listed as a feed, and each feed carries its own assignment control. 2. Set the feed to rotate: Find the feed you want to rotate, such as your website form or a listing site, and set its assignment to All (Round Robin). A feed that should always go to one person stays on Single with that user chosen. A feed anyone may claim uses Unassigned (Up for Grabs). 3. Rotate a source you added yourself: Open Lead Source Settings from Account Settings. Open the feed, set Lead Assignment to Round Robin, and press Save Feed. The choices here match the default feeds: Single User for one owner, Unassigned (everyone can claim) for an open pool. 4. Choose who is in the rotation: Open User Management. On each user record the Round Robin box decides whether that person takes a turn. Tick it for salespeople who work leads. Leave it clear for managers, for BDC agents who only set appointments, and for anyone on leave. 5. Test it with two live leads: Submit a test lead through the rotating source, then submit a second one a minute later. The first lands on one salesperson and the second on the next in line, each with a notification, and the owner shows on the Leads list. #### What do you need before you start? You need a Manager or Master Administrator login, because Lead Feeds Manager and User Management both sit under Billing & Admin and a User role does not see them. You also need at least two users with the Round Robin box ticked, since a rotation of one person is just an assignment. Have the list of your lead sources in front of you so you can decide, feed by feed, which ones rotate and which ones go to a single closer. Nothing needs to be installed or purchased. Round robin is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, and the setting lives on the feed rather than in a separate rules product. If your store is new, the feeds already exist; you are only changing the assignment choice on each one. #### What should you see when it works? Each rotating feed shows All (Round Robin) as its assignment in Lead Feeds Manager, and each custom feed shows Round Robin under Lead Assignment. When a lead arrives on that feed, it appears on the Leads list with a salesperson's name already on it, and that salesperson gets the notification they set in their preferences: an email, a text to their notify number, a sound at the desk and an on screen toast. On the LeadLocate mobile app the same lead shows in the Leads view with the same alert. Every feed keeps its own count. Two leads that arrive on two different rotating feeds can land on the same salesperson, because each feed takes turns independently. That is expected. Within one feed, consecutive leads go to consecutive users, and a lead entered by hand from the phone app or the desktop belongs to the person who entered it and skips the rotation. #### What if it did not work? Every lead lands on the same person. The feed is still on Single, or only one user has the Round Robin box ticked. Open User Management, open each salesperson with Edit User, and confirm the box. Then reopen the feed and confirm it reads All (Round Robin). A salesperson who should get leads never does. Their user record does not have the Round Robin box ticked, or the leads are arriving on a feed set to a single user. Check the user first, then the feed the leads actually come through, which you can see on the lead itself. Leads sit unassigned. The feed is on Unassigned (Up for Grabs), which is a valid choice for a pool anyone may claim. If you want the rotation instead, change the assignment and any new lead from that point takes a turn. Leads that arrived earlier keep the state they arrived in; reassign them from the lead row. #### Which related tasks come next? Once leads rotate, the rest of the first five minutes is set on the same feed. Lead Feeds Manager is where each source is defined, where Automated Templates send the first text under the assigned rep's name, and where manager copies are chosen. The round robin lead assignment feature page explains what the rotation does on a normal day, and the CRM with round robin lead distribution page covers why a store rotates at all. The same rotation runs on the shared team calendar, so an appointment booked through the store's booking link goes to the next available salesperson. Contact uploads can rotate too: on Import Contacts, tick Round Robin assignment and the whole list spreads evenly across the team instead of landing in one queue. Who can change any of this is set by role, described on user roles and permissions. Every other guide is listed on the help center. #### Tips from the floor Keep the rotation honest by editing users, not feeds. A new hire joins the rotation the day you tick the Round Robin box on their record, and a departing rep leaves it the day you clear it. If you instead switch feeds back and forth to steer leads, nobody can explain the count later. Rotate the feeds that pay for themselves and leave the specialists alone. Website and listing feeds usually rotate; a service drive referral feed often goes to one closer on Single. Anything the radio buttons do not express, such as a weighted rotation toward a senior closer or a rotation that follows shift schedules, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Describe how your floor works through contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: Does round robin apply to every lead source at once? A: No. The assignment is chosen per feed in Lead Feeds Manager, so one source can rotate while another goes to a single user and a third sits open for anyone to claim. Each rotating feed keeps its own count. Q: How do I take a salesperson out of the rotation without deleting them? A: Open their record in User Management and clear the Round Robin box. They keep their login, their leads and their history; they simply stop receiving new turns until you tick the box again. Q: Can I reassign a lead that the rotation gave to the wrong person? A: Yes. A manager changes the owner from the lead's row on the Leads list at any time. The rotation only decides the first owner at the moment the lead arrives. Q: Does a walk-in entered by hand take a turn in the rotation? A: No. A lead entered manually belongs to the person who entered it. Round robin runs on leads that arrive through a feed and on contact imports where you tick Round Robin assignment. ### How to Set up Two-Factor Authentication in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-two-factor-authentication Two factor authentication is built into every SecureWebX sign in, so there is nothing to turn on. You enter your email and password, a single use code goes by text to the mobile number on your user record, and you type that code to finish signing in. Keeping that number current is the entire setup. Steps: 1. Put your mobile number on your user record: The code goes to the number stored on your user, not to a number you type at the door, so check it before the day you need it. A user who already has a good mobile number on file reads Already set up in the console, and nothing else is required of that person. 2. Sign in with your email and password: Open the console and sign in the way you always do. The password screen hands off to the code screen on its own; there is no separate security tab to visit first and no setting a manager has to release for you. 3. Enter the code that arrives by text: The text carries a short numeric code. Type it into the code screen and you are in. The code is single use and short lived, so an old text sitting in your phone from this morning will not work in the afternoon; request a fresh one instead of scrolling back. 4. Fix a number that is wrong or missing: New phone, new carrier, or a typo from onboarding: a manager opens that person's user record and uses Set on the mobile number, then the next sign in sends the code to the new phone. The change lands in the audit log with who made it, which is exactly what you want an access change to do. 5. Give lenders and partners their own sign in: Never hand a lender or a vendor one of your logins. Add them as a partner and choose Invite this partner to set it up themselves so they create their own credentials and answer their own code. Your users stay yours, and the audit log stays readable. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX user of your own and a mobile phone that can take a text. That is the list. Managers who set up teammates also need the user administration view, which comes with the manager roles described on user roles and permissions. One rule saves a lot of trouble later: one person, one login. A shared front desk login means the code goes to whoever owns that phone, and the audit log then shows a room instead of a person. Give every teammate their own user, and every code reaches the right hand. #### Why is the code on every sign in? Because of what is behind the login. A credit application carries a Social Security or ITIN number, income, residence history and a signature. A second factor on every sign in is one of the protections built into credit application security, next to encryption of application data at rest, a full audit log, virus scanning on uploads and a watermarked viewer that gates printing and downloading. Dealers ask whether they should use an authenticator app instead, the way they do for email or social accounts. The code here comes as a text to the number on your user record, so your team installs nothing and a new hire is productive the same morning. A different second factor your compliance policy calls for is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What you should see After the password screen, a short code screen. Within a few seconds the text arrives on the phone tied to your user, you type the code, and the console opens on the dashboard with the application badges. From there on it behaves like any other session, and the one click launch from the CRM dock still carries you in without re typing anything. On a manager's user list, people with a mobile number on file read Already set up. Each sign in writes to the security log with the user, the time and the result, so a manager reviewing access sees who came in and when without asking anyone. #### If it did not work No text arrived. The number on the user record is the one to check first, especially for anyone who changed phones. A manager opens the user and corrects it, then you sign in again. Also check that the phone has service where you are standing; a code cannot reach a phone in the basement of the service drive. The code is refused. You used an older text. Codes expire and each one works once. Start the sign in again and use the newest message. Two people share the login. The code goes to the phone on that record, which is the other person's. Split it into two users; it takes a minute and it fixes the sign in, the audit trail and the assignment of applications at the same time. You are locked out with nobody in the store to help. Our support team can see your screen with you and sort it out on the call, and a manager with user administration can update your number in the meantime. #### Related tasks Adding and removing the people who sign in is covered in the guide to managing SecureWebX users, and the way one set of credentials carries you between the applications is on single sign on. Each product is its own application under one login, so the same care you take with this user record pays off everywhere your team works. The LeadLocate Help Center holds the rest of the step by step guides. If your store has a security review coming up and wants the full picture in writing, the credit application security page is the one to send to whoever is asking. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I have to turn two factor authentication on? A: No. It runs on every SecureWebX sign in for every user. The only thing you maintain is the mobile number on your user record, which is where the code goes. Q: Do I need an authenticator app? A: No. The code arrives as a text to the number on your user record, so there is nothing to install on a phone or a workstation before a new hire can sign in. Q: What happens when someone changes their phone number? A: A manager opens that user record and updates the mobile number. The next sign in sends the code to the new phone, and the change is recorded in the audit log. Q: Can a lender or vendor use our login? A: Give them their own instead. Add them as a partner and invite them to set themselves up, so they hold their own credentials and your audit log still reads clearly. ### How to Set up Your Privacy Notice and Terms in SecureWebX URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-your-privacy-notice-and-terms Open the SecureWebX console, go to your company's compliance settings, and paste the privacy notice and terms your counsel approved into the editor for that company. Record your public policy pages in Privacy policy URL and Terms of service URL, then save. Applicants see the new language on the next credit application, and each consent is kept against that version. Steps: 1. Get the language from your counsel: Your compliance counsel writes the privacy notice and the terms; the console is where you put them. Ask for the text in a form you can paste, and ask which states need their own disclosure while you are at it, since those are managed in the same place. 2. Open compliance settings for the company: In the SecureWebX console, open the compliance settings for the company you are editing. A group with several rooftops keeps one notice per company, so check the name at the top before you paste anything. A single store has one. 3. Paste the privacy notice into the editor: The editor takes headings, bold, italic, underline, bulleted and numbered lists and links, so counsel's language reads the way counsel wrote it instead of arriving as a wall of text. Paste it, tidy the formatting, and read it once on screen before you save. 4. Add your terms the same way: Your terms are edited in the same place and against the same company. These are the terms the applicant submits under, separate from the SecureWebX Terms of Service that governs your store's use of the console itself. 5. Record your public policy pages: Put the addresses of your website's own policy pages into Privacy policy URL and Terms of service URL on the company record, so the notice inside the application and the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service links a customer follows from your site say the same thing. 6. Save it, then check an application: Save, then open one of your apply links the way a customer would and walk to the review step. The notice, the terms and any state disclosure you show appear there with the credit authorization and the signature line. What you read there is what the next applicant agrees to. 7. Make sure your people are on the record too: Every user of the console is asked to read and accept the terms before working in it. A new finance manager signing in for the first time sees Accept our Terms of Service with I have read and accept the SecureWebX Terms of Service. to check, and the acceptance is recorded with the date. #### Before you start You need a SecureWebX login with a role that edits company settings, usually the dealer principal, a general manager or the office manager who owns compliance. The console opens from the SecureWebX button in the LeadLocate CRM dock with one login, and SecureWebX is created with your LeadLocate account, so the settings are waiting for your language the day you start. Bring three things: the privacy notice, the terms, and the list of states you sell into. State specific disclosures are added, edited and deleted in the same compliance settings and shown on credit applications, and a store that draws buyers across a state line usually needs more than one. Everything on this page is your store's language under your store's control, which is the part that matters when counsel changes a paragraph. #### What you should see Your notice and terms saved against the company, and the new language on applications from that moment. Nothing to redeploy, no ticket, no wait. Open an apply link and read the review step: the credit authorization, the disclosures you show, the notice, and the e-signature the applicant uses to submit. The online credit application form page walks the five steps a customer works through and shows where the language appears. Underneath, each submission records the applicant's consent against the version in force when they signed. Change a paragraph next quarter and every earlier applicant keeps the exact wording they agreed to, with the date. That is what makes a question about one customer, asked long after the deal, a lookup instead of an investigation. #### How a wording change is handled Counsel sends a new paragraph, you paste it, you save. Applicants from that point forward see the new language. The versions before it are kept with the applications that were signed under them, so the record stays accurate rather than being overwritten by the latest edit. Console users get the same treatment on their side. When the terms that govern your store's use of the console change, acceptance is asked for again at sign in, and each acceptance is recorded with a name and a date. Between the versioned applicant consent, the forced acceptance for staff, the full audit log and an archive, never delete rule for records, your compliance file builds itself while the store sells cars. #### If it did not work The application still shows the old wording. Check the company name on the settings you edited. In a group, each rooftop keeps its own notice, and pasting into the wrong company changes an application you were not looking at. The formatting arrived as one block. Paste again and rebuild the headings and lists in the editor. Text pasted from a word processor sometimes carries styling that does not belong to the page, and five minutes of tidying is worth it for a document customers actually read. You need a disclosure on one apply link only. Add it to that link instead of to the company. Each of your apply links can carry its own extra disclosures with acknowledgment required before the applicant continues, which suits a special finance link or a commercial link without touching the one on your website. A user says they were asked to accept terms again. That is the forced acceptance working after a change. It takes one click and puts them on the record for the conditions they handle applicant data under. #### Related tasks The whole compliance surface, state specific disclosures, the notice and terms editor, per link disclosures and versioned consent, is described on the compliance disclosures and privacy notices page. How the application itself is customized, field by field and section by section, is on the apply links page. The LeadLocate Help Center holds the rest of the finance office guides. Notice wording or a consent step your counsel wants that is not on the screen today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Who writes the privacy notice my applicants see? A: Your store's compliance counsel writes it. SecureWebX gives you the editor, shows the language on every application your apply links produce, and records which version each applicant agreed to. Q: Can each rooftop in my group have its own notice? A: Yes. The notice and terms editor works per company, so each store keeps its own language, and a single store keeps one. Check the company name at the top of the settings before you paste. Q: What happens to applications signed under the old wording? A: They keep it. Consent is captured against the version in force at signing, so a question about a specific customer months later has a specific answer, with the language and the date. Q: Do my own staff have to accept anything? A: Yes. Every console user reads and accepts the terms before working, and acceptance is asked for again when the terms change. Each acceptance is recorded with the user and the date. ### How to Set up Your Profile in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-your-profile Your profile in LeadLocate CRM is the name, photo, contact details and email signature that customers and teammates see next to everything you send. On the desktop CRM it lives on your user record under User Management; on the phone app it is My Profile. Setting it up takes about five minutes, and you do it once. Steps: 1. Open your user record: In the desktop CRM open Billing & Admin and choose User Management. Find your name in the Users list and open Edit User. A Manager or the Master Administrator opens any record this way; if that menu is not on your login, ask them to open yours, or start from the phone app in step six. 2. Check your details: On User Details confirm your name, Job title and Mobile phone (US). The mobile number is where your text alerts go, so it has to be the phone in your pocket, not the desk line. 3. Add your photo and signature: Open Profile and Signature. Upload a clear head and shoulders photo under 5MB, then write your Email Signature: name, title, store, direct number and your booking link. The signature is added to the emails you send from the CRM. 4. Set your Quick Access PIN: On the same record set the 4 digit PIN for mobile quick access. This is the Quick Access PIN you use to get back into the phone app at a shared desk or on the lot without typing a password. 5. Choose your alerts and sounds: Open Notifications. Switch on the Text Notifications you want on your phone and the Notification Sounds you want at your desk, such as Play New Lead sound and Play Text Message sound. Save the record. 6. Check the phone app: Open the LeadLocate mobile app and tap My Profile. Confirm the same First and last name, Email address and Mobile phone show. Tap the photo there to change it if you would rather take it with the phone camera. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate login, a photo of yourself, your direct number and, if you already have one, your personal booking link. One login carries the same profile into the LeadLocate CRM, SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the My LeadLocate account portal, so there is one profile to set, not four. Who can do it depends on the role. A Manager or the Master Administrator edits any user from User Management, which is how most stores set up a new hire before the first shift. Every user, whatever the role, edits their own name, contact details and photo from My Profile in the phone app. The user roles and permissions page explains the three roles if you are not sure which one you have. #### What you should see Your photo appears next to your name inside the CRM and on your personal booking link, so a customer who has been texting with you books with a face they recognize. Emails you send from the CRM carry your signature at the bottom, with your direct number and booking link where the customer can tap them. The appointment booking links page shows what the customer side looks like. On the phone, the Quick Access PIN lets you back into the app after it locks, and the alerts you switched on arrive as texts to the mobile number on your record. At your desk, the sounds you chose play when a lead lands or a customer replies, with an on-screen toast alongside. If all three of those are happening, the profile is done. #### If it did not work The photo did not upload. The record only accepts an image under 5MB. Resize the photo, or take a fresh one with the phone camera from My Profile, which produces a file of the right size. A square crop of your head and shoulders reads best at the small sizes the CRM uses. Text alerts are not arriving. Check two things: the mobile number on your record is your cell, with no extension, and the events you want are switched on under Text Notifications. If a notify number ever replied with a stop keyword, that number is blocked from alerts on that channel until it is opted back in. The lead notifications and alerts page lists every toggle. User Management is not in your menu. Your role is User, which is normal for a salesperson. Edit what you can from My Profile in the phone app, and ask a Manager or the Master Administrator to set the PIN, signature and routing on your record. #### Related tasks The profile is the first of a handful of one time settings. Next, set your notification preferences so the right events reach your phone, then set your booking link and its hours so the link in your signature actually books. If you are the person adding the rest of the team, the guide to adding users and roles walks through User Management. Every step by step guide is listed in the help center, and the LeadLocate mobile app page covers the phone side of the profile in more detail. #### Tips from the floor Use the same photo on your profile, your personal website and your business card from Design Studio, so a customer sees one face across every touch. Put the booking link in the signature on day one; a customer reading an email at 9 p.m. books a Saturday visit without a single text back and forth. And set the PIN before you need it, because the moment you need it is on the lot with a customer waiting. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do I edit my profile in LeadLocate CRM? A: On the desktop CRM your profile is your user record under User Management in the Billing & Admin menu, opened with Edit User. In the LeadLocate mobile app it is My Profile. The same login carries the profile into SecureWebX, Inventory Link and the account portal. Q: Can a salesperson edit their own profile? A: Yes. Every user edits their name, contact details and photo from My Profile in the phone app. A Manager or the Master Administrator edits any record from User Management, including the PIN, signature, notifications and routing. Q: Where does my email signature show up? A: At the bottom of emails you send from the CRM. Write it once on the Profile and Signature tab with your name, title, store, direct number and booking link. Q: What is the Quick Access PIN for? A: It is a four digit code per user for getting back into the phone app quickly at a shared desk or on the lot. It is set on your user record and does not replace your password for the first sign in on a new device. ### How to Set up the DNC Blacklist in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-the-dnc-blacklist Setting up the DNC Blacklist in LeadLocate CRM means loading the contacts your store must never call or text, so they disappear from Leads, Contacts, the inbox and every campaign list. You open DNC Blacklist under Billing and Admin, import your existing list by CSV, add single contacts with a live do not call lookup, and teach the floor to block from the lead row. Steps: 1. Open the DNC Blacklist page: Sign in as a Manager or Master Administrator. Open Billing & Admin in the main menu and choose DNC Blacklist. The page is titled Do Not Call Blacklist and lists every blocked contact, who added it, and a spam count for entries that have stopped inbound traffic. 2. Import the list you already have: Export the do not contact list from your previous CRM or the BDC's spreadsheet as a CSV with Name, Phone and Email columns in that order. Press Import, drop the file on the Import DNC Blacklist panel or choose it, and confirm with Import DNC List. Press Back to Blacklist to see the entries. 3. Add a single contact with the live lookup: Press Add to Blacklist. Enter the Contact Phone with its country code and the page reports the line type and the national do not call registry status beneath the field. Press Pull Name to fill Contact Name from the number, add a Contact Email if you have one, and save. 4. Block a customer from the lead itself: When a customer replies with a stop request, the rep opens the lead and presses Blacklist in the row actions. The CRM warns that the contact will be hidden from all CRM views; the rep confirms, and the customer is gone from every screen without anyone emailing the team. 5. Check the result: Search for the contact on Leads and Contacts. They are absent from both, from the SMS and email inboxes, and from the recipient lists for bulk texting and bulk email. The blacklist entry shows Blocked with the Added By name. 6. Remove an entry only on purpose: To unblock someone, open the entry and press Remove from Blacklist. The page warns that the contact will reappear in Leads, Contacts and Inbox views; press Yes, Remove to confirm. Unblocking is a decision, not a click. #### What do you need before you start? You need a Manager or Master Administrator login to reach DNC Blacklist under Billing & Admin, and a CSV of your existing opt outs with Name, Phone and Email columns in that order. Phone numbers with a country code let the live lookup run. Any user can press Blacklist on a lead, so the floor needs to know that the button exists and that it is the store's only accepted way to honor a stop request. Nothing needs to be turned on. The blacklist is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, active from the first day of the account and empty until you fill it. The live lookup checks a number against the national registry and reports the line type on demand, against a current source rather than a copy downloaded months ago. What a store does with the result is the store's decision; the CRM gives the rep the fact and a one click way to act on it. #### What should you see when it works? The Do Not Call Blacklist table shows every blocked contact with Added By, an activity column, the Blocked marker and a spam count. A blacklisted contact is hidden from the Leads list, the Contacts list, the SMS and email inboxes and every campaign list, on the desktop and in the LeadLocate mobile app alike. A rep never has to remember that a customer asked to be left alone, because the rep never sees the customer again. The block works both ways. A blacklisted number that texts or calls in is stopped at the door, and the spam count on the entry climbs each time, which is how the blacklist doubles as a spam filter for your tracking numbers. Every contact attempt before the block is still in the communications log on the lead, so the store can show what was sent before the request and that nothing was sent after. #### What if it did not work? The import loaded nothing, or the wrong fields. The CSV columns are out of order or the header row is missing. Rebuild the file as Name, Phone, Email in that order, open Import again and drop it on the Import DNC Blacklist panel. The lookup shows nothing under the phone field. The number was entered without a country code, or with letters and spaces the field does not read. Enter digits with the country code first and the line type and registry status appear beneath Contact Phone. A blocked customer is still visible. The rep pressed Blacklist but did not confirm the warning, or the customer exists twice with a second number that was never blocked. Confirm the block, then search Contacts for the other record and block it too. Merging duplicate leads first keeps one record per customer so a stop request on one is not undone by another. #### Which related tasks come next? The blacklist is the hard stop; the tasks around it are what it protects. Run contact import alongside the blacklist import so your opt outs arrive with your customers. The do not call scrub and blacklist feature page covers the page in detail, including the two way block, and bulk texting is the campaign the blacklist quietly scrubs before it goes out. For checking a whole list rather than one number, the Phone Validator flags registry status and line type across a file. Every call, text and email stays in the log described on call recording and transcription, which is the record behind the control. The rest of the guides are on the help center. #### Tips from the floor Make the Blacklist button on the lead the store's rule for every stop request, and retire the note field, the spreadsheet and the email to the floor. Each of those lives in one place while contact attempts come from five. Run the lookup on any list of uncertain origin before a campaign, and read the spam counts once a week to see what the block is keeping out of the inbox. A store that wants more, such as an automatic block when a customer replies with a stop word, a scheduled scrub of every list against the registry, or one blacklist shared across a group of rooftops, can have it: it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Describe it through contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: What columns does the DNC import need? A: Name, Phone and Email, in that order, in a CSV. Drop the file on the Import DNC Blacklist panel and the contacts disappear from every view as soon as the import completes. Q: Does blacklisting delete the customer's record? A: No. The record and its history stay, hidden from Leads, Contacts, the inboxes and every campaign list. Remove from Blacklist brings it back into view if the store decides to. Q: Can a salesperson block a customer, or only a manager? A: Any user can press Blacklist on a lead they are looking at and confirm the warning. The DNC Blacklist page itself, with the import and the full table, is for Managers and Master Administrators. Q: Does the blacklist stop the customer from texting us? A: Yes. The block works in both directions. Inbound texts and calls from a blacklisted number never reach an inbox, and the entry counts how many were stopped. ### How to Set up the Referral Program in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-set-up-the-referral-program The Referral Program in LeadLocate CRM lives on the dock at the bottom of the screen. Setting it up means opening the page, setting the reward and the payout connection in Payout Settings, copying Your Personal Referral Link and the Shared Team Referral Link into your delivery texts and signage, and turning on the Referrals tab in the website editor so the public form shows on your site. Steps: 1. Open the Referral Program: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM on the desktop and click Referral Program on the dock at the bottom of the screen. It sits next to Design Studio. The page opens with your links at the top and the payout tools below. 2. Set the reward: Open Payout Settings. Enter the reward amount the store pays for a referral that earns it and connect the payout method the rewards are sent through. This is a one time setup for the account, done by a manager. 3. Copy your links: Next to Your Personal Referral Link use Click to copy and paste the link into your delivery text template. A manager copies the Shared Team Referral Link for signage at the service counter and for posts that are not tied to one salesperson. 4. Put the form on your site: Open the Website Editor and turn on the Referrals tab so the referral form appears on the store website and as a pop up on the public booking page. Customers who reach the form through a personal link are attributed to that salesperson. 5. Send a test referral: Open your personal link in a browser, fill out the form with your own details and click Submit Referral. The referral arrives in the lead inbox sourced to you, and the Referral Program page shows it as pending against the referrer. 6. Pay a reward when it is earned: When a referred customer buys, open the Referral Program page, find the referral and click Send Referral Payout. The reward goes to the referrer in the amount you set and the line appears in Payout History. #### Before you start Every user in LeadLocate CRM can open the Referral Program and copy their own link. Setting the reward and connecting the payout method needs a Manager or Master Administrator role, and so does the website editor. Decide the reward amount, who is eligible and whether a reward requires a completed sale before you open Payout Settings; those rules differ by state and by what you sell, and they are decisions the dealership makes with its own counsel. The CRM records what you decide; it does not decide for you. Have the payout method ready to connect, and decide where the links will live. The most effective spot is the delivery text, which you can put into an Automated Template so nobody has to remember to send it. The public side of the program, why it has to capture, attribute, remind and reward, is explained on the automotive CRM with a referral program page; this page is the clicks. #### What you should see The Referral Program page shows Your Personal Referral Link for the signed in user and the Shared Team Referral Link for the store, each with a copy control. Payout Settings shows the amount you set and the connected payout method. On your website and on the public booking page, the referral form is visible and asks for the referrer's name and contact details, the full name of the person being referred, what they are looking for and an optional note. Your test referral appears in the lead inbox as a lead with the referral as its source and the referrer's name on the record, assigned to the salesperson whose link was used. On the Referral Program page it shows as pending. After you send a test payout, Payout History lists the reward with the amount, the date and the referral it belongs to. That record is the point of the program: every reward is tied to a name, a referral and a sale. #### If it did not work The link opens a page that says the referral link was not found. The link was copied incompletely or from an account that is no longer active. Go back to the Referral Program page, use Click to copy again rather than selecting the text by hand, and paste the whole link. The referral did not show up in the inbox. Check that the form was submitted, not just opened; the form has required fields for the referrer and the person referred and will not submit without them. Then check the lead inbox filter, since a referral lands as a lead with the referral source and may be hidden by a source filter. The payout did not send. The payout method is not connected or the reward amount is blank in Payout Settings. A manager completes both and tries Send Referral Payout again. The form is not showing on the site because the Referrals tab in the website editor is off; turn it on and reload the page. #### Related tasks Print the physical piece: Design Studio on the dock builds a referral card with the link on it, the thing a salesperson hands over at delivery. Put the personal link into the delivery text on the Automated Templates page so it goes out on every sale. The referral itself is worked like any lead, with round robin and the first touch templates if the store uses them. The Referral Program feature page covers the whole tool, and the customer referral program software page covers the buying side. Every other walkthrough is in the help center, and the contact page reaches a person who will set the program up with you. #### Tips from the floor Ask at the happiest moment, which is delivery. The link in the delivery text does more than any sign. Pay the reward the day the deal funds, not at month end; a customer who gets a reward the same day tells someone. Keep the amount simple and the same for everyone, and put the shared team link on a card at the service counter where customers wait with time to read it. Read Payout History against the deals it produced each month so the general manager sees what the program cost and what it returned. #### Questions and answers Q: Who can set up the referral program? A: Any user can copy their own link. Setting the reward, connecting the payout method and turning on the website tab need a Manager or Master Administrator role. Q: Where does a referral go once it is submitted? A: Into the lead inbox in LeadLocate CRM as a lead sourced to the referral and the referrer, assigned to the salesperson whose personal link was used, with the note the referrer wrote. Q: How is the reward paid? A: From the Referral Program page. Set the amount and connect the payout method once in Payout Settings, then click Send Referral Payout when a referral earns it. The reward is recorded in Payout History. Q: Does the referral program cost extra? A: No. It is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. The store funds the rewards it chooses to send and nothing else. ### How to Share a File Securely in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-share-a-file-securely Put the document in the Files menu of LeadLocate CRM, open the password control on that file, type a password and press Lock File. Then send the link from the customer's text or email thread, or show the code on your screen for the customer to scan. The file stays in your library, the share is recorded, and you can see it was opened. Steps: 1. Get the document into the library: Open Files in the main menu. If the document is already a store document, it is in a folder. If it is new, drop it on the area labeled Upload files to your File Library and pick the folder it belongs in. Sharing works from the library, so this step is not optional, and it is the step that keeps one copy instead of five. 2. Put a password on it: Open the password control on the file and the Set File Password panel appears. Type a password of at least three characters and press Lock File. The panel says it plainly: anyone opening the file will need this password. Use a password you can say out loud without repeating yourself, because you are about to. 3. Send the link from the conversation: Go to the customer's thread rather than to your email. In the texting composer the control is Attach from File Library, and the link rides out with your message, so the send is logged on the lead next to every other call, text and email for that customer. That is what makes it a record instead of a favor you did on a Tuesday. 4. Or hand it over in person with a code: When the customer is standing at your desk, asking for an email address and spelling it back is a strange ritual to perform in front of someone holding a phone. Create the code for the file instead, turn your screen, and let them scan it with the camera. The document opens on their phone before they have stood up, and the share is recorded the same way. 5. Give the password by a different route: Say the password out loud at the desk, or call and say it. Do not type it in the same text as the link, which defeats the point of locking the file. This one habit is the difference between a document that is protected and a document that looks protected. 6. Watch whether it was opened, then follow up: The share record tells you the document was opened. A customer who has read the trade appraisal is ready for a different conversation than one who has not, so check before you call. If nothing has been opened by the next morning, the follow up is about whether they got it, not about the numbers. 7. Change or remove the password when the deal moves on: Open the same password panel on the file later to set a new password or take the protection off. Do it when a document stops being sensitive, and do it when a customer calls back a month later and cannot remember anything you told them. #### Before you start There is nothing to buy or enable. Secure file sharing is part of the Files menu in LeadLocate CRM on every plan, for every user, at the desk and in the phone app. The library page opens under the File Sharing heading, which is a fair description of what it is for. What you need is the right document in front of you and a decision about the password. Lock anything with a person's information on it: a trade appraisal with a name and a VIN, a worksheet with a payment on it, a stipulation checklist that names a customer. Leave the brochures, the service menu and the what to bring list unlocked, because a password on a brochure only teaches customers to ignore passwords. The file library guide covers building the folders these documents live in. #### What you should see On your side: the file still in your library, marked as locked, with the share controls next to it. On the customer's side: a page asking for the password, then the document. Nothing was attached to anything, so nothing is sitting in an inbox waiting to be forwarded, and there is no attachment size to worry about because the file never left your library. You should also see the send where the rest of the customer's history is. A share sent from a lead's thread belongs to that lead, so the communications log for that customer shows the calls, the texts, the emails and the document, in order, for whoever opens the record next. A manager reviewing a deal does not have to ask which salesperson emailed what. #### If it did not work The customer says the password does not work. Passwords are exact. Read it back a character at a time, and if it was set weeks ago just open the panel and set a new one rather than guessing. Then tell them the new one by phone. The customer opened the link and got a file they cannot read. Phones preview some file types and not others. Save the document as a PDF and share that; a PDF opens on every phone at the desk and every phone at home. A document from a deal shows a card instead of the file. On a phone, deal paperwork that the browser will not preview shows a Secure File Stored card with a Download Secure File button under it. That is the file, waiting; tap the button. You wanted to send the deal, not a document. Those are two different controls. The Share button on a deal sends the customer deal page itself, with its PIN and its e-signature, and the send a deal page for e-signature guide walks through it. The file library is for documents around the deal. #### Which documents belong somewhere else Sharing from the library is right for the store's own documents. Three kinds of paperwork have a better home. A credit application and the documents that support it belong in SecureWebX, where the consent, the stipulations and the notices sit together and where the finance office already works. The paperwork that belongs to one deal, the license copy, the insurance card, the signed buyer's order, belongs in the deal jacket on that deal, which has its own intake from a phone camera. And the account paperwork between your store and us lives in the My LeadLocate portal. Putting each document where it belongs is not filing for the sake of filing. It decides who can reach it, which record it shows up on, and how few copies of a customer's information exist at your store. Fewer copies is the whole game: a document that lives in one library, shared by link, with a password on it, is a document nobody has a stray copy of in a personal inbox. #### Related tasks Most shares leave the building from a text thread, so the LeadLocate Help Center guides on texting a customer and sending a picture message are the natural neighbors, along with uploading deal documents by QR and printing a deal packet for the customer who wants paper. If your store wants a document workflow that is not here today, a retention rule, an approval before a certain form goes out, a folder only the finance office can reach, it is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The file library and secure sharing page covers the wider case for keeping every document in one place. #### Questions and answers Q: How do I password protect a file in LeadLocate? A: Open the password control on the file in the Files menu, type a password of at least three characters in the Set File Password panel, and press Lock File. Anyone opening the file then needs that password. Q: Can I send a document without asking for the customer's email? A: Yes. Send the link in the text thread you are already in, or show the code on your screen and let the customer scan it with a phone camera at the desk. Q: Will I know if the customer opened it? A: Yes. The share is recorded and shows that the document was opened, which is a better reason to call back than guessing. Q: Can I take the password off later? A: Yes. The same panel on the file sets a new password or removes the protection, so a document that stops being sensitive stops being locked. ### How to Show OEM Incentives in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-show-oem-incentives The incentives engine in Inventory Link carries manufacturer programs for more than twenty makes, so there is no switch to turn on. Get your vehicles into the portal, fill in the store details in Profile, and the brand page for each make you carry shows the current lease, finance and cash offers. The same programs appear on the unit in the CRM deal view. Steps: 1. Get your inventory into the portal: The platform works out which makes you carry from the vehicles in Inventory Link, so connect a provider feed, run the import that reads the cars off your own dealership website, or add units by hand. A broker with no lot switches on auto broker inventory mode and gets the brand offer pages anyway. 2. Fill in the store details in Profile: Open Profile in the dealer portal and put in the store name, the phone number, the hours, the address and your website. Every brand page draws from there, so this is the one place to get it right and the reason you never hand type a phone number onto a page again. 3. Open the brand pages for your makes: Go to the brand pages the platform built for your store and read each one as a shopper would. Tap Show all brands to see the full lineup the engine covers and confirm that the makes on your lot each have a page with the current programs on it. 4. Put the matching cars under the offers: In Builder, turn on Show matching vehicles from your inventory so each offer shows the units on your lot it applies to. An offer with cars under it gives the shopper somewhere to go next; an offer on its own sends them to another store to find the car. 5. Walk the shopper path once: Answer the questions the way a customer would, narrow by budget, payment and use, and tap Show me what fits. You should get the programs that apply and the vehicles behind them. Do this on a phone, because that is what most of your shoppers are holding. 6. Check the same offers at the desk: Open a deal on a new unit in the CRM and look at the deal view under Desking. The Incentives Showroom shows the manufacturer lease program, finance rate and customer cash on that vehicle, which is where the pencil should start rather than from memory. #### Before you start There is no switch to hunt for. The incentives engine inside Inventory Link carries manufacturer programs for more than twenty makes, and once the platform knows which of those makes you carry, the offers show on your brand pages and on the vehicle at the desk. What you are really doing in this guide is making sure the platform knows your store. So two things first. Get your vehicles into the portal, from a provider feed under Feeds, from an import that reads your own dealership website, or by hand, because the makes on your lot are what decide which brand pages get built. A broker with no lot switches on auto broker inventory mode and gets the brand offer pages connected without a vehicle to their name. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Then fill in the store details in Profile: the store name, the phone number your customers should call, the hours and the address. Every brand page draws those from Profile, so a shopper reading a lease offer at nine at night sees the right number under it. The portal opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on. #### What you should see on your brand pages A page for each make you carry, with the manufacturer's current programs on it: the lease special, the finance rate, the customer cash. Each one sits in a card built for that kind of offer, so a lease reads as a lease and a rate reads as a rate, with a lead form beside it and a Schedule a Visit sheet on the vehicles underneath. When a shopper narrows things down by budget, payment and use and taps Show me what fits, the offers come back with the units on your lot that they apply to, which is the difference between an advertisement and a car they can come and drive. A shopper who wants to see the whole lineup taps Show all brands and gets every make, then picks their own way in. Every form submission and every visit request from those pages lands in the dealer portal under Requests and in LeadLocate CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached, so an offer that worked shows up as a name your team can call rather than a click in a report. #### Where your salespeople see the same offers The same programs your shopper is reading appear where your salespeople work. Inside the CRM, the Incentives Showroom is part of the deal view under Desking, so a salesperson with a customer at the desk on a new unit sees the manufacturer's lease program, finance rate and customer cash on that vehicle without leaving the deal. Nobody walks to the tower to ask and nobody quotes last month's program from memory. From there the number goes into the pencil. The worksheet is where a quoted incentive becomes a payment, and the EZ desking worksheets page covers that side of the desk, with the desking tool page covering the tool itself. The point of having the offer in both places is that the customer who read the brand page last night and the salesperson sitting across from them this morning are quoting the same program. #### If it did not work A make you carry has no page. The platform builds pages from the makes in your inventory, so if a franchise is missing, the units for it have not reached the portal. Open the inventory list, confirm the vehicles are there, and check the feed or the website import if they are not. The offers look thin on one brand. Manufacturer programs vary by make and by month, and the engine shows the programs it carries for the makes you sell. If your store sells a make outside the ones the engine covers, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The page shows the wrong phone number or hours. Those come from Profile in the dealer portal. Fix them once there and every brand page picks the change up, which is the reason not to hand type them anywhere else. The offer shows but no cars are under it. Turn on Show matching vehicles from your inventory in Builder so the units that qualify sit with the offer. A shopper who sees a program and no vehicle usually leaves to go find the vehicle somewhere else. A salesperson says the deal view shows nothing. The Showroom appears on new units from the makes the engine covers. On a used unit there is no manufacturer program to show, which is correct rather than broken. #### Related tasks The product page for this is OEM Incentives Showroom, and the pages the offers live on are covered by brand offer pages, including the six offer card formats and the shared confirmation a shopper sees after they send a form. The rest of the path has guides of its own in the LeadLocate Help Center: setting up brand pages, publishing the inventory site the offers sit beside, and handling the Schedule a Visit request that comes in when a shopper decides to come and drive the car the offer applies to. Point this month's advertising at the brand hero page for the make with the stronger program and let the pages do the rest. #### Questions and answers Q: Which makes do the incentives cover? A: The engine carries manufacturer programs for more than twenty makes, and your brand pages show the ones you actually carry. A make outside that set is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Q: Do I have to enter the offers myself? A: No. The engine carries the programs and the brand pages show them, which is the point of having it. Your job is to make sure your inventory and your store details in Profile are current so the right pages get built with the right contact information. Q: Where does a salesperson see the incentives? A: In the deal view under Desking in LeadLocate CRM. The Incentives Showroom sits on the unit being worked, so the lease program, the rate and the customer cash are on the screen next to the worksheet. Q: Why does a used vehicle show no incentives? A: Because there is no manufacturer program on it to show. The Showroom covers new units from the makes the engine carries, and a used unit is priced and desked on its own merits. ### How to Skip a Month in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-skip-a-month Skip A Month is a plan on My LeadLocate that pauses leads and holds your store's account through a quiet cycle. Sign in, open Products & Subscriptions to see what is on the account, then ask for the switch through Create Support Request before your renewal date. Your CRM, tracking number and customer history stay exactly where they are. Steps: 1. Sign in to My LeadLocate: Go to your account portal and press Sign In with the email your store used at signup. If the password is on a sticky note in someone else's desk, use the sign in link sent to your email or the code sent to your mobile instead, or press Use a passkey if you set one up. You land on the account dashboard. 2. Open Products and Subscriptions: Click Products & Subscriptions in the account menu. This is the page that lists the plan your store is on today and every add on attached to it, each on its own card with its status, so you can read the whole account in one pass. 3. Read your renewal date first: Open Invoices and look at the date on the most recent one, then check Transactions for the day the payment cleared. That pair tells you which day of the month your cycle turns. The request to skip has to reach us before that day, because the plan changes on the cycle boundary, not in the middle of one. 4. Ask for Skip A Month: Click Create Support Request, say which month you want to skip and press Submit Ticket. One sentence is enough: the store name, the month, and whether you want the full plan back automatically after it. If you would rather talk it through with your rep, press Schedule a Call and pick a time. 5. Confirm the change on the account: Come back to Products & Subscriptions once the request is answered. The plan card reads Skip A Month for the coming cycle, and Invoices shows the next invoice at the Skip A Month rate. The ticket stays in your account with the whole exchange on it, so nobody has to remember who agreed to what. 6. Come back on when the month turns: Tell us the month you want the full plan back, or ask for it in the same ticket when you set the skip up. The plan you were on returns at the next cycle with the same zones, the same numbers and the same users. Nothing gets rebuilt because nothing was taken apart. #### Before you start You need a My LeadLocate login with billing rights, which is normally the account admin or the billing contact your store named at signup, and you need to know the day your cycle renews. If you only hold a CRM user login, your account admin makes the request or adds you to the portal first; Account Settings shows who the admin and the billing contact are. Know what you are asking for, too. Skip A Month is a real plan on the account, and not a checkbox hidden inside the CRM. Your store moves onto it for one cycle and back off it afterward, the same way you would move between any two plans on the pricing page. Because it is a plan, it changes on the cycle boundary, so the request needs to land before the renewal date rather than the week after it. #### What you should see On Products & Subscriptions the plan card reads Skip A Month for the coming cycle. On the billing page, Invoices shows the next invoice at the Skip A Month rate instead of your usual plan rate, and Transactions records the payment against it when it clears. Your logins do not change at all. The same email and password open LeadLocate CRM, the mobile app opens the same way on your phone, and every user on the account keeps the role they had. The support ticket you opened stays in your account with the printable history on it, which is the record to point at if anyone asks later what the store agreed to. #### What stays with your store while you skip? Everything your store has built. Every contact, every text thread, every call recording and transcript, every appointment on the calendar, every saved template, every lead page and every note a salesperson typed at nine at night. Your tracking number stays your tracking number, so a customer who calls the number on last month's buyer's order still reaches the store and still lands on the right record. Your users stay too, with the same permissions, so a manager who comes back from vacation mid cycle signs in and finds the desk exactly as it was. When the full plan turns back on, it turns on over the top of all of it. Nothing is rebuilt, nothing is re imported and no one re keys a customer list, because none of it was ever taken apart. That is the entire point of the plan: a quiet month on the lot costs you a month of spend, never a year of work. #### If it did not work The cycle renewed at the old rate. The request reached us after the renewal date, so it applied to the next cycle instead. Check the date on the newest row under Transactions, then reply on the same ticket and say which cycle you meant. Put a reminder in your own calendar a week before the renewal date so the next one is easy. You do not see a plan line at all. You are signed in as a CRM user rather than on the account portal, or you are on a second account your group also owns. Check the store name at the top of Account Settings and sign in with the email that owns the subscription. The ticket has no reply yet. Open Support Requests, find the ticket and read the thread; replies land there and in your email. Press Schedule a Call if you would rather settle it out loud, and your rep works the request with you on the phone. You actually want to spend less, not skip. Say that in the ticket. Plans, zones and add ons all move, and a rep will walk your account with you and put the store on the shape that fits the quarter. Anything your store needs that is not on the shelf today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Related tasks The My LeadLocate page covers the rest of the portal: invoices and receipts, the payment method on the account, service credits, the file library and which users can launch which products. The LeadLocate Help Center has the short guides for turning automatic renewal off, updating the payment method on the account and pulling a receipt for your office manager. If the month you are skipping is quiet because the store is between marketing pushes rather than between seasons, look at what the platform already carries before you skip. The CRM, the texting, the calendar and the website tools are in the plan you are already paying for, and most stores find a cycle's worth of work in the contacts they already own. #### Tips from the floor Ask early. A request sent two weeks ahead of the renewal date is a two minute exchange; one sent the morning after is a conversation about next cycle. Name the month in the ticket instead of writing next month, because the person reading it may open it on the first. Say in the same sentence whether you want the full plan back automatically, and you will not have to think about it again. And use the quiet cycle: the contacts, the trade in offers and the unsold showroom traffic your store already has are still sitting in the CRM, and working them is free. #### Questions and answers Q: Do I lose my leads and customer history if I skip a month? A: No. Every contact, text thread, call recording, appointment and note stays on the account exactly as it is, and your tracking number stays yours. The full plan turns back on over the top of all of it. Q: How does Skip A Month work? A: It is a plan of its own, and it keeps your whole account in place. The current rate for your store's shape sits on the pricing page, and your rep confirms it on the ticket before anything changes. Q: How late can I ask to skip a month? A: Before your renewal date. The plan changes on the cycle boundary, so a request that arrives after the cycle has turned applies to the following one. Check the newest row under Transactions if you are not sure which day that is. Q: How do I come back to my full plan? A: Say so in the ticket, either when you set the skip up or any time before the next cycle. Your old plan returns with the same zones, numbers and users, and there is nothing to set up again. ### How to Start a Deal from a Lead in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-start-a-deal-from-a-lead To start a deal from a lead in LeadLocate CRM, open the lead in Leads, make sure the Unit field names the vehicle, and click Start New Deal in the lead's button row. DealTracker creates a deal with the customer's name, phone, email, address and the vehicle already filled, and opens it so you can set the Deal Type and pencil it. Steps: 1. Open the lead: Click Leads on the desktop CRM and open the customer's lead. Check the name, phone and email on the lead, because they are copied onto the deal exactly as they are; a fix here saves a fix on the worksheet. 2. Put the vehicle in the Unit field: The Unit field on the lead is what becomes the vehicle on the deal. Type it, or click the inventory picker button to the left of Start New Deal and choose the unit from the store's inventory, which drops a formatted year, make, model and stock line into the field. If the field is blank, the lead's title is used instead. 3. Click Start New Deal: In the lead's button row, next to In Store Now, Print and Blacklist, click Start New Deal. The CRM creates the deal, links it to the lead, and opens it. The customer block and the vehicle line are already filled from the lead. 4. Set the deal basics: On the deal, confirm the Deal Date, choose the Deal Type and, if you have the VIN, use Enter VIN to auto-fill vehicle info so the year, make, model and trim decode onto the deal. Add the trade under Trade or Buy From Customer Vehicle if there is one. 5. Pencil it and save: Work the numbers on the worksheet: the Finance Deal Summary updates as you type, and the multi pencil grid lays out payments across terms and down payments. Click Save changes to this deal when the structure is right. The deal now shows on the Deal Tracker list with its own Deal Status. #### Before you start DealTracker has to be turned on for the store, which the master administrator does once on the company settings. If it is off, clicking Start New Deal returns you to the lead with a message saying so, and nothing is created. Any user who can open the lead can start a deal from it; whoever starts it is recorded as the salesperson on the deal, so a desk manager starting a deal for a rep should check that line after it opens. Get the lead right first. The deal takes the customer's name, phone, email and address from the lead as they stand at the moment you click, and the vehicle from the Unit field, so thirty seconds tidying the lead is faster than retyping on the worksheet. Set the store's deal defaults before the first deal too: tax rate, fees, loan and lease defaults and the default tab all live in the desking profile and land on every new worksheet. The EZ Desking worksheets page explains those defaults and what the grid and the goal seek solver do once the deal is open. #### What you should see The deal opens with a customer block showing the name, phone, email and address from the lead, and a vehicle line showing the Unit you set. The deal carries a Deal #, a Deal Date and a Deal Status that starts at the first stage; the status is separate from the lead's status and moves as the deal does, through working, negotiating, sent, in financing and sold. The lead itself now links to the deal, so anyone opening the customer later can jump to the worksheet. Around the worksheet are the rest of the deal tools. The Road to Sale checklist tracks the deal from vehicle selection through delivery, the Deal Jacket: panel takes the license, insurance and trade documents, including a QR code the customer scans to upload from their own phone, and the customer deal page and pencil recap sheet share the structure with the customer. The Road to Sale checklist and deal jacket pages cover each one. If you are on the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app carries the same deal in its desking view. #### If it did not work You were sent back to the lead with a message. The message names the cause. If it says the feature is off, the store's master administrator turns DealTracker on in the company settings. If it says the lead was not found or you are not allowed, the lead belongs to another company in a group or was deleted; open the right record and try again. The vehicle on the deal is wrong or blank. The deal took whatever was in the Unit field when you clicked, or the lead title if the field was blank. Fix the vehicle on the deal itself with Enter VIN to auto-fill vehicle info or by editing the vehicle line; there is no need to start over. You started a second deal for the same customer by mistake. Open the Deal Tracker list, open the extra deal and use Delete this deal. The lead keeps its link to the deal that remains. You need a deal for a customer who is not a lead. Open Desking in the main menu and use Start New Deal there; Search existing customers on that screen pulls a contact onto the deal, or you type the customer in by hand. #### Related tasks Once the deal is open, the next tasks are desking it and sharing it. The customer deal pages put the structured deal on a branded page the customer unlocks with a passcode and signs, and the pencil recap sheets share any customer print version as a link. The desking tool page is the overview of DealTracker as a product. Every guide is in the Help Center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows how leads, deals and the inbox fit together. #### Tips from the floor Start the deal the moment a customer picks a car, even before they sit down, so the worksheet is ready when they do and the lead's texting thread and the deal are already tied together. Use the inventory picker rather than typing the unit; a stock number on the deal is worth more than a description later. And start one deal per customer per visit, not one per pencil; the multi pencil grid and the revision history exist so that one deal can hold every version you showed them. #### Questions and answers Q: What does Start New Deal copy from the lead? A: The customer's name, phone, email and address, and the vehicle from the lead's Unit field, or the lead title if the Unit is blank. The new deal is linked to the lead. Q: Why do I get sent back to the lead when I click it? A: DealTracker is turned off for the store, or the lead is not one you can open. The message on the lead names the cause; the master administrator turns DealTracker on in the company settings. Q: Can I start a deal without a lead? A: Yes. Open Desking and use Start New Deal there, then use Search existing customers to pull a contact onto the deal or type the customer in. Q: Does the deal status change the lead status? A: No. The deal has its own Deal Status that moves as the deal progresses, and the lead keeps its own status. Update each where it lives. ### How to Tag a Lead in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-tag-a-lead In LeadLocate CRM a tag is the name label attached to a customer's phone number or email address, and it is what the texting and email inboxes show for that conversation. To tag a lead, open the customer's thread from Messaging, click Edit name beside the name, type the tag and click Save. The label follows the number everywhere. Steps: 1. Open the conversation: Go to Messaging on the desktop CRM and open the customer's text thread, or open the email thread from the email inbox. The customer's current name sits at the top of the thread next to the number or address. 2. Click Edit name: Click the pencil labeled Edit name beside the name. The name turns into a text field with the current label already in it and the cursor selected, so you can type over it. 3. Type the tag: Type the label you want the store to see. Use the customer's real name if the caller ID name is wrong or missing, and add the one thing the floor needs after it if it helps, such as the vehicle or the word trade. Keep it short; it has to fit an inbox row. 4. Save it: Click Save or press Enter. Press Escape or click Cancel to back out without changing anything. A blank name is refused, so the field always carries something. 5. Check the inbox: Click Go Back to Inbox. The thread now shows the tag you typed, and so does the same conversation in the LeadLocate mobile app. #### Before you start Tagging happens in the conversation, not on the lead form, because the tag belongs to the number or email address the customer wrote from. Any user who can open the thread can set it, and there is nothing to turn on. You need the customer's thread to exist, which means at least one text or email in either direction. A brand new lead that has never messaged does not have a thread yet; send the first text from the lead with Send a Text and the thread is there. Understand what the tag replaces. When a number texts the store for the first time, the inbox shows the caller ID name if the lookup found one, or the bare number if it did not. The tag overrides that. It is stored against the number or address for the whole account, so a customer who texts three different reps shows the same label in all three inboxes. The Custom Lead Statuses, Tags and Row Colors page explains how tags sit alongside statuses and colors. #### What you should see After you click Save, the field returns to a plain name showing what you typed, and a short confirmation appears. Back in the inbox list, the conversation row shows the tag instead of the caller ID name or the raw number, and the lead's name in Leads updates to match, because the two are kept in step. On the phone, the texting inbox in the LeadLocate mobile app shows the same label the next time it refreshes. The tag does not change the number or the address, and it does not touch the messages. Every text, picture and delivery status on the thread stays exactly where it was. The two way texting inbox page covers what else the thread carries. #### If it did not work You do not see the pencil. The Edit name control shows only on a thread that is attached to a lead. If the conversation came in from a number that is not on a lead yet, click Add to Contacts first so there is a record to name, then reopen the thread. The old caller ID name came back. Save was not completed, usually because the field was left empty or the page was closed before the click. Open the thread again, click Edit name, type the tag and press Enter, then wait for the confirmation before you leave. The tag shows on text but not on email. Text and email conversations are keyed separately, one by phone number and one by email address. Set the tag on the email thread as well, from the same pencil, and both inboxes agree. You want to label the lead, not the person. If what you need is a marker such as has a trade or wants a lease, use the row color on the lead and Filter by Color in the inbox, or add a custom status. Those are covered in the statuses and tags guide above. #### Related tasks A tag fixes the name; the rest of the record is fixed on the lead. The caller ID and contact validation tools show where the original name came from and whether the number is live. Statuses and row colors are the way to mark where a lead is and what is true about it, and the lost reason popup is how a dead lead is labeled. Every guide is in the Help Center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows how the inbox, the leads list and the customer profile connect. #### Tips from the floor Tag the thread the moment you learn the customer's real name, because the caller ID name is often a spouse, a business or nothing at all, and a BDC agent picking up the thread on your day off should not have to guess. Keep the label to a name and one word; the inbox row is narrow on the phone. And if the store has a naming habit, such as putting the vehicle after the name, make it the same habit for everyone so the inbox reads the same way for every user. #### Questions and answers Q: Where does the tag show up? A: On the conversation in the texting inbox and the email inbox, on the desktop CRM and in the mobile app, and on the lead's name, because the two are kept in step when you save. Q: Is a tag the same as a status? A: No. A status is where the lead is in the process and is set from the status dropdown on the lead. A tag is the name label on the customer's number or email and is set from the conversation. Q: Does tagging change the phone number or the messages? A: No. Only the displayed name changes. The number, the address and every message on the thread stay exactly as they were. Q: Can I tag a customer from the mobile app? A: Set it on the desktop thread with Edit name, and the tag shows in the mobile app's texting inbox as soon as it refreshes. ### How to Text a Customer in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-text-a-customer You text a customer from the lead record or from Send a Text in the top bar of LeadLocate CRM. The composer opens with the customer's number filled in; you write or pick a template, add a vehicle or picture if you want, and press Send Text. The message leaves from the store's tracking number and the reply lands in the same thread. Steps: 1. Open the composer: From an open lead, use the text option on the record and the customer's number is already filled in. From anywhere else, click Send a Text in the top bar or open Messaging and click New Text Message. On the phone app, Text is on the bottom dock. 2. Pick the customer: If the number is not filled in, type it in To or use Contact Lookup to search by name. A contact with more than one lead shows them so you pick the right one; the text will be logged on that lead. 3. Write the message: Type in Write your message..., or choose one of the store's saved messages under Select a Template. If you want help with the wording, open AI Writing Assistant, tell it what the message should do, and edit what comes back; Clean Up My Text fixes spelling and grammar on what you already typed. Keep it short and sign it with your first name. 4. Add a vehicle or a picture if it helps: Click Insert a vehicle from your inventory to drop a unit from the store's inventory into the message with its photo and price, or Attach file (MMS) to send a photo or a document. A shopper who asked about a specific car gets a better reply with the car in it. 5. Send it: Press Send Text, or use Send (Enter) from the keyboard. The message appears as a bubble in the thread right away. 6. Read the delivery status and wait for the reply: Each outbound bubble carries a status that moves from queued to sent to delivered; a failed status means the number did not take the message. When the customer answers, the thread moves to the top of the texting inbox, the desktop chimes if Play Text Message sound is on, and you reply in the same thread. 7. Schedule the follow up: If the customer goes quiet, click Schedule TEXT Follow-up in the thread, pick the day and time, and the next message goes out without you remembering it. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login, on desktop or in the mobile app, and a customer with a mobile number on the lead. Every account gets a tracking number when it is created, and every user can text from it; there is nothing to enable. Turn on Notify me when I get a NEW TEXT in your notification preferences so a reply reaches you when you are away from the screen. Text only customers who asked to hear from you: a lead who submitted a form, a customer who texted or called first, a buyer you are already working. The store's DNC Blacklist stops texts to numbers on it, and the phone validity dot on the record tells you whether the number is a mobile before you write. The do not call scrub and blacklist page explains how numbers get there and how a manager keeps the list current. #### What you should see Your message as a bubble on the right of the thread, with the time and a status under it. The status changes on its own as the carrier reports back: sent, then delivered, or failed if the number rejected it. The customer's reply shows on the left, and pictures they send render in the thread. The whole conversation is also on the lead record in the communications log, next to the calls and emails, so a manager or a teammate reads it without asking you. If the customer's phone supports rich messaging, the same message arrives in that format automatically and falls back to a standard text when it does not; you send once and the platform picks. When the message carried a vehicle, the customer sees the photo with the year, make, model and price in the body. If you used a template with a link in it, the link is shortened and its clicks show on the record. #### If it did not work The bubble says failed. The number is a landline, is out of service, or blocked short business numbers. Check the validity dot on the lead, run the Phone Validator on it, and call instead if it is a landline. A number that fails twice is usually wrong on the lead; ask the customer for the right one by email. The composer refuses the number. It is on the store's DNC Blacklist, either because the customer replied STOP or because a manager added it. Honor it; a manager can review the entry on the DNC Blacklist page if the customer asks to be contacted again. You sent it but nothing shows on the lead. The text went to a contact that is not linked to that lead, usually because the customer has two records. Use the merge on the lead to combine them and the thread appears on the surviving record. No sound or alert on a reply. Confirm Play Text Message sound and Notify me when I get a NEW TEXT are on in your preferences, and that the browser tab was opened at least once since login. The notifications page lists every setting. #### Related tasks Everything about the thread view, pictures and delivery status is on the two way texting inbox feature page. The vehicle button is covered on send vehicles by text, and the writing help on the AI writing assistant page. Texting a list of customers at once is a different tool, Bulk Texting under Marketing Tools on the dock, with its own recipient lists. The LeadLocate Help Center has the step by step guides for sending a picture message, sending a vehicle in a text, and making a call from the CRM, each starting from the same lead record. A texting workflow your store needs that the composer does not offer is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Lead with the customer's question, not your name. Send the car, not a description of the car. Ask one question per text so the reply is easy. Text during the hours you would call, and schedule the follow up before you close the thread. And read the delivery status before you assume a customer is ignoring you; a failed bubble means they never saw it. #### Questions and answers Q: What number does the customer see when I text from LeadLocate? A: The store's tracking number, provisioned when the account was created. Replies to it land in the texting inbox and on the lead, not on anyone's personal phone. Q: Can I text a customer from my phone and still have it logged? A: Yes, from the LeadLocate mobile app. Text is on the bottom dock, the thread is the same one the desktop shows, and every message lands on the lead record. Q: How do I know the customer got my text? A: Every outbound bubble carries a delivery status that moves from sent to delivered. Failed means the number did not accept it; check the number and call instead. Q: Can I send a picture or a vehicle in the text? A: Yes. Attach file (MMS) sends photos and documents, and Insert a vehicle from your inventory drops a unit with its photo and price into the message. ### How to Turn Automatic Renewal off in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-turn-automatic-renewal-off In My LeadLocate, open Products & Subscriptions and switch Automatic Renewal off. That is a cancellation, so the portal shows the full terms: tick the box confirming the 10 day notice, type cancel and press Yes, Cancel My Service. Cancellations need at least 10 days notice before your next billing date, and a charge due sooner still processes as scheduled. Your subscription then reads Cancels at the End of Agreement. Steps: 1. Sign in as the account admin: Automatic renewal lives on the account portal, not in the CRM, and only a login with billing rights can change it. Press Sign In with the email your store used at signup, or use the sign in link sent to your email or the code sent to your mobile. Account Settings tells you who the account admin and the billing contact are if you are not sure. 2. Open Products and Subscriptions: Click Products & Subscriptions in the menu. Every subscription your store holds has its own card with its status, an Automatic Renewal switch and a Cancel Service button. A dealer group with several stores often has more than one subscription on the same login, so read every card before you touch anything. 3. Check the 10 day notice: Every card states the rule: cancellations must be requested at least 10 days before your next billing date. If that date is 10 or more days away, the next charge does not run. If it is sooner, that charge still processes as scheduled and your service stays active through the period it covers. Transactions on the Billing page lists every payment with its date, and your plan bills on the same calendar day every month. 4. Switch automatic renewal off on the right card: Turn the Automatic Renewal switch off on the subscription you mean, or press Cancel Service on the same card. Both open the same cancellation dialog, because turning renewal off and cancelling are the same instruction in different words. 5. Read the terms, tick the box and confirm: The dialog lists what happens under Before you cancel, including the last date inside the 10 day notice window. Tick the box confirming you understand the 10 day notice, type the word cancel, then press Yes, Cancel My Service. Press No, Keep My Service to close it with nothing changed. 6. Keep your confirmation: A confirmation number appears as soon as the request is saved; keep it for your records. The card now reads Cancels at the End of Agreement, the Automatic Renewal switch shows OFF, and the button changes to Cancellation Processed Click HERE to Request Reactivation. Anyone on your account who opens the portal sees the same status. 7. Change your mind before the period ends: Press Cancellation Processed Click HERE to Request Reactivation on the same card and your account manager picks it up, or open Create Support Request and say you want the subscription to keep renewing. Ask before your paid period ends and your users, tracking numbers and customer records carry on exactly as they are. #### Before you start You need a login with billing rights on My LeadLocate, which is the account admin or the billing contact your store named at signup. A CRM user login opens the products, not the billing, so if the switch is not on your screen the fix is usually the login rather than the account. Know which subscription you mean. A dealer group that runs several rooftops on one account can hold more than one subscription, each on its own card, and each add on renews with the subscription it belongs to. Read every card once before you change anything, and if two look alike, ask your account manager which store each one serves before you cancel. Know your timing. Cancellations need at least 10 days notice before your next billing date, as section 6.1 of the Terms of Service sets out. Your plan bills on the same calendar day every month, so the date of your most recent payment under Transactions on the Billing page tells you the next one. Request the cancellation 10 or more days ahead and the next charge does not run. Inside those 10 days, that charge still processes as scheduled and your service stays active through the period it pays for. Know, too, that this is a cancellation with a later date on it. If what you actually want is one quiet cycle instead of an ending, Skip A Month is the plan for that, and it keeps everything in place. The pricing page lists it next to the rest of the plans. #### What you should see The full terms before anything is saved, then a clear status. Under Before you cancel, the dialog spells out the 10 day notice, names the last date inside the notice window counted from today, and confirms that your service stays active through the end of your paid period. Nothing is saved until the box is ticked, the word cancel is typed and you press Yes, Cancel My Service. After that, a confirmation number appears on screen, the card on Products & Subscriptions reads Cancels at the End of Agreement, and the reactivation button sits on the same card. Billing follows the agreement. A charge due inside the 10 day window processes as scheduled, and Transactions keeps every payment your store has made, because the history stays whatever the subscription does. You will also receive a cancellation notice for the recurring payment from the payment provider, confirming the same request. Until your paid period ends, every login, every user, every tracking number and every record in LeadLocate CRM works exactly as it did this morning. You paid for the period and the period is yours. #### Why the screen warns you like a cancellation Because it is one. Automatic renewal is the thing that carries the subscription from one billing date to the next, so switching it off is the instruction to end the subscription when the current paid period runs out. Rather than letting that sit quietly in a settings page and surprise someone in six weeks, the portal says it in the same words a cancellation uses, puts the 10 day notice in front of you with the exact date it applies to, and asks you to confirm twice: once with the box, once with the word. That is deliberate, and it is the behavior every store should want from a vendor holding its customer records. Nobody at the store wakes up to a subscription that ended because a manager clicked a toggle they read as a billing preference. The status stays on the card where the owner, the controller and the rep can all see it, and a reactivation request is one button away. #### If it did not work There is no renewal control on your screen. You are signed in as a CRM user rather than as the account admin or billing contact. Check the names on Account Settings and sign in with the email that owns the subscription, or ask that person to make the change. You cancelled the wrong subscription. Press Cancellation Processed Click HERE to Request Reactivation on that card right away, then repeat the steps on the card you meant. Your account manager puts the first one back to renewing and nothing on it is lost. Yes, Cancel My Service does nothing. The dialog stays open until the box is ticked and the word cancel is typed exactly, and it marks whichever one is missing. Tick the box, check the spelling and press it again. The card still shows renewal on. The dialog was closed before it was confirmed, or the portal reported that your cancellation was not saved, so nothing changed. Refresh the page and walk the steps again. You want a smaller plan, not an ending. Open Create Support Request and say what the store needs for the next quarter. Plans, zones, seats and add ons all move, and your rep will reshape the account with you. Press Schedule a Call if you would rather do it out loud, and watch Support Requests for the reply. #### Related tasks The My LeadLocate page walks the rest of the portal: invoices, receipts, the payment method on the account, service credits, the file library and which users can launch which products. The LeadLocate Help Center has the companion guides for skipping a month, updating the payment method on the account and pulling a receipt. Before you end a subscription over price, it is worth seeing what is already included in the one you have. The texting, the calling, the calendar, the credit application intake, the website tools and the desking worksheets all sit inside the platform you are paying for, and most stores are using a fraction of it. Anything your store needs that is not there is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Make the change yourself rather than asking a salesperson to do it, because the person who ticks the notice box should be the person who knows the billing date. Decide two weeks before that date and the 10 day notice is never a race. Save the confirmation number and a screenshot of the card in the accounting folder the same day. Tell your rep why, in one sentence, on a ticket: half the time there is a plan that fits better and the store stays. And if the reason is a quiet season rather than a decision, skip a cycle instead and keep every record your store has built. #### Questions and answers Q: Does turning automatic renewal off end my service right away? A: No. Your service stays active through the end of the period you have already paid for, and the subscription reads Cancels at the End of Agreement until then. Every login and every record works normally in the meantime. Q: How much notice do I need to give? A: At least 10 days before your next billing date, as section 6.1 of the Terms of Service sets out. A charge due sooner than that still processes as scheduled, and your service stays active through the period it covers. Q: What does the cancellation dialog ask me to do? A: Tick the box confirming you understand the 10 day notice, type the word cancel, and press Yes, Cancel My Service. No, Keep My Service closes it with nothing changed, and the same dialog opens whether you use the switch or Cancel Service. Q: Why does the screen call it a cancellation? A: Because that is what it does. Automatic renewal is what carries the subscription into the next term, so switching it off ends the subscription at the end of the current one. The portal says so plainly instead of hiding it in a settings page. Q: Can I turn automatic renewal back on? A: Yes, by requesting reactivation before your paid period ends. Use the reactivation button on the same subscription card, or open a support request and say you want it renewing again. Your users, numbers and customer history carry on as they are. Q: What if I only need one quiet month? A: Ask for Skip A Month instead. It is a plan that holds the account for one cycle and keeps your CRM, tracking number and history in place, then your full plan comes back. ### How to Turn on the Virtual Receptionist in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-turn-on-the-virtual-receptionist Turning on the virtual receptionist in LeadLocate CRM is one switch on IVR Settings under Account Settings. Once it is on, your tracking number is answered in the store's name, the receptionist follows the greeting, business description and call instructions you write, transfers to the numbers you list, and sends message copies to the people you name. This guide walks through each field. Steps: 1. Open IVR Settings: Sign in as a Master Administrator. Open Billing & Admin, then Account Settings, then Phone & IVR and IVR Settings. Scroll to the Virtual Receptionist section. If Answering Service is handling your calls, the section is locked until the service is turned off. 2. Turn the switch on: Flip the Virtual Receptionist switch. On, callers reach the receptionist. Off, calls forward to the Forward Calls To list as before. Nothing answers differently until you save, so fill in the fields below first. 3. Write the greeting: In Greeting, type what the caller hears first, starting with the store's name. Press Generate to have a greeting drafted from your business details, or press Upload Greeting to use a recording in your own voice. Use Standard puts the default greeting back at any time. 4. Describe the store and the rules: Fill in About Your Business: what you sell, where you are, how you want the store described. Then write Call Instructions in plain English: when to transfer, when to take a message, and what to ask for, such as the caller's name, number and the vehicle they are calling about. 5. List transfers and message recipients: In Transfer Numbers, enter the phones a connected caller reaches, usually the same people on the ring list. In Message Copies, enter who receives a copy whenever the receptionist takes a message, such as the sales manager and the internet director. 6. Set hours, save and test: Tick Open 24 hours or set Edit Hours, so the receptionist transfers during business hours and simply takes a message after close. Save with the bar at the bottom. Then call the tracking number from a cell phone, ask about a vehicle, and confirm the transfer and the message both behave as written. #### What do you need before you start? You need a Master Administrator login, because the Virtual Receptionist section of IVR Settings is read only for everyone else. You need three short pieces of writing ready: a greeting in the store's name, a paragraph about the business, and the rules for when to transfer and when to take a message. You also need the phone numbers that should receive transfers and the people who should receive message copies. Nothing needs to be bought. The receptionist is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan. A new account starts with plain forwarding, the line open around the clock and the press 5 confirmation off, so the first call rings through with nothing configured; the receptionist is the one switch that changes that. If a live Answering Service with an Operator Greeting is already taking your calls, turn it off first, or the receptionist stays locked. #### What should you see when it works? The next call to your tracking number is answered on the first ring in the store's name. The receptionist asks how it can help, and when the caller wants sales during business hours it rings the Transfer Numbers. If nobody picks up in time, or the store is closed, it takes a message with the details your Call Instructions asked for and tells the caller someone will return the call. Two things then happen at once. The message arrives with everyone listed in Message Copies, and the call appears on the Calls page with the caller ID, the recording and the message taken. When the caller's number matches a lead, the call sits on that lead's timeline, and the rep who owns the lead sees it as soon as they finish with their customer. On the LeadLocate mobile app the same history shows under Call Logs, and a transferred call rings the rep's phone with the inbound call alert screen showing the caller's name. #### What if it did not work? Calls still ring straight to the floor. The switch was flipped but the page was not saved, or Answering Service is on and the receptionist section is locked. Turn the service off, confirm the Virtual Receptionist switch is on, and save. The receptionist takes messages but never transfers. Transfer Numbers is empty, or the Call Instructions never say when to transfer. Add the numbers, write a plain rule such as transfer sales calls during business hours, and check that Edit Hours matches the store's real schedule, since a transfer outside those hours is a message by design. Nobody at the store sees the messages. Message Copies is empty. Add the people who should call back, and turn on Call Alerts in their notification preferences so a taken message becomes a text to them within the minute. #### Which related tasks come next? The receptionist sits in front of the ring list, so the list it transfers to is the next thing to check: the call forwarding and ring lists page covers the Forward Calls To field and the press 5 confirmation under Call Handling, which applies to a transferred call as well. The virtual receptionist and call screening feature page explains what a normal day looks like with it on, and the AI receptionist for car dealerships page answers whether a store should let software answer its phone at all. A store that wants a numbered menu before the receptionist, or a different path for sales and service callers, builds it with the IVR call flow builder on the same page. What a caller hears when a transfer fails and no message is taken is the Company Voicemail greeting. Every other guide is on the help center. #### Tips from the floor Write the Call Instructions the way you would brief a new receptionist on her first morning. Say what to ask for, say what never to promise, such as a payment or an out the door price, and say who gets which kind of message. The receptionist follows what is written, so a rule you leave out is a rule it does not have. Read the first week of messages on the Calls page and tighten the instructions from what you see. A store that wants help writing them, or wants the receptionist to handle something specific to its business, can ask: anything the standard fields do not cover is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. Reach us through contact us. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the virtual receptionist answer every call, or only unanswered ones? A: With the switch on, it answers the tracking number first and then transfers or takes a message according to your Call Instructions and hours. With the switch off, calls forward straight to the ring list. Q: Can I use my own voice for the greeting? A: Yes. Press Upload Greeting on the Virtual Receptionist section and choose your recording. You can also type the greeting as text, have one drafted with Generate, or go back to the default with Use Standard. Q: Where do the messages it takes go? A: To everyone listed in Message Copies, to the Calls page with the recording and the message text, and to the lead's timeline when the caller's number matches a lead. Q: Is the receptionist the same thing as Jax? A: No. Jax is the AI assistant that helps a salesperson inside the CRM. The virtual receptionist is a separate switch on IVR Settings that answers callers on the store's tracking number. ### How to Update Your Payment Method in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-update-your-payment-method Sign in to My LeadLocate with a billing login, open your account settings and edit the Payment Method on File block. Type the new card details, save, and the line rewrites with the new card type and last four digits. Pay any open invoice with it through Proceed to Payment → and Confirm Your Payment to prove it works. Steps: 1. Sign in with a login that has billing rights: The payment method lives on the account portal, not in the CRM. Sign in with the account admin or billing contact email your store named at signup, using the password, the sign in link sent to your email or the code sent to your mobile. A product user login will open the CRM and the other applications but not the billing details. 2. Open your account settings: From the account menu, open the settings page. It holds the store's billing contact, the billing address, the service address and the payment details for the subscription, all on one screen. Read the store name at the top first if your group holds more than one account on the same login. 3. Edit the payment method block: Find Payment Method on File and start an edit on it. The block shows what is there today as a card type and the last four digits, which is all anyone at the store ever needs to see to know which card is paying the bill. 4. Type the new card and save it: Enter the card number, the expiration date, the security code and the billing address the card statement uses, then save. If the billing address is the same as the address already on the account, use the option that copies it rather than typing it twice. Save the change and wait for the page to come back. 5. Check the line rewrote: Payment Method on File should now read the new card type and the new last four digits. That is the confirmation. If it still shows the old card, the save did not take, and the fix is almost always a mistyped billing address or an expiration date in the past. 6. Pay an open invoice with it: If an invoice is waiting, open it and press Proceed to Payment →, then Confirm Your Payment. The payment clears against the new card, which is the only real proof that the details are right. If nothing is open, the next scheduled invoice uses the new card on its own. 7. Keep the receipt: Every cleared payment produces a PAYMENT RECEIPT on the account, with the amount, the invoice reference and the Payment Method that paid it. Print it or save it to the accounting folder the same day, and your controller never has to ask you which card was charged. #### Before you start You need a billing login on My LeadLocate and the card itself, because you will type the number, the expiration date and the security code. You also need the billing address exactly as the card statement prints it. Most declines at this step are an address mismatch rather than a problem with the card. Decide who should own this before you type. The payment method belongs on the person who will still be at the store next year: the dealer principal, the controller or the office manager, not a salesperson's personal card. Your account settings page names the billing contact, and changing that name is the same short edit as changing the card. If the person who used to handle it has left, update both in one visit. Worth saying plainly: the payment details on this page pay your LeadLocate invoices. Your customers' deposits, down payments and finance transactions are the store's own business and run through the store's own systems, exactly as they always have. #### What you should see After the save, Payment Method on File reads the new card type and the new last four digits, and nothing else about the card is displayed anywhere on the account. That is on purpose. Your whole team can look at the billing page and see which card pays the bill without any of them being able to read the number. When the next invoice is raised it charges the new card, and the payment appears in the account's payment history within a minute of clearing. Open it and you get a PAYMENT RECEIPT showing the amount, the invoice reference, the billing contact and the Payment Method used. If you paid manually through Confirm Your Payment, the same receipt is produced the same way, so the accounting trail looks identical either way. #### When to change it before it changes you Three moments are worth putting on a calendar. The first is the month a card expires: swap it the week before rather than the week after, and no invoice ever has to be chased. The second is when the store changes banks, because a new account number usually arrives with a new card and the old one stops working the same week. The third is when the person who owns billing leaves, which is the one stores forget until an invoice goes unpaid and nobody knows whose card it was. None of this touches what your store is using. Your users keep working, your tracking numbers keep ringing, and every record in LeadLocate CRM stays exactly where it is while you edit the billing details. The platform is built so the store keeps selling, and paperwork on the account portal is paperwork, not an interruption to the floor. #### If it did not work The save came back with an error. Nine times out of ten the billing address or ZIP does not match what the bank has for the card. Copy it from the card statement, character for character, and try again. The line still shows the old card. The edit was never saved, or a second browser tab had the page open and overwrote it. Reload the settings page, check the last four digits, and make the edit once from a single tab. The payment will not confirm. Check that the card has not already been reported lost by the bank, that the expiration date is in the future, and that the store's bank has not flagged a new vendor charge. A quick call to the bank clears the last one faster than anything on this page can. There is no payment block on your screen. You are signed in as a product user rather than a billing login, or on another account your group owns. Sign in with the email that owns the subscription, and check the store name on the settings page. Your store pays by check or by transfer. Say so on a support request and your rep sets the account up for it. Anything your store needs on billing that is not on the page today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Related tasks The My LeadLocate page covers the rest of the portal: invoices, receipts, service credits, add ons, the file library, support tickets and which users can launch which products. The LeadLocate Help Center has the companion guides for viewing a receipt, using referral credits, skipping a month and turning automatic renewal off. If you are updating the card because the store is reviewing what it spends, open the pricing page next to the products list on your account. Plans, zones, seats and add ons all move, and a ten minute call with your rep usually lands the store on a better shape than a cancelled card ever will. #### Tips from the floor Use the store's card, not a personal one. Put the expiration month in the shared calendar the day you type it. Screenshot the settings line after the save, because a picture of the card type and last four digits ends every future argument about which card is paying. And if you are the person who just took over billing, walk the whole settings page once while you are in there: billing contact, billing address, service address and the payment method all belong to the same person and all age at the same rate. #### Questions and answers Q: Who can change the payment method on the account? A: The account admin or the billing contact your store named at signup. A CRM user login opens the products but not the billing details, which is why the block does not appear for everyone. Q: Will my team be able to see the card number? A: No. The account shows a card type and the last four digits and nothing else, so anyone with billing rights can tell which card is paying without being able to read it. Q: Do I have to pay an invoice right after I change the card? A: Only if one is open. If nothing is waiting, the next scheduled invoice uses the new card by itself. Paying an open invoice is simply the quickest way to prove the details are right. Q: Does updating the card interrupt anything my store is using? A: No. Your users, tracking numbers, texts, calendar and every record in the CRM carry on exactly as they are while you edit the billing details. ### How to Upload Deal Documents by QR in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-upload-deal-documents-by-qr Uploading deal documents by QR in LeadLocate CRM starts from the deal jacket on a lead card or in the deal view under Desking. You choose Upload with phone camera, a QR code appears on your screen, any phone scans it and opens a private single use page, and the photos taken there land in the deal jacket within seconds, ready to preview, rename and rotate. Steps: 1. Open the deal jacket: From the main menu choose Desking and open the deal, or expand the lead card under Leads, Contacts or Calendar. The Deal Jacket: section lists the files already on the record. 2. Show the QR code: Click Upload with phone camera. A QR code opens in a window on your screen with a note that it expires in sixty seconds. Turn the screen toward whoever holds the phone, the customer or yourself. 3. Scan it with any phone: Point the phone camera at the code and tap the link it shows. A private upload page opens in the phone browser with a lock badge and a note that it is single use. The window on your screen closes on its own the moment the phone connects. 4. Take or pick the photos: On the phone, photograph the front and back of the document, crop if needed, add more pages or pick files already on the phone, and upload. A receipt page confirms the upload and then expires, so the link cannot be reused. 5. Check the files on the record: The Deal Jacket: list refreshes on its own and shows the new files. Click one to preview it, rotate the page that was shot sideways, and rename it from the phone file name to something the finance office will recognize. 6. Mark the documents done: When the deal has everything it needs, use Mark documents complete on the Road to Sale checklist so the rest of the store can see the paperwork step is finished. #### What do I need before I upload by QR? You need a lead, contact, appointment or deal open in LeadLocate CRM on a desktop screen, and any phone with a camera. The phone does not need the LeadLocate app, a login or anything installed; the customer's own phone works, which is the point. Any user who can open the record can start the upload, and there is nothing to turn on. Know which flow you want. The generic QR upload described here puts any document into the Deal Jacket: on the record. Two specialized scanners on the same panel do more with specific documents: Scan ID and insurance cards reads a driver license and insurance card into the customer record, and the Trade Info scanner reads registration, title and payoff documents into the trade. Use those when the document is one of that kind, and the generic upload for everything else. The deal jacket and QR intake page describes all three. #### What should I see when it works? On your screen, the QR window closes by itself when the phone connects, and a few seconds after the phone uploads, the Deal Jacket: list shows the new files marked as new, without a page refresh. Each row has preview, rename, rotate and delete. The preview opens in a lightbox with zoom for images and a framed viewer for PDFs. The record timeline shows a deal jacket upload event with a paperclip, so anyone reading the lead later knows when the document arrived and how. On the phone, the upload page shows a lock badge, a plain note that the link is single use and that documents are processed automatically, and the terms and privacy links. After the upload, a receipt confirms the files, then the page expires. A second phone that scans the same code gets a not found page. The files are stored privately under your store's account and preview only through the CRM after it checks that the file belongs to your company. #### What if it did not work? The code expired before the phone scanned it. The code is good for sixty seconds until a phone opens it. Click Upload with phone camera again for a fresh code and scan it right away. The phone shows a not found page. Another phone already claimed the code, or the upload window on that phone ran out. Generate a new code from the record; each code serves one phone for one session. The files are on the record but the wrong one. Every card of that customer shares the same jacket, so check that you opened the right lead. If a file landed in the wrong customer's jacket, delete it there; deleted files go to the trash bin under Deal Jacket Files with restore, so nothing is lost if the delete was the mistake. The customer has no phone in hand. Use Upload document from computer on the same panel, or drag the file onto it, and it lands in the jacket the same way. #### What do I do next? Documents the customer owes from home do not need a QR code at all. Send the customer deal page and the customer uploads each item from the phone camera into the named slots under 5. Deal Jacket Documents on their page, where you approve or reject each one from the deal. For a license or an insurance card, use the scanner instead, covered on how to scan a driver license. For a title, registration or payoff letter, use the trade scanner, covered on how to capture a trade in. The store wide document library, with folders and secure sharing, is on the file library page. The Help Center lists every task in order, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where the deal jacket sits in the platform. #### Tips from the floor Hand the customer their own phone, not yours. A customer who photographs their own license into your system never has a copy of it on your personal camera roll, which is the habit this feature exists to end. Rename the file the moment it lands, while you remember what it is; a finance manager opening the jacket at delivery should see the document name, not a string of numbers from a phone. Shoot the back of every card, because the barcode on the back is what the identity scanner reads. And show the code before the test drive, when the customer is standing at your desk anyway, so the paperwork step is already done when the customer decides to buy. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the customer need an app to scan the QR code? A: No. Any phone camera opens the link. A private single use upload page opens in the phone browser, the customer takes or picks photos, crops if needed, and uploads. Nothing is installed. Q: How long is the QR code good for? A: Sixty seconds until a phone opens it. Then that phone has a limited window to shoot, crop and upload, and a second scan from another phone is refused. Q: Can the customer see the deal jacket? A: No. The deal jacket is private to your team. Documents you want from the customer are requested through the slots on their deal page, and those uploads are reviewed and approved on the deal. Q: What happens if someone deletes a file by mistake? A: It goes to the trash bin under Deal Jacket Files with a restore action, and the record timeline still shows the original upload event. ### How to Use Deal Chat in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-deal-chat Deal chat in LeadLocate CRM is the message thread attached to one deal. The customer writes from the Online Chat card on their deal page; you answer from the Customer Chat panel in the deal view on the desktop or from the Deal Chats inbox in the LeadLocate mobile app. Photos, files and links travel on the thread, and every message stays on the deal record. Steps: 1. Open the thread on the desktop: From the main menu choose Desking, open the deal, and find the Customer Chat panel in the right hand column next to the offer cards the customer is looking at. New customer messages appear here as they arrive. 2. Or open it on your phone: In the LeadLocate mobile app open Deal Chats. Use Search deal chats to find a customer, tap the conversation, and read the deal summary above the messages before you answer. 3. Write the reply: On the phone tap Reply to customer. Type the answer, pick a Message template for a standard explanation, or dictate it with the microphone. On the desktop the composer is the same one you use for texting, with the AI writing assistant available for a draft you can edit. 4. Attach what the customer needs: Tap Add photo or file from device to send photos of the unit, a walk around or a document. Paste a listing link and it unfurls as a card with the vehicle image and title. From the desktop composer you can drop a vehicle in from inventory with its photos and price. 5. Send it: Click Send message on the desktop or send from the phone. The customer is texted that there is a reply on the deal page, so the answer does not sit unread. 6. Act on what the customer sent: If the customer sent a document or a trade photo, open the lead with View Lead Details and file it where it belongs. Use Back to Deal Chats to return to the inbox and work the next conversation. #### What do I need before I use deal chat? You need a deal that has been sent to the customer as a deal page, because the customer reaches the thread only from that page. Any user who can open the deal can read and answer the chat; there is nothing to turn on. On the phone you need the LeadLocate mobile app signed in to the same account, and it helps to set your notification preferences so a new customer message reaches you as a toast, a sound, a text or an email. Turn on Play Deal Tracker sound in your settings if you want to hear a new deal message land while you are at the desk. On the customer side there is nothing to install. The customer opens the deal page with the texted passcode, and the Online Chat card is on the page, stacked under the deal details on a phone and beside them on a desktop. The how to send a deal page guide covers getting the page to the customer. #### What should I see when it is working? On the desktop, the Customer Chat panel shows both sides of the conversation in order, with the customer's messages, your replies, the photos and the link preview cards. The panel sits next to the offer cards that mirror the customer's page, so you answer while looking at the same presentation the customer is looking at. On the phone, Deal Chats lists every open thread with the newest message first, and each thread opens with a read only summary of the deal above the conversation. On the customer's page, the customer types into Type your message and taps Send Message; your reply appears in the same card, and the customer gets a text that a reply is waiting. Every message on the thread is stored against the deal and its customer, and the CRM's communications log keeps it with every call, text, email and voicemail on the same person. The deal chat feature page describes what travels on the thread in full. #### What if it did not work? The customer says there is no chat on the page. The customer is looking at a shared pencil recap sheet, not the deal page. A recap sheet is a single worksheet with a signature; the chat lives on the deal page. Send the customer link from Share on the deal and the Online Chat card is on it. You did not get notified. Check your per user notification preferences for deal messages and confirm the phone app is signed in to the right account. A message you did not hear about is still in the Customer Chat panel on the deal and in Deal Chats on the phone; nothing is lost. A photo did not send. Very large files take longer on a slow connection; wait for the upload to finish before leaving the thread. If it still fails, send the photo as a text from the lead instead and note it on the deal. #### What do I do next? Most deal chat conversations end in one of three tasks. When the customer asks for a number in writing, send a revised sheet or a signed snapshot rather than typing a figure into the chat; the pencil recap sheets page covers the shareable worksheet. When the customer sends the payoff letter or the title, put it in the deal jacket, covered on deal jacket and QR intake. When the customer is ready, the Road to Sale checklist on the deal tells you which step comes next. For everything that is not about one deal, the two way texting inbox is the right place, and the LeadLocate mobile app carries both inboxes side by side. The Help Center lists every task, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows where deal chat sits in the platform. #### Tips from the floor Answer from the deal, not from your own phone, even when texting feels faster. The thread on the deal is what the manager reads when the customer comes back Saturday and what the store keeps after you take a day off. Read the deal summary above the conversation before you reply on the phone; the customer is asking about a specific payment, and the summary tells you which one. Use a Message template for the warranty and payoff explanations your store repeats a dozen times a week, and keep the chat for explaining a number, never for agreeing one. When the customer wants it in writing, that is a sheet, and the chat is where you say so and send the link. #### Questions and answers Q: How does the customer start a deal chat? A: From the Online Chat card on their deal page. The page opens from the link you sent, unlocked with a one time passcode texted to the number on the deal. The customer never installs anything. Q: Is deal chat the same as the texting inbox? A: No. The texting inbox is organized by phone number and covers every conversation. Deal chat is attached to one deal, so the thread about that vehicle, trade and payment stays with that transaction and the manager reviewing the deal can read it. Q: Can the customer send photos and documents? A: Yes, in both directions. The customer can send trade photos and documents from the phone, you can send unit photos, a walk around or a file, and links unfurl as preview cards. Q: Does the customer know when I reply? A: Yes. The customer is texted that there is a reply on the deal page. On your side, per user notification preferences decide whether a new customer message arrives as a toast, sound, text or email. ### How to Use My Office in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-my-office Click My Office on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM and a full screen canvas opens over your work. Add the widgets you want, sticky notes, a to-do list, a timer, a reminder, a link card, a VIN decode, and drag them where you want them. The layout saves itself as a space, and you can keep a second space for a different part of the day. Steps: 1. Open the canvas: Click My Office on the dock, the bar across the bottom of the CRM that also holds Marketing Tools, the Referral Program, Design Studio, My Inventory, SecureWebX, Reports and Jax. The desk opens full screen over whatever you were doing and closes back to it. Everything on it belongs to you; another user signing in at the same store sees their own desk, not yours. 2. Put the first three things on it: Start small or you will never use it. A sticky note with the customers you promised to call before ten. A to-do list for the day. A timer or a reminder for the one thing you always forget. Drag each widget where you want it and let go; the canvas saves as you work, so there is no save button to hunt for and nothing is lost if you close it in a hurry. 3. Drop a link and decode a VIN: Paste a URL onto the desk and it becomes a link card with the page title and picture, so a desk full of links is readable at a glance instead of a column of blue text. Paste a seventeen character VIN into the VIN decode widget and it comes back as year, make, model and trim, which is how you know what a customer's trade actually is before she pulls onto the lot. 4. Have something read to you: Text to speech reads a note or a pasted message aloud, which is useful when a manager left you six paragraphs and you are walking to the lot. The image widget generates a quick visual when you need to show an idea and the store has no photo of it. Tell the customer it is an illustration, not the car, and then walk her to the closest unit on the lot. 5. Save it as a space, then make a second one: A layout is a space, and you keep as many as you want. Most people end up with two: a desk space with everything, and a lighter floor space with the notes and the VIN decode up front, because on the lot you want two things and not ten. Switching between spaces is one click, and each one keeps its own widgets exactly where you left them. 6. Keep files on the desk: Drop a file on the canvas and it stays on your desk, reachable by you and nobody else. This is the scratch pile, not the store's library. Anything the whole team needs, or anything you will send to a customer, belongs in the Files menu instead, where it has folders, sharing and a record of what went out. #### Before you start There is nothing to turn on and nothing extra to pay for. My Office is part of LeadLocate CRM for every user, on every plan, from the first login. If you can sign in at a desk, the button is on the dock. It is a desktop habit. The canvas wants a screen you can arrange things on, so that is where to set it up. The phone app carries the working tools instead, the inbox, the dialer, the Workspace and the VIN lookup, and its sign in screen asks for your Quick Access PIN with Use email instead underneath when the PIN is not handy. The My Office feature page explains why a personal desk belongs inside the store's system; this page is the clicks. #### What you should see A full screen canvas, empty the first time, with the widgets you add sitting where you dropped them. Sticky notes, to-do lists, small spreadsheets, timers, reminders, link cards, images, files and freehand ink are all widgets, and they behave the way a desk behaves: you move things around until the layout matches how you work, and then you stop thinking about it. You should also see it survive things. Close the canvas and reopen it and everything is where you left it. Sign in from a different machine and the desk is there, because it lives on your account rather than on the computer. That is the whole difference between this and the sticky notes around a monitor: a new laptop, a new phone or a new month does not cost you your desk. #### If it did not work You cannot find the button. It is on the dock at the bottom of the desktop CRM, first in the row. If you are on the phone app you are looking at a different set of tools; open the CRM at a desk. A widget moved back where it was. Drop it and pause for a second before you close the canvas. The desk saves as you work, and a drag that is still in flight when the window closes is the one case where a position does not stick. A teammate cannot see what you put on your desk. That is correct. My Office is one person's desk. For anything the store shares, use Team Chat for the conversation and the Files menu for the documents. You want the same layout for everyone. A store-wide space a manager designs, or a widget your dealership wants that is not on the canvas today, is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### What belongs on the desk, and what belongs on the lead The desk is for your working notes: the three calls before ten, the link to the truck a customer sent you last night, the VIN you decoded in the drive lane. Anything that is really about the customer belongs on the customer's record, and the reason is practical rather than legal. A note about a buyer that lives only on your desk is a note your manager cannot see when you are out, the BDC cannot see when the customer calls, and nobody can act on when the customer walks in on your day off. So put what the store needs on the lead: the status, the tags, the appointment, the notes on the record, the conversation itself. Personal information, including a co-buyer's, belongs in the Customer Profile, where the store keeps it encrypted and where every user with the right role finds it. Keep the desk for how you work, keep the lead for who the customer is, and the store never loses a customer because one person's notes went home with them. #### Related tasks The dock around My Office is worth learning as a set. Design Studio makes the business cards, referral cards and print pieces a rep hands out. The Referral Program page is where a store sends us someone who could use the platform, under a heading that reads Know someone who could use our help? by default. Jax is the assistant in the same row, for the questions you would otherwise open a search tab for. Reports is the scoreboard. The LeadLocate Help Center has the neighboring guides: setting up your profile, working the lead inbox, scheduling an appointment and using the file library. If you spend most of your day away from a desk, the LeadLocate mobile app page covers what travels with you. #### Questions and answers Q: Can anyone else see my My Office desk? A: No. The canvas, the widgets and the files on it belong to the user who is signed in. Every user at the store gets their own desk. Q: Is My Office on the phone app? A: The canvas is a desktop tool. The phone app carries the working tools instead: the inbox, the dialer, the calendar, the Workspace and the VIN lookup. Q: What is a space? A: A saved layout. Keep one space for the desk and a lighter one for the floor, and switch between them in a click. Each keeps its own widgets in their own places. Q: Do I have to save my desk? A: No. The canvas saves as you work, so closing it and reopening it later brings back exactly what you left, from any machine you sign in on. ### How to Use Quick Schedule on Mobile in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-quick-schedule-on-mobile Quick Schedule books an appointment from a lead in the LeadLocate mobile app without leaving the lead. Open the lead in Leads, tap the appointment picker next to In Store Now, pick a day and an open time, choose who the appointment is with, and confirm. The slots mirror your public booking link, so nothing is double booked. Steps: 1. Sign in and open the lead: Open the LeadLocate mobile app and sign in with your CRM login, your Quick Access PIN or biometrics. Tap Leads or Contacts, find the customer, and tap the row so it expands. 2. Find the picker: In the expanded row, look for the In Store Now button. Two square buttons sit to its left: the calendar with a plus opens the appointment picker, and the list icon adds a to-do instead. Tap the calendar. 3. Check the customer: The Schedule an Appointment sheet rises from the bottom with the customer's name, phone and email already filled from the lead. There is nothing to type here unless the lead is missing a number. 4. Pick a day, then a time: Tap a day on the month grid, then tap one of the open times under it. The times are the same slots a customer would see on your booking link, so a slot that is already taken does not show. If a day reads that there are no open times, pick another day. 5. Choose who it is with: The picker under the times defaults to you. A BDC agent booking for a salesperson picks that person here, and the appointment lands on their calendar, not the agent's. 6. Add notes and confirm: Type anything the person taking the appointment should know in Notes, such as the vehicle or the trade, then tap Confirm. The sheet closes and you are back on the lead. #### Before you start You need the LeadLocate mobile app installed and signed in with the same login you use on the desktop CRM. Any user role can book an appointment this way; there is no manager switch to turn on. The one piece of setup that matters is booking hours. Quick Schedule draws its open slots from the same hours as your public booking link, which are set in the Settings popup on the desktop Calendar. If your hours are blank, the picker offers weekday slots by default, so it still works, but the slots will not match what customers see online until the hours are set. The appointment booking links page explains where those hours live. Quick Schedule is available on the phone from the Leads list, the Contacts list and the Calendar, and inside the lead details popup that opens from the texting inbox and the email inbox. Wherever you see the In Store Now button on a lead, the picker is beside it. #### What you should see After you tap Confirm, the appointment appears on the Calendar tab of the app on that day, with the customer's name and the notes you typed. It also appears on the lead itself, so anyone who opens the customer later sees the appointment in the history. On the desktop CRM, the same appointment shows on the Workspace under the day's appointments and on the shared calendar the desk uses, which is the point: the phone and the desk are looking at one calendar, not two. If your store's Automated Templates include an appointment confirmation, it goes out to the customer on the same trigger a desktop booking would use. Open the appointment from the Calendar tab and you can Reschedule it, mark it confirmed or arrived, or use Send Text Reminder and Send Email Reminder the day before. The LeadLocate mobile app page covers the rest of the calendar view. #### If it did not work Every day shows no open times. The booking hours for the calendar you are booking on are not set, or the days you are tapping are days off in those hours. Set the hours in the Settings popup on the desktop Calendar, then reopen the picker. If you are booking for another user, it is that user's hours that count. The appointment landed on the wrong calendar. The picker under the times chooses whose appointment it is, and it defaults to whoever is signed in. Open the appointment on the Calendar tab, tap Reschedule if the time is also wrong, and rebook it under the right user; then delete the stray one. You created a to-do instead of an appointment. The two square buttons look alike. The calendar with a plus is the appointment; the list icon is a to-do, which is a task for you and does not send anything to the customer. To-dos live under Tasks and To-Dos on the mobile Workspace, where you can complete or delete the extra one. You do not see the two buttons at all. Update the app from the store, then expand the lead row again. The buttons only render in the expanded row, not the collapsed list. #### Related tasks Quick Schedule is the mobile half of the store's scheduling. The desk half is the shared team calendar, where round robin assignment and team availability are set, and the booking links customers use to book themselves. If reps carry a personal calendar, Google Calendar sync puts the appointment there too. Every guide for the app and the desktop CRM is in the Help Center, and the LeadLocate CRM page shows how the calendar fits with texting, calls and desking. #### Tips from the floor Book while the customer is still on the phone or standing in front of you. The picker shows a real slot list, so you can read two or three times out loud and let them choose, and the appointment is saved before the conversation ends. Put the vehicle and the trade in Notes every time; the person who greets the customer on Saturday is often not the person who booked on Thursday. And if you are a BDC agent, get in the habit of checking the user picker before you confirm, because a salesperson who never sees the appointment on their own calendar treats it as if it never happened. #### Questions and answers Q: Does Quick Schedule use the same slots as my booking link? A: Yes. The open times in the picker are drawn from the same booking hours and the same existing appointments as your public booking link, so a slot a customer could not book online does not show in the app either. Q: Can I book the appointment for another salesperson? A: Yes. The picker under the times lets you choose the user the appointment is with. It defaults to you, so change it before you confirm when you are booking on someone else's behalf. Q: Does the customer get a confirmation? A: If the store's Automated Templates include an appointment confirmation, it goes out the same way it would for an appointment booked on the desktop. You can also send a text or email reminder from the appointment on the Calendar tab. Q: What is the second square button next to the picker? A: It adds a to-do for you on that lead, such as a reminder to call back. A to-do is a task on your Workspace; it is not an appointment and nothing is sent to the customer. ### How to Use Referral Credits in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-referral-credits Referral credits sit on the billing page of My LeadLocate under Service Credits. Sign in with your billing login, read the balance and the lines behind it, and the credit comes off what your store owes on the next invoice. There is no code to enter and nothing expires quietly; whatever is left simply carries to the invoice after that. Steps: 1. Sign in with a login that sees billing: Credits live on the account portal rather than in the CRM, so you need the account admin or billing contact login your store named at signup. Sign in with the email and password, use the sign in link sent to your email or the code sent to your mobile, or press Use a passkey if your store set one up on that login. 2. Open the billing page: From the account menu, open Billing. This is the one page that carries invoices, payments and balances for the whole account, so everything in this guide happens here. If your group runs more than one subscription on the same login, read the store name at the top before you go further. 3. Find the Service Credits balance: Look for Service Credits. The number there is what your store currently holds, referral credits and any other account credits together, in one figure. A store that has referred two dealers and been credited for both sees the total, not two separate pots to manage. 4. Read where the credits came from: Open the credit lines under the balance. Each one names what put it there and when, so a referral credit reads as a referral credit and is easy to match against the dealer you sent us. Print or screenshot that view if your controller wants the trail in the accounting folder. 5. Let the credit come off the next invoice: You do not redeem anything. When the next invoice is raised, the credit is applied against what your store owes, and the invoice shows the smaller amount. If the credit covers the whole invoice, the balance owed is zero and there is nothing to pay that cycle. 6. Pay whatever is left: If a balance remains after the credit, pay it from the same page. The portal asks for the Last 4 Digits of Credit Card to confirm the payment method before it goes through, which is the check that stops a wrong click from charging the store. The receipt appears on the account as soon as the payment clears. #### Before you start You need a My LeadLocate login with billing rights. A CRM user login opens the products your store uses; the billing page, the invoices and the credit balance answer to the account admin and the billing contact your store named at signup. If the balance is not on your screen, the fix is almost always which login you used. It also helps to know how the credit got there. A referral credit is raised when a dealership you sent us becomes a customer, and your rep records it against your account. You do not have to claim it, chase it or quote a code at checkout; the credit is placed on the account and the billing page carries it from that moment. If you have referred a store and want to be sure it is attached to your account, tell your rep the store name and the rooftop city, or use contact us and say who you sent. #### What you should see A single Service Credits figure on the billing page, with the credit lines behind it naming what each one is for. Under it, the invoice history and the payment history for the account, so you can follow a credit from the day it was raised to the invoice it came off. On the next invoice, the credit is applied against the amount owed and the invoice shows the result. If the credit is larger than the invoice, the leftover stays on the account and reduces the one after it. Nothing sits in a separate wallet that somebody has to remember to spend, and nothing quietly disappears at the end of a term. The figure on the billing page is the whole truth about what your store holds. #### How the credit affects what you pay It comes straight off the invoice, in dollars, on the account it was raised against. That means the store sees the benefit as a smaller bill rather than as points, a discount code or a coupon that only applies to certain plans. A store on the CRM Only plan and a group on the hybrid plan use the same credit the same way, and moving between plans does not strand it. The pricing page shows what each plan costs before credits so you can work out the net for a cycle in your head. Credits also stack with whatever else your store is doing on the account. Add ons, extra zones and extra seats all bill on the same invoice, so the credit lands against the total rather than against one line of it. If you want a credit held for a particular upcoming cycle instead of the next one, say so on a support request and your rep will note it on the account. #### If it did not work You do not see a credits figure. The login you used is a product user rather than a billing login. Sign in with the account admin email, or ask that person to open the page and send you a screenshot. The credit you expected is not there. The dealership you referred may not have started yet, or the referral may be recorded against a different account your group owns. Tell your rep the store name and the city and it will be matched and credited. The invoice arrived at the full amount. The credit was raised after the invoice was issued, so it applies to the next one instead. The balance on the billing page still shows it, and it comes off the following cycle. The payment will not confirm. The Last 4 Digits of Credit Card you typed do not match the payment method on the account, usually because the store replaced the card and the old digits are in muscle memory. Check the number on the payment method, or update the payment method first and pay after. #### Related tasks The My LeadLocate page covers everything else on the portal: invoices and receipts, the payment method on the account, add ons, the file library, support tickets and which users can launch which products. The LeadLocate Help Center has the short guides for updating the payment method, viewing a receipt and skipping a month. Referring dealers is a different thing from the referral tools inside LeadLocate CRM, which your salespeople use to collect referrals from their own customers and pay them out. Both exist, and a store can run both at once: one credits the store's subscription, the other rewards the customer who sent a friend to your showroom. #### Tips from the floor Tell your rep the moment you send someone, not after they sign. A name and a city on a ticket takes ten seconds and removes any question about who referred whom. Check the credits figure the week before your renewal date so the controller is not surprised in either direction. And refer the store you would actually call for a trade: the dealers who get the most out of the platform are the ones who came in from somebody they trust. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do referral credits show up? A: On the billing page of My LeadLocate, under Service Credits. The figure is what your store holds today, and the lines behind it name what each credit was raised for. Q: Do I have to redeem a referral credit? A: No. The credit is applied against the next invoice automatically, and whatever is left over carries to the invoice after that. There is no code to enter and nothing to activate. Q: What if the credit is bigger than my invoice? A: The invoice goes to zero for that cycle and the remaining credit stays on the account for the next one. It follows your store even if you change plans. Q: How do I make sure a dealer I referred is credited to us? A: Send your rep the store name and the city, or use the contact page and say who you sent. Your rep records the referral against your account and the credit appears on the billing page. ### How to Use Team Chat in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-team-chat Click Team Chat in the top bar of LeadLocate CRM, or tap Team on the phone app dock, and the chat drawer slides open beside your work. Pick a channel or a person, type, and send. Reactions, polls and file uploads are in the same drawer, and the unread count rides on the button so you see a new message without leaving the lead. Steps: 1. Open the drawer: On the desktop, click Team Chat in the top bar, the same row as Send a Text, Make a Call, Send an Email and Support. The drawer opens over the right of the screen and the page you were on stays where it was. On the phone app, tap Team on the bottom dock and the panel rises from the bottom. Same conversations, same history, either way in. 2. Pick a channel or a person: The list on the left holds the store's channels and the people on the account. Use the search box at the top to find a channel or a teammate by name instead of scrolling. Most stores run three channels to start: one for the whole sales floor, one for the BDC and one for managers. If nobody has made one yet, the new channel control at the top of the list creates it, names it, and adds the people who belong in it. 3. Say the thing: Type in the message box at the bottom of the drawer and send. If you would rather talk than type, the microphone in the message box takes dictation and drops the words in the box for you to read before you send. Drop a file straight into the conversation with the attach control when the answer is a spec sheet, a spiff sheet or a photo of the lot. 4. React instead of replying: Hover or long press a message and add a reaction. Twelve people acknowledging the weekend spiff sheet is one line of reactions rather than twelve replies, and the channel stays readable for the person who was off yesterday. Use a poll for the small decisions that would otherwise take a meeting, such as which two units go on the front line. 5. Turn the sound on so you hear the next one: Open your user record in User Management and find the notification preferences. Play Team Chat sound plays a tone whenever a teammate messages you, unless the drawer is already open in front of you. Turn it on for the people who need to be reachable, such as the desk and the BDC, and leave it off for anybody who lives in the drawer all day anyway. 6. Close it and get back to work: Close the drawer and the CRM is exactly where you left it, because the drawer sits over your work rather than replacing it. The unread count on the button tells you when something new arrived, so a rep working a lead does not have to keep checking. #### Before you start There is nothing to switch on and nothing to buy. Team Chat is part of LeadLocate CRM for every user on the account from the first login, at the desk and on the phone app. If you can sign in, you have it. What is worth deciding before the first message is who is in which channel. A Master Administrator or a Manager makes the first channels and posts the first announcement in one of them, rather than in the group text, so the floor learns where announcements now live. The people available to add are the users your store already manages in User Management, which is also where a departing salesperson's access ends, and with it their access to the store's conversation. The Team Chat feature page makes the case for moving off personal phones; this page is the clicks. #### What you should see A drawer, not a new page. Channels and people on the left, the conversation on the right, the message box at the bottom. Presence tells you who is actually online, which at a dealership means who can take a walk in right now. Read receipts answer the question a BDC manager asks a dozen times a day, which is whether the rep saw it, and they change behavior: a message everyone knows was read tends to get acted on. On the top bar the button carries its unread count, so it reads 0 Team Chat when you are caught up and shows the number when you are not. On the phone the same conversations are behind Team on the dock, next to Text, Call, New Lead and Email, so a manager between tasks answers from the lot without walking back to an office. #### If it did not work You do not see the channel your team is talking in. Channels hold the people who were added to them. Ask whoever made it to add you, or search the list first, because a channel you were added to this morning may simply be further along than you scrolled. No sound when a teammate messages you. Check Play Team Chat sound on your user record. It also stays quiet on purpose when the drawer is already open in front of you, which is correct behavior rather than a missed message. The person you want is not in the list. They do not have a login yet. A Master Administrator adds them in User Management, and they appear in Team Chat as soon as the account exists. You meant to message a customer and used Team Chat. Team Chat is between employees only, so nothing you type there reaches a shopper. Customer messages go out from the texting inbox or from the lead, where the delivery status, the consent record and the do not call check live. #### Team Chat and Customer Chat are not the same thing Two conversations run at a dealership and they should never share a room. Team Chat is the store's internal conversation: the manager telling the floor a unit got marked down, the rep asking the tower for a number, the BDC saying the two o'clock just pulled in. It is owned by the store and tied to the users the store controls. The customer conversation lives on the customer's record. Texts and calls run through the lead, where every message carries a delivery status and the whole thread sits in the communications log. On a deal, the card the buyer types into is labeled Customer Chat, and the deal chat page covers how that one works. Keeping the line clean is most of a messaging policy: customer conversation in the lead, team conversation in Team Chat, and no more screenshots of a customer's information flying around on personal phones. #### Related tasks The LeadLocate Help Center has the guides for the work Team Chat usually interrupts: texting a customer, making a call from the CRM, setting your notification preferences and working the lead inbox. The LeadLocate mobile app page covers the rest of the dock the Team button sits on. Two habits make Team Chat stick in a store. Managers answer in the drawer for a week instead of walking over, so reps learn that a message gets a reply. And the old group text gets retired on purpose, with one last message in it saying where the conversation moved. A channel structure your store wants that is different from the usual three is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Can customers see Team Chat? A: No. Team Chat is only between users on your account. Customer conversation happens on the lead, in the texting inbox, or on a deal page, and never crosses into the team drawer. Q: Do I need a separate app for Team Chat? A: No. It is inside LeadLocate CRM at the desk and behind the Team button on the phone app dock, under the same login as everything else. Q: How do I know a teammate read my message? A: Read receipts. The message shows when the other person has seen it, which is how a BDC agent stops chasing a salesperson about an appointment. Q: Who can create a channel? A: Any user can start a conversation, and most stores let a Master Administrator or a Manager set up the standing channels so the floor, the BDC and the managers each have one place. ### How to Use in Store Now in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-in-store-now When a customer walks in, open their lead in LeadLocate CRM and press In Store Now. The lead is marked as on the lot, an arrival is recorded against it, and the assigned salesperson, the desk and the BDC all see it. On the phone app the same button sits on the appointment, and the status reads In Store (Arrived) once it is set. Steps: 1. Find the customer's lead: Whoever greets the customer opens the lead: the receptionist at the front desk, the rep who was expecting them, or the manager on the floor. Search by name or phone number in the Leads menu, or open today's appointments if the customer says they have one. Most arrivals are already a lead, because most people who show up have already texted, called or filled out a form. 2. If there is no lead yet, make one first: A walk in with nothing in the system needs a lead before anything else can be true about them. Create it from the phone app in the driveway, scan the driver license if they hand it over, and you have a record in less time than it takes to walk back inside. Then flag it. 3. Press In Store Now: Press In Store Now on the lead. The arrival is recorded against that lead and you land on the appointments list, which is where the rest of the store is looking. The button is deliberately blunt: one press, no form, because the person pressing it is standing in front of a customer and has about two seconds. 4. Check the appointment reads arrived: If the customer was booked, their appointment status becomes In Store (Arrived). That is the line that turns a booked appointment into a shown appointment, so the BDC agent who set it stops the reminder call she was about to make and counts it. On the phone app, an appointment for a customer who is already flagged says so on the button rather than letting you add a second arrival. 5. Tell the floor and work the customer: Post it in the sales floor channel if the customer has a trade or an appointment somebody has been waiting on. Then work them: scan the license into the record, pull the unit they came to see from inventory, and start the deal from the lead when the conversation gets to numbers. Every one of those tools opens from the same lead you just flagged. 6. Take the flag off when they leave: When the customer drives away, clear the flag. A board that says six people are in the building when two are is worse than no board at all. The visit itself stays on the lead, which is what the unsold follow up runs from tomorrow morning. #### Before you start Nothing to turn on. In Store Now is on the lead in LeadLocate CRM from the first login, on every plan, at the desk and in the phone app. What it needs is a habit rather than a setting: somebody has to press it when a customer arrives, every time, or the board is fiction. Decide who that somebody is before Saturday. In most stores it is whoever greets the customer, which means the receptionist and every salesperson on the floor. Give the front desk the Leads menu and the search box, and give the reps the phone app, because the rep who meets a customer in the driveway is not walking back to a desk to mark it. The In Store Now feature page explains what the flag is worth to a store; this page is the clicks. #### What you should see The lead marked as in the building, and the appointment for that customer reading arrived. On the floor, the assigned salesperson knows the customer is here without anybody shouting across a showroom. At the desk, a manager looking at the day sees which customers are on the lot and who has them, so the next number goes to the right place. In the BDC, the agent who booked the appointment sees it showed. You should also see the visit stay on the record after the customer leaves. That is the part a whiteboard never gave anyone. The lead now says this person came in, on this day, with this conversation behind them and this unit in it, which makes the follow up two days later a different conversation than texting a stranger. #### If it did not work You pressed it twice and only one arrival appeared. That is on purpose. A second press within a short window takes you to the appointments list instead of recording a duplicate arrival, because two people greeting the same customer is normal and two arrivals on one lead is not. Nothing happened when you pressed it. Check that the lead is actually a lead and not an unsaved new contact. Save the record first, then flag it. The phone app has been open since this morning and the button is not responding. The app asks whether you are still there after a long idle stretch and offers to keep you signed in or to use Sign out now. Choose to stay signed in, or sign back in, and press the button again. The customer is flagged but the wrong rep has them. The flag follows the lead, so the fix is on the lead: reassign it to the salesperson who is actually with the customer, and the floor sees the right name. Two records for one customer. Merge them on the lead, and the visit, the conversation and the appointment all land on the surviving record. The help center guide on merging duplicate leads covers it. #### Why a flag on the lead beats a name on a whiteboard A whiteboard answers one question for the people standing in front of it: who is here. The flag answers five. Who is here, because the lead is marked. Who has them, because the lead is assigned. Where they came from, because every lead carries its source. What they want, because the texts and calls are on the same record. And whether the appointment showed, because the booking and the arrival are the same customer. That last one is worth more than it looks. A BDC is judged on appointments that show, and an appointment that shows is exactly a lead that was booked and then flagged. When pressing the button is the habit, the store has a record of shown appointments that came out of the work instead of out of somebody's memory, and the old argument between the BDC and the floor about whether the customer ever came in has an answer on the screen. #### Related tasks An arrival is the start of a sequence, and the rest of it is in the LeadLocate Help Center: scanning a driver license into the customer record, capturing a trade in with photos and a VIN scan, starting a deal from the lead, and scheduling the next appointment before the customer leaves. The in store customer check in page walks the whole arrival end to end. Two neighbors carry the rest of the day. Team Chat is where the floor hears that the customer with the trade just pulled in, and the desking tool is where the manager pulls numbers for the unit the customer came to see. A showroom board your store wants that works differently from the flag is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the In Store Now button? A: On the lead in the desktop CRM, and on the appointment in the phone app. Whoever greets the customer opens the lead and presses it. Q: Does In Store Now mark an appointment as shown? A: Yes. A booked customer who is flagged reads as In Store (Arrived), which is how the BDC counts the appointment and stops the reminder call. Q: What if the walk in has no lead in the system? A: Create the lead first, from the phone app in the driveway if that is where you are, then flag it. A driver license scan fills in the name and address in one step. Q: Do I have to clear the flag when the customer leaves? A: Yes, and it takes a second. The visit stays on the lead either way, but the board is only useful while it is telling the truth about who is in the building. ### How to Use the AI Writing Assistant in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-the-ai-writing-assistant The AI Writing Assistant sits in the text and email composers inside LeadLocate CRM. Open a lead, start a message, click the assistant, and tell it what the message should do in one line. It writes a draft with the customer and the vehicle already in it. Edit the draft so it sounds like you, then send it. Steps: 1. Start the message you are about to write: From an open lead, start a text or an email. The composer opens with the customer already attached, and that context is what lets the assistant write about this buyer and this vehicle instead of writing a generic paragraph. Writing from the lead also keeps the finished message on the customer's record with the rest of the conversation. 2. Open the assistant: Click AI Writing Assistant in the composer. A small panel opens over the message box with a place to describe the message you want. Nothing is sent while the panel is open, so you can try three versions before anything leaves the building. 3. Say what the message should do: Write the job, not the sentence. Good prompts sound like a manager talking to a green pea: follow up on the used truck he looked at Saturday, answer a payment question without quoting a number, confirm the Thursday ten o'clock appointment and ask him to bring the title. One line is plenty. Add the tone if you care about it, short and friendly or straight to the point. 4. Read the draft and make it yours: The draft lands in the message box, where you can change every word of it. Cut anything that reads like a brochure, put your first name at the end, and keep it to the length a person would actually type on a phone. The assistant gives you a first draft in seconds; you are still the one talking to the customer, and the customer can tell the difference. 5. Fix a message you already wrote: When you typed the message yourself and only want the spelling and grammar corrected, use the cleanup action beside the assistant instead of asking for a new draft. It tidies what is already in the box and leaves your wording alone, which is the right tool for a note you are happy with but would rather not send with a typo in it. 6. Drop in the vehicle and the merge fields: Merge fields fill the customer's first name, the store name and the vehicle for you, so one saved message works for every buyer. The vehicle button in the composer attaches a unit from your inventory with its photo and price. A follow up with the actual car in it gets answered more often than a follow up that describes the car. 7. Send it, then save the ones that work: Send the message from the composer and watch the delivery status on the bubble. When a draft works twice, save it as a template so the rest of the floor sends the same thing without rewriting it, and so your automated follow ups use wording you already trust. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login and a lead you are about to message. The assistant is part of the text composer and the email composer for every user on every plan, so there is nothing to switch on, nothing to buy and no key to paste anywhere. If you can send a text from the CRM, you can open the assistant. Two things make the drafts better before you ever type a prompt. First, work from the lead record rather than a blank message, because the customer's name, the vehicle they asked about and the source of the lead are all sitting there. Second, know what you want the message to accomplish. A prompt that says write something nice gets a paragraph nobody answers. A prompt that says ask if he still wants to see the gray crossover this week gets a message you can send. The AI writing assistant feature page covers what the tool does across texts and emails. This page is the task: where the button is and what to do with it. #### What you should see A draft in the message box within a couple of seconds, written in plain sentences, addressed to the customer by first name, and short enough to read on a phone. If you asked for an email, the draft carries a subject line and a body with paragraph breaks. Everything is editable. Nothing sends until you press send, and nothing is saved to the lead until the message actually goes out. Ask twice and you get two different drafts, which is the fastest way to find the one you want. Most reps settle into a rhythm of asking once, cutting the first sentence, adding their name and sending. From there the message behaves like any other message in the CRM: it leaves from the store's tracking number or the store's email domain, it lands in the conversation thread, and the reply comes back to the same place. #### What should I ask the assistant for? The prompts that earn their keep are the ones you write a dozen times a day. A first response to a fresh internet lead that answers the question they asked and offers two appointment times. A follow up on a unit that just took a price cut. A note to a customer who has gone quiet for a week, without the word touching base in it. A thank you after a test drive that asks for the appointment rather than hoping for one. An apology for a missed call that gets straight to rescheduling. Ask for the thing you actually want to happen. Say who the customer is, what they looked at, what changed, and what you want them to do next. Say how long it should be. If the store has a house rule about not quoting payments by text, say that in the prompt and the draft respects it. The assistant also writes the long form you avoid writing: the trade appraisal recap, the walkthrough of what to bring to a delivery, the Spanish version of a message you already sent in English. Those are the ones that used to sit in your drafts folder until the customer bought somewhere else. #### If it did not work The draft is generic. The prompt was generic. Put the vehicle, the timing and the ask in it. Follow up produces a follow up about nothing; ask if the gray crossover is still the one he wants and offer Thursday or Saturday produces a message worth sending. It sounds like a brochure. Tell it to be shorter and to drop the adjectives, then cut the opening line yourself. The best texts start with the customer's question, not with your name and title. You are typing in the taskbar box instead. The Help from Ai assistant ... box on the taskbar is Jax, which answers your questions about the software. The writing assistant lives inside the composer and writes to the customer. Two different jobs, two different boxes. You wanted a spell check, not a rewrite. Use the cleanup action next to the assistant. It corrects spelling and grammar in the message you already wrote and leaves the rest of your wording where you put it. The message will not send after you edit it. That is the number, not the draft. Check the validity dot on the lead, and send to a mobile number the customer gave you. #### Related tasks The whole texting loop, from opening the composer to reading the delivery status, is on how to text a customer. The email inbox and composer page covers the same assistant on the email side, where it writes the subject line too. Drafts you keep reusing belong in Automated Templates, and every custom source feed in Lead Feeds Manager carries its own How to use note describing how that feed's inbound template gets applied. The LeadLocate Help Center has the step by step guides for the rest of the composer: sending a picture message, sending a vehicle in a text, and building the follow up process that sends the message for you. A wording tool your store wants that the assistant does not already cover is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the assistant send the message by itself? A: No. It writes a draft into the composer and stops there. You edit it and press send, so nothing reaches a customer that you did not read first. Q: Can I use it for emails as well as texts? A: Yes. The assistant is in the email composer too, where it writes a subject line and a body, and in the text composer, where it writes something short enough for a phone. Q: Will the customer know a draft started with the assistant? A: Not if you edit it. Cut the opening line, add your first name and keep it short. The drafts that read like software are the ones nobody touched before sending. Q: What is the difference between the writing assistant and Jax? A: The writing assistant writes messages to customers from inside the composer. Jax sits in the taskbar and answers your questions about the software while you work. ### How to Use the File Library in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-the-file-library Open Files in the main menu of LeadLocate CRM and the library opens under the File Sharing heading. Build the folders your store actually uses, drop your documents into the upload area, and pick the folder they belong in. From then on any user can attach one to a text, an email or a deal without hunting for the current version. Steps: 1. Open the Files menu: Click Files in the main menu, the row that also holds Workspace, Leads, Contacts, Desking, Inventory, Messaging, Calendar, Email, Calls and Website. The library opens under the File Sharing heading with your folders along the toolbar and the files listed below. 2. Make the folders before you upload anything: Use the new folder control on the toolbar and name the folders the way your store talks: Inventory, Finance, Service, Team, Customer Handouts. Five real folders beat twenty clever ones. A folder you have to explain to a new salesperson is a folder nobody will file anything in, and everything will end up in All Files. 3. Upload the current version of each document: Drop your files onto the upload area, the one labeled Upload files to your File Library, or click it and pick them from the computer. Choose the folder to save them into in the same panel, so they land where they belong instead of being sorted later. If the document is a piece of paper on the desk in front of you, the upload panel also offers a code you can scan with a phone camera and send the photo straight into the library. 4. Find a file the way a busy person finds one: Filter by folder on the toolbar and the list narrows to that folder. Search when you know part of the name. Both beat scrolling, and both are what a rep with a customer sitting across from them will actually do, so name files the way somebody would search for them: the unit, the form, the month, not a string of numbers from a scanner. 5. Attach one to the conversation you are already in: You rarely open the library to look at a file; you open it to send one. In the texting composer the control is Attach from File Library on the phone and Choose from File Library in the quick composer, and on a deal it reads Attach file from library or computer. Pick the file and it rides out with the message, logged on the lead like everything else you send. 6. Set the folders each user starts in: In User Management, each user can be given default file folders. Set them for the roles that need different things, so a new salesperson lands in Customer Handouts and Inventory rather than an empty screen, and the finance office lands in Finance. It takes a minute per role and it is the difference between a library people use and a library people avoid. 7. Get back a file somebody deleted: Deleted files are not gone. Open the trash bin, set the type filter to File Library, find the file and restore it. Do that before anybody re-creates a document that already exists, which is how stores end up with three versions of the same buyer's order. #### Before you start Nothing to turn on. The Files menu is part of LeadLocate CRM on every plan, for every user, at the desk and in the phone app. What you need before the first upload is a decision rather than a setting: which documents are the store's standard versions. Get the current we owe form, the trade appraisal sheet, the financing checklist, the appointment prep sheet, the service menu and the blank buyer's order in front of you, and throw away the ones nobody has used in a year. A Master Administrator or a Manager should do the first hour of this, because the folder structure is a store decision and not a personal one. After that, every user can upload into it and send from it. The file library and secure sharing feature page makes the case for one library; this page is the clicks. #### What you should see Your folders along the toolbar, the files in the selected folder below, and share controls on each file. The same library on the phone app, so a rep standing on the lot pulls a spec sheet without walking back to a desk. One copy of each document, which is the part that matters: when a manager replaces the spiff sheet, everybody is working from the new one the next time they open it, because there was never a second copy in anyone's email. You should also see the library show up where the work happens. In a texting thread and in an email composer the attach control lists what is in the library. On a deal, the same list is one click from the deal jacket. The rep never leaves the conversation to go find a document, which is the only reason a library ever gets used. #### If it did not work The file uploaded but you cannot find it. It went into All Files or into whichever folder was selected. Filter by folder, or search the name, then move it where it belongs. The upload will not finish. Very large files take a moment; give it one. If a file still will not go up, it is usually a file type a browser refuses to hand over, and the fix is to save it as a PDF and upload that, which is also the version a customer can open on any phone. A teammate cannot see the file you uploaded. Check which folder it is in and whether their default folders point somewhere else in User Management. Folders are the store's, not a person's, so the file is there; they are looking at a different shelf. Somebody deleted the wrong thing. Open the trash bin, filter to File Library, restore it, and then decide who should be doing the deleting. #### Which library holds what There are four homes for a document in the platform and knowing them is most of a document policy. The Files menu is the store's reusable library: the forms, the handouts, the checklists, the things you send more than once. The deal jacket holds the paperwork that belongs to one deal, the license copy, the signed buyer's order, the insurance card, with its own QR intake from a phone camera. Credit applications and their supporting documents belong in SecureWebX, where the consent, the stipulations and the notices live together. And the account portal, My LeadLocate, has its own file area for the paperwork of the business relationship, such as the welcome guide, so a salesperson looking for a spec sheet never wades through billing documents. One question answers it every time: is this document about the store, about this deal, about this credit application, or about the account. #### Related tasks Sending a file to a customer with a password on it is its own short guide, on how to share a file securely, and it is worth reading before anyone emails a trade appraisal as an attachment again. The LeadLocate Help Center also covers texting a customer, sending a picture message, uploading deal documents by QR and printing a deal packet. Two neighbors make the library more useful. Design Studio produces the printed cards and flyers a rep hands out, and those pieces can carry a code that points at a file in the library. And the texting inbox is where most files actually leave the building, because the customer is already in a conversation there. A folder structure or a document workflow your store needs that the library does not do today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the file library in LeadLocate? A: The Files menu in the main menu of the desktop CRM, and the File Library in the phone app. Both show the same folders and the same files. Q: Can every user upload to the library? A: Yes, every user on the account can upload and send. Folder structure and the default folders each user starts in are set by a Master Administrator in User Management. Q: Can I attach a library file to a text or an email? A: Yes. The composer has an attach control that lists the library, so the file goes out with the message and the send is logged on the lead. Q: Someone deleted a file. Can I get it back? A: Yes. Open the trash bin, filter the type to File Library, find the file and restore it. ### How to Use the Mobile Dialer in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-the-mobile-dialer The mobile dialer is the VoIP phone inside the LeadLocate app. It places a call from your phone on the store's tracking number, records it if you choose, and writes the call to the lead and the call log. You start it from Call on the bottom dock or from the phone number on any lead. Steps: 1. Sign in to the app: Open the LeadLocate app on your phone and sign in. If your store has set a 4 digit PIN for mobile quick access for you, the PIN gets you in without typing a password. 2. Open the dialer: Tap Call on the bottom dock. The VoIP Phone opens with a keypad and a Phone Number field. To call a customer you already have on file, open Leads instead, pick the customer and tap their phone number; the dialer opens with the number filled in. 3. Enter the number: Type the ten digit number on the keypad. Tap Delete digit to fix a wrong key. A number that came from a lead is already there, so you skip this step. 4. Decide about recording: Turn on Record this call before you dial if your store records calls. Your store sets the announcement policy for recording; the switch only controls whether the audio is kept. 5. Place the call: Tap the call button. The first time, your phone asks for microphone permission; allow it, or the customer hears nothing. Talk through the handset, the speaker or a connected headset. 6. Drop a voicemail if nobody answers: When the call rolls to voicemail, tap Drop Voicemail, choose a message from Select Voicemail Recording and hang up. The recording plays into the customer's mailbox while you move on. 7. Check the log: After the call, open the Call Log from the app, or tap Open call logs from the Workspace, and confirm the call is there with its direction and duration. #### Before you start You need the LeadLocate app installed on an iOS or Android phone and a login for your dealership's account. Any role can place calls: a salesperson, a manager or a Master Administrator. Your store's tracking phone number is provisioned when the account is created, so there is nothing to set up on the phone side; the number the customer sees on their screen is that tracking number. Allow the app to use the microphone when the phone asks. A headset is optional and a good idea on a noisy lot. If you would rather talk on your own cell line than through the app's audio, the VoIP softphone page explains the triggered call to a physical phone, which rings your handset first and then bridges the customer in. #### What you should see When the call connects you see the customer's number, a running timer and the controls for the call. When you hang up, the call is written to three places at once. It appears in the Call Log in the app with its direction and duration, on the lead's timeline in order with the texts and emails around it, and on the desktop Calls page where a manager sees every call the store made that day. If you turned on Record this call, the desktop row carries a Play control and a transcript you can open, which is covered in how to read a call transcript. If you dropped a voicemail, the row shows it as a voicemail drop rather than as a call nobody answered. Inbound calls work the other way round: a customer who calls the store's tracking number rings your phone with an alert screen that shows who is calling and which lead they belong to, and you answer from there. #### If it did not work The customer hears nothing, or you hear nothing. Microphone permission is switched off for the app on this phone. Open your phone's settings, find the LeadLocate app, allow the microphone, and place the call again. This is the cause nine times out of ten on a phone that has never made a call from the app. The call ends immediately or the log shows Call could not be placed. Check the number. The dialer places calls to a ten digit US number, so include the area code and leave off the leading 1. If the number is right, your data connection is the next suspect. A VoIP call rings through best on a steady signal; move to a better signal or switch to Wi-Fi and dial again. The call connected but is not on the lead. You dialed the number by hand rather than from the lead, and the number on the lead does not match the one you typed. Open the lead, check the number on file, and call from the lead next time so the call attaches itself. If none of these fit, the support team is a call or a text away and can look at the call from the store's side. #### Related tasks The mobile dialer is the phone half of the LeadLocate mobile app, and the same call log, recording and voicemail library are shared with the desktop LeadLocate CRM. Recording a message for Drop Voicemail to use is its own short task, how to drop a voicemail. A customer who does not pick up is often a customer who answers a text, and the Open text messaging quick action on the Workspace takes you to the same lead's thread. Every guide in the Help Center follows the same shape, so the next one reads like this one. #### Tips from the floor Call from the lead, not from the keypad, whenever the customer is already in the CRM. The call attaches itself to the right record, the recording lands where the manager can find it, and you never mistype a number. Make your voicemail drop recordings before the day starts, not when the third call rolls to voicemail with a customer walking up. And if you take a lot of inbound, keep the app signed in; the inbound alert screen only rings a phone that is signed in. #### Questions and answers Q: What number does the customer see when I call from the app? A: Your store's tracking phone number, the same number they see when the store calls from a desk. A salesperson who wants their own office number to show runs the caller ID verification once from the desktop CRM. Q: Can I use the dialer without a headset? A: Yes. The call runs through the phone's own microphone and speaker like any other call. A headset only makes a noisy lot easier. Q: Does the call use my cell plan minutes? A: No. The dialer places the call over your data connection or Wi-Fi. If you prefer a regular cell call, trigger the call to your own phone from the desktop CRM and it still gets logged. Q: Where do I find a call I made yesterday? A: In the Call Log in the app, filtered by date, or on the Calls page of the desktop CRM, and on the lead's own timeline. ### How to Use the Request Sheet in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-the-request-sheet The request sheet in the Inventory Link dealer portal is one page per request. You create a request for a vehicle, describe the job, choose which transport carriers or service providers to ask from the directory and send it. The sheet then holds a row for each one: what was sent, what came back, the quote and the outcome. Steps: 1. Open Requests and start a new one: In the dealer portal, open Requests and click Create request. Everything about this job is going to live on the page you are about to make, so start it before you make a single phone call rather than after the third one. 2. Name the unit: Identify the vehicle by VIN, by the last six of a VIN, or by its stock number, and the portal fills in the rest from the inventory record. Quoting on a described car invites a different number later; quoting on a decoded vehicle does not. 3. Say where it is going: Enter the pickup and delivery city, state and ZIP, and the address where one matters. Add the date you need it there by. Route and timing are the two things that move a price more than anything else, so be specific rather than optimistic. 4. Describe the job exactly: Say whether the unit runs and drives, whether it needs an enclosed trailer, and anything the provider should know: low front end, no keys, oversized, a gate code at the pickup. A surprise found at the loading dock turns into a second price and a lost afternoon. 5. Choose who to ask: Search the directory of transport carriers and service providers by name or by city and add the ones you want on this job. Ask several. One quote is a price and three quotes are a market, and the sheet is built to hold all of them side by side. 6. Send it: Click Send request and the same description goes to everyone you picked. From that moment the sheet starts tracking the conversation: what was sent, what was emailed, who replied and what they said. 7. Read the replies and record the quotes: As answers come in, the row for each provider fills in with what came back. Put the number on the row when somebody quotes you on the phone as well, so the page is the whole picture and not the half that arrived by email. 8. Pick one and close it out: Choose the provider you want, arrange the job with them directly, and mark the outcome on the sheet. Use Email this request to send the page to a manager or to whoever promised the customer a date, and reopen it later with Open the request when you need the history. #### Before you start You need a sign in to the Inventory Link dealer portal and the unit you want moved or worked on in your inventory. The portal opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on, and on a device where you have set one up you can Use a passkey instead of typing a password. Have the details in front of you before you start, because the whole value of the sheet is that every provider gets the same information and you can compare what comes back. That means the vehicle, where it is now, where it is going, whether it runs and drives, and the date you need it there by. A unit that does not start, one with a low front end, and anything you want under cover are all worth saying up front; a provider who learns it later comes back with a different number. Inventory Link carries a directory of transport carriers and service providers, which is where the list of who to ask comes from. You choose who to work with and you deal with them directly. The sheet is your record of what you asked, who you asked and what each of them said. #### What you should see One page per request, with the unit at the top and a row for every provider you asked. Each row tells you where that conversation stands: that the request went out, that it was emailed, that they replied, what came back, and the quote if they gave you one. Your own notes sit with it, so the thing the dispatcher told you on the phone is on the sheet instead of on the back of a deal jacket. The requests list is the view above that. It shows your open requests with who has been asked, who has quoted and what is closed, so a used car manager can look once and see which four cars are waiting on somebody to call back. Nothing here goes stale in a drawer, because it is a page anyone on the team with access can open. The point of putting them side by side is that quotes are easy to compare only when the question was identical. Three providers answering the same described unit and the same route give you a real number. Three providers answering three different phone calls give you a headache. #### How the sheet keeps the quotes straight Keep each provider on its own row and keep the outcome current. When a quote comes in, put it on the row. When you pick somebody, mark it, and close the request when the unit arrives. Two weeks later, when you are moving another car on the same route, you open the old sheet and you already know who answered fast and who never called back. Use Email this request when somebody else needs the whole picture: the manager approving the spend, the salesperson who promised a delivery date, or a provider you are adding late who wants to see what the others were asked. Sending the sheet is better than retyping a summary, because the summary is where details go missing. Treat the notes field as the record rather than as scratch paper. A dealership that moves a few cars a month builds a usable picture of its own lanes this way within a season, and it costs nothing more than typing what happened when it happened. #### If it did not work Nobody has replied. Give it the business day, then work the phone on the rows that are still quiet and put what you hear on the sheet. Providers answer at very different speeds, which is exactly the thing the sheet is there to show you over time. The quotes are all over the place. Usually the unit was described differently to each one. Check what you wrote about condition and about whether it runs and drives, correct it, and ask the outliers again with the same description. A car that does not start is a different job and a fair difference in price. You cannot find the request you made last month. It is in the requests list with its status. Open the list, find it by the unit or by the status, and click Open the request to get the whole sheet back, quotes and notes included. The vehicle is not in the list when you start the request. It has not reached the portal yet. Add it in the inventory list first so the request carries the year, make, model and VIN, and then the provider is quoting on a vehicle rather than on a description. You want somebody who is not in the directory. Ask them directly and put their answer on the sheet as a note, so the comparison stays in one place. A provider your store wants added to the directory is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Related tasks The directory and the rest of what the portal does are on the Inventory Link page. If the reason you are moving a car is a buyer in another state, the sell to out of state buyers page covers that deal end to end, from texting the unit with photos to the signature and the delivery. Do not confuse this sheet with the shopper facing one. When a customer on your brand page or your inventory site picks a time to come in, that is a Schedule a Visit request and it lands on a lead in the CRM. The LeadLocate Help Center has the guide for handling those, along with publishing your inventory site and getting the widget onto the website you already run. #### Questions and answers Q: How many providers should I put on one request? A: Enough to compare, which usually means three or four. The sheet holds a row for each, so adding one more costs you nothing and often moves the price. One quote on its own tells you very little. Q: Does LeadLocate arrange the move for me? A: You choose the provider and work with them directly. Inventory Link gives you the directory to ask from, the request that goes out with the same description to everyone, and the sheet that holds every reply in one place. Q: Can I share a request with somebody else at the store? A: Yes. Email this request sends the page as it stands, quotes and notes included, which is better than retyping a summary for a manager who is approving the spend. Q: Is this the same as a Schedule a Visit request? A: No. Schedule a Visit is the shopper facing sheet on your brand and inventory pages, and it lands on a lead in the CRM. The request sheet in the portal is your own request to a provider about a unit. ### How to Use the Road to Sale Checklist in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-the-road-to-sale-checklist Open the deal under Desking, pick the deal type, then work the road left to right: vehicle, trade, credit, approval, documents, stipulations, delivery and follow up. Each step opens a panel, you fill it in and mark it done, and you move the deal status as the deal moves, through Sale Pending and on to delivered. The customer checks off the same road on their deal page. Steps: 1. Open the deal and find the road: Click Desking in the main menu, find the deal in the list and open it. The road is the row of numbered steps across the top of the deal view, above the worksheet and the deal jacket. The steps start collapsed. Clicking one opens its panel underneath, which is where the fields for that step live. 2. Pick the deal type first: The first step is the deal type: finance, lease, cash or acquisition. Pick it before anything else, because it decides which steps you see and which tab the worksheet opens on. A cash deal drops the credit step, since there is no application to send. An acquisition deal, where the store is buying the customer's car outright, drops the sale vehicle and payment steps and keeps the trade, the documents, delivery and follow up. 3. Work the vehicle step: Open the vehicle step and put the unit on the deal. Vehicle For Sale takes the year, make and model, the For Sale URL Details popup holds the link to the vehicle detail page you want the customer to see, and List any deal details related to this sale is the notes box for anything the desk needs to know about this unit. Put the number in Sale Price, then mark the step done. 4. Move through trade, credit and approval: The trade step holds the customer's car, its photos and its VIN scan, and a deal can carry more than one trade package. The credit step is where the application goes out as an apply link and comes back into SecureWebX; the checklist marks where the deal is in that process rather than pulling anything itself. The approval step is where the lender answer and the note that goes with it land. The payment panel shows Vehicle Sale Price with the rest of the money, and a manager modeling a second way through the deal works the bays and the Sale Price Delta beside it. 5. Clear the documents and stipulations: The documents panel under the road lists every document slot on the deal with its review status. Mark each one needed, uploaded, approved or rejected, or request it again, and the customer sees the change on their page within seconds. Documents the customer uploads from a phone camera land in the same list as the ones a salesperson uploads at the desk, labeled with who sent them, so nobody hunts through two places for a proof of income. 6. Move the deal status as the deal moves: The status pill on the deal carries the deal through vehicle selected, submitted to lender, approved, stipulations pending, ready for delivery, delivered, follow up and closed. Set it to Sale Pending when the customer has committed and the paperwork is in motion. The same status shows on the deal list and in the phone app, which is how a manager reads fourteen deals in a minute without opening any of them. 7. Finish delivery and follow up: The delivery step holds how the car is going home and to whom, and the follow up step is the one most stores skip. Mark them both. A deal that ends with the follow up step done is a deal the store can hand to a follow up process the next morning, and the record of the whole road, in order, stays on the deal. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login with the desking tool turned on for your store, and a deal to work. Start the deal from the lead rather than from a blank screen, so the customer, the phone number and the whole conversation travel with it; the start a deal from a lead guide covers that in three clicks. Everything on this page happens inside that deal. One thing is worth doing once, before anybody works a road. On the deal defaults page, the Vehicle Defaults (applies to all sale panes) section holds Default Sale Condition and the other fields a new deal should open with, and every one of them can sit on Use system default until your store wants something of its own. Set them and every deal after that starts with your store's numbers already in place, which is the difference between a checklist people follow and one they argue with. The Road to Sale checklist feature page describes what each step covers; this page is the clicks. #### What you should see A row of steps across the top of the deal, numbered, with the one you are on open and the rest collapsed. A step you have marked done keeps its checkmark when you come back, and the deal list shows the status you set. Under the road sit four panels that do the reporting for you: the documents panel with every slot and its review state, the trades panel with each trade package the customer submitted, a finance summary with the path the deal is on and its stipulations, and a next task panel that names the next best action on this deal. You should also see the customer's side moving. The buyer walks the same road on their deal page, checking off vehicle, trade, credit, payment, documents, delivery and follow up as they go, and that progress saves to your deal. A customer who uploads a driver license at nine at night shows up as an uploaded document when the desk opens in the morning. That is the point of the road: the record updates when the customer acts, not only when somebody at the store remembers to update it. #### If it did not work A step you expected is not there. Check the deal type. Cash deals hide the credit step and acquisition deals hide the sale vehicle and payment steps on purpose. Change the deal type at step one and the road redraws. The panel will not keep what you typed. A required field in that panel is still empty. Open the panel again, fill every field that is asking for something, and save it before you collapse it. The customer says they checked a step and you do not see it. Reload the deal. Customer checkmarks save to the deal as they happen, so a refresh is all it takes, and the documents panel is the fastest place to confirm. The step is done but the status is wrong. The status is its own control on the deal, not a side effect of a checkmark. Set it yourself on the status pill so the deal list reads correctly for the manager scanning it. A document the customer sent is not in the deal jacket. Review it in the documents panel first, then look on the deal jacket, which is the private folder for the same deal and has its own QR intake from a phone camera. #### Related tasks The math behind the payment step lives in the EZ Desking worksheets, with cash, finance and lease structures, the multi pencil grid and the state tax matrix. When it is time to hand paper across the desk, the print menu on the deal gives you both copies: Dealer View Full detail, internal use only for the desk, and a customer copy for the buyer, and the print a deal packet guide walks through the whole set. The LeadLocate Help Center has the neighboring guides: sending the deal page for e-signature, uploading deal documents by QR, capturing a trade in, and scanning a driver license into the customer record. A step your store runs that the road does not name today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Set the deal type before you touch anything else. Half the questions about missing steps are a finance road sitting on a cash deal. Mark the step done when it is done, not at the end of the day. The road is only worth the trust the store puts in it, and a road that is updated in batches is a road nobody reads. Read the next task panel before you read anything else in a sales meeting. It answers the only question a manager has about fourteen open deals, which is what has to happen on each of them today. Ask the customer to work their side of the road while they are still at the desk. Two minutes on their phone, with the documents step open, saves three calls later in the week. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the Road to Sale checklist on a deal? A: Across the top of the deal view under Desking, above the worksheet and the deal jacket. Each numbered step opens a panel below it with the fields for that step. Q: Why is the credit step missing on this deal? A: The deal type is cash or acquisition. Both roads drop the credit step because there is no application to send. Change the deal type at the first step and the road redraws. Q: Does the customer see the same checklist? A: Yes. The customer deal page carries vehicle, trade, credit, payment, documents, delivery and follow up, and the checkmarks they set save to your deal. Q: Does marking a step done change the deal status? A: No. The status is its own control on the deal, so set it yourself as the deal moves, through Sale Pending and on to delivered. That keeps the deal list honest for the manager reading it. ### How to Use the Vehicle Finder in Inventory Link URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-the-vehicle-finder The vehicle finder, called Locate inside Inventory Link, lets a shopper describe the car in plain words and locates it in your inventory. It sits on your dealer page and on any inventory site the portal publishes. The shopper picks a unit, sends the request, and it lands in the dealer portal and in the CRM with the vehicle attached. Steps: 1. Get the inventory in first: The finder searches what the portal holds, so connect the feed, run the website import, or add units yourself. A vehicle added by hand starts with Add vehicle and its Vehicle identification number, so the decode fills the trim, the drivetrain and the equipment the finder will match on. 2. Open the finder where shoppers meet it: Go to your dealer page or to an inventory site you published from Builder and find the search box on the front. That is the same finder a customer uses. Run it yourself before you point advertising at it, because whatever it returns for you is what it will return for them. 3. Describe the vehicle the way a customer would: Work through it in plain words: the kind of vehicle, a make or no make at all, the model year range, the budget, how the buyer plans to pay, and What will you use it for? Add the two or three things the car has to have. A shopper who already has the car in mind can enter a Vehicle identification number instead and go straight to it. 4. Read what comes back: The finder returns the units in your inventory that fit, with photos, decoded build, mileage and price. This is the moment that tells you whether your records are in shape, because a thin record is a car that does not come back when a customer asks for exactly it. 5. Send the request: Pick a vehicle and the request sheet rises from the bottom of the screen on a phone. The shopper adds their name, how to reach them and whatever they want to ask, and sends it. That request travels with the vehicle they chose, so nobody has to ask which car they meant. 6. Work it on the dealer side: The request is in the portal under Requests and in the CRM as a lead. Find it with the leads search box, Name, email, phone or vehicle, open it, and read the unit under Vehicle. Reply with the car attached rather than a paragraph about it, and set the appointment in the same thread. #### Before you start The finder searches your inventory, so the inventory comes first. Vehicles reach Inventory Link from a provider feed connected under Feeds, from an import that reads the cars off your own dealership website, or from units added by hand in the portal. A broker with no lot switches on auto broker inventory mode. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. On the dealer side you need a sign in to the portal. It opens from the My Inventory button on the dock at the bottom of LeadLocate CRM with single sign on, and on a device where you have set one up you can Use a passkey instead of typing a password. On the shopper side nobody needs anything: the finder is on your dealer page and on any inventory site the portal publishes, and a customer uses it without signing in to anything. Walk it yourself once before you send anybody to it. Five minutes answering the finder as if you were a customer tells you more about your own inventory records than an afternoon of reports. #### What a shopper types, and what the finder matches on The finder is built for the way shoppers actually describe a car, which is not the way a database stores one. A customer says roughly what they want, in the order it occurs to them: the kind of vehicle, a make or no make at all, a model year range, what they can spend a month or in total, how they plan to pay, what they need it to do and the two or three things it has to have. What will you use it for? is the question that does the most work, because a school run, a long commute and towing a trailer send the search in three different directions. What it matches on is the part that matters. Every vehicle in the portal has been through VIN decode and the automotive database, so the finder is searching real trims, real drivetrains and real equipment rather than whatever text a feed happened to carry. A shopper asking for a third row and a tow package gets the units that have them. The VIN decode and vehicle database page covers where those specifications come from. There is a direct path too. A shopper who already knows the car can enter the Vehicle identification number and the decode names the unit outright, which is how somebody who saw a car on another site checks whether you have that exact one. #### What you should see On the shopper side, the units in your inventory that fit, each with its photos, decoded build, mileage and price. The shopper picks one and the request sheet rises from the bottom of the screen on a phone rather than pushing the page away, and they ask their question and send it. On your side, that request arrives in two places at once. The dealer portal holds it under Requests and in the inbox, and LeadLocate CRM receives it as a lead with the vehicle attached. Search the leads list with Name, email, phone or vehicle to pull it up by the customer name or by the car they were looking at, and the lead detail names the unit under Vehicle with its trim, mileage and price. Answer it with the car. The vehicle insert button in the text and email composers drops that unit into your reply as a card with a photo and a price, which is a better answer than a paragraph describing it, and the send vehicles by text page covers how that works. #### If it did not work The finder came back with nothing. Usually the unit is not in the portal yet. Open the inventory list and look; if it is not there, click Add vehicle, enter the Vehicle identification number and let the decode fill the build. Newly added units become searchable as the lookup index rebuilds on its own schedule. It came back with the wrong cars. The records behind them are thin. A unit added by hand with no trim, or a feed line with a description that stops at the color, gives the finder little to match on. Open those vehicles and let the decode fill the build, then search again. A shopper says they used it and you never got anything. They found the car and closed the tab without sending the request, which happens. Check the leads list anyway, and check your notification preferences in the CRM so the next one reaches a phone rather than a screen nobody is watching. The car exists but not in that trim. That is the finder telling you the truth. It matches on the equipment the VIN says the unit carries, which is the whole point, because a customer who drives across town for a package that is not on the truck has a fair complaint. #### Related tasks The product page for this tool is vehicle finder, which covers where it sits and what search costs elsewhere. Where it appears is the other half: the inventory website builder publishes sites that carry it on the front page, and the embeddable inventory widget puts the same inventory on the site your web vendor runs. The rest of the loop has guides in the LeadLocate Help Center: handling the Schedule a Visit request that follows a good search, editing vehicle photos so the unit the finder returns is worth stopping on, and publishing the site the finder lives on. If your store wants the finder to ask a question the standard set does not ask, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: Does a shopper need an account to use the vehicle finder? A: No. The finder is on your public dealer page and on any inventory site you publish, and a customer uses it without signing in. They only give you contact details when they choose a vehicle and send the request. Q: What does the finder search when a shopper types in plain words? A: The decoded inventory record: the real trim, drivetrain and equipment from the VIN, plus the mileage and price on the unit. That is why a search for a third row and a tow package returns the trucks that actually have them. Q: How fast does a new vehicle become searchable? A: The lookup index rebuilds on its own schedule, so a unit added this morning is searchable without anyone doing anything else to it. Adding the VIN rather than typing the build by hand gets it there in better shape. Q: Where does a finder request end up? A: In the dealer portal under Requests and in LeadLocate CRM as a lead with the vehicle attached. Search the leads list by name, email, phone or vehicle to pull it up and reply with the unit in the message. ### How to Use the Workspace URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-use-the-workspace Open Workspace from the top of the main menu in LeadLocate CRM. Read Today's Appointments, then click Past Due on the Tasks & To-Dos panel and work the list from the top: text, call or email from each row, then mark the task complete with a note. Snooze a task, move it to tomorrow or clear old ones with Clear All. Steps: 1. Open the Workspace: Sign in to LeadLocate CRM and click Workspace, the first item in the main menu. On the phone, open the LeadLocate app and tap Workspace. The screen loads with today's appointments and your task list already built from your leads, your calendar and any to-dos assigned to you. 2. Read today's appointments: Look at Today's Appointments first. The count beside the title tells you how many customers are booked today, and each row shows the time and the customer. Each appointment row carries its own buttons: add a quick note, mark the customer In Store Now, or use Reschedule Appointment to pick a New date & time when the customer asks to move. 3. Clear what is past due first: On the Tasks & To-Dos panel, click Past Due to narrow the list to anything left over from earlier. Work those rows before anything else. When the past due list is empty, switch to the Due Today filter and work today's follow ups from the top down. 4. Reach the customer from the row: Each task row has text, call and email buttons on its top line. Click one and the CRM opens its own composer or phone on that customer, so there is no number to look up. Click the row to open the lead popup, and press Open Full Lead Details when you need the whole record, the vehicles and the timeline. 5. Complete the task with a note: Click the complete button on the row's bottom line. Choose the Method of contact, such as by phone or by text message, type a line about what happened, and press Save Note & Complete. The note goes on the lead's timeline. If there is nothing to add, press Skip Note & Complete. The task moves to the Complete tab. 6. Snooze, move or clear: Use the snooze button on a row to bring the task back in an hour, or move it to tomorrow when the customer asked for another day. When the list carries tasks that no longer apply, press Clear All and choose Clear all tasks on the list or Select tasks to clear, then tap the rows to retire. 7. Add your own to-dos: Press Add To-Do on the task panel to add a reminder of your own, with a due date and time, and assign it to yourself or to a teammate. At the end of the day, press Print current task list to take tomorrow's list into the morning meeting. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login. Every user on the account has a Workspace of their own, and a salesperson's list shows that salesperson's appointments, tasks and to-dos. If you are the account admin setting up a new rep, add them first in User Management; the guide on how to add users and roles walks through it. The Workspace fills itself from the rest of the CRM. Leads from your lead feeds create follow up tasks, bookings on your calendar become appointments, and a manager's assignments arrive as to-dos. On a brand new account it may be short on the first morning. That is normal, and it grows as the leads come in. Setting your booking link in Calendar Settings on day one is the fastest way to see appointments land on it. #### What you should see Two working panels. Today's Appointments shows every booked customer for today with a count on the title and a print button for a paper copy. Tasks & To-Dos shows your follow ups and to-dos in one list, with the Due Today and Past Due counts above it and a Complete tab that fills up as you work. Your own to-dos carry a To-Do chip so you can tell them apart from lead tasks at a glance. The News to be aware of panel carries dealer industry news, worth a minute before the first appointment. When you complete a task, the row leaves the open list and appears under Complete, and the note you typed is on the lead's timeline. On the phone, the same lists sit under the Workspace screen, and anything you do on one device shows on the other. #### Quick checks Expecting more appointments? Appointments show on the calendar of the rep they were booked with. Open Calendar, confirm the booking is on your calendar, and check that your booking link is the one in your texts. The guide on how to schedule an appointment covers both. Looking for a task you finished? It is on the Complete tab for the day. A task you snoozed comes back in an hour, and one moved to tomorrow waits on tomorrow's list. A narrowed list? A filter is on. Click Past Due again, or the Due Today count, to switch it off and see the whole list. Want live help? Every plan includes live training. Press Schedule Training in the top bar and a trainer walks your Workspace with you. #### Tips from the floor Start every morning on the Workspace, not the inbox. The inbox shows who wrote to you; the Workspace shows who you promised to call, and promises close deals. Clear past due before anything new. Always complete with a note, even one line, because the note is what the manager and the next rep read. Use Clear All for tasks that no longer apply rather than completing them, so your contact numbers stay real. And add a to-do the moment you promise something on the phone; a reminder typed while the customer is still talking is one you keep. #### Related tasks The feature page for the Workspace explains what it replaces and how a manager uses it. For reminders of your own, read how to add a reminder or to-do. On the phone, Quick Schedule books a customer on the spot, and In-Store Now marks the customer who just arrived. The Help Center has every other guide, starting with how to work the lead inbox. #### Questions and answers Q: Where is the Workspace in LeadLocate CRM? A: It is the first item in the main menu on the desktop and its own screen in the LeadLocate mobile app. Every user has one, showing their own appointments, tasks and to-dos. Q: What is the difference between completing and clearing a task? A: Completing records that you reached the customer, with the method of contact and a note on the lead's timeline. Clearing closes tasks that no longer apply without recording a contact, which keeps your activity numbers accurate. Q: Can I use the Workspace on my phone? A: Yes. The LeadLocate app has a Workspace screen with the same appointments, tasks and to-dos. Complete, snooze, reschedule and add to-dos from the phone, and the desktop shows the change right away. Q: How do I get training on the Workspace? A: Every plan includes live training. Press Schedule Training in the top bar of the CRM to book a session, or open the video training library for a walkthrough you can watch any time. ### How to Validate a Phone Number in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-validate-a-phone-number Validating a phone number in LeadLocate CRM means running it through the Phone Validator under Marketing Tools on the dock, which tells you whether the number is live, what kind of line it is, and whether it carries a do not call flag. You paste a list or upload a file, name it, press Validate Numbers and read the results. The result also shows as a dot on the lead. Steps: 1. Open the Phone Validator: Click Marketing Tools on the dock, then Phone Validator, the tile that reads weed out dead numbers. The page is titled Phone Number Lookup. 2. Name the list: Type a List Name you will recognize a month from now, such as the event and the date range. The name is what the history table shows. 3. Add the numbers: Paste them into Phone Numbers to Lookup: where it says Please enter one number per line, ten digit US numbers with no punctuation needed, or upload a CSV File exported from a spreadsheet. One number on its own works the same way as six hundred. 4. Run the check: Press Validate Numbers. A short list returns in seconds; a long one takes a little longer and you can leave the page. 5. Read the results: The Results view lists every number with a Do Not Call column and a scrubbed marker, and the Phone Number Lookup Results report adds the Line Type and Carrier for each. A number flagged Do Not Call comes off the call list; a landline comes off the text list. 6. Keep the record: Scroll to Phone Lookup History:. The run is a row with the list name, Pulled By, Total Number and a Report Link that reopens the report later. On the lead itself, the number now carries a validity dot next to it. #### Before you start You need a login to LeadLocate CRM with a role that can see the dock. In practice a manager with a list runs the tool, and a salesperson reads the validity dot it leaves on the lead. Lookups use credits, and the balance is managed by the Master Administrator from My LeadLocate; check it before a large run. Have the numbers in one place first. If the list is a spreadsheet from outside the CRM, export it as a file with the numbers in one column, or bring it in with contact import so the validator can run on the imported records and the dots land on the leads. The Phone Validator feature page explains what each column means and where the results are reused. #### What you should see When the run finishes, the Results view shows every number on the list with its flags: Do Not Call for the numbers the store should not contact, and a scrubbed marker showing the number has been through the check. A number that has not been run shows as not checked, which is how a list that was added to after the run announces itself. The report behind Report Link adds Line Type, mobile or landline, and the Carrier, which is what decides whether a number belongs on a text list or a call list. Back on each lead, the phone number carries a validity dot, so the salesperson working the lead sees the outcome of a check a manager ran, without opening the tool. The history row is the store's record that the list was checked, when, by whom and how many numbers it held. #### If it did not work Every number came back not checked. The run did not start. Usually the account is out of lookup credits; the Master Administrator adds them from My LeadLocate and you run the list again with the same List Name. Some numbers were skipped. They were not ten digit US numbers. A leading 1, a missing area code or an extension on the end stops that row. Fix the format in the source and paste again. A number I know is good shows Do Not Call. The flag means the number is on a do not call list, not that it is dead. It may still be a customer who asked your store to call; the DNC Blacklist page is where the store records its own exceptions and its own blocks, and a customer who asks in writing to be called is a different matter from a stranger on a list. When in doubt, leave the flag alone. For a run that stays stuck, the support team can see it from the store's side. #### Related tasks A validated list is the list you send from bulk texting and from Voicemail Drops in the same menu, and the one the BDC dials from the VoIP softphone. The lead side of do not call protection is the DNC Blacklist, which holds the store's own list and runs a live do not call lookup on numbers as they arrive. Checking the same list on the email side is how to validate an email address, two tiles over. Every guide in the Help Center is written the way this one is. #### Tips from the floor Validate the night before a call session, not the morning of, so the BDC starts on a clean list rather than waiting on a run. Name lists by event and date so the history table reads like a calendar. And treat the landline column as a gift: a landline is a number to call, not text, and a BDC that knows which is which wastes no messages and no minutes. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I check one number without a list? A: Yes. Paste the single number into the same field, name the run and press Validate Numbers. The lead's validity dot updates the same way. Q: What does the Do Not Call flag mean? A: The number appears on a do not call list and the store should not contact it without a reason it can document. The flag is about the number, not about whether the line is live. Q: Does validation cost anything? A: Lookups use credits managed by the Master Administrator from My LeadLocate. The tool itself is part of every LeadLocate plan. Q: Will the result show on the lead? A: Yes. Validity shows as a dot next to the phone number on the lead record, so a salesperson sees it without opening the tool. ### How to Validate an Email Address in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-validate-an-email-address Validating an email address in LeadLocate CRM means running it through the Email Validator under Marketing Tools on the dock, which tells you whether the address can receive mail before the store sends to it. You paste a list or upload a file, name it, press Validate Emails and read the report. A single address can be checked from the lead as well. Steps: 1. Open the Email Validator: Click Marketing Tools on the dock, then Email Validator, the tile that reads catch bad emails early. The page is titled Email Verification Tool. 2. Name the list: Type a List Name that will still mean something in the history table next quarter: what the list is and roughly when it was built. 3. Add the addresses: Paste them into Email Addresses to Lookup: where it says Please enter one email per line, or upload a CSV File exported from a spreadsheet with the addresses in one column. 4. Run the check: Press Validate Emails. A short list is back in seconds; a long one takes a little longer and you can leave the page and come back. 5. Read the report: Scroll to Email Lookup History: and open the Report Link on the new row. The report lists which addresses are deliverable and which are not. The row itself records Pulled By and Total Number, which is the audit trail. 6. Check one address from the lead: For a single customer, open the lead, use Enter Email to validate on the record and run it. The result shows as a validity dot next to the address, where the salesperson working the lead will see it. #### Before you start You need a login to LeadLocate CRM with a role that can see the dock. A manager with a list runs the tool; a salesperson reads the dot it leaves on the lead. Lookups use credits, and the balance is managed by the Master Administrator from My LeadLocate, so check it before a run of several hundred. Gather the addresses in one column first. If the list came from outside the CRM, bring it in with contact import so the validator runs against real records and the dots land where the salespeople work. The Email Validator feature page explains what a dead address costs a sending domain and why the check is worth doing before every blast rather than after the first bounce. #### What you should see When the run finishes, Email Lookup History: has a new row with the list name, who ran it, how many addresses it held and a Report Link. The report separates the addresses that can receive mail from the ones that cannot. The second group is the valuable one: each failed address is a customer record that is wrong, and fixing it usually means a phone call, which is a reason to talk to a customer that a salesperson can use. Back on each lead, the email address carries a validity dot, so a rep about to send a one to one email sees at a glance whether it will arrive. The history row stays as the store's record that the list was checked before it was mailed, with a name and a count on it. #### If it did not work Nothing came back. The run did not start, and the usual cause is an account with no lookup credits left. The Master Administrator adds credits from My LeadLocate; run the list again with the same List Name. Some addresses were skipped. They were not addresses. A missing at sign, a space in the middle or a trailing comma stops that row. Fix them in the source and paste again, one per line. An address I know is good failed. Some mail servers refuse to say whether an address exists, and the validator reports what it could learn. Send that customer a one to one email from the composer; a reply settles it, and a bounce tells you the check was right. For a run that stays stuck, the support team can look at it from the store's side. #### Related tasks A validated list is the list you send from Bulk Email, the tile beside the validator, and the list you let into Email Automation, because a drip sends to the same dead address five times instead of once. Checking the same customers on the phone side is how to validate a phone number, which works the same way with a Do Not Call column added. The other half of a clean sending reputation is email domain authentication, covered on the Bulk Email page. Every guide in the Help Center reads the way this one does. #### Tips from the floor Validate any list older than a few months before you mail it, every time, and validate a new list once on the way in. Give the failed addresses to the salespeople as a call list rather than deleting them; a customer whose email changed is a customer worth a conversation. And run the phone and email checks in the same sitting, so one list is clean on both channels before the campaign is built from it. #### Questions and answers Q: Can I check an address without sending anything? A: Yes. That is what the validator is for. Nothing is sent to the customer; the tool checks whether the address can receive mail and reports back. Q: Does a passed address mean the customer wants email from us? A: No. It means the address works. Consent is a separate matter, and the moment you fix a bad address with a customer on the phone is the moment to confirm they want to hear from the store. Q: Does validation cost anything? A: Lookups use credits managed by the Master Administrator from My LeadLocate. The tool itself is part of every LeadLocate plan. Q: Where does the result show on the lead? A: As a validity dot next to the email address on the lead record, beside the dot for the phone number. ### How to View a Receipt in My LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-view-a-receipt Sign in to My LeadLocate with a billing login, open the billing page and click Transactions. Every cleared payment is listed there by date. Click the one you want and the PAYMENT RECEIPT opens with the amount, the Receipt Date:, the invoice it paid and the card that paid it, ready to print or save. Steps: 1. Sign in with a billing login: Receipts live on the account portal rather than in the CRM, so use the account admin or billing contact email your store named at signup. Sign in with the password, the sign in link sent to your email or the code sent to your mobile. A product user login opens the applications your store uses but not the money. 2. Open the billing page: From the account menu, open Billing. Everything about what your store has been charged and what it has paid sits on this one page: the balance, the invoice list and the payment history. If your group holds more than one account on the same login, read the store name at the top before you go hunting. 3. Choose Transactions for payments, Invoices for bills: Click Transactions to see what your store has actually paid, in date order, each row with its amount. Click Invoices instead if what you want is the bill rather than the proof of payment. Controllers usually want both: the invoice for the expense and the receipt for the reconciliation. 4. Open the payment you want: Click the row. The PAYMENT RECEIPT opens as a clean, printable document with your store's name, the billing contact and the amount at the top. If two payments in a month look alike, match them on the amount and the Receipt Date: rather than guessing from position in the list. 5. Read the four fields that matter: Receipt Date: is the day the payment cleared. Invoice: names the bill it paid. Payment Method and Card Last 4 say which card was charged. Reference: is the number to quote if anyone ever needs to ask about this exact payment, and Account #: identifies your store. 6. Print it or save it: Use your browser's print command to send the receipt to the printer or save it as a PDF for the accounting folder. The layout is built for paper, so it prints on one page with the borders and the shading intact. Email that file to whoever asked and you are finished. #### Before you start You need a login with billing rights on My LeadLocate. The account admin and the billing contact your store named at signup both have it; a salesperson's CRM login does not, which is by design, because the person selling cars has no reason to be reading the store's payment history. It also helps to know what you are actually being asked for. A receipt proves a payment cleared. An invoice states what was owed. A bookkeeper closing a month usually wants the receipt, a GM approving a spend usually wants the invoice, and a lender or a CPA asking about a line on the P and L wants both. The billing page carries all of it, so you can answer any of those three in the same visit. #### What you should see A printable document, not a screenshot of a table. The PAYMENT RECEIPT opens with your store's name, the billing contact and the service address at the top, the amount paid in large type, and the detail underneath: Receipt Date:, Invoice:, Reference:, Account #:, and the Payment Method with the Card Last 4 of the card that was charged. Nothing sensitive is on it. The card is identified by its type and its last four digits, which is exactly what a bookkeeper needs to match a line on a bank statement and nothing more. If your store paid part of a balance with account credits, the receipt shows what was actually charged, so it always reconciles against the bank rather than against the sticker price of the plan. #### Receipt, invoice, or both? Use the invoice when someone is asking what the store is paying for. It lists the subscription, the add ons and the term, and it is the document a dealer principal reads before approving a renewal. Use the receipt when someone is asking whether it was paid. It carries the date, the amount, the reference and the card, and it is the document that closes a line in the books. Both live on the same billing page, and both are permanent. Invoices keeps every bill your store has ever been issued and Transactions keeps every payment your store has ever made, so an audit two years from now is a matter of scrolling rather than emailing your rep. Pull them yourself at eleven at night if that is when the month closes; nobody has to be awake to send them to you. #### If it did not work The payment is not in the list. It may have cleared after you loaded the page. Refresh, then check the date range you are looking at, and confirm you are on the right store if your group holds several accounts. You see invoices but no payments. You are on Invoices rather than Transactions. The two lists answer different questions and sit next to each other on the same page. There is no billing section on your screen. The login is a product user rather than a billing login. Sign in with the email that owns the subscription, or ask your account admin to pull the receipt and send it over. The receipt prints across two pages. Set the browser print scale to fit the page and turn headers and footers off. Saving it as a PDF first and printing the PDF also solves it. Your accountant wants a format the page does not produce. Ask on a support request and say what the format needs to contain. Anything your store needs that is not on the page today is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Related tasks The My LeadLocate page covers the rest of the portal: invoices, the payment method on the account, service credits, add ons, the file library, support tickets and which users can launch which products. The LeadLocate Help Center has the short guides for updating the payment method, using referral credits and skipping a month. If a receipt has you asking what the store is getting for the amount on it, read the platform page next to your products list. The CRM, the texting and calling, the calendar, the credit application intake, the website tools and the desking worksheets are all inside the plan on that invoice, and the pricing page shows where each plan sits. #### Tips from the floor Save the receipt as a PDF named with the month and the amount the moment you open it, and the next request takes ten seconds instead of three clicks. Give your controller a billing login of their own rather than forwarding receipts one at a time. Reconcile against the Card Last 4 on the receipt rather than the plan name, because that is the field that matches the bank statement. And keep the Reference: number in any email you send about a payment; it identifies that one transaction and saves an entire round of back and forth. #### Questions and answers Q: Where are my receipts in My LeadLocate? A: On the billing page, under Transactions. Every cleared payment is a row there, and clicking a row opens the printable payment receipt for it. Q: What is the difference between an invoice and a receipt? A: An invoice states what your store owes. A receipt proves a payment cleared, with the date, the amount, the reference and the last four digits of the card. Both are kept permanently on the account. Q: Can I print or email a receipt? A: Yes. The receipt is a printable document, so use your browser to print it or save it as a PDF, then send that file to your controller or your accountant. Q: Can my bookkeeper pull receipts without asking me? A: Yes, if you give them a login with billing rights on the account. Your account admin adds them on the user access page, and they can then read invoices and receipts themselves. ### How to Work the Lead Inbox in LeadLocate URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/how-to-work-the-lead-inbox You work the lead inbox from the Leads menu in LeadLocate CRM. New leads sit at the top with their source and posting time; you open one, text or call the customer from the record, type notes that save as you go, set the Lead Status, and return to the list. The same inbox runs in the mobile app. Steps: 1. Open the lead list: Sign in and open Leads from the main menu; on the phone app it is the Leads screen. The list shows every lead assigned to you, newest first, with the source feed, the Lead Posted Date and the current status on each row. Rows in the color your store set for new leads are the ones nobody has touched. 2. Take the newest untouched lead first: Click the row to open Lead Details. The customer's name, phone, email, vehicle of interest and the message they submitted are at the top, with the source feed and the Lead ID. If the same person has submitted before, the record shows the earlier leads so you are not starting cold. 3. Contact the customer from the record: Use Send a Text to text from the store's tracking number or Make a Call to dial from the softphone, both from the lead. The text thread, the call recording and any email land on the same record, so the next person who opens it reads the whole story. If the customer called or texted first, the reply is already threaded there. 4. Write notes and set the status: Type what happened in the notes; the record autosaves as you type, so there is no save button to forget. Change Lead Status to the stage you reached, for example contacted or appointment set, using the statuses your store defined. Add a tag if the store uses them for things like trade or cash buyer. 5. Schedule the next touch: Set an appointment or a to do from the record so it shows on your Workspace the day it is due. A lead with no next step is a lead that goes quiet; the Workspace only chases what you schedule. 6. Close what is dead, report what is bad: When a customer buys elsewhere or stops responding, choose Mark Lead As Lost and pick the reason in the popup; the reason feeds the reports. A lead with a wrong number or a person who never inquired is not lost, it is bad: choose Report Lead to Quality Control, describe the problem, and a manager reviews it. 7. Add a walk in or phone up by hand: For a customer who was never a lead, click Add New Lead, enter the name and phone, and the record is created on the walk in source so it is worked and reported like every other lead. #### Before you start You need a LeadLocate CRM login and at least one lead source delivering into the store. Sources are set up as feeds in Lead Feeds Manager by a Manager or Master Administrator; a salesperson does not need to touch that page, only to know which feed name means which source. Turn on your alerts before the first lead lands: Notify me when I get a NEW LEAD sends the text or email alert, and Play New Lead sound chimes on the desktop, both under your notification preferences. Know your store's statuses. The Lead Status list is customized per dealership, with row colors and tags set by a manager, and the reports count whatever your team picks. If the list does not describe how your store actually moves a deal, ask a manager to fix the custom statuses rather than working around them. #### What you should see A row for every lead assigned to you, newest at the top, colored by status. Opening a row shows the full record: contact details, the source, the message, the vehicle, the communications log with every text, call, email and voicemail in order, and the notes area. As you type, the record saves in the background; you can close the tab mid sentence and the words are there when you return. After you text or call from the record, the thread or the recording appears in the log within seconds. After you change Lead Status, the row color in the list changes to match. After Mark Lead As Lost, the lead leaves the working list and the reason shows on the record and in the reports. After Report Lead to Quality Control, the lead shows a pending review and the manager sees it in the quality control queue. On the phone app the same record opens as a sheet, and the bottom dock places Text, Call and New Lead one tap away. #### If it did not work No new leads appear. Either the feed is not delivering or the lead was assigned to someone else. A manager checks Lead Feeds Manager for the source and the assignment rule; a round robin rule sends each lead to the next person in the rotation, so your neighbor may have it. All Leads, visible to managers, shows everything the store received. The alert did not fire. Open your notification preferences and confirm Notify me when I get a NEW LEAD is on and the phone number and email on your profile are right. Desktop sound needs the browser tab open at least once after login so it is allowed to play. The lead notifications page covers every setting. Two records for the same customer. Open one of them and use Merge Duplicate Records; the merge keeps every text, call and note from both and leaves one record with the older lead history intact. A lead you deleted by mistake. Deleted leads go to the trash bin, where a manager can restore them. #### Related tasks The inbox hands off to three other screens. Texting continues in the two way texting inbox, where every conversation on the store's numbers lives one thread per customer. Calls and recordings live under Calls. Appointments, reminders and to dos collect on the Workspace, which is the page to open each morning after the inbox. Every task on the platform has a guide in the LeadLocate Help Center: texting a customer, making a call from the CRM, sending a vehicle in a text, and setting up notification preferences all start from the lead record you just opened. A lead workflow your store needs that the inbox does not express is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Tips from the floor Work newest first, always; the value of an internet lead falls by the minute. Text before you call, because a text gets read and a cold call from an unknown number gets ignored, then call the ones who reply. Never leave a record without a status change and a next step, even if the step is a to do for next week. And mark lost with the real reason; the lost reason report is how a manager finds out the store keeps losing on trade value, and it only works if the reasons are true. #### Questions and answers Q: Where do new leads show up in LeadLocate? A: In the Leads menu on the desktop and the Leads screen in the mobile app, newest first, with the source and posting time on each row. New leads also trigger a text, email or sound alert if you turned them on. Q: Do I have to save my notes on a lead? A: No. The lead record autosaves as you type. Change the status, type the note and move to the next lead. Q: What is the difference between marking a lead lost and reporting it? A: Lost is a real customer who did not buy from you; pick the reason and it feeds the reports. Reporting to Quality Control is for a lead that was never a real inquiry, such as a wrong number, and a manager reviews it. Q: Can I work the lead inbox from my phone? A: Yes. The LeadLocate mobile app has the same lead list and record, with Text, Call and New Lead on the bottom dock. ### LeadLocate Help Center: Step by Step Guides URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/help-center The Help Center is the documentation for the LeadLocate platform: one page per task, in order, with the exact labels you will see on screen. Guides cover setup, daily use, desking and deals, SecureWebX credit applications, Inventory Link and the My LeadLocate account portal. For anything a guide does not answer, support is a call, a text or a ticket away. #### How the guides are written Each guide starts with what you need before you begin, then the steps, then what you should see when it worked, then what to check if it did not. Labels that appear on screen are shown as key caps, like Send a Text, and every one of them is checked against the live product templates before the guide is published, so a guide never names a button that does not exist. Guides stay in the present tense and the second person because that is how someone reads with one hand on the mouse. The guides are grouped by product. The CRM group covers setup and daily use; desking and deals have their own group because the customer deal page is a workflow of its own; SecureWebX and Inventory Link each have a group; and the My LeadLocate group covers billing, add-ons and account access. #### When a guide is not enough Some questions are about your account rather than the product, and some are about a store's process. For those, the support team is available by phone and text at 844-376-2274 during business hours, by ticket from the account portal at any time, and through live training sessions you can schedule from the CRM. The feature directory explains what each feature is for, which is the other half of most questions, and the glossary defines the terms the guides use. #### Setup guides come first The guides a new account needs are grouped under getting started: setting up a profile and notification preferences, adding users and roles, business hours, connecting Google Calendar and setting a booking link, importing contacts, setting up lead feeds and round robin, adding a tracking phone number, call forwarding, recording a voicemail greeting, building an IVR call flow, turning on the virtual receptionist, the DNC blacklist, authenticating an email domain, creating Automated Templates, building a Follow Up Process, the referral program, designing a business card, connecting ad accounts, building a lead campaign, creating a lead page, connecting a domain and editing the website. Most stores finish that list in a single afternoon with a specialist on the phone, and the guides let a store do it again for a new user without the call. #### Daily use guides are short on purpose A daily use guide answers one question, such as how to send a picture in a text, how to drop a voicemail, how to merge two leads, how to start a deal from a lead or how to send a deal page for signature. They are written to be read in the time it takes a customer to walk from the lot to the desk. Each one ends with the related tasks, so a rep who learned to send an apply link by text also sees how to review the application when it comes back and how to add a stipulation. Managers can hand a new hire the daily use group as a first week checklist; the solutions pages then show how those tasks combine into a role. #### What a guide will never do Every guide names only the controls on your screen, describes exactly what the platform delivers, and keeps you inside every compliance rule. Where a task carries a rule, texting consent before a campaign, a do not call check before a call list, a disclosure before a credit application goes out, the guide puts the check in the step. Where a task touches money on your account, the guide says exactly what happens next, such as turning Automatic Renewal off, which warns like a cancel, asks you to confirm the 10 day notice and sets the account to cancel at the end of the agreement. If a guide seems to disagree with what you see, tell support; the templates and the guides are checked against each other and a difference means one of them changed. #### LeadLocate CRM - How to Add a Reminder or To Do - How to Add a Tracking Phone Number in LeadLocate - How to Add More Than One Vehicle to a Lead - How to Add Users and Roles in LeadLocate - How to Authenticate Your Email Domain in LeadLocate - How to Blacklist a Number in LeadLocate - How to Build a Follow up Process in LeadLocate - How to Build an IVR Call Flow in LeadLocate - How to Change a Lead Status in LeadLocate - How to Connect a Website Form to the CRM - How to Connect Google Calendar in LeadLocate - How to Connect or Buy a Domain in LeadLocate - How to Create a Lead Page in LeadLocate - How to Create Automated Templates in LeadLocate - How to Design a Business Card in LeadLocate - How to Dictate a Message in LeadLocate - How to Drop a Voicemail in LeadLocate - How to Edit Your Website in LeadLocate - How to Import Contacts in LeadLocate - How to Log in with a Quick Access PIN in LeadLocate - How to Make a Call from the CRM in LeadLocate - How to Mark a Lead Lost with a Reason in LeadLocate - How to Merge Duplicate Leads in LeadLocate - How to Preview Sample Ads and Custom Offers - How to Read a Call Transcript in LeadLocate - How to Read Your Reports in LeadLocate - How to Record a Voicemail Greeting in LeadLocate - How to Report a Bad Lead in LeadLocate - How to Restore a Deleted Lead From the Trash Bin - How to Scan a Driver License in LeadLocate - How to Scan a VIN in LeadLocate - How to Schedule a Text or Email for Later - How to Schedule an Appointment in LeadLocate - How to Send a Bulk Email in LeadLocate - How to Send a Bulk Text in LeadLocate - How to Send a Picture Message in LeadLocate - How to Send an RCS Message in LeadLocate - How to Send Managers a Copy of Every Lead - How to Set Business Hours in LeadLocate - How to Set Call Alert Keywords - How to Set Notification Preferences in LeadLocate - How to Set up Call Forwarding in LeadLocate - How to Set up Lead Feeds in LeadLocate - How to Set up Round Robin in LeadLocate - How to Set up the DNC Blacklist in LeadLocate - How to Set up the Referral Program in LeadLocate - How to Set up Your Profile in LeadLocate - How to Set Your Booking Link in LeadLocate - How to Share a File Securely in LeadLocate - How to Tag a Lead in LeadLocate - How to Text a Customer in LeadLocate - How to Turn on the Virtual Receptionist in LeadLocate - How to Use in Store Now in LeadLocate - How to Use My Office in LeadLocate - How to Use Quick Schedule on Mobile in LeadLocate - How to Use Team Chat in LeadLocate - How to Use the AI Writing Assistant in LeadLocate - How to Use the File Library in LeadLocate - How to Use the Mobile Dialer in LeadLocate - How to Use the Workspace - How to Validate a Phone Number in LeadLocate - How to Validate an Email Address in LeadLocate - How to Work the Lead Inbox in LeadLocate #### Desking and deals - How to Capture a Trade in in LeadLocate - How to Desk a Deal in LeadLocate - How to Print a Deal Packet in LeadLocate - How to Send a Deal Page for E-Signature in LeadLocate - How to Start a Deal from a Lead in LeadLocate - How to Upload Deal Documents by QR in LeadLocate - How to Use Deal Chat in LeadLocate - How to Use the Road to Sale Checklist in LeadLocate #### Campaigns and advertising - How to Build a Lead Campaign in LeadLocate - How to Connect Your Ad Accounts in LeadLocate #### Jax - How to Ask Jax in LeadLocate #### SecureWebX - How to Add Custom Disclosures in SecureWebX - How to Add Stipulations in SecureWebX - How to Add Your Credit Bureau Account to SecureWebX - How to Attach a Worksheet to an Application in SecureWebX - How to Complete an Application with a Co-Applicant in SecureWebX - How to Create an Apply Link in SecureWebX - How to Customize an Apply Link in SecureWebX - How to Email a Lender From the SecureWebX Mailbox - How to Export a SecureWebX Report to PDF - How to Export Applications in SecureWebX - How to Issue an Adverse Action Notice in SecureWebX - How to Manage SecureWebX Users in SecureWebX - How to Open a SecureWebX Support Ticket in SecureWebX - How to Push a Desked Deal to SecureWebX - How to Respond to an Application as a Lender in SecureWebX - How to Review Applications in the Inbox in SecureWebX - How to Run a Book Value in SecureWebX - How to Run a Title, Stolen or Warranty Check on a Deal - How to Run an OFAC Check in SecureWebX - How to Send a Fax in SecureWebX - How to Send an Application to a Lender in SecureWebX - How to Send an Apply Link by Text in SecureWebX - How to Set up Two-Factor Authentication in SecureWebX - How to Set up Your Privacy Notice and Terms in SecureWebX #### Inventory Link - How to Add a Vehicle Manually in Inventory Link - How to Connect an Inventory Feed in Inventory Link - How to Connect Inventory to the CRM in Inventory Link - How to Edit Vehicle Photos in Inventory Link - How to Embed the Inventory Widget in Inventory Link - How to Handle a Schedule a Visit Request in Inventory Link - How to Import Inventory from Your Website in Inventory Link - How to Publish Your Inventory Site in Inventory Link - How to Send a Vehicle in a Text in Inventory Link - How to Set up Auto Broker Mode in Inventory Link - How to Set up Brand Pages in Inventory Link - How to Show OEM Incentives in Inventory Link - How to Use the Request Sheet in Inventory Link - How to Use the Vehicle Finder in Inventory Link #### My LeadLocate account - How to Add an Add on in My LeadLocate - How to Buy Usage Credits in My LeadLocate - How to Download Your Welcome Guide in My LeadLocate - How to Launch Your Apps from My LeadLocate in My LeadLocate - How to Log in Without a Password in My LeadLocate - How to Manage Account Access in My LeadLocate - How to Open a Support Ticket in My LeadLocate - How to Pay an Invoice in My LeadLocate - How to Schedule Live Training - How to Skip a Month in My LeadLocate - How to Turn Automatic Renewal off in My LeadLocate - How to Update Your Payment Method in My LeadLocate - How to Use Referral Credits in My LeadLocate - How to View a Receipt in My LeadLocate #### Questions and answers Q: Are these guides for the desktop CRM or the mobile app? A: Both. A guide says where it applies, and tasks that differ on the phone have their own guide. Q: How current are the guides? A: The labels in every guide are checked against the live product templates before publishing, so a guide never names a control that is not there. Q: Can I get help from a person? A: Yes. Call or text 844-376-2274, open a ticket from your account portal, or schedule a live training session from the CRM. Q: I cannot find a guide for my task. A: Tell us which task and we write it. Anything not listed is available on request. ## Glossary ### Automotive Sales and Dealership Software Glossary URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/automotive-sales-glossary This glossary defines the terms used on a dealership sales floor, in the F&I office, on the used car lot and inside dealership software. Each entry gives a plain definition first, then how the term works at a store with a worked example, then how LeadLocate handles it where that applies. Entries are grouped by where you hear them: sales floor, finance and compliance, communications, inventory, marketing and software. #### Who this glossary is for New salespeople hear fifty words in their first week that nobody explains: a mini, a pack, a be back, a spiff. Managers moving from franchise to independent meet a different fifty, and anyone who has just been handed the F&I office meets regulation by its initials. This glossary is for all of them, and for the growing number of dealers who ask an AI assistant to explain a term and want the answer to come from people who sell cars. Every entry is written to stand alone, so a definition quoted out of context is still right. Where a term is also a feature of the platform, the entry links the feature page, and where it is a task, the Help Center. The platform overview is the place to start if the software itself is the question. #### The groups, and what lives in each Sales floor terms are the ones a new salesperson hears in week one: be back, walk in, fresh up, turnover, pencil, mini, spiff, pack, holdback, front end and back end gross, the road to sale and the deal jacket. Finance and compliance terms are the F&I office and the rules around it: buy rate and sell rate, reserve, money factor, residual, cap cost, loan to value, payment to income, prescreen against prequalify, soft pull against hard pull, stipulations, adverse action notices, Regulation B, the Safeguards Rule, OFAC, the Red Flags rule, ITIN financing, subprime and special finance. Communications terms cover texting and calling: TCPA, the Do Not Call list, 10DLC, RCS, MMS, IVR, call tracking, caller ID names and ringless voicemail. Inventory terms cover the lot: days supply, aged inventory, reconditioning, ACV, window stickers, VIN decode, stock numbers, feeds and syndication. Marketing terms cover where leads come from: lead source, exclusive lead, internet lead, VDP and SRP, landing pages, equity mining, lease maturity, orphan owners and conquest. Software terms cover the tools themselves: CRM, DMS, round robin, lead routing, ADF XML, e-signature, digital retailing, deal pages and pencil recaps. #### How to use a definition Each entry is written so the first two sentences can be lifted out and still be right, which is how search engines and AI assistants quote them. The rest of the entry adds the working detail: how the term plays out at a dealership, a worked example with round numbers labelled illustrative, and, when LeadLocate has a feature that touches the term, one paragraph on how the platform handles it with a link to the feature page. Terms that are regulated say what the rule requires in plain language and then say that a store's own counsel and lenders set its policy, because that is true and a glossary should say so. #### Terms that changed meaning when software arrived Several entries exist because the software gave an old word a second meaning. A pencil was a worksheet a desk manager wrote by hand; in LeadLocate it is a saved structure in EZ Desking with a recap the customer can open on a phone. A deal jacket was a paper folder; now it is the document set on the deal, uploaded from a camera through a QR code. A lead source was a newspaper; now it is a feed with its own template, tracking number and round robin rule. The glossary keeps both meanings side by side, so a manager who learned the floor before the software and a new hire who learned the software first are reading the same page. #### Sales floor - What Is a BDC? Business Development Center Explained - What Is a Be Back? - What Is a Deal Jacket? - What Is a Dealer Pack? - What Is a Fresh Up? - What Is a Mini Deal? - What Is a Pencil in Car Sales? - What Is a Spiff? - What Is a Turnover in Car Sales? - What Is a Walk In? - What Is Desking? Structuring a Car Deal Explained - What Is Front End Gross? - What Is Holdback? - What Is One Price Selling? - What Is Out the Door Price? - What Is the Road to Sale? #### Finance and compliance - What Are Stipulations? - What Is a Co-Applicant? - What Is a Credit Application? - What Is a Credit Tier? - What Is a Money Factor? - What Is a Rebate vs Dealer Cash? - What Is a Soft Pull vs a Hard Pull? - What Is a Subprime Auto Loan? - What Is a Vehicle Service Contract? - What Is an Adverse Action Notice? - What Is an Apply Link? - What Is Back End Gross? - What Is Buy Here Pay Here? - What Is Buy Rate vs Sell Rate? - What Is Cap Cost? - What Is Dealer Reserve? - What Is F&I? The Finance and Insurance Office Explained - What Is GAP Coverage? - What Is ITIN Financing? - What Is Loan to Value? - What Is Negative Equity? - What Is OFAC Screening? - What Is Payment to Income? - What Is Prescreen vs Prequalify? - What Is Regulation B? - What Is Residual Value? - What Is Special Finance? - What Is the GLBA Safeguards Rule? - What Is the Red Flags Rule? #### Communications - What Is 10DLC? - What Is an IVR? - What Is Call Tracking? How Dealers Measure Calls - What Is CNAM? - What Is MMS? - What Is RCS Messaging? - What Is Ringless Voicemail? - What Is TCPA? - What Is the Do Not Call List? #### Inventory - What Is a Stock Number? - What Is a Window Sticker? Price Label Explained - What Is ACV? Actual Cash Value Explained - What Is Aged Inventory? - What Is an Inventory Feed? - What Is Days Supply? - What Is Inventory Syndication? - What Is Reconditioning? - What Is VIN Decode? #### Marketing and leads - What Is a Landing Page? - What Is a Lead Source? - What Is a VDP vs an SRP? - What Is an Exclusive Lead? - What Is an Internet Lead? - What Is an Orphan Owner? - What Is Conquest Marketing? - What Is Equity Mining? - What Is Lease Maturity? #### Software - What Is a Deal Page? - What Is a Dealer Management System? - What Is a Pencil Recap? - What Is ADF XML? - What Is an Automotive CRM? Definition and Uses - What Is an E-Signature? - What Is Digital Retailing in Car Sales? - What Is Lead Routing? - What Is Round Robin Lead Distribution? #### Questions and answers Q: Are these definitions specific to LeadLocate? A: No. The definition comes first and is general. The LeadLocate part, where there is one, is a separate paragraph at the end. Q: Can I suggest a term? A: Yes. Send it through the contact page and we add it. Q: Are the finance and compliance entries legal advice? A: No. They explain what a term means and how dealers commonly handle it. A store's own counsel and its lenders set its policy. Q: Why do some entries have worked examples? A: Because a number makes a term concrete. The examples use round figures and are labelled illustrative. ### What Are Stipulations? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-are-stipulations Stipulations, or stips, are the conditions a lender attaches to an approved auto loan before it will release funding: proof of income, proof of residence, a copy of a valid license, proof of insurance, references. The approval is real but conditional. A delivered deal sits in contracts in transit, unpaid, until the last stipulation on the list is satisfied and sent back to the lender. #### What are stipulations on a car deal? A stipulation, called a stip on the sales floor, is a condition a lender attaches to an approval before it will release the money. The approval itself is real. It is simply conditional, and the condition is almost always a document: a recent pay stub, a utility bill in the buyer's name at the buyer's address, a copy of a valid license, proof of insurance, a list of personal references, sometimes a bank statement or a letter from an employer. The lender lists what it needs on the approval, the store gathers it, and the contract funds when the last item is in. Two terms travel with it. A conditional approval is the approval that carries the stips. Contracts in transit is the accounting word for a signed deal the store has delivered but the lender has not yet paid for, which is exactly where a deal sits while its stips are outstanding. A funded deal is one where the lender has bought the contract and the money has hit the store's account. Anyone who has watched a used car manager chase a pay stub for nine days understands why the middle stage gets its own vocabulary in this automotive sales glossary. Stips are not a sign of a weak buyer. Prime deals carry them too. A lender verifying that the person on the contract is the person who applied, lives where they said and earns what they said is doing its job, and a store that treats the stip list as part of the sale rather than paperwork after the sale gets paid faster. The document handling itself belongs in a real system, which is what online credit application software is for. #### How a finance office works a stip list Say a store delivers a used crossover on a Saturday, illustrative figures only: a retail price near $24,000, a trade allowance of $6,000 and a payment near $520 a month. The lender approves it Friday afternoon and lists four stips: two most recent pay stubs, proof of residence, proof of full coverage insurance, and verification of the phone number on the application. Nothing on that list is unusual, and none of it is hard on Friday afternoon while the customer is sitting in the finance office with a phone in their hand. The good stores clear the list before the customer leaves. The pay stubs get photographed at the desk. The insurance binder gets emailed from the agent while the buyer is signing. The utility bill gets pulled up in the customer's own account on their phone and captured on the spot. What is left goes on the deal with a name against it, so Monday morning the finance manager is chasing one item instead of remembering four. The alternative is the Monday everyone knows. The customer is back at work and will not answer a number they do not recognize. The pay stub arrives as a dark photo of half a page. The lender wants the document again because the address is cut off. The car has been gone for six days and the store still has not been paid for it. #### Where stipulations cost a store money The money in stips is time. Every day a signed contract sits unfunded is a day the store carries the vehicle, the payoff on the trade and its own floorplan cost, and a stip list that ages past a week starts producing real casualties: a lender that pulls the approval because the pay stub is now stale, a buyer whose employment changed, a deal that has to be re-desked at a worse structure, or an unwind where the customer brings the car back. The pattern behind almost every one of those is the same. The stip list lived somewhere that is not the deal. It was a sticky note on the jacket, a line in a manager's notebook, or a text thread where the customer sent a photo of a pay stub that nobody saved anywhere. When the lender calls, the answer takes ten minutes of scrolling. When the finance manager is off, nobody else can say what is outstanding. A store that puts the list on the application record, with the document attached to the request that asked for it, stops losing deals to its own filing. #### How LeadLocate handles stipulations In SecureWebX, stips live on the credit application itself. A manager adds each condition from the common list or types a custom one, marks it required, and fulfills it by uploading the document directly against the request that asked for it, so the record shows the stip, the file, when it arrived and who put it there. Supporting documents are stored with the submission and scanned on upload, the customer can send a photo of a license or a pay stub straight into the deal from a phone through a QR code, and when a lender asks for the proof it requested, a code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked share puts only that application in front of only that lender. The stipulations workflow page shows the screen, and the secure share to a lender shows what the lender sees. #### What stipulations are often confused with A stipulation in a courtroom is an agreement between two parties that a fact is true, which is why a search for the word turns up legal results. Same word, different world. On a car deal a stipulation is a funding condition set by one party, the lender, and the buyer either produces the document or the deal does not fund. It is also not an adverse action notice. Stips arrive with an approval; an adverse action notice arrives when an application is declined or approved on materially different terms, and Regulation B governs what that notice has to say. And a stipulation is not a condition of the retail installment contract itself. The contract terms are the rate, the term and the payment. The stips are what the lender needs to see before it buys that contract. #### Questions and answers Q: What does stips mean at a dealership? A: Stips is the floor shorthand for stipulations, the documents a lender wants before it funds the contract. Proof of income, proof of residence, proof of insurance and a valid license are the four you hear most. Q: Is a conditional approval the same as being approved? A: It is an approval with a list attached. The lender has agreed to buy the contract at a structure, provided the store produces what it asked for. Miss the list and the approval can expire or be withdrawn. Q: What are the most common stipulations? A: Recent pay stubs or bank statements for income, a utility bill or lease for residence, a valid license, proof of full coverage insurance, personal references, and verification that the phone number on the application belongs to the buyer. Q: Is a stipulation on a car deal the same as a stipulation in court? A: No. In court a stipulation is an agreement between parties that a fact is true. On a car deal it is a funding condition a lender sets, and it is satisfied with a document rather than an agreement. ### What Is 10DLC? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-10dlc 10DLC stands for ten digit long code: an ordinary local phone number that a business has registered for application to person texting. Carriers require the company behind the number and the type of messages it sends to be on record before those messages are delivered at volume. For a dealership it is simply what makes business texting arrive. #### What does 10DLC actually stand for? Ten digit long code. The long code part just means a standard phone number with an area code, as opposed to a five or six digit short code, and the ten digit part is there because the industry needed a name that distinguished a normal business line from those short codes. A 10DLC looks exactly like the number on the store's business card, because it is one. What makes it 10DLC rather than an ordinary line is registration. Business texting is application to person traffic, often shortened to A2P: software sends it, not a thumb. Person to person texting between two phones has never needed paperwork. A2P does, and it comes in two layers. The brand registration identifies the business itself, its legal name, its address, its tax identification, its website. The campaign registration describes what the business texts about, with sample messages, the opt in language it uses and the way a consumer opts out. Once both are on record, the numbers attached to that campaign are approved to send. Registration also sets throughput, meaning how many messages a number is allowed to send in a given minute and a given day. A small store texting a few hundred customers and a group texting tens of thousands are not the same traffic, and the registered profile is what tells the carriers which one is knocking. Other messaging terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### Why do the carriers require it? Because consumers complained, and the wireless carriers had no way to tell a dealership from a scammer when both were sending from a ten digit number. Registration puts a name behind every business number. A consumer who reports a message can be traced to a registered brand, and a brand that sends things nobody asked for can be handled at the source. The upside for a legitimate business is delivery: a registered sender with a clean profile gets its messages through, while unregistered A2P traffic from a long code gets blocked before it reaches anyone. That last part is what stings a sales floor, because a blocked text does not come back and say so. The rep sees a message they believe was sent, the customer never gets it, and the store concludes that texting does not work. Registration and delivery status are the two things that turn texting from a hope into a channel you can read. #### What does 10DLC look like at a dealership? Say a store runs four numbers: a main texting line, one on its website lead form, one on a used car listing site and one printed on service reminders, and the four together send about 800 messages on a busy Saturday, illustrative figures only. All four belong to the same registered brand, the dealership, and to a campaign that describes what the store texts about: replies to shoppers who submitted a request, appointment confirmations, vehicle photos and follow up on an active deal. The sample messages on the registration look like the real ones, because the real ones are what get reviewed if anyone ever asks. The consumer never sees any of this. What the consumer sees is a text from a local number that answers stop and help the way a business text should, that comes from the same number every time, and that keeps the whole conversation in one thread on their phone. What the store gets is a delivery status on each message it sent and a reason when one fails. The rest is paperwork that happens once and then supports every message afterwards. That is also why a store should not run its texting through a rep's personal cell phone: a personal number is unregistered A2P the moment software sends from it, and the store loses both the record and the delivery. #### How does LeadLocate handle 10DLC? The texting numbers a store uses inside LeadLocate CRM are provisioned in the platform, registered for business messaging as part of getting the store's lines live, and assigned where the store wants them, one per source if that is how the store measures marketing. Nobody at the dealership goes looking for registration forms. Reps open the two way texting inbox and send; every bubble carries its own status, sent, delivered or failed, so a manager can tell the difference between a customer who is ignoring the store and a message that never arrived. The consent side is built in for the same reason. A stop keyword opts the customer out and puts the number on the two way blacklist, a help keyword gets a reply that identifies the store, and the Do Not Call Blacklist hides an opted out contact from every recipient list the store can build. Tracking numbers per source are described on tracking numbers per lead source. Where a store wants its own dedicated sending profile or a separate campaign for a distinct brand, that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### How is 10DLC different from a short code or a toll free number? A short code is the five or six digit number national brands use for high volume alerts. It sends enormous quantities quickly, it costs a great deal every month, it takes a long lead time to approve, and it cannot receive a phone call, which makes it wrong for a car store where half the value of a text is that the customer calls the number back. A toll free number can also be registered for business texting and is a reasonable fit for a call center, but it reads as a corporate line rather than as the dealership up the road. A 10DLC is a local number that both texts and rings. The customer sees an area code they recognize, can call it back, and gets a person. For a dealership that is the whole argument, and it is why local long codes carry almost all of a store's messaging. The trade is throughput: a long code is metered, so a blast to twenty thousand people is paced rather than instant, which matters for a campaign schedule and almost never for a sales conversation. #### Questions and answers Q: Is 10DLC the same thing as A2P? A: They are related, not identical. A2P means application to person, any message software sends to a consumer. 10DLC is the ten digit long code such messages are sent from once the business and its campaign are registered. Most dealership texting is A2P traffic on a 10DLC number. Q: Does a dealership have to register to text customers? A: Any business sending texts from software through a ten digit number needs the brand and campaign on record with the carriers. Inside LeadLocate the store texts from numbers provisioned and registered in the platform, so the setup is handled rather than handed to the dealership. Q: What happens to a text sent from an unregistered number? A: Carriers block unregistered application to person traffic, and the sender usually gets no explanation. That is why delivery status on each message matters: a store can see that a message failed instead of assuming a customer ignored it. Q: Can we text from the store's existing main line? A: Often yes. An existing business number can be registered and used for texting, and stores commonly keep the main line for calls and add tracking numbers for individual marketing sources so they can tell which one produced the conversation. ### What Is ACV? Actual Cash Value Explained URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-acv ACV stands for actual cash value: what a used vehicle is genuinely worth to a dealership on the day it is appraised, at wholesale, in the condition it arrived in. It is the store's working number for a trade. The allowance written on the customer's worksheet is a separate figure, and the gap between the two is a pricing decision, not a valuation. #### What does ACV mean at a car dealership? Three numbers travel together on any deal with a trade, and confusing them is where most trade conversations go wrong. ACV is what the store believes it can realize for the vehicle as it sits, at wholesale, today. Allowance is the figure shown to the customer for their trade on the worksheet. Over allowance is the difference when the allowance is higher than the ACV, which is simply a discount moved from the price line to the trade line because that is where the customer is looking. ACV is also the number that governs the used car department's next ninety days. It becomes the cost of a unit the store is about to own, before reconditioning is added, and the pricing, the turn target and eventually the gross all sit on top of it. That is why a used car manager will argue about two hundred dollars on an appraisal and shrug at two hundred dollars on the new car being sold: one is a discount, the other is an asset put on the books at the wrong price. #### How an appraiser lands on an ACV A proper appraisal has four inputs. First the vehicle itself: VIN decode for trim and factory options, mileage, tires, glass, panels, interior, warning lights, and a road test if there is any doubt. Second the paperwork: title status, accident and service history, open recalls, and whether there is a lien and what the payoff is. Third the guides: book values give trade and wholesale ranges for the year, trim and mileage band, adjusted for condition and region. Fourth the live market: what the same unit is actually bringing at auction this week, and how many comparable cars are already listed nearby, which is where market days supply earns its keep. Then the appraiser subtracts a reconditioning estimate and a margin for the risk of being wrong. A car that books well and needs 2,000 of work is not a car that books well. Illustrative figures only, but that subtraction is the step customers never see and the one that explains almost every appraisal they disagree with. #### A worked example with an over allowance Say a customer wants 18,000 for a trade and the appraisal comes back at 15,500 ACV, with 900 of anticipated reconditioning. Illustrative figures only. The store is selling a unit priced at 32,995 and is willing to discount 1,500. The desk can show 15,500 for the trade and 1,500 off the price, or it can show 17,000 for the trade and no discount at all. The customer's out of pocket is identical either way; the second version is the one that gets signed, because the customer came in with a number in their head about their own car. The store's books then carry the trade at 15,500 plus 900 of recon, which is 16,400 of cost in a unit it hopes to retail around 19,495. Where the over allowance hurts is when it is granted without a ceiling: allow 19,000 on a 15,500 ACV to save a deal and the used department inherits a car it cannot price. That is why desking systems carry trade credit caps, and why the appraisal and the pencil belong on the same worksheet. #### Why a customer hears the ACV as a lowball Because they have been looking at retail asking prices for their own model all week. A shopper who sees the same year and trim listed at 21,995 on a dealer's lot hears 15,500 as an insult, and the explanation that closes that gap is short and true: the listed car has already been inspected, repaired, detailed, photographed, advertised, warranted and financed by a business that has to make a margin on the work, and it has been sitting for some number of days while that money was spent. The wholesale value of an unreconditioned car with an unknown history is a different number, and it is the number every store in town will land near. Say it plainly, show the condition report, show the market listings, and offer to buy the car whether or not they buy one from you. Customers rarely argue with an appraisal they were walked through. They argue with a number that appeared on a slip of paper with no explanation attached. #### Where LeadLocate fits on a trade Trade in capture in LeadLocate CRM starts the appraisal where the customer is standing: scan the VIN with a phone, decode the unit, add the mileage and condition notes and photograph the car, and it all lands on the deal with the customer record attached. From there the trade sits inside EZ Desking, where the allowance, the payoff, the trade credit cap and the tax treatment of the trade all calculate against the structure the desk is building, and the Acquisition tab handles the days you are buying a car rather than selling one. In SecureWebX, a book value can be run inside the worksheet and the report stays on the deal record, so the number you appraised at is still there when somebody asks about it in ninety days. #### What ACV is often confused with In insurance, actual cash value means replacement cost minus depreciation, and it is what an insurer pays on a total loss. Same three letters, same underlying idea of present worth, different calculation and a different party doing it. In software and subscription sales, ACV means annual contract value, which has nothing to do with vehicles at all and is the reason the abbreviation returns strange search results. Inside a dealership, keep ACV separate from trade in value as consumers use it, which usually means a published estimate range, and from retail value, which is an asking price after reconditioning. The automotive sales glossary keeps each of these as its own entry, and trade in appraisal software covers how stores run the process at volume. #### Questions and answers Q: What does ACV stand for? A: Actual cash value. At a dealership it means the wholesale value of a vehicle on the day it is appraised, in its current condition and before any reconditioning. Q: Is ACV the same as trade-in value? A: Not quite. ACV is the store's internal wholesale number. The trade-in value a customer is shown is the allowance, which can be higher when part of the discount on the vehicle being purchased is moved onto the trade line. Q: Why is the ACV so much lower than the price of a similar car on the lot? A: Because a listed car has already been inspected, repaired, detailed, photographed, advertised and warranted, and that work costs money and takes days. Wholesale value reflects a car as it sits, with its history unverified. Q: Does ACV mean something different in insurance? A: Yes. In insurance, actual cash value is replacement cost minus depreciation, and it is what a carrier pays on a total loss. The dealership meaning is a wholesale appraisal figure for a trade. ### What Is ADF XML? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-adf-xml ADF XML is the Auto-Lead Data Format, a small XML document the automotive industry uses to move a sales lead from one system to another. One file carries the shopper, the vehicle asked about, any trade, the free text comments and the provider that sent it, and it usually travels as an email to a lead intake address rather than over an integration. #### What does ADF stand for? ADF stands for Auto-Lead Data Format. It is an XML document with an agreed structure for one car shopper: who they are, how to reach them, which vehicle they asked about, which vehicle they might trade, what they typed in the comment box, and which vendor sent it. When somebody at a store says a lead came in as ADF, they mean a machine readable file arrived and became a record without anyone retyping it. The format survives for an unglamorous reason. Almost every lead provider can produce it, almost every automotive CRM can read it, and it travels by email, which means two companies that have never spoken can exchange leads with no keys, no credentials and no integration project. A provider sends a message to an address and a lead appears in a CRM. That is a low bar, and it is exactly why the format became the common language of the business. #### What is inside an ADF XML file? An ADF document wraps everything in a prospect element with a request date, and inside it sit four groups a salesperson would recognize: - Vehicle: year, make, model, trim, VIN, stock number, and two attributes that matter more than any of them, interest (buy, lease, trade in) and status (new, used, certified). - Customer: the contact name, email address, phone numbers with a type on each, the mailing address, and a comments block holding whatever the shopper typed. - Trade: an optional second vehicle with mileage and condition, when the form asked about one. - Vendor and provider: which store the lead is for and which service sent it, which is what a CRM turns into the lead source. Nothing in that list is exotic, and that is the point. A well formed ADF is a lead you could read out loud. The trouble is never the structure, it is what people put inside the fields. #### How a dealership actually receives one A worked example, illustrative only. A store buys leads from a provider and gives it a dedicated intake address. At 7:12 a shopper submits a form asking about a used crew cab listed at $38,900. The provider builds an ADF with the shopper's name, a mobile number, an email, the VIN and stock number of that truck, status used, interest buy, a trade with 96,000 miles, and a comment asking whether the price is firm. It emails the file to the intake address. The CRM reads the message, parses the XML, creates a lead with the source set to that provider, attaches the VIN so the salesperson opens the record already knowing which unit is in play, and routes it to whoever owns that feed. Total elapsed time is seconds. The salesperson sees a truck, a trade, a question about price and a phone number, which is a far better starting point than a name and the word inquiry. #### Why does an ADF lead arrive broken? Four failures account for nearly all of it, and every one of them is worth checking before blaming a CRM. The first is a vehicle expressed as one free text string instead of separate fields, something like the word Certified followed by a model year, a make, a model and a mileage figure all run together. A careless parser splits on spaces and decides the make is Certified and the model is a four digit number. Those records look plausible, pollute source reporting and break duplicate detection, which is worse than an obvious error. The second is delivery dressed up as marketing: the file arrives as an attachment beside an HTML message with a logo and a footer, and a strict parser on the other end takes the message as text and finds nothing. The third is a sender that emails twice for every lead, once for a human and once for a parser, so the receiving system creates two records and the store blames its CRM for a problem made upstream. The fourth is plain email authentication. If the sending domain is not aligned, the message is discarded before any parser sees it, and nobody is told. The buying side of all four is covered on automotive CRM with ADF and XML integration. #### How does LeadLocate handle ADF XML? LeadLocate CRM reads ADF in both directions. Inbound documents arrive through custom source feeds set up in Lead Feeds Manager, where each provider gets its own delivery route, so the source is established by how the lead arrived rather than by a salesperson picking from a dropdown an hour later. A genuine ADF document is parsed by structure, field by field, and anything that is not valid XML falls back to careful reading rather than being discarded, which is what saves the plain text and HTML table leads smaller vendors still send. Outbound, a lead can be pushed as a clean ADF document to the intake address of whatever CRM a store keeps for franchise reasons, every push logged so the question of whether a lead ever arrived has an answer. The wider tool set around it sits in LeadLocate CRM. #### ADF XML, CSV and direct form posts: which one should a source use? ADF is excellent at moving a lead between two companies that have no relationship, and poor at anything live or two way. Use it for lead providers, marketplaces and manufacturer programs. Use a direct form post when the other side is your own website or a partner with a developer, because the record appears immediately instead of waiting on mail delivery. Use a CSV upload for a list you bought or exported once, such as a show list or a service file. The same distinction shows up further along the deal. Moving a finished credit application to a lender or into a dealer management system is a different job with different formats, described on lender and DMS export formats. ADF moves shoppers. It was never meant to move deals, and a store that tries to make it do both ends up with neither. #### Questions and answers Q: Is ADF the same thing as XML? A: No. XML is a general way to structure data. ADF is one specific XML vocabulary for automotive leads, with defined elements for the prospect, the vehicle, the customer and the vendor. Q: How is an ADF lead delivered to a dealership? A: Almost always by email to a dedicated intake address, which is why it works between companies with no shared credentials. Some providers can post the same document to a web address instead. Q: Why did a lead arrive with the make listed as Certified? A: Because the provider packed the whole vehicle description into one free text field and the receiving parser split it on spaces. It is a parsing problem, not a data problem, and a careful parser reads the string properly. Q: Can leads be sent out as ADF as well as received? A: Yes. A lead can be pushed as a clean ADF document to the intake address of another CRM, which is how a store keeps a required system fed while it works leads somewhere else. ### What Is Aged Inventory? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-aged-inventory Aged inventory is any vehicle that has been in a dealership's stock longer than the store's own turn target, counted in days since it was acquired or since it reached the front line. Most stores bucket stock in thirty day bands and treat anything past sixty days as aged. Older units tie up money, depreciate while they sit, and usually retail for less than fresh ones. #### What is considered aged inventory at a dealership? There is no universal threshold, which surprises people who expect one. Each store sets a turn target from its floorplan terms, its reconditioning speed and how quickly its market moves, then counts stock against that target in bands: 0 to 30 days, 31 to 60, 61 to 90, and over 90. Fresh units sit in the first band and usually carry the strongest gross. Anything in the last band is an aged unit, and in most stores the over 90 list is read out loud in the Monday meeting. The one decision worth making deliberately is where the clock starts. Counting from the acquisition date is the version that matches reality, because the money went out that day and the market started moving the day after. Counting from the date the unit hit the front line flatters a slow reconditioning process and hides the real problem. Stores that want both keep two numbers: days in stock and days on the line. An inventory aging report is simply that list, grouped by band, usually with cost, current price and the last price change beside each unit. Aged is a relative word. A specialty truck at eighty days in a market with almost no competition is a healthy unit. A common sedan at fifty days in a segment with a heavy days supply is already a problem. Read the aging list next to the market, never on its own. #### What a day of aging actually costs The interest line is the part everybody quotes and the smallest part of the bill. A unit financed on a floorplan accrues interest daily, and that cost is real, but it rarely explains why aged cars lose money. Depreciation does. A used vehicle loses market value every month, faster in some segments than others, and the retail price a shopper will pay drifts down with it, so a car held an extra sixty days is often worth several hundred less before anyone negotiates. Then come the costs nobody lines up: the capital that could have bought a fresher unit, the price cuts that signal to every shopper watching the listing that more cuts are coming, the photographs that now show the wrong season, and the sales floor's quiet decision that the car is not worth showing. The last one is the expensive one. A unit the floor has stopped believing in stops being offered, and a car nobody offers never sells. #### A worked example Say a store has 15,000 in a sedan, prices it at 17,995 and does not sell it. Illustrative figures only. Ninety days later the floorplan interest has cost roughly 300, the market has taken about 500 off what the car is worth, and the price has been cut twice to 16,495 to chase it. The gross that looked like 3,000 on day one is now closer to 700 before a single negotiation, and a wholesale exit at this point would likely book a loss. Run the same car with a real response at day forty five, a fresh set of photos, a corrected description, a price set to the market rather than to hope, and a text to the eleven customers in the CRM who looked at that body style, and the same unit usually retails inside the target with most of its gross intact. The aged inventory cost calculator puts a per day number on your own unit, which is the figure that makes the decision easy. #### What good stores do on the day a unit ages The flag itself is the easy part, and nearly every inventory system produces one. What separates stores is having a written response that fires on the same day. Re-merchandise first: new photos, a description that names the trim and the options a shopper searches for, and a price that reflects the market today. Then work the demand you already own, the shoppers in the CRM who asked about that model, the customers in a trade cycle, the service lane. Then, and only then, consider the wholesale exit, because the choice between a discounted retail deal and an auction run is an arithmetic question, not a mood. The aged inventory alert software page goes through the response in detail. #### How LeadLocate handles an aged unit The aging clock lives in the inventory system your store runs, and pulling that clock into the platform is available on request, our team puts it in production for your dealership. What the platform is built for is everything that happens after the flag. Inventory Link keeps the unit merchandised: it takes a feed or imports inventory from your own website, builds a listing site and an embeddable widget, adds stock imagery when a car has no photos yet, and puts the unit on brand offer pages with a request form attached. Inside LeadLocate CRM, the vehicle button in every text and email composer attaches that car with its photos and price, Bulk Texting sends it to a recipient list, and Follow Up Processes keep the conversation going afterward. One list of cars, one place to work the people who might buy them. #### Questions and answers Q: What is an inventory aging report? A: A list of every unit in stock grouped by days in stock, normally in thirty day bands, with cost, current price, last price change and often the market position beside each vehicle. It is the working document for the weekly aged walk. Q: Does the aging clock start at purchase or at the front line? A: Start it at acquisition, because that is when the money left. Tracking days on the line as a second number is useful, since a large gap between the two points at reconditioning rather than at the sales floor. Q: When should a store wholesale an aged unit instead of retailing it? A: When the expected retail gross after further discounting is smaller than the cost of continuing to hold the vehicle. That is a per unit calculation with your own floorplan and depreciation numbers, not a fixed day count. Q: Do fresh photos really change anything on an aged car? A: Often, yes. Listings age in shoppers' eyes as well as in your report, and a unit with new photos, a corrected description and a market price reads as a new listing to somebody searching this week. ### What Is Back End Gross? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-back-end-gross Back end gross is the profit a dealership earns in the finance office after the vehicle is sold: finance reserve on the loan plus the margin on optional products such as a vehicle service contract, GAP and tire and wheel coverage. It is reported per deal and averaged per retail unit, and it is subject to chargeback if the contract ends early. #### What makes up back end gross? Back end means everything that happens after the car is agreed on. It has two halves. The first is finance reserve, the dealership's compensation for arranging the loan, which comes from the spread between the rate the lender will buy the contract at and the rate written on the contract. The second is product margin: what the store keeps on the optional coverages a customer chooses, typically a vehicle service contract, GAP, tire and wheel, appearance protection, prepaid maintenance or theft protection. Each product has a cost to the store, and the difference between that cost and the price the customer agreed to is the gross on that line. What is not in back end gross is the car. Price against cost, with the trade accounted for, is front end gross and it was decided at the desk. The two are reported separately because they are earned by different people doing different jobs, and a store that mixes them cannot tell whether a good month came from the lot or from the F and I office. #### How finance reserve works When a lender approves a retail installment contract it quotes a buy rate, the rate at which it will purchase the paper. The dealership may contract the customer at a higher rate, called the sell rate or the contract rate, and the lender pays the store a share of the difference. That payment is the reserve. Lenders cap how much spread a store may add, usually by a set number of percentage points and often with a dollar ceiling, and they set how the reserve is calculated and when it is paid. Flats are the other shape this takes. Some lenders, and most deep subprime programs, pay a flat fee per contract instead of a spread, and some subprime programs work the other way entirely, with the store paying an acquisition fee to the lender that shows up as negative reserve on the deal. Fair lending law governs how a store may mark up rate: the markup a customer receives cannot vary on a prohibited basis, which is why most dealerships adopt a written policy setting a standard markup with narrow, documented exceptions. #### A worked back end example Illustrative figures only, and nothing here is a market average. A customer finances 26,000 over 72 months. The lender's buy rate for that credit tier comes back at one rate and the store contracts one percentage point higher within the lender's cap, which on that balance and term produces roughly 900 dollars of reserve paid to the store. In the same visit the customer takes a vehicle service contract priced at 2,400 that costs the store 1,450, and GAP priced at 895 that costs the store 350. That is 950 plus 545, so 1,495 of product margin. Back end gross on that deal is roughly 2,395, and the store will report it beside the front end gross the desk produced. Change one thing and watch it move. If the customer pays cash, the reserve disappears entirely and GAP no longer applies, so the same car with the same service contract produces a back end of 950. This is why a finance office that only knows how to sell rate has a bad month every time interest rates or cash buyers move, and why product presentation is the half of the job that holds up in every market. #### Chargebacks, and why the number is not final at delivery Back end gross is booked when the deal is funded, but a good part of it is conditional. If the customer pays the loan off early, refinances, trades the car in again, or the vehicle is totaled inside the lender's chargeback window, the store returns part or all of the reserve. Product income is the same: a service contract cancelled by the customer, or cancelled automatically when a car is totaled and GAP pays, is refunded on a pro rata basis and the store's margin goes back with it. Two habits follow from that. Stores hold a reserve account against expected chargebacks rather than treating every delivered dollar as earned, and most F&I pay plans pay on a delayed or charged back basis so a manager's pay follows the actual outcome. A store whose back end looks strong in the month and weak in the quarter is almost always reading the gross before the chargebacks arrive. #### How LeadLocate supports the finance office The back end starts with an application, and this is the best path a store can give one. The store texts an apply link and the customer fills in a secure credit application on a phone, co-applicant included, long before anyone sits in the office. It arrives in the application inbox with a status, an owner, an amount and a thread, so the manager is reading a complete file rather than assembling one while the customer waits. The EZ Desking worksheet carries a finance reserve and rate spread line beside the structure and a deal profit and loss view that shows the front and the back together, stipulations are tracked until each is satisfied so funding is not sitting on a missing pay stub, and deal pages with e-signature let a customer review and sign on a branded page. Compliance is built in: consent is captured and versioned, access is set by role, screening and adverse action records live with the deal. The role page is LeadLocate for F&I managers. #### Back end gross, PVR and total gross PVR means per vehicle retailed, and it is how almost every store talks about the back end: total back end gross for the month divided by retail units delivered. It is a useful number because it is comparable across stores of different sizes, and a dangerous one because it hides mix. A month heavy in cash deals and heavy in one owner trades will show a lower PVR for reasons that have nothing to do with how well the office performed. Total gross is front end plus back end, and it is the number a dealer principal actually runs the store on. Reading the two halves together is what tells a manager whether last month's improvement came from holding price on the lot or from a finance office that finally got its stipulations in the same day. The rest of the money vocabulary is defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: What is back end gross in car sales? A: The profit earned in the finance office after the car is agreed on: reserve for arranging the loan plus the margin on optional products such as a service contract, GAP or tire and wheel coverage. Q: What is finance reserve? A: The dealership compensation for arranging financing. The lender quotes a buy rate, the contract may be written at a higher rate within the lender cap, and the lender pays the store a share of that spread. Some programs pay a flat fee per contract instead. Q: What is PVR? A: Per vehicle retailed. Back end gross for the period divided by retail units delivered, which is how stores compare finance office performance month to month. Q: Do salespeople get paid on back end gross? A: Often a small share, and it varies by store. Most pay plans pay the salesperson mainly on front end gross and volume, and pay the F&I manager a percentage of the back end, usually adjusted later for chargebacks. ### What Is Buy Here Pay Here? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-buy-here-pay-here Buy here pay here, or BHPH, is a dealership model where the store finances the vehicle itself and collects the payments directly, instead of assigning the contract to an outside lender. Approval turns on verifiable income, stability and the cash the customer puts in rather than a credit score, and the store carries the risk for the whole term. #### What does buy here pay here mean? Buy here pay here, usually shortened to BHPH, is a dealership model where the store sells the car and finances it itself, then collects the payments directly from the customer. There is no outside bank buying the contract. The store is the seller and the lender at the same time, which is where the name comes from: you buy here, and you pay here. The same model goes by other names. In house financing means the same thing. Tote the note is the older phrase for it. Some larger operations run a related finance company, a separate entity that holds the paper the dealership originates, for tax and accounting reasons. Lease here pay here is a close cousin where the customer leases rather than buys, which changes who holds title and how a default is handled. What makes the model different is not the paperwork, it is the exposure. A franchise store that sells a car on an outside lender's contract is paid within days and the lender carries the risk for the next six years. A buy here pay here store owns that risk for the whole term, so it is running two businesses at once: a car business that has to buy and recondition the right units, and a finance business that has to collect. Terms like this one are collected in the automotive sales glossary. #### How a buy here pay here lot actually runs Underwriting is the first difference. A BHPH store cares much less about a score and much more about whether the customer can pay: verifiable income, how long they have been at the job, how long at the residence, the size of the cash deposit, references who answer the phone, and the distance between the customer and the lot. A person with a repossession three years ago and two years at the same employer is a better buy here pay here customer than a higher score with six addresses in four years. The structure follows the paycheck. Payments are commonly weekly or every two weeks, timed to the customer's pay cycle, because that is the schedule that actually gets paid. Illustrative figures only: a unit acquired for around $6,000 with $1,200 of reconditioning in it might retail at $12,900 with $1,500 from the customer and payments near $115 a week for two and a half years. The cash invested in the deal, not the retail price, is the number the operator watches, because that is what is at risk until the account seasons. Then comes the part franchise stores never see: servicing. Somebody has to remind customers before the due date, work the accounts that slip, keep insurance current, arrange to get the car back when an account goes bad, and get it back on the line. The collection side is where a buy here pay here store makes or loses its year. #### What makes or breaks a buy here pay here store Four things separate the lots that last from the ones that do not. Reconditioning standards come first, because a store that finances its own sales for thirty months is going to hear about every repair it skipped, usually from a customer who stops paying while the car sits. Second is contact: an account that is easy to reach is an account that gets collected, so phone numbers, texting consent and a live relationship with the customer are financial assets. Third is compliance, and it is a strength rather than a hazard when it is built into the process. A store extending its own credit is a creditor, so Regulation B applies to it: an application it declines needs an adverse action notice with real reasons. The Red Flags Rule applies to identity verification, the Safeguards Rule applies to the customer data it holds, and state law governs licensing, rate caps, repossession notice and whether a payment device may be used at all. Fourth is advertising: no credit check and everyone approved are claims that draw regulator attention and disappointed customers in equal measure. The software question follows from all four, which is the subject of the buy here pay here dealer software page. #### How LeadLocate handles a buy here pay here store LeadLocate CRM runs the customer side of a buy here pay here store: tracking numbers so calls and texts come from the store's own line, a two way texting inbox where every reply lands in one place, automated templates and follow up processes that send the reminder a customer agreed to receive before a due date, call recording and transcription on the conversations, and a Do Not Call scrub and blacklist that honors every opt out. LeadLocate sends the reminder and keeps the whole conversation on the customer record; the payment itself happens exactly where it happens today, at the store. The CRM for buy here pay here dealerships page has the full picture. #### What buy here pay here is often confused with Buy here pay here is not the same as subprime. Subprime describes a credit profile and a loan that an outside lender buys at a higher rate. Buy here pay here describes who holds the note. Plenty of customers who end up at a BHPH lot would have been approved by a subprime lender at a store with the right lender relationships, which is the argument for sending a deal to a special finance desk first. It is also not a no credit check business by definition. Most operators pull credit, because the file tells them who the customer already owes and how they have handled a car payment before. And it is not rent to own: a buy here pay here customer buys the vehicle on a retail installment contract and holds an ownership interest in it from the start. #### Questions and answers Q: Do buy here pay here lots check credit? A: Most of them do. The file tells the operator what other payments the customer carries and how they handled a previous car loan. The score simply matters less than income, time on the job and the cash put into the deal. Q: How is buy here pay here different from a regular dealership? A: A regular dealership sells the contract to a bank or a finance company and is paid within days. A buy here pay here store keeps the contract, collects the payments and carries the risk until the account is paid off. Q: Does buy here pay here build your credit? A: Only if the store reports the account to a credit bureau, and not every store does. Ask before signing, because an on time payment history that is never reported does nothing for a future application. Q: Why are buy here pay here prices and rates higher? A: The store is financing the sale with its own money, servicing the account for years and absorbing the losses on accounts that go bad. That cost sits in the retail price, the rate and the deposit rather than in a lender fee. ### What Is Buy Rate vs Sell Rate? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-buy-rate-vs-sell-rate The buy rate is the interest rate a lender approves for a borrower. The sell rate, also called the contract rate, is the rate the dealership actually writes on the retail installment contract. The spread between the two is dealer participation, the store's compensation for arranging the loan, and every lender caps how wide that spread may be. #### What is the difference between buy rate and sell rate? A dealership sends a credit application to the lenders it works with. A lender that wants the contract sends back an approval: how much it will advance, the longest term it will write, any conditions it needs proof of, and the rate at which it will buy that contract. That rate is the buy rate. The store then writes the retail installment contract at a rate of its own choosing inside that lender's rules, and the number the customer signs is the sell rate, also called the contract rate. The space between the two has its own name: dealer participation, finance reserve, or simply reserve. It is the dealership's pay for assembling the loan, satisfying the lender's conditions and getting the contract funded. The idea is not unique to cars. Any business that resells money quotes one number to the wholesale side and another to the retail buyer, which is why the phrase difference between buying rate and selling rate also turns up in currency and banking. #### How buy rate and sell rate work in the finance office A finance manager sends the application out, gets two or three approvals back, and compares them on more than rate: advance, term, conditions, fees and how quickly that lender funds. Each lender agreement states what the store may add to the buy rate, usually in points, usually capped, and often capped tighter on long terms. Some programs pay a flat fee per contract instead of participation, and a manufacturer subvented rate is normally written exactly where it lands with nothing added at all. Then the structure gets built on the desk like any other, because rate is one lever beside term, cash at delivery and the trade. Desking software exists so a manager can see the payment at the buy rate, at the sell rate and at three terms at once before walking back to the customer with anything. #### A worked example, illustrative figures only Say a customer finances $30,000 over 60 months, illustrative figures only. The lender approves the deal at a buy rate of 7 percent and allows up to two points of participation. Written at 7 percent the payment is about $594 a month. Written at 8 percent it is about $608 a month, roughly fourteen dollars apart, and the lender pays the store reserve on that single point once the contract funds. Two things follow from those numbers. The spread is worth real money on one contract. It is also small next to the price of the car, so a store that fights for every point of rate while giving up hundreds on the front end is keeping score on the wrong number. Write the same deal above the lender's cap and the contract comes back to be redone, which delays funding and costs the store the reserve it already booked. #### Where stores get buy rate and sell rate wrong The first place is the cap. Every lender agreement sets how much may be added and in what form, and the desk has to know those numbers by lender and by credit tier rather than by habit. The second is consistency. Federal fair lending rules require that similarly situated customers be treated the same way, so markup follows a written store policy applied the same way every time, not a read of who at the desk will notice. A store's own counsel and its lenders set that policy. The third is the answer at the table. A customer who asks what the dealership makes on the financing deserves a plain one: the store arranged the loan, it is paid for arranging it, and the rate on the contract is the rate they will pay. Dressing that up is how a signed deal becomes a bad review two weeks later. #### How LeadLocate handles the finance side of the deal SecureWebX is the credit application system in the platform and it holds everything that surrounds the rate. A customer fills out a five step application on the store's own branded apply link, with a co-applicant, ITIN or SSN, income, trade and e-signed consent on versioned terms. It arrives in the dealer console as a live application with status, assignee, amount, notes and a stipulations list the customer clears by uploading a document from a phone. Send to Lender puts a code gated, expiring, watermarked copy in front of the lender of the store's choosing and gives that lender a place to send its decision back, and adverse action notices are generated from the same record. The store's own credit bureau account and its lender relationships stay the store's own. The rate work itself happens in the worksheets, which are cash, finance and lease pencils at parity with the desking engine inside LeadLocate CRM. The structure built on the floor is the structure the finance office opens, and the deal recap the customer reads on a phone shows the payment they actually agreed to. #### What buy rate and sell rate are often confused with On a lease, the cost of money is quoted as a money factor instead of a rate, so nothing on that contract is called a buy rate; the same markup idea appears as a base factor and a marked up factor. APR and interest rate are not the same thing either, because APR folds certain finance charges into the number the contract discloses. And dealer reserve is the money the spread produces, not the spread itself. The rest of the vocabulary sits in the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: Why is the buying rate higher than the selling rate? A: In vehicle financing it runs the other way: the sell rate is the higher of the two, because it carries the dealership's compensation for arranging the loan. The phrasing comes from currency exchange, where a bank buys a currency for less than it sells it. Same principle, opposite labels. Q: Does the customer ever see the buy rate? A: The contract states the rate the customer pays, which is the sell rate. Lender and dealer paperwork commonly discloses that the dealership may be compensated for arranging the financing, and a customer who asks what that means should be told plainly. Q: Is marking up the buy rate allowed? A: Yes, inside the cap in the store's agreement with that lender and under a written markup policy applied consistently to similarly situated customers. The caps come from the lender and the consistency requirement comes from federal fair lending law, not from the desk. Q: What is the difference between buy rate and sell rate called? A: Dealer participation, finance reserve, or simply reserve. The lender pays it to the dealership after the contract funds, and it can be charged back if the loan pays off very early. ### What Is CNAM? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-cnam CNAM, short for Caller ID Name, is the text label a phone shows above an incoming number. The number travels with the call itself, but the name does not: the receiving carrier looks it up in a separate database, which is why the same number can display a business name on one phone and nothing at all on another. #### How does the name get onto the screen? In two separate pieces. The calling number rides along with the call, which is why a phone can display digits instantly. The name does not travel at all. When the call reaches the recipient's carrier, that carrier performs a lookup, often called a dip, against a shared database of names registered to numbers, and displays whatever comes back. The label itself is short, traditionally fifteen characters, which is why business names arrive truncated and in capitals. Whoever owns a phone number is the one who sets its registered name with their provider. Everything after that is out of their hands. Carriers refresh their copies of the data on their own schedules, some carriers do not perform the lookup at all on wireless lines, and modern phones increasingly prefer their own information: a name from the recipient's own contacts always wins, and many carriers now overlay their own label on numbers their systems consider suspicious. The result is the thing every business notices, which is that the same number looks different on different phones. Other phone terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### Why does a dealership care what the name says? Because answer rate is the whole game on outbound calls. Say a BDC makes 200 calls in a day and reaches a live person on 40 of them, illustrative figures only. The single biggest reason for the other 160 is not a bad list, it is a customer looking at an unfamiliar ten digit number and deciding it is a robot. A recognizable name on the screen moves that number, and a spam label pushes it the other way. Inbound is the mirror image. A store that sees a name with an incoming call answers differently: the receptionist greets a customer by name instead of asking who is calling, the salesperson who is about to pick up knows whether the caller is the person who submitted a request twenty minutes ago, and the manager scanning missed calls can tell a customer from a vendor without dialing anyone back. Knowing who is on the line before you say hello is worth more than any script. #### What can a store actually control? Three things, and one of them matters far more than the other two. A store controls the name registered to the numbers it owns, so a store whose calls display a previous tenant's business name should get that corrected with the provider that holds the number. A store controls which of its numbers it calls from, which matters when one line has picked up a spam label and another has not. And a store controls the behaviour that earns the label in the first place: call volume that looks like a robot, short abandoned calls and numbers that never answer inbound are exactly the pattern the carriers score. What a store does not control is what any individual carrier chooses to display, or whether the customer's own phone overrides it. That is worth saying plainly, because plenty of vendors sell a name display as if it were a guarantee across every handset in America, and it never has been. The practical approach is to register the name correctly, keep the calling numbers clean, verify them, and make it easy for a customer to save the number by texting from the same line they are called from. #### How does LeadLocate handle caller ID? Inbound, LeadLocate CRM runs a caller ID name lookup on calls arriving at the store's numbers, so a call from a number the store has never seen still arrives with a name attached, and a call from a customer already in the system opens their record. Outbound, the CRM includes caller ID verification for the numbers a store calls from, which is how a store confirms that a line is presenting itself correctly before it gets used for a day of calls. Both sit on the same page as the phone and email checks, described on caller ID and contact validation. The rest of the answer is structural. Because each marketing source gets its own line, described on tracking numbers per lead source, a store is never pushing its whole month of outbound calling through one number, and a customer who is called from a line can text that same line back and reach the same rep. Every call is recorded, transcribed and written to the customer record, so the name on the screen is the smallest part of what the store knows about a caller by the time somebody says hello. #### CNAM is not CNAME, and it is not a spam label The most common confusion is spelling. CNAM is caller ID name, a telephone thing. A CNAME is a canonical name record in DNS, a web thing, the record that points one hostname at another when a store sets up a subdomain for its website or a booking page. They share five letters and nothing else; the DNS side is covered on custom domains and DNS. The second confusion is between the registered name and the labels carriers apply on their own. A spam or fraud warning on an incoming call is not the CNAM record; it is an assessment a carrier's own system made about the calling behaviour of that number, and correcting the registered name does not remove it. The third is caller ID number against caller ID name: the number is what the call carries and what a store can rely on, while the name is a courtesy the receiving network provides when it can. Build the store's phone habits around the number and treat the name as the bonus it is. #### Questions and answers Q: What does CNAM stand for? A: Caller ID Name. It is the short text label, traditionally up to fifteen characters, that a phone displays above an incoming number when the receiving carrier looks the number up and finds a registered name. Q: Why does my dealership name show on some phones but not others? A: Because the name is looked up by the receiving carrier rather than carried with the call. Carriers refresh their data on different schedules, some do not perform the lookup on wireless lines at all, and a name saved in the recipient own contacts always takes priority. Q: Is CNAM the same as a CNAME record? A: No. CNAM is the caller ID name on a phone call. A CNAME is a DNS record that points one hostname at another for a website. The names look alike and the two have nothing to do with each other. Q: Can a store stop its calls being labelled as spam? A: A label reflects how a number behaves, so the durable fixes are calling from clean lines, keeping outbound volume reasonable per number, answering inbound calls on those lines and verifying the numbers. Registering the correct name helps, but it is a separate thing from the label. ### What Is Call Tracking? How Dealers Measure Calls URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-call-tracking Call tracking is the practice of giving each marketing source its own phone number, so a business can tell which ad, page, listing or campaign produced a call. The call still rings the same people; the number it arrived on is the attribution. For a dealership it turns the phone into something a manager can measure. #### What is a call tracking number? It is an ordinary phone number that exists to answer one question: where did this caller come from. A store publishes a different number on each place it advertises, the listing site, the pay per click landing page, the service mailer, the window banner, and forwards all of them to the people who should answer. The caller dials the number they saw, the phone rings the same as always, and the system records which of the store's numbers was dialed. That single fact, the number the call arrived on, is the attribution. Bigger implementations add pieces around that idea. Websites sometimes swap the displayed number depending on how a visitor arrived, so a visitor from a search ad sees one number and a visitor from a listing site sees another. Some setups match a call back to a specific vehicle page. All of them rest on the same mechanic: one number, one lead source, and a log that says which rang. Related phone terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### How does call tracking work at a dealership? Say a store spends its marketing money in three places and gives each one a number: the listing site, the search campaign that sends people to a landing page, and the service reminder that goes out by mail. Over a month those three numbers ring 180 times, split 90, 60 and 30, illustrative figures only. Without tracking the store has one number, 180 calls and an argument. With tracking it has three numbers and three conversations: the listing site is doing the volume, the search campaign is producing fewer calls but they are longer, and the mailer produced 30 calls that were almost all service. The interesting part is what happens next. Because each call is recorded and attached to a customer record, a manager can listen to the ten calls from the search campaign that never became appointments and hear the actual reason. Sometimes the answer is that the campaign is drawing the wrong shopper. More often the answer is that the phone rang eleven times before anybody answered it on a Saturday, which is not a marketing problem at all, and no amount of lead counting would ever have shown it. #### What does call tracking tell a manager that a lead count cannot? Three things. Which source produced the call, which is the number everyone asks for. How the call was handled, which is the number nobody asks for and the one that changes results, because a missed call is a customer who dialed the competitor next. And whether the call turned into anything, once the call sits on the same customer record as the appointment, the deal and the follow up. That third one is the reason to keep call tracking inside the CRM rather than in a separate reporting tool. Attribution that lives in its own dashboard tells the store which number rang. Attribution that lives on the customer record tells the store which number rang, who answered, what was said, what was scheduled and whether a car got delivered. The first is a report. The second is a decision about next month's budget, and the what to expect from car sales leads page covers how the calls themselves usually behave. #### How does LeadLocate handle call tracking? LeadLocate CRM provisions tracking numbers inside the platform and assigns one to each lead source the store wants measured, described on tracking numbers per lead source. Calls to any of them ring the phones the store chooses through a Forward Calls To list built from its own users, follow the store's business hours, and can pass through a menu or a screening step before anyone picks up. Every call is recorded and transcribed, so a manager reads a conversation as fast as they read an email and listens only to the ones worth hearing, covered on call recording and transcription. The call, the recording, the transcript and the source all land on the customer's record in one communications log next to the texts, emails and voicemails, and the caller's name is looked up on the way in. The buying side of the same subject, features and what to compare, is on dealership call tracking software. Tracking numbers are part of the platform, so attribution is not a second subscription. #### Call tracking, call recording and call monitoring Call tracking answers where the call came from. Call recording keeps the audio of what was said. Call monitoring, sometimes written as call logging, is the management practice of reviewing those calls, scoring how they were handled and coaching the people who took them. They are three different things, and stores buy the first while quietly needing the third. The reason they get confused is that one number per source is useless on its own. A store that knows the listing site produced 90 calls and nothing else has bought a statistic. A store that knows which 90, who answered them, what was promised and which ones set an appointment has bought a management tool. Recording and transcription are what convert tracking into coaching, and a shared record is what keeps the coaching honest, because the call is on the customer's file where the manager, the rep and the next rep can all read it. #### Questions and answers Q: Do call tracking numbers change how a customer reaches the dealership? A: No. A tracking number rings the same phones as the main line. The only difference is that the system knows which published number the caller dialed, which is what makes attribution possible. Q: How many tracking numbers does a store need? A: One for every source it wants measured separately. Many stores start with three or four, the website, the main listing site, paid search and service, and add numbers as they add campaigns. Adding one takes a minute inside the CRM. Q: Is call tracking the same as call recording? A: No. Tracking tells you which source produced the call. Recording keeps the audio of the conversation. They are most useful together, which is why LeadLocate records and transcribes calls on the same numbers it tracks. Q: Where do tracked calls show up? A: On the customer record, in one communications log with the texts, emails and voicemails, and in the call list where a manager can see the source, who answered, how long it lasted and what was said. ### What Is Cap Cost? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-cap-cost Capitalized cost, or cap cost, is the amount a lease is written on: the agreed price of the vehicle plus anything financed into the lease, such as an acquisition fee or negative equity. A capitalized cost reduction is anything that lowers it, including cash at signing, trade equity or a rebate. What remains is the adjusted cap cost. #### What is cap cost on a lease? On a retail purchase the customer negotiates a selling price. On a lease the same negotiation produces the capitalized cost, shortened everywhere to cap cost, and it is the figure the lease is built on. Three versions of it appear on the paperwork. The gross capitalized cost is the agreed value of the vehicle plus everything rolled in. The capitalized cost reduction is everything applied to bring that figure lower. The adjusted capitalized cost is what is left, and that is the number the payment is calculated from. Cap cost matters because a lease charges the customer for the distance between the adjusted cap cost and the residual value. Lower the cap cost and the depreciation piece of the payment falls, and the rent charge falls slightly with it, since the rent charge is computed off the cap cost plus the residual. It is the one lever on a lease that is genuinely open, because the residual is published and the base money factor comes from a credit tier. #### What gets rolled in, and what a cap cost reduction is Into the gross cap cost can go the agreed vehicle price, the acquisition fee the leasing company charges, a documentary fee where the state allows it to be capitalized, taxes in states that tax a lease up front, accessories, a service contract or an asset protection product, and any negative equity from a trade that is worth less than its payoff. Everything capitalized is paid for across the term with rent charge attached, which is why rolling a large payoff into a lease turns a modest gap into a real monthly number. A capitalized cost reduction is the opposite direction: cash at signing, the equity in a trade, and any manufacturer rebate the customer assigns to the deal. Leases use the phrase instead of the word people expect, because the money is not building equity in anything; it is reducing the balance the lease charges against. Some leases show taxes and fees due at signing separately, so a shopper comparing two quotes has to check whether the same items were capitalized in both. #### A worked example, illustrative figures only Say a vehicle stickers at $38,000, the store and the customer agree on $35,500, and the leasing company charges an $895 acquisition fee that gets capitalized, illustrative figures only. The gross cap cost is $36,395. The customer brings $2,000 at signing and assigns a $1,000 rebate, so the capitalized cost reduction is $3,000 and the adjusted cap cost is $33,395. With a residual of $20,900 on a 36 month term and a money factor of .00150, depreciation is $33,395 minus $20,900 divided by 36, or $347.08 a month. The rent charge is $33,395 plus $20,900 multiplied by .00150, or $81.44 a month. The base payment before tax is $428.52. Take the same deal without the $3,000 reduction and the payment lands near $516, which is the clearest possible demonstration of what the cap cost does. #### Where cap cost goes wrong The first place is the assumption that sticker price is the cap cost. It is not, and a shopper who never negotiates it is leasing at full price no matter how good the advertised payment sounded. The second is the rolled in payoff. Negative equity capitalized into a lease is repaid over a short term with rent charge on it, and at the end there is no vehicle to sell to recover any of it. The third is a large amount at signing. Putting several thousand dollars into a capitalized cost reduction lowers the payment, but if the vehicle is stolen or totaled early in the term, that money has already been spent against the balance and the insurance settlement pays the leasing company, not the customer. Asset protection coverage exists for exactly that scenario, and it is a fair conversation to have at the desk rather than a month later. #### How LeadLocate desks a cap cost EZ Desking in LeadLocate CRM keeps the gross cap cost, the reduction and the adjusted figure visible while the structure is being written, alongside cash and finance versions of the same deal. The lease side carries a fifty state tax matrix, three lease tax methods, trade credit caps and semimonthly frequency, and the multi pencil grid with goal seek bays lets a manager hold a payment and solve for the amount at signing rather than guess at it. Centralized deal defaults mean the acquisition fee and the store's fees are already in the structure instead of remembered. The customer gets the same picture. The branded deal page opens on a phone with PIN access, shows the structure line by line, takes an e-signature and keeps every revision, and deal chat sits beside it for the questions that always follow. The print packet carries payment ranges and a finance breakdown for the folder. Building the deal online covers that path from first structure to signature. #### Cap cost, capitalized cost and the other three numbers Cap cost, residual value and money factor are the three inputs to every lease payment, and only the first is negotiable at the store. Outside the lease office the word capitalized means something related but different: in accounting, capitalizing a cost records it as an asset to be depreciated rather than expensed at once, and in engineering economics a capitalized cost is the present worth of an asset assumed to run forever. Neither has anything to do with the cost cap that turns up in motorsport headlines. The lease meanings are the ones defined across the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a cap cost reduction on a lease? A: Any amount applied to lower the capitalized cost: cash at signing, the equity in a trade, or a manufacturer rebate the customer assigns to the deal. It reduces the balance the lease charges against, so the payment falls. Q: Is the cap cost the same as the sticker price? A: No. Sticker price is the starting point; the cap cost is what the store and the customer agree on, plus anything capitalized into the lease such as an acquisition fee or negative equity. Negotiating it is the main lever on a lease payment. Q: Should a customer make a large capitalized cost reduction? A: It lowers the payment, and it is money already spent against the balance if the vehicle is totaled or stolen early in the term. Many shoppers keep the amount modest for that reason and cover the exposure with asset protection coverage instead. Q: Does the cap cost affect the buyout price at the end? A: No. The buyout is the residual value, which the leasing company set before the negotiation started. The cap cost decides how much depreciation the customer pays during the term, not what the vehicle costs at the end. ### What Is Conquest Marketing? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-conquest-marketing Conquest marketing is advertising aimed at shoppers who currently own, lease or buy from a competing brand or a competing store, with the goal of winning them instead of keeping an existing customer. At a dealership it covers competitive offers, trade focused campaigns, and the pages and follow up built to convert a driver with no history at the store. #### What does conquest mean in automotive marketing? Every dealership customer falls into one of two groups. Retention covers the drivers the store already sold, services or leased, and the marketing aimed at them is about keeping them. Conquest covers everybody else, and the marketing aimed at them has to give a reason to leave something that is working. A conquest sale is a sale where the customer traded a competing make or came from a competing store, and most manufacturers track it as its own number because it is the one that grows market share rather than defending it. Manufacturers support the idea with money. A conquest incentive is a rebate offered specifically to owners of a rival make, proof of ownership required, and it sits alongside loyalty cash offered to owners of the same brand. The difference between the two, and how each shows up on a worksheet, is covered under rebate versus dealer cash. #### How a dealership actually runs a conquest campaign The shape is always the same. Pick the segment, which usually means one or two rival models the store has a credible answer to. Build the offer, which has to be specific enough to move a person who is not shopping: a trade appraisal above what they expect, a payment comparison, a model match with the equipment they already have. Choose the market, meaning the radius or the set of communities the store can realistically deliver to. Send the traffic to a page built for that message rather than the homepage, as covered under landing pages. Put a tracked number on it. Then follow up like the lead is cold, because it is. One rule sits over all of it. Campaigns that advertise financing terms run under fair lending rules, which forbid narrowing an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP code. A conquest campaign built on vehicles and offers is ordinary competitive advertising. A credit offer aimed at some neighborhoods and not others is a different thing entirely, and stores treat that line as bright. #### A worked example of conquest math Illustrative figures only. A store spends $6,000 in a month on a conquest campaign around one rival midsize SUV. It produces ninety leads, twenty two appointments, thirteen shows and five sold units. That is $1,200 of advertising per sale, against front end gross the store already knows, and it adds five owners who had never done business there. The number that matters comes later. Those five customers now enter retention: service visits, an equity position building, a maturity date if they leased. A conquest sale priced thin still pays if the store keeps the customer, and it is expensive if the relationship is dropped the moment the paperwork is signed. That is why conquest campaigns and orphan prevention belong to the same conversation. #### Where conquest marketing goes wrong The first failure is casting too wide. A campaign aimed at every driver within a hundred miles is not conquest, it is untargeted advertising with a conquest label on the invoice. The second is an offer that is not an offer: a picture of a vehicle and a phone number asks somebody to change brands for nothing. The third is naming the competing store or making side by side claims a store cannot support, which invites a complaint and rarely moves anybody. The fourth is follow up built for shoppers who already wanted the brand. A conquest lead needs a longer sequence, more education and a straight comparison, and stores that give up after two calls convince themselves conquest does not work. The fifth is failing to track the source, so the campaign gets renewed or cancelled on a feeling instead of on sold units, which is the argument in the lead source entry. #### How does LeadLocate run conquest campaigns? Leads Manager is where a store builds the campaign: the zone editor draws the market, zip stats and the market scan show what is actually there, and the offers are chosen by the store. From those selections our team launches and manages every campaign, in the managed webXintel Ads Network or in the ad accounts the store already owns, and reports on it in the same place. Every lead produced in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture, and backed by a replacement review, so a bad lead costs the store nothing. The leads arrive in LeadLocate CRM under their own source with the first text already sent, the landing page and tracked number belong to the store, and the follow up process runs the long sequence a conquest buyer needs. Start with the Leads Manager campaign builder and running your own lead campaigns. #### Conquest, retention and equity mining Conquest chases drivers the store has never had. Retention works the ones it has. Equity mining is the sharpest form of retention, because it goes after the customers whose numbers say they can trade today. Loyalty cash and conquest cash are the manufacturer versions of the same split. A healthy store runs both at once and knows which sold unit came from which, because the two cost very different amounts and the reporting is the only way to tell them apart. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a conquest sale? A: A sale to a customer who traded a competing make or came from a competing store rather than one the dealership already had. Manufacturers usually track it separately because it grows share instead of defending it. Q: What is the difference between conquest and retention marketing? A: Conquest targets people with no history at the store and has to give them a reason to switch. Retention works customers the store already sold or services, where the reason to engage already exists. Q: What is a conquest incentive? A: A manufacturer rebate offered only to owners or lessees of specified rival makes, with proof of ownership required. Loyalty cash is the mirror image, offered to owners of the same brand. Q: How long should a conquest follow up sequence run? A: Longer than the one used for house leads. A driver who was not shopping needs education, a comparison and a real appraisal number, so stores that stop after two attempts rarely see what the campaign can do. ### What Is Days Supply? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-days-supply Days supply is how many days a dealership's current inventory would last at its recent selling rate. Divide the units in stock by the average number of units sold per day over a trailing window, usually thirty, forty five or sixty days. A store with 90 cars selling 3 a day carries a 30 day supply. Market days supply applies the same math to every comparable unit listed in a market. #### What is the days supply formula? Units in stock divided by average units sold per day equals days supply. The average comes from a trailing window the store picks, commonly the last thirty or forty five days of retail sales, and the window matters more than people expect. A forty five day window smooths out a single strong weekend; a fifteen day window will tell you a holiday week changed your business when it did not. Two phrases sit next to it. Days on hand, or days in stock, is about one car: how long that specific unit has been in inventory. Days supply is about the group: how long the whole segment would last at the current pace. A car can be at ten days on hand while the segment it belongs to sits at a hundred and twenty days supply, which tells a used car manager the unit is fresh and the appetite for it is not. The phrase is also used in pharmacy and general retail for the same idea applied to prescriptions and to stock keeping units; the dealership version is the one defined here. Stores run the number by segment, not just in total. Trucks, three row crossovers, compact sedans, and anything over a certain price point behave like separate businesses, and a healthy total can hide a segment that has stopped moving entirely. #### What market days supply tells a used car manager Market days supply counts every comparable vehicle listed for sale in a defined radius and divides it by how many of those are selling per day in that same radius. It answers a different question than your own days supply does: not how long your cars will last, but how much competition a car of that year, make, model, trim and mileage band faces the moment you list it. The practical use is at appraisal. A unit with a thin market days supply is scarce relative to demand, which supports a stronger number for the customer's trade and a firmer price on the line. A unit with a heavy market days supply is everywhere, so the price has to be right on the day it is listed rather than three price cuts later. Nothing about market days supply is a promise about any individual car. It is a way to be less wrong about a decision that gets made in four minutes at a service drive. #### A worked example Say a used department has 120 cars in stock and retailed 90 units over the last forty five days. Illustrative figures only. That is 2 units per day, so days supply is 60. If the store's turn target is 45 days, it is carrying roughly 30 units more than the pace supports, and the fix is either faster retail or fewer acquisitions for a couple of weeks. Split the same store by segment and the picture sharpens. Trucks: 30 in stock, 30 sold in 45 days, so 0.67 per day and a 45 day supply, right on target. Compact sedans: 40 in stock, 12 sold, so 0.27 per day and roughly a 150 day supply. The total said the store was a little heavy. The segment split says stop buying compact sedans and price the ones already on the ground to sell. The vehicle days supply calculator runs the arithmetic if you would rather not do it in your head. #### Where stores get days supply wrong The first mistake is counting cars that cannot be sold yet. Units still in reconditioning, units without photos and units awaiting title are in stock on paper but invisible to a shopper, so including them flatters the number while the front line is actually thin. Count what a customer can see, and track the rest separately. The second is a sales window that does not match the season. The third is running one number for the whole store. And the fourth is treating days supply as a score instead of a decision. The number is only useful when it changes something: an acquisition target, a price, a spiff, an advertising choice. A dealership inventory turn dashboard is worth having for exactly that reason, because turn and days supply are two views of the same question. #### How LeadLocate handles inventory that is running long Inventory Link keeps the list of what you have accurate and in front of buyers. It takes a feed from your provider, or imports inventory straight from your own website when there is no feed, and an inventory feed and dealer management system access are not required to use the platform at all. From that one list it builds a merchandising site, an embeddable widget for any page you already own, brand offer pages, and stock imagery for units that have not seen a photographer yet. Inside LeadLocate CRM, the same vehicles appear in the Inventory menu and on a vehicle button inside every text and email composer, so the cars carrying the heaviest days supply can be sent to a real shopper with photos and price while you are still on the call. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a good days supply for a dealership? A: Every store sets its own target by segment, its floorplan terms and how fast it can recondition. Rather than chasing a universal figure, compare your days supply to your own turn target and to the market days supply of the same segment. Q: What is the difference between days on hand and days of supply? A: Days on hand measures one vehicle, counting from the day it entered stock. Days of supply measures a group of vehicles against the rate they are selling. A fresh car can sit in a badly oversupplied segment, and both numbers are worth knowing. Q: How do you calculate market days supply? A: Count the comparable units listed for sale in your radius and divide by the number of those selling per day in the same radius. The definition of comparable, year range, trim and mileage band, changes the answer, so keep it consistent. Q: Should reconditioning units count in days supply? A: Keep them separate. A unit a shopper cannot find online or walk up to on the lot is not supply yet, and including it makes a thin front line look healthy. ### What Is Dealer Reserve? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-dealer-reserve Dealer reserve is the money a lender pays a dealership for arranging a vehicle loan. It comes from the spread between the rate the lender approved and the rate written on the contract, it is paid once the contract funds, and the lender can take it back if the loan pays off or defaults inside an agreed window. #### What does dealer reserve mean at a dealership? Dealer reserve, also called finance reserve, dealer participation or just reserve, is what a lender pays a store for putting a loan together. A finance manager takes the credit application, sends it to lenders, works an approval, clears the conditions and gets a signed contract funded. The lender buys that contract and pays the dealership for the work, and the amount is driven by the gap between the rate the lender approved and the rate on the paper the customer signed. It is one of several income lines in a finance office, sitting next to income from protection products and separate from the profit on the vehicle itself. It is also the one income line the store does not fully control, because the lender sets the caps, writes the agreement and decides when the money is earned for good. #### How a store actually gets paid reserve The lender agreement spells out the method, and it is usually one of three. Some lenders pay a share of the present value of the rate spread, so a wider spread and a longer term produce more. Some pay a percentage of the amount financed with a dollar ceiling, which keeps a small loan and a large one closer together. Some pay a flat fee per contract, which removes the incentive to add rate at all. Subvented manufacturer programs are usually written at the promoted rate with nothing added, so those contracts produce no reserve and the store knows that before it quotes. Payment arrives after the contract funds, not at delivery. Most lenders send a statement, often called a dealer reserve statement, listing the contracts funded in the period, the reserve earned on each one and any amounts taken back. Matching that statement against what the desk expected is a weekly job in a well run store, because a rate that changed during the approval and a contract that funded at a different term both move the number quietly. #### A worked example, illustrative figures only Say a customer finances $25,000 over 72 months, illustrative figures only. The lender approves a buy rate of 8 percent and allows one and a half points of participation. The store writes the contract at 9 percent. On a spread of one point, a lender paying a share of the present value of that spread might send the store a few hundred dollars once the contract funds, and the number shows up on the next statement with the customer's name beside it. Now the customer refinances at their credit union in the second month. Under most agreements that reserve is charged back in full, and the line appears on the same statement as a negative. The deal still happened, the car is still sold, the front end gross is untouched, and the reserve went away. That is the part new finance managers learn the hard way. #### What is a dealer reserve chargeback? A chargeback is the lender reclaiming reserve it already paid because the contract ended sooner than the pricing assumed. Every agreement defines the trigger and the window: an early payoff, a refinance, a repossession, a first payment default, or an unwound delivery. Inside the window the reserve typically comes back in full, and some agreements prorate it after that. Product income can be charged back on its own schedule when a customer cancels a contract, which is why a single customer can create two different clawbacks in two different months. Stores manage it rather than hope. Getting the first payment made, keeping the customer with the store's service drive, and explaining the payoff math to a customer who is being called by a refinance pitch are all cheaper than losing the reserve. The tracking and the accounting entries themselves live in the store's dealer management system, which is where the money is posted. #### How LeadLocate supports the finance office The part LeadLocate owns is everything before the funding: the application, the file and the structure. SecureWebX takes the credit application on the store's own branded apply link, with co-applicant, ITIN or SSN, income and trade, and e-signed consent on versioned terms. In the dealer console the application is a live record with status, assignee, amount, notes, a stipulations list the customer clears by uploading a document, and supporting documents attached to the submission. Send to Lender shares a code gated, expiring, watermarked copy with the lender of the store's choosing and gives that lender somewhere to send the decision back, and adverse action notices come out of the same record. Reports and analytics export to PDF when a manager wants the month in one place. The structure behind the rate is built in the desking engine in LeadLocate CRM and mirrored in the SecureWebX worksheets, so a cash, finance or lease pencil written on the floor is the same pencil the finance office opens. Deal history, the visit log and the Road to Sale checklist on every deal mean the file that funded can be reconstructed months later, which is exactly what you want in front of you when a statement and a memory disagree. #### What dealer reserve is not It is not holdback, which is money a manufacturer returns to the dealership out of the vehicle invoice and has nothing to do with the loan. It is not dealer cash, which is a factory incentive on the unit. It is not income from a service contract or asset protection product, which is priced and refunded on its own terms. And it is not the reserve of an auction listing, where reserve means the seller's minimum acceptable price, or the merchant reserve in card processing, where a processor holds funds back against risk. Those are three unrelated uses of one overworked word, which is why the automotive sales glossary defines each of them separately. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a dealer reserve statement? A: A periodic statement from a lender listing the contracts that funded, the reserve earned on each one and any amounts charged back. Finance managers reconcile it against what the desk expected, because a rate or term that changed during the approval moves the number quietly. Q: What triggers a dealer reserve chargeback? A: An early payoff, a refinance, a repossession, a first payment default or an unwound delivery, inside the window the lender agreement defines. Inside that window the reserve usually comes back in full, and some agreements prorate it afterward. Q: Is dealer reserve the same as dealer holdback? A: No. Holdback is money a manufacturer returns to the store from the vehicle invoice and exists whether the customer finances or pays cash. Dealer reserve exists only because a loan was arranged, and it is paid by the lender. Q: Does dealer reserve mean the customer paid too much? A: Not by itself. It means the dealership was paid for arranging the financing, within the cap in its lender agreement. What matters is that the markup follows a written store policy applied consistently, which is what federal fair lending rules require. ### What Is Desking? Structuring a Car Deal Explained URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-desking Desking is the act of structuring a car deal. A desk manager takes the selected vehicle, the trade and its payoff, taxes, fees, rebates and the customer's cash down, and turns them into one or more payment options the buyer can choose from. It is the step between the test drive and the finance office, and it is where most of a store's gross is either made or given away. #### What does desking mean in car sales? Desking gets its name from where it happens. The desk is the raised counter or office in the middle of the showroom where the managers sit, and a deal that is being desked is a deal being structured at that counter. The output is a worksheet, called a pencil, that shows the customer what the vehicle costs, what the trade is worth, what is owed on the trade, what taxes and fees apply, and what the payment looks like at one or more terms. Everything a customer argues about lives on that sheet. To desk a deal is to answer four questions at once: what the store will sell the unit for, what it will allow on the trade, what the customer will put in as cash down, and how long the loan or lease runs. Change any one of them and the payment moves, which is why desking is closer to solving for a target than to filling in a form. The term sits next to pencil, front end gross and F and I in a store's vocabulary, and each of those has an entry of its own. #### What does a desk manager at a car dealership do? The desk manager owns the numbers. Salespeople bring a customer, a unit and a trade; the desk decides what the store will offer and what it will take. On a busy Saturday that manager is structuring several deals at once, appraising trades between them, approving discounts, choosing which lender tier to assume before credit is pulled, and deciding when a deal goes to the finance office and when it needs one more pass. The job is also coaching. A desk manager reads the worksheet back to the salesperson so the salesperson can present it, tells them which number to lead with, and sends them back out with a second option rather than a flat no. Pay is usually a salary plus a percentage of the store's gross, which is why a desk manager cares about the difference between a deal that holds and a deal that just gets delivered. #### How a deal gets desked, step by step Work an example with round numbers, illustrative figures only. A customer likes a used crossover the store is asking 28,000 for. They owe 11,500 on a trade the used car manager appraises at 9,000, so there is 2,500 of negative equity riding along. They have 2,000 in cash down and they say they want to be near 450 a month. The desk builds it: 28,000 selling price, plus the store's documentation and registration fees, plus sales tax figured the way that state figures it with the trade credit applied, minus the 9,000 trade allowance, plus the 11,500 payoff, minus the 2,000 in cash. That is the amount financed. At a 72 month term and an assumed rate for the customer's likely credit tier, the payment lands somewhere north of what they asked for, so the desk writes three options instead of one: the asking price at 72 months, a smaller discount with more cash in, and a longer term with the same money in. The salesperson presents all three, and the customer picks a lane rather than saying no to a single number. That is the whole craft. A deal that goes out with one payment on it gets a yes or a no. A deal that goes out with three gets a conversation, and the store learns which variable the customer actually cares about. #### Where desking costs a store money The usual leak is math done twice. The desk builds the worksheet in a spreadsheet or a standalone tool, the customer's name and the unit get retyped, and the numbers on the printed sheet do not quite match the numbers the finance office later puts in the contract. Every mismatch is a customer asking why the payment changed, and that question costs more deals than the payment itself. The second leak is state detail. Sales tax on a vehicle is not one rate, trade credit is applied differently depending on the state, negative equity is taxed in some places and not others, and lease tax has several accepted treatments. A desk that carries one remembered rate is wrong somewhere, and being wrong on a lease payment is expensive. The third is presentation. A worksheet that only the manager can read does not sell anything. The customer needs a sheet they can hold, take home, photograph and show a spouse, and the store needs a record of exactly what was shown and when. #### How LeadLocate desks a deal EZ Desking is the desking worksheet inside LeadLocate CRM, and it is the best place in the store to structure a deal because it sits on the lead instead of beside it. A deal starts from the lead card, so the customer, the co-buyer and the unit are already on the worksheet. Cash, finance and lease each have their own tab, a 50 state tax matrix handles rate, trade credit method and trade credit caps, and three lease tax treatments cover the states that need them. The Multi-Pencil Grid lays out several cash down amounts across several terms at once, and Goal-Seek Desking takes the payment the customer asked for and tells the manager what selling price or cash it takes to hit it. Customer print versions match the screen to the penny and carry the store's own disclaimer, and pencil recap sheets share the same numbers as a private link the buyer can open on a phone. The tool itself is on the EZ Desking worksheets page, the click by click walkthrough is how to desk a deal, and the wider case for keeping the desk next to the CRM is on the dealership desking tool page. #### Desking, the pencil and the finance office These three get used as if they were the same thing. Desking is the activity. The pencil is the artifact, the worksheet that carries the numbers to the customer and back. The finance office, or F and I, is the next room, where credit is applied for, the lender is chosen, optional protection products are presented and the contracts are signed. A deal is desked first and finalized in finance, and the gross is reported in two halves for exactly that reason: front end gross on the vehicle and back end gross in the finance office. One more distinction is worth making. Desking software structures and presents the deal. A dealer management system posts the deal to accounting, handles title and registration work and keeps the store's books. Those are different jobs in different systems, and the store's DMS keeps doing its own. #### Questions and answers Q: What is desking a deal? A: It is structuring the deal: pricing the vehicle, valuing the trade, applying taxes and fees, choosing a term, and producing the payment options the customer will be shown. Q: What does a desk manager at a car dealership do? A: A desk manager owns the numbers on every deal. They price the unit, approve the trade allowance, build the payment options, coach the salesperson on how to present them, and decide when the deal moves to the finance office. Q: Is desking the same as F&I? A: No. Desking structures the deal before the customer goes to finance. The F and I office then arranges the loan with a lender, presents optional products and completes the contracts. Q: Do small dealerships need desking software? A: A store selling ten cars a month can desk on paper, but the moment a second manager, a lease or an out of state buyer appears, remembered tax rules start costing money. A worksheet that carries the store defaults pays for itself quickly. ### What Is Digital Retailing in Car Sales? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-digital-retailing Digital retailing is the practice of letting a car shopper complete steps of the purchase online instead of only at the store: building the deal with real figures, valuing a trade, applying for financing, uploading documents and signing. The vehicle is still delivered by the dealership, and the point is to move the paperwork out of the showroom rather than the relationship. #### What is digital retailing in the automotive world? Digital retailing is everything that lets a shopper do at home what used to require a chair in a showroom. At the shallow end it is a payment calculator on a vehicle listing. At the deep end it is a full transaction: the shopper structures the deal with the actual price, taxes and fees, submits a trade with photos, applies for financing, uploads a license and an insurance card, reviews the figures, signs what can be signed and schedules the delivery. The phrase is used loosely by everyone selling something, so it helps to ask one question of any tool wearing the label: can the customer reach a number the store will honor, and does the store see the work the moment it happens? A calculator that produces an estimate nobody at the desk can reproduce is marketing. A deal the desk can open, revise and finish is retailing. #### Which steps actually move online Seven of them, in roughly the order a customer meets them. A real payment, including taxes and the fees the store charges, rather than a round number. A trade valuation with photos, the VIN and the payoff, which is where most online deals either gain trust or lose it. A credit application the customer fills in privately. Document upload, so the license, the insurance card and proof of income arrive before delivery day. A deal review where the customer reads the final structure. Signing. And the delivery arrangement, whether that is a pickup appointment or a quote to bring the vehicle to them. One step does not move, and stores should be plain about it. Money is collected the way it always has been, at the store or through the lender funding the contract, on the schedule those parties set. Everything above is about agreement and paperwork, which is where the hours actually go. #### A worked example of a deal that starts online Illustrative figures only. On a Tuesday evening a shopper opens a listing for a unit at $28,900, builds a structure with $2,000 of cash at signing and a seventy two month term, and sees $438.20 a month with taxes and fees included. They submit their current vehicle with four photos and the payoff, apply for financing and upload a license, all before nine at night. Wednesday morning the desk has an appraisal to confirm and a credit response to work. The trade comes back $700 under the customer estimate, the manager revises the structure, and the customer reads the revision at lunch and accepts. They sign the documents that can be signed electronically and book a Thursday delivery. The store spent forty minutes of desk time on a deal that used to take two showroom visits, and the customer never sat waiting for anybody. #### Where digital retailing goes wrong at a store The first failure is a payment the desk cannot honor. A calculator running on generic rates and no fees teaches the customer a number, and every conversation afterward is a negotiation against a figure the store invented for itself. The second is a separate portal nobody in the store watches, where a submitted deal sits until somebody logs in. The third is re-keying: the customer does the work at home and a rep types all of it again when they arrive, which tells the buyer their time was wasted. The fourth is silence, since the moment a customer stalls online is the moment a human has to appear. The fifth is treating an online deal as a lead rather than a deal, so it lands in a queue with a form fill from someone who asked for a brochure. #### How does LeadLocate handle digital retailing? The customer side runs on the DealTracker deal page, skinned to the store rather than to a vendor. A desked deal publishes as a private page the customer unlocks with a passcode, and the digital retail steps on it cover the build, the document review, the deal review and a shipping quote. The customer asks questions in deal chat and signs on the phone, documents go into the deal jacket through a QR upload from a camera, and the credit application goes out through SecureWebX. The salesperson watches every step from LeadLocate CRM or the mobile app and can revise the structure in EZ Desking without the customer losing their place, because each revision becomes its own version of the page. Start with digital retail checkout, digital retailing software for dealerships and the deal page entry. #### Digital retailing, online checkout and e-commerce E-commerce in most industries means a cart and a card. A vehicle sale has a trade with its own value, a lender with its own conditions, a title, a registration and a physical unit that has to be handed to somebody, so the practical shape of automotive digital retailing is a hybrid: the agreement moves online, the delivery stays human. Online checkout is the narrow slice of that where a customer confirms the structure and signs. The stores getting the most out of it are not trying to remove themselves from the transaction, they are trying to remove the waiting. #### Questions and answers Q: Is digital retailing the same as selling cars online? A: Not quite. Selling online suggests the whole transaction happens without the store. Digital retailing moves the structure, the application, the documents and the signature online, and keeps the appraisal, the delivery and the relationship with the dealership. Q: Does digital retailing mean the customer never comes in? A: Rarely. Most buyers still take delivery in person, and many want a test drive first. What changes is how much of the paperwork is finished before they arrive, which is usually the part they dreaded. Q: What does a store need for digital retailing to work? A: Figures the desk will stand behind, a page the customer can open on a phone, a person watching the deal while it moves, and one place where the online work and the showroom work are the same record. Q: What does digital retailing cost a dealership? A: Sold separately it is usually a monthly tool fee on top of the CRM. Included in a platform it is part of the subscription, and the plans are listed on the pricing page. ### What Is Equity Mining? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-equity-mining Equity mining is the practice of working a dealership's own customer and deal history to find owners whose vehicle is worth more than the balance left on their loan or lease, then offering them a trade into something newer at a comparable payment. It is the cheapest source of a sold unit in the building, because the store already owns the relationship. #### What does equity mining mean at a dealership? Equity is what a vehicle is worth today minus what is still owed on it. When the value is higher than the payoff the owner has positive equity, which behaves like cash at signing on the next deal. When the payoff is higher, the owner has negative equity, and the difference has to be covered, rolled into the new loan within what a lender will advance, or waited out. Equity mining is simply the work of finding the first group inside records the store already has. Three numbers decide it: the actual cash value of the unit today, the payoff quoted by the finance company, and the remaining term. A customer thirty months into a seventy two month note at a high rate is usually still upside down, while a short note, a large amount of cash at signing or a lease with a conservative residual can put someone in equity far earlier. The supporting entries are ACV, negative equity and loan to value. #### Where the equity list actually comes from The first source is the store's own sold history: who bought, what they bought, what they financed and on what terms. The second is the service drive, because a customer sitting in the waiting room with forty thousand miles on a three year old unit is the easiest conversation in the business. The third is the lease book, where every maturity date is known years in advance. The fourth is current book values, refreshed often enough to be worth quoting. Payoffs are the piece most stores get wrong. A payoff is a moving number that only the finance company can state exactly, so an equity list built on an estimate is a list of conversations, not a list of promises. Some stores subscribe to a payoff estimate service and run it under their own agreements with their lenders and a credit bureau, which is a decision for the dealer principal and the compliance officer rather than a marketing choice. #### A worked example of an equity position Illustrative figures only. A customer bought a crew cab at $34,000 and financed $31,000 over seventy two months. Thirty four payments later the payoff is about $18,400. The same truck, same mileage, books at $21,000 in the current market, so the owner is sitting on roughly $2,600 of equity without knowing it. Now put that number to work. The store has a newer unit of the same model and trim. Applying the $2,600 as cash at signing on the replacement, with the same lender tier and a similar term, lands the payment within a few dollars of what the customer pays today. That is the whole pitch: a newer truck, a full factory warranty again, and a payment the customer already knows they can make. Every figure here is invented for the example, and the real version is built in the desking tool with the actual payoff, the actual book and the actual rate. #### Where equity mining goes wrong at a store The first failure is a stale list. A payoff from last quarter and a book value from last year produce a manager who promises equity that is not there, and one appraisal ends the relationship. The second is volume for its own sake: texting the entire customer file the same message, which burns the list and annoys the customers a store will need next year. The third is having nothing to put them in. An equity campaign that works fills the showroom with buyers who need one specific replacement, so it has to be aimed at a segment the store actually stocks. The fourth is the letter that says a buyer is waiting for this exact vehicle when no buyer exists, which is the kind of mail that ends up in front of a state regulator. The fifth is consent: every outbound text and call has to respect the store's do not call records and the rules covered under TCPA. #### How does LeadLocate run an equity campaign? The work happens inside LeadLocate CRM. The store brings its own customer records in through contact import, then tags them and gives them a custom status so the equity list is a living segment instead of a spreadsheet. Bulk texting and bulk email send to that segment with the replacement unit attached from inventory, photos and price included, so the customer sees the actual truck rather than a slogan. Follow up processes carry the ones who do not answer the first message, a live do not call lookup and the DNC Blacklist keep the send clean, and every reply lands in the same inbox with the whole history under it. When a customer engages, EZ Desking proves the number and the deal page shows it to them on their phone. The step by step version is on the equity mining workflow, and the campaign side is on equity mining marketing campaigns. #### Equity mining, trade cycle and lease maturity Equity mining is the general practice. The trade cycle is the rhythm behind it, the interval at which a given customer tends to replace a vehicle, which is shorter for a lease and longer for a long note. Lease maturity is the scheduled version, where the end date is written into the contract and the store knows exactly when the conversation has to happen. Orphan owners overlap with all three: they are customers whose salesperson is gone, which is why nobody has called them about the equity they have been building. #### Questions and answers Q: What counts as positive equity? A: The vehicle is worth more today than the payoff quoted by the finance company. The difference works like cash at signing on the next deal, which is why a store will chase it. Q: Does equity mining require a credit bureau? A: No. The starting point is the store's own sold and service records plus current book values. Some dealerships add a payoff estimate service under their own agreements, which is a compliance decision the store makes with its lenders. Q: How often should a dealership rebuild the list? A: Monthly at minimum, because payoffs fall every month and book values move with the market. A list nobody refreshes produces appraisals that contradict the letter that brought the customer in. Q: What should an equity message actually say? A: What the store will do, in one sentence, with the replacement unit attached. Vague promises about a buyer waiting for this exact vehicle are the fastest way to lose a customer and attract a complaint. ### What Is F&I? The Finance and Insurance Office Explained URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-f-and-i F&I stands for finance and insurance, the dealership office that arranges a buyer's financing with lenders and offers optional protection products such as service contracts and GAP. It is where the credit application is submitted, the required disclosures are given, the stipulations are collected and the contracts are signed. It is also where a large share of a store's profit is earned. #### What does F&I stand for at a car dealership? F&I stands for finance and insurance. It is the office a customer goes to after agreeing on the car and the structure, and the two words describe its two jobs. Finance means arranging the loan or lease: taking the credit application, submitting it to lenders, choosing among the approvals that come back and papering the one the customer accepts. Insurance is the older word for the optional protection products the store sells alongside the vehicle, which today usually means a vehicle service contract, GAP coverage, tire and wheel protection, appearance protection and prepaid maintenance. Staff call the office a lot of things. The box, the business office, the finance department, the tower, and the second pencil are all the same room. Whatever it is called, it sits between the agreed structure and the delivered car, and no deal at a franchise or a full service independent store leaves without going through it. The step before it is desking, and the step after it is delivery on the road to sale. #### What does an F&I manager actually do? The F&I manager is part underwriter, part salesperson and part compliance officer, and the order matters. First they read the deal: credit profile, loan to value, payment to income, the term the desk assumed and whether any lender will actually buy the paper at those numbers. Then they place it, which means sending the application to the lenders most likely to approve that profile and reading the approvals carefully, because approvals come back with conditions on rate, advance, term and down payment that change the deal. Once the approval is chosen they present the products, complete the disclosures, collect whatever the lender stipulated, and get the contracts signed correctly, because a contract signed in the wrong place is a contract the lender returns. Afterwards they chase funding until the money arrives. Pay is usually a percentage of the back end gross they produce, often with a per unit component and a penetration or product per deal component, which is why the office measures itself in dollars per retail unit rather than in deals. Illustrative figures only: on a store delivering 100 units a month, an office producing 1,200 dollars of back end per unit is working a very different business than one producing 600, and the difference is almost never the products. It is application quality, lender selection and how fast stipulations come back. #### What happens in the F&I office, in order The sequence is remarkably consistent from store to store. The credit application is completed and the customer's identity is verified from a government issued license. Credit is pulled with the customer's permission and the application goes to lenders. Approvals come back, and the manager picks the one that works for both the customer and the store, which is rarely simply the lowest rate, because advance, term and required cash all move together. Then the presentation: the vehicle's remaining factory coverage, what is and is not covered, and the optional products offered consistently to every customer at prices the store has set in advance. The customer accepts or declines each one in writing. The contracts are prepared, the disclosures are given, everything is signed and dated, and copies go to the customer. The stipulations the lender attached are collected, the funding package goes out, and the deal jacket is closed. On a good day the whole thing takes half an hour, and the reason it sometimes takes two hours is almost always paperwork that was not ready when the customer sat down. #### Which rules govern the F&I office? More than any other room in the store, and all of them are worth knowing plainly. The Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z set how credit terms are disclosed on a retail installment contract, and Regulation M does the same for leases. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B require consistent treatment of applicants and require that an applicant who is declined, or approved on materially worse terms, receives an adverse action notice stating the specific reasons. The Gramm Leach Bliley Act and its Safeguards Rule require a written information security program around the customer financial information the office collects. The Red Flags Rule requires a written identity theft prevention program and a resolution process when the identity documents and the application disagree. OFAC screening checks the buyer against the federal sanctions lists. Large currency payments carry their own federal reporting requirement. State law adds documentation fee caps, disclosure language, rate ceilings on some contracts and rules on how products are quoted. This entry describes the rules as law rather than as advice; a store's own counsel and its lenders set its policy, and the office's job is to run the same process on every customer so that the file proves it. #### How LeadLocate supports the F&I office SecureWebX is the credit side of the platform and it is the best front door an F&I office can put in front of a customer, because the application starts before the customer reaches the desk. The store texts an apply link, the customer completes a secure online credit application on a phone with a co-applicant if there is one, and it arrives in the application inbox with a status, an assignee and a thread. Worksheets inside SecureWebX carry the same structure the desk built, stipulations are tracked until each one is satisfied, OFAC screening runs on the applicant, adverse action notices are produced with their reasons on file, and Send to Lender shares the package securely with tracking on who opened it. Compliance is built in rather than bolted on: consent is captured and versioned, access is controlled by role, and every step leaves a record. The role page is LeadLocate for F&I managers, and a store working tougher credit should read the subprime deal desk workflow. #### F&I, back end gross and the second pencil The office and the money it makes get talked about as if they were one word, so keep them apart. F&I is the department. Back end gross is what that department earns on a deal, which is finance reserve plus the margin on the products the customer chose. Front end gross is what the store earned on the vehicle itself, and it was decided before the customer ever walked into the office. The second pencil is floor slang for the moment the F&I manager presents payment options that include products, since the customer sees a second set of numbers after the desk's. Done badly it feels like a renegotiation and it is where customer satisfaction scores go to die. Done well it is a straightforward presentation of coverage at prices the store set in advance, offered the same way to everyone, with a clean yes or no on each line. #### Questions and answers Q: What does F&I mean in car sales? A: Finance and insurance. It is the dealership office that arranges the loan or lease with a lender, presents optional protection products, completes the required disclosures and gets the contracts signed. Q: Do I have to go through F&I if I have my own financing? A: Yes, though it is quicker. The office still verifies identity, completes the contracts and disclosures, handles title and registration paperwork and offers the optional products. Customers bringing their own bank or credit union are a normal part of the day. Q: How is an F&I manager paid? A: Usually a percentage of the back end gross they produce, often with a per unit amount and a bonus tied to how many customers take at least one product. That structure is why the office measures dollars per retail unit. Q: Is F&I the same as the business office? A: In most stores the names are used for the same room, though larger dealerships split them: F&I sells and papers the deal, and the business office funds it, files the title work and posts it to accounting in the store DMS. ### What Is Front End Gross? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-front-end-gross Front end gross is the profit a dealership makes on the vehicle itself: the selling price minus what the store has in the unit, including reconditioning, plus or minus whatever it made or lost on the trade. It is decided at the desk before the customer reaches the finance office, and it is the number most salespeople are paid a percentage of. #### What counts in front end gross? Front end means the car. Gross means profit before any expense of running the store is taken out. Put together, front end gross is what the vehicle itself earned: the price the customer agreed to, less the store's cost in that vehicle. On a used unit, cost is what the store paid for it at auction, on trade or from a wholesaler, plus the reconditioning spent to make it front line ready. On a new unit, cost starts from the factory invoice and is adjusted by the factory and dealer cash programs that apply to it. Two other things ride in or beside the number depending on how a store keeps score. The first is the store's documentation fee, which some dealerships report in front end gross and others hold out separately. The second is the trade, because a car bought too high or too low is a profit or a loss that belongs to this deal even though it will not be realized until the trade is retailed or wholesaled. What never counts is anything the finance office produced, which is back end gross and is reported on its own. #### How front end gross is figured, with an example Illustrative figures only, and every store keeps its books its own way. A dealership takes a sedan on trade and values it at 9,000 in cash. It spends 1,400 on reconditioning: tires, brakes, a windshield and a detail. Its cost in the unit is now 10,400. The store front lines it at 13,995 and sells it for 13,200. Front end gross on that deal is 13,200 less 10,400, which is 2,800. Now add a trade to the same deal. The customer's car appraises at 5,500, but to make the payment work the desk allows 6,200 on it. That extra 700 came out of the same pot, so the reported front end gross on the deal is 2,100 rather than 2,800. The customer did not get a better car price and the store did not get a worse one; the money just moved from the price line to the trade line, which is exactly why front end gross is reported after the trade is accounted for. Notice what is not in that arithmetic: no service contract, no GAP, no finance reserve, no factory holdback. Those are real money and they are counted elsewhere, and mixing them into the front end is the single most common bookkeeping mistake a new manager makes. #### What is a pack, and why the paid gross is smaller A pack is an amount a dealership adds to the cost of every unit before gross is calculated for pay purposes. Stores use it to cover the overhead a specific car does not get billed for: lot expense, the cost of carrying inventory, a reconditioning allowance, advertising. If a store packs a used car, the cost of that car for commission purposes is the real cost plus the pack, so the gross a salesperson is paid on is smaller than the gross the store reports on the same deal. Packs are ordinary and they are not a secret; they should be written into the pay plan and explained on day one. Where they cause trouble is when a salesperson finds out about the pack on the first pay stub, or when the pack quietly grows. A new hire looking at a worksheet showing 2,800 of gross and a check calculated on 2,000 has one honest question, and the answer is the pay plan, not the math. The same logic explains a mini. A mini deal is one where the gross is so thin that the commission formula would pay almost nothing, so the pay plan pays a flat minimum instead. Stores with heavy one price used inventory or aggressive new car programs write a lot of minis, which is why volume bonuses and back end participation matter so much in those pay plans. #### How the trade moves the front end Most front end gross is won or lost on the trade rather than on the price. The number that matters is ACV, the actual cash value the used car manager believes the trade is worth, and the difference between ACV and the allowance the desk writes on the worksheet is called an over allowance. Every dollar of over allowance is a dollar of front end gross, spent to make a payment work or to let a customer feel they got their number. That trade is also the next deal. A car bought at the right ACV and reconditioned sensibly becomes front end gross a second time when it retails, which is why used car managers argue with desks about 300 dollars that looks trivial on a single worksheet. The store that consistently buys right sells with more room later, and the store that buys every trade 700 high spends the next 90 days discovering it on the wholesale report. #### How LeadLocate shows the front end on a deal EZ Desking inside LeadLocate CRM builds the structure that produces the front end, and it is the best place to watch it because the cost side and the customer side sit on the same worksheet. Selling price, the store's cost fields, the trade allowance and the payoff all live on the deal, and the worksheet carries a Deal Profit and Loss view a manager can print on one page, so the conversation about where the gross went happens against a document instead of a memory. Factory and dealer cash incentives sit on the worksheet, and the incentives showroom inside the deal view shows the current programs for the make, so a manager is not pricing a new unit from a printout somebody taped to the desk. Trades are captured with photos and a VIN scan on the deal itself, and every version of the worksheet stays in the deal history, so a deal that lost 700 somewhere between the first pencil and delivery can be read back step by step. Start with EZ Desking worksheets, see the programs on the OEM incentives showroom, and see the store level numbers on the reports dashboard. #### Front end, back end and total gross Total gross on a deal is front end plus back end. Front end is the vehicle: price against cost, with the trade accounted for. Back end is everything the finance office produced: finance reserve on the loan plus the margin on the optional products the customer chose. Stores report both per deal and average them per retail unit, and a store can have a strong month on one and a weak month on the other without either number explaining the other. Holdback is the term most often mistaken for front end gross, and it is not part of it. Holdback is money a manufacturer keeps back at invoice and pays a franchise dealer later; it lands in the store's accounting rather than on the deal, and salespeople are almost never paid on it. The step where the front end is actually decided is desking, and the rest of the money vocabulary is in the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a mini deal? A: A deal with so little front end gross that the normal commission formula would pay almost nothing, so the pay plan pays a flat minimum instead. Stores with one price used inventory or heavy new car programs write plenty of them. Q: Does front end gross include dealer fees? A: It depends on the store. Some dealerships report the documentation fee inside front end gross and some report it separately, and the pay plan should say which. What is consistent is that finance reserve and product margin are never in it. Q: Is holdback part of front end gross? A: No. Holdback is paid by the manufacturer to the dealership after the fact and lands in accounting, not on the deal. It is one reason a car sold at invoice is not necessarily a car sold at zero profit for the store. Q: Why is the gross on my pay stub lower than the gross on the worksheet? A: Usually a pack: an amount the store adds to the cost of every unit before commission is calculated. It should be written into the pay plan and explained before the first check, not discovered on it. ### What Is GAP Coverage? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-gap-coverage GAP coverage, short for guaranteed asset protection, pays the difference between what a vehicle is worth and what the customer still owes on it when the vehicle is totaled or stolen. It settles after the primary insurance payout, it is optional on most retail deals, and it is normally cancellable for a prorated refund. #### What does GAP coverage actually pay? When a financed vehicle is totaled or stolen and not recovered, the customer's own auto policy pays the actual cash value of the vehicle on that day. The finance contract does not care about actual cash value; it cares about the payoff. If a vehicle settles at $24,000 and the payoff is $28,000, the customer is left owing $4,000 on a vehicle that no longer exists. GAP coverage is the product that pays that difference, and the letters stand for guaranteed asset protection. It comes in two legal shapes that do the same practical job. Most of what a dealership sells is a GAP waiver, an amendment to the finance contract in which the creditor agrees to waive the remaining difference. Some states and some sellers use GAP insurance instead, issued by an insurer. Either way the customer keeps their own comprehensive and collision coverage, because GAP only settles after the primary claim pays. #### How GAP coverage is sold at a dealership It is presented in the finance office alongside the other protection products, priced as a flat charge, and usually financed into the contract rather than paid separately. On most retail deals it is optional and that has to be said plainly, though a lender may require it as a condition of an approval, and lease contracts commonly include a form of it already, which is worth checking before selling a second one. Coverage terms vary and the certificate is the authority. Some contracts pay the deductible on the primary claim, commonly up to a capped amount, and some do not. Most cap the total they will pay and cap how much rolled in negative equity they will recognize. Missed payments, late fees and amounts added after the sale are normally outside the coverage. A customer who pays the vehicle off early, trades it in or cancels the contract is generally entitled to a prorated refund of the unused portion, and several states require the seller to process one on request. #### A worked example, illustrative figures only Say a customer finances $32,000 on a vehicle, puts very little in at delivery, and takes a 75 month term, illustrative figures only. Fourteen months later the vehicle is totaled. The insurer values it at $24,500 and pays that, less a $500 deductible. The payoff that day is $28,900. Without GAP the customer owes $4,900 on a vehicle sitting in a salvage yard, and they still need transportation, which is a hard conversation to have with a lender and an even harder one to have with a spouse. With GAP the difference is settled by the waiver, and depending on the certificate the deductible may be covered as well. The exposure here came from a long term and a small amount at delivery, which is exactly the shape most vehicle loans have. #### Where GAP coverage goes wrong The first place is the assumption. Plenty of customers believe their full coverage policy pays off the loan, because the phrase full coverage sounds like it should. It pays the value of the vehicle, which is a different promise, and thirty seconds of explanation at the desk prevents a call later. The second is duplicate coverage. Some personal auto policies offer loan or lease payoff coverage as an endorsement, and a customer who already carries it does not need a second product. Ask. The third is the unclaimed refund: a customer who trades or pays off early has money waiting and often never hears about it, and a store that surfaces it voluntarily buys a lot of goodwill for a small amount of paperwork. The fourth is silence about price and options, which is the fastest way to turn a useful product into a complaint. #### How LeadLocate handles the deal around the product The product itself belongs to the administrator and the store's finance office. What the platform handles is everything around it: the structure, the disclosure, the signature and the file. In EZ Desking inside LeadLocate CRM, the multi pencil grid means a manager can write the same deal two ways and put both payments on one screen, so the conversation is a comparison rather than a pitch. The customer deal page, branded to the store, opens on a phone with PIN access, shows the structure line by line, takes an e-signature and keeps every revision, and deal chat sits right beside it for the question that arrives at nine at night. The paperwork lands where it belongs too. The deal jacket takes uploads straight from a phone camera through a QR code, so the certificate and the signed documents live on the deal instead of in a folder on somebody's desk, and the print packet carries payment ranges and a finance breakdown for the customer to take home. Every call, text and email about the deal is in one communications log on the customer record, which is what a store wants when a claim or a cancellation comes up months later. Desking software covers the structure side in full. #### What GAP coverage is often confused with A vehicle service contract pays for listed repairs; GAP pays the difference still owed on the financing after a total loss. Comprehensive and collision coverage pay the value of the vehicle and are the primary claim GAP settles behind. New vehicle replacement coverage, offered by some insurers, replaces the vehicle outright rather than paying a difference. And the phrase turns up far outside the car business: gap coverage in health insurance describes a plan that fills what a primary plan leaves, and in title insurance it covers the interval between a search and a recording. In a dealership the word means one thing, and the neighboring finance terms are defined across the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: Is GAP coverage required? A: On most retail deals it is optional and the customer has to be told so. A lender can require it as a condition of an approval, and many lease contracts already include a form of it, so the certificate is worth checking before a second one is sold. Q: How long does GAP coverage from a dealership last? A: Typically for the term of the finance contract it was written on, or until the vehicle is paid off, traded or the contract is cancelled. The certificate states the term, and it ends when the loan it protects ends. Q: Can GAP coverage be cancelled for a refund? A: Usually yes. A customer who pays off early, trades the vehicle or simply changes their mind is generally entitled to a prorated refund of the unused portion, and several states require the seller to process one on request. Q: Does GAP coverage pay the insurance deductible? A: Some contracts do, commonly up to a capped amount, and some do not. It is a real difference between products and it is printed on the certificate, so it is worth reading before the customer signs rather than after a claim. ### What Is Holdback? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-holdback Holdback is an amount a manufacturer keeps back from a franchise dealership when a new vehicle is invoiced and pays back to the store later, usually on a quarterly schedule. It is normally a small percentage of MSRP or of invoice, set by each manufacturer, and it is the main reason the invoice price on a new car is not the dealership's true cost in that car. #### What is holdback and who pays it? Holdback is a manufacturer program, so it exists only on new vehicles at franchised dealerships. When the factory invoices a store for a new car, it builds a set amount into that invoice and then returns it to the dealership later, typically once a quarter, on the units that have been sold and reported. The money is real and it is the store's, but it arrives after the sale rather than at it. Each manufacturer sets its own program, and the two things that vary are the rate and the base it is calculated on. Some pay a percentage of the total MSRP, some a percentage of the base MSRP, some a percentage of invoice or of the base invoice. A few brands pay no holdback at all. The current figure for any brand comes from the store's own factory statements and program bulletins, not from a number somebody remembers, because the programs change. Holdback is also not the only money that arrives after the sale. Floorplan credits, factory to dealer cash, stair step volume bonuses and wholesale parts incentives all behave the same way, which is why a franchise store's real profit on new vehicles is only visible on the financial statement rather than on any one deal. #### How holdback is figured and paid Work an example, illustrative figures only, since each manufacturer sets its own program. Say a crossover carries an MSRP of 42,000 and an invoice of 39,500, and the brand's program pays two percent of total MSRP. Holdback on that unit is 840 dollars. The store pays the factory 39,500 when it takes the car, and after the car is sold and reported, that 840 comes back on a quarterly statement together with the holdback on every other unit sold in the period. So if the store sells that crossover at 39,500, the deal shows no front end gross at all, and the store still receives 840 on the next statement. What the statement does not show is what the unit cost to carry. If the crossover sat on the lot for four months, the floorplan interest on 39,500 over that period eats into the 840, and in a high rate environment on an aged unit it can eat all of it. Holdback is not free money; it is a cushion sized for a car that turns reasonably quickly. #### Why does holdback exist? It exists for two reasons, one practical and one competitive. The practical one is cash flow and expense. Holdback was designed to offset the cost of carrying inventory, the floorplan interest a store pays on a car it has bought but not yet sold, and to give a dealership a predictable quarterly payment that supports fixed overhead. Because it is paid on sold units, it also rewards turning inventory rather than holding it. The competitive reason is that holdback lets a manufacturer publish an invoice price that is visible to shoppers while leaving the dealership a margin underneath it. That is why the invoice price became a well known number in the first place, and why a store can advertise at or near invoice on a slow model without selling at a loss. The same logic explains factory to dealer cash, which a store may use to discount while the customer sees only the advertised invoice figure. #### Does holdback mean a store profits on an invoice deal? Usually a little, and far less than the internet says. A car sold at invoice returns the holdback and any dealer cash on that unit, and against that sit the costs the deal carries: floorplan interest for the days it was in stock, the store's share of advertising association fees that are often billed on the invoice itself, prep and delivery work not covered by the factory, and the salesperson's minimum commission on a deal with no gross. A quick turning unit at invoice is a small win. A unit that has been in stock five months at invoice is frequently a loss the store takes to clear the floorplan and reorder. This is also why an invoice price screenshot is a weak negotiating tool on a car the store cannot easily replace. A model in short supply does not get discounted into holdback no matter what the invoice says, and a model sitting in rows gets discounted past invoice without anyone needing to be talked into it. Supply decides that conversation, not the printout. #### Where shoppers and new salespeople get holdback wrong Three misreadings come up constantly. The first is that holdback applies to used cars. It does not; a used vehicle's cost is what the store paid plus reconditioning, and there is no factory behind it. The second is that holdback is a rebate the customer can ask for. It is a payment between a manufacturer and a franchise dealership under the franchise agreement, and it is not part of the transaction with the buyer. The third is that a salesperson gets paid on it. Almost never: pay plans are written on the gross shown on the deal, which is front end gross on the vehicle plus whatever share of back end gross the plan includes. Holdback lands in the store's accounting, not on the worksheet, which is exactly why a mini deal is a mini deal for the salesperson even when the store did fine on the unit. #### Where the cost side of a deal lives in software Holdback itself is an accounting item. It is credited on a factory statement and posted in the store's dealer management system along with floorplan, the general ledger and factory reporting, and that is where it belongs. What a desk needs at the moment of the deal is the rest of the cost picture, and that is what sits on the worksheet. In LeadLocate CRM, EZ Desking carries the unit's cost fields, the factory and dealer cash incentives that apply to it, and a deal profit and loss view a manager can print on one page, so the deal is structured against real numbers rather than against a price alone. The incentives showroom inside the deal view shows the current programs for the make so a manager is not hunting for them in another tab, and the deal history keeps every version of the worksheet. Start with EZ Desking worksheets or the OEM incentives showroom, and read the rest of the money terms in the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: How much is holdback on a new car? A: It depends entirely on the manufacturer. Programs are set as a percentage of MSRP or of invoice, the base used differs by brand, some brands pay none at all, and the figures change. A store reads its own factory program bulletins rather than a published list. Q: Do used cars have holdback? A: No. Holdback is a factory program on new vehicles at franchised dealerships. A used car cost is what the store paid for it plus reconditioning. Q: Is holdback the same as a rebate? A: No. A customer rebate is factory money paid toward the buyer purchase and shown on the deal. Holdback is paid by the manufacturer to the dealership after the sale and is not part of the customer transaction. Q: Can I ask a dealer to sell below invoice using holdback? A: You can ask, and on a slow moving model a store may go there, especially with factory to dealer cash behind it. On a unit in short supply the answer will be no, because the store cannot replace the car at that number. ### What Is ITIN Financing? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-itin-financing ITIN financing is vehicle financing arranged for a buyer who applies with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security number. The IRS issues an ITIN to people who file US taxes but are not eligible for a Social Security number. Some lenders buy this paper as part of their normal program, usually with more documentation and a larger deposit. #### What is an ITIN, and what is ITIN financing? ITIN financing is vehicle financing arranged for a buyer who uses an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number in place of a Social Security number. The IRS issues an ITIN to people who are required to file a US tax return but are not eligible for a Social Security number, and it is a nine digit number formatted the same way. It is a tax identifier, nothing more. It says nothing about immigration status and it is not a work permit. For a dealership the practical meaning is narrower: it is the identifier that goes in the identification field on a credit application, and the question is which lenders will underwrite a deal built on it. Some banks and credit unions buy ITIN paper as a normal part of their program, some buy it in certain states only, and some do not participate at all. The store's lender relationships decide whether an ITIN customer is a retail deal, an in house deal or a referral to somebody else. The customers themselves are frequently excellent risks. Many have years of consistent rent, utilities, insurance and remittances behind them, steady employment, and a real credit file under the ITIN because their prior lenders reported it. What they do not have is the identifier most underwriting systems were built around. Related terms are defined across the automotive sales glossary. #### Can you finance a car with an ITIN number? An ITIN deal is a document deal. Lenders that buy this paper usually want more than the application: the ITIN letter or a recent tax return showing it, a valid photo identification such as a passport or a consular card, proof of residence, proof of income in the form of pay stubs or filed returns for the self employed, proof of insurance, and several personal references with working phone numbers. Longer time at the address and on the job carry real weight, because stability is doing the work a long credit history would do elsewhere. Structure matters too. Illustrative figures only: a used sedan retailing near $19,000, $3,000 cash from the customer and a payment around $430 a month is a far easier approval on an ITIN program than the same car with nothing put toward it, because most of these programs cap the advance and want the buyer invested. Terms tend to be shorter and the rate is priced to the risk the lender sees, exactly as it would be for any thin file borrower. A store that sells to this market keeps a written list of which of its lenders take ITIN applications, what each of them requires, and which documents to collect before the application ever goes out. The alternative is a customer sent home to find a pay stub three separate times. #### Where ITIN deals go wrong at a dealership The most expensive mistake is assuming there is no deal. A salesperson hears that the customer has no Social Security number, decides the store cannot help, and sends a cash buyer with $5,000 in hand out the door. The second most expensive is the opposite: promising an approval before anyone has checked which lender is open, then unwinding a delivered car a week later. Two smaller errors show up constantly. One is running the application under the wrong identifier, which returns an empty file and a declination on a customer who actually has a reportable history. The other is treating the identification requirement casually. The Red Flags Rule expects a store to have a program for identifying and resolving identity discrepancies, and identity documents that do not match the application are exactly the case that rule exists for. Regulation B, meanwhile, forbids discrimination on the basis of national origin, so the questions on the application are about creditworthiness and documentation, not about where somebody is from. Stores selling heavily to this market generally find the language question sitting next to the paperwork question, which is its own subject on the Spanish speaking dealership software page. #### How LeadLocate handles ITIN applications The credit application in SecureWebX accepts an ITIN as readily as a Social Security number, so an ITIN buyer completes the same branded five step application on their phone, with income, deposit, trade and co-applicant sections, e-signature and consent capture. Because apply links are customizable per store, the finance office can build one link that asks an ITIN applicant for exactly what its lenders want, extra fields, extra sections and document uploads included, so the identification, the proof of residence and the pay stubs arrive with the application instead of after it. Those documents and every lender stipulation attach to the application record, and the finished package exports to the lender in the format that lender expects. #### What ITIN financing is often confused with ITIN financing is not buy here pay here, though the two get mentioned together. Buy here pay here describes who holds the note, and plenty of ITIN deals are ordinary retail contracts sold to an outside lender. It is not a no credit check program either: lenders on these deals pull credit, read the file that exists and verify income like any other deal. It is also not the same thing as subprime. Subprime describes a damaged credit profile. An ITIN applicant may have a strong file, a thin file or no file at all, and the identifier is what makes the deal unusual rather than the risk. The overlap is real, because both often land on the same desk, but the underwriting questions are different. #### Questions and answers Q: What does ITIN stand for? A: Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. The IRS issues it so people who are required to file a US tax return, but are not eligible for a Social Security number, can do so. It is a tax identifier and nothing else. Q: What documents does an ITIN buyer usually need? A: Expect the ITIN letter or a recent tax return, a valid photo identification such as a passport or consular card, proof of residence, recent pay stubs or filed returns, proof of insurance and several personal references. Each lender publishes its own list. Q: Does an ITIN buyer have a credit score? A: Often yes. Lenders and card issuers that reported accounts under the ITIN build a file the same way they would under a Social Security number. Some applicants have a full file, some have a thin one, and some have none. Q: Is ITIN financing the same as buy here pay here? A: No. Buy here pay here describes a store that finances its own sales. Many ITIN deals are ordinary retail contracts sold to an outside lender that buys this paper. ### What Is Inventory Syndication? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-inventory-syndication Inventory syndication is publishing one dealership's vehicle data to many destinations at once, on a schedule, so the same units appear on the store's website, on marketplaces and in its marketing tools without anyone entering a vehicle twice. It needs a single source of truth, a transform for each destination, a refresh cadence and a list of exactly who receives the data. #### What is inventory syndication? Inventory syndication is the practice of publishing one dealership's vehicle data out to many destinations at once, on a schedule, so the same units appear everywhere the store advertises without anyone entering a vehicle twice. One source of truth in, many copies out, each copy shaped the way its destination expects. The word is borrowed from broadcasting, where syndication means selling one program to many stations. The dealership version keeps the idea and changes the cargo: instead of an episode going to two hundred stations, a hundred and forty vehicles go to the store's own website, the large marketplaces, the store's marketing tools and anywhere else the store has agreed to be listed. Syndication is not the same thing as the inventory feed underneath it. The feed is the data and its format. Syndication is the act of distributing it, plus everything that has to be decided along the way: which units go to which destination, how price is expressed at each one, which photos travel, what happens when a unit sells, and who is allowed to receive the data at all. #### How syndication actually works Four moving parts. First, a source of truth: one system that holds the current list of vehicles and their attributes. Everything else reads from it, and the moment a store has two sources it has a reconciliation job instead of a distribution job. Second, a transform for each destination. Every receiver wants its own field names, its own value lists for body style and drivetrain, its own photo rules and often its own limits on description length. The transform is where a store's data either survives the trip or arrives with holes in it. Third, a schedule. Nightly is the traditional cadence and hourly or faster is better, because the cost of being slow is measured in calls about cars that are gone. Fourth, a return path: a receipt, an error report or an import log that says how many records arrived, how many were rejected and why. A store that syndicates without reading the return path is publishing into the dark and finding out from customers. The fifth part, which is not technical at all, is a written list of who receives the data. Every destination is a business relationship, and a store should be able to name all of them and switch one off the same day it decides to. #### A worked example of one day of syndication Say a store carries 140 units and syndicates to five destinations on an hourly schedule. Illustrative figures only. A manager reprices eleven vehicles on Monday morning. Within the hour those eleven carry the new number on all five destinations and on the store's own vehicle detail pages, so a shopper comparing two of them never sees two different prices for the same car. Later the same day, three units sell. Their status changes at the source, the next cycle removes them from all five destinations, and the store stops taking calls for vehicles it cannot deliver. Contrast that with the store publishing a file once a night: the eleven repriced cars carry a stale number through the whole selling day, and the three sold units stay live until the next morning, which is about fourteen hours of advertising that can only produce a disappointed customer. None of this requires more inventory or more advertising money. It is the same cars, the same destinations and the same budget, moving on a faster clock. #### Where syndication costs a store money The expensive failure is the destination nobody reviews. A store signs up, the listings run, and two years later nobody on the current staff can say what that receiver does with the data, what it costs or whether the listings are still accurate. Keep the list, read it quarterly, and treat every consumer as a relationship with a renewal date. The second is duplication. Two providers syndicating the same vehicles to the same destination produce two listings for one car, which splits the shopper attention the store paid for and makes the store look careless. It usually happens after a website or inventory provider changes and the old connection is never switched off. The third is data loss in the transform. Photos truncated to the first eight, descriptions cut at a character limit, option packages dropped because the destination has no field for them. The listing is live, so nothing looks wrong, and the vehicle simply performs worse than it should. The fourth is the sold unit that keeps advertising. That is the one customers notice, and it is the one that costs a store its credibility in the market it is trying to win. #### How LeadLocate publishes your inventory Inventory Link holds the store's vehicles as one clean record and publishes them outward from there. It ingests the dealer feed, or imports inventory straight from the store's own website when there is no feed, and then puts the same units on the inventory site it builds, on an embeddable widget for any page the store already owns, on per salesperson inventory sites, and on brand offer pages with their own lead forms and Schedule a Visit sheets. A public inventory API with key provisioning covers everyone else: the store hands a consumer a key, sees what that key is used for and takes it back when the relationship ends. Additional destinations are available on request, and our team puts them in production for your dealership. Wherever a unit appears, the resulting conversation lands in LeadLocate CRM with the vehicle attached, which is the part that decides whether syndication was worth doing. The category itself is covered on the automotive inventory syndication software page. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the difference between an inventory feed and syndication? A: The feed is the data and its format. Syndication is the distribution of that data to many destinations, with the rules each one needs: which units go where, how price is shown, which photos travel and how fast a sold unit is removed. Q: Who decides which vehicles go to which destination? A: The store does, and it should be written down. Common rules hold wholesale units back, keep units in reconditioning off public destinations until they have photos, and restrict certain price displays to the store's own pages. Q: Why do the same vehicles appear twice on a listing site? A: Almost always because two providers are syndicating the same inventory to the same destination, usually after a website or inventory provider changed and the older connection was never switched off. Keeping a current list of consumers prevents it. Q: How quickly should a sold vehicle come off a listing? A: As fast as the schedule allows, which is why hourly or near live beats nightly. Every hour a sold unit stays live generates calls nobody can fill and costs the store credibility with the shoppers it most wants. ### What Is Lead Routing? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-lead-routing Lead routing is the set of rules that decides which salesperson, team or rooftop gets each new lead and how quickly it reaches them. At a dealership those rules key off the lead source, the hour, the store and whose turn it is in the rotation, so a fresh lead lands with a name on it instead of sitting in a shared inbox waiting for a volunteer. #### What does lead routing mean? Lead routing is the set of rules a business uses to decide who owns a new lead. At a store the question is concrete: a shopper submits a form at 9:40 on a Tuesday night, and routing decides whether that record goes to the BDC queue, to the closer who handles that brand, to the next name in the rotation, or to the rooftop nearest the shopper's ZIP code. Three words get used for the same idea, and separating them makes every vendor conversation shorter. Lead routing is the rule set. Lead distribution is the act of spreading arriving leads across a group of people or stores. Lead assignment is the result, one lead with one owner's name on the record. A round robin is the most common rule of all: a rotation that hands each arriving lead to the next person in line, then starts again at the top. Other rules route by source, by hour, by language, by brand or by geography, and most stores run two or three of them at once. Routing is not follow up, and a store that confuses the two ends up with a tidy rotation and no phone calls. Routing answers the ownership question only. What happens in the first five minutes is a separate discipline, covered on responding to internet leads in five minutes, and the rest of the vocabulary around it lives in the automotive sales glossary. #### How lead routing works on a Tuesday night Say a store runs four sources: its own website, a third party lead provider, a trade offer page and inbound calls on a tracked line. Illustrative figures only: the website sends twenty leads a week, the provider sixty, the offer page fifteen and the phone line forty. With six salespeople on the floor and two BDC agents, an unrouted week means eight people looking at the same pile and every one of them assuming somebody else already has the 9:40 form. Routed, the same week looks different. Website leads rotate through the six salespeople, one each in turn. Provider leads go to the two BDC agents, because that traffic needs a fast first call more than it needs a product specialist. The trade offer page goes to the used car manager, the only person who can put a real number on a trade. Calls ring a list of phones in order until somebody picks up. Nobody chooses, nobody cherry picks, and every record carries an owner before it has been read. The second half of routing is the clock. A rule that assigns the 9:40 form is worth very little if the owner sees it at 8:15 the next morning. Real routing fires a notification the moment the assignment is made, to the phone in the owner's pocket as well as the screen, and it fires again if nobody has touched the record. That is why routing and response time always get discussed in the same breath. #### Where dealerships get lead routing wrong The most common mistake is the shared inbox with no rule at all, where the fastest clicker takes the good looking leads and the rest age quietly. The second is a rotation that keeps assigning leads to people who are not working: a rep on vacation collects a week of internet traffic nobody else can see. The third is having no rule for nights and weekends, which is when a large share of forms arrive. Two quieter mistakes cost more than any of those. One is letting the salesperson choose the source from a dropdown after the fact, which turns every source report into a guess. The other is duplicates: the same shopper fills out two forms, two owners appear, both call, and the customer decides the store is disorganized before anyone has quoted a price. Routing rules only hold when the source is set by how the lead arrived and duplicates merge into one record with one owner. Group stores add one more layer. A lead that mentions a model only one rooftop carries should never be routed by rotation alone, and a shopper thirty miles from the wrong store is a lost sale dressed up as a fair assignment. The rules a group needs are laid out on dealership CRM lead routing rules and the desk side of the same problem on BDC lead routing software. #### How does LeadLocate route a lead? In LeadLocate CRM every lead source is defined as a feed in Lead Feeds Manager, and the routing rule lives on the feed rather than in a separate rule engine. Each feed carries its intake method, its assignment choice, its notification settings and an optional first message. The assignment choice is one of three: All (Round Robin) to rotate the feed through the team, a single named user, or Unassigned (Up for Grabs) to leave it open for the first rep to claim. Because the choice lives on the feed, a store can rotate website leads across the floor, send provider leads to one closer and leave a trade show list open, all at once. The mechanics of the rotation are on the round robin lead assignment page, the feed itself on Lead Feeds Manager, and the group version, where distribution rules and lists decide which rooftop gets the lead, on multi rooftop lead routing. Notifications reach the owner by email, by text and as an on screen alert with a sound, duplicates merge into one record, and the reports read by source and by rooftop, so a manager can see whether the rules held instead of hoping they did. #### Lead routing, lead distribution and lead assignment If a vendor uses the three terms interchangeably, translate as you go. Ask which rules are available, whether the rule is set per source or only globally, what happens to a lead that arrives at midnight, how the source gets recorded, and what a manager sees when a rule fails. Those five questions separate a routing feature from a dropdown labelled assigned to. Two neighbouring terms belong here as well. A lead source is the place the lead came from, and it is what most routing rules key off, so a store with unreliable sources has unreliable routing no matter how good the rules are. Response time is what routing exists to protect: every minute between arrival and first contact is a minute the shopper spends with another store. The full set of terms around leads, sources and the floor is collected in the glossary, and the tools that carry them sit inside LeadLocate CRM. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the difference between lead routing and lead distribution? A: Routing is the rule set that decides where a lead should go. Distribution is the act of spreading leads across a group. Assignment is the outcome, one lead with one owner. Most vendors use all three words for the same feature. Q: Is round robin the best lead routing rule? A: It is the fairest default, which is why most stores start there. It works best combined with source rules, so a rotation covers the general website traffic while specialist sources go to the person who handles them. Q: What should happen to a lead that arrives after hours? A: It still needs an owner and an answer. Most stores route night traffic to the BDC or to an on call rep, send an immediate first message so the shopper knows they were heard, and have the owner call the moment the store opens. Q: Does lead routing decide who gets paid on the deal? A: No. Routing decides who owns the record and works the customer. Pay plans, splits and turnover rules are the store's own policy, and they are set separately from the software. ### What Is Lease Maturity? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-lease-maturity Lease maturity is the point at which a vehicle lease reaches the end of its contracted term. At maturity the customer returns the vehicle, buys it at the contract residual, or trades it, and any excess mileage or wear charges come due. For a dealership the maturity list is a calendar of customers who have to make a decision. #### What does lease maturity mean on a car lease? A lease is a contract to use a vehicle for a fixed term and a fixed mileage allowance. The maturity date, printed on the contract and on every statement, is the day that term ends. At that point the lessee has three choices: hand the vehicle back and walk away, buy it at the residual value written into the contract plus tax and fees, or trade it and let the buyout roll into the next deal. The vocabulary around the date matters. Residual value is the contracted end of term value the finance company set at signing. The buyout, or payoff, is that residual plus whatever remains due, and it is the number that decides whether the customer is in equity. Grounding is the act of turning the vehicle in at a dealership. A disposition fee is the charge for handing it back rather than buying or trading it. Excess mileage and excess wear are the charges assessed at inspection, and they are the reason a customer who is over miles should never be allowed to drive to a turn in appointment without a conversation first. #### What a lease end department actually does A store that works lease maturity properly starts ninety to one hundred and twenty days before the date, not in the last month. Somebody owns the list, usually the BDC or a dedicated lease end desk, and the sequence is the same every time. Pull the maturities for the next four months. Quote the buyout from the finance company. Appraise the unit at current market. Compare the two and sort the list into customers in equity, customers close to even, and customers over miles who need help. Then the conversation changes by group. Customers with equity get a pull ahead: come in early, we use the equity, you drive something newer at a similar payment. Customers near even get a straight replacement offer. Customers over miles get the math on what turning in is going to cost against what trading it costs, which is usually the most valuable phone call a store makes all week. The units that come back are also the best used inventory a franchise store will ever own, since it knows the service history. #### A worked example of lease end equity Illustrative figures only. A customer leased a midsize SUV with a contract residual of $18,500 and a maturity date three months out. The same unit, at the mileage it is actually carrying, appraises at $21,000 in the current market. The equity position is roughly $2,500 before fees, which means the customer can trade out early instead of writing a check. Flip it and the work matters just as much. If the appraisal comes in at $17,200 against the same $18,500 residual, the customer is $1,300 short, and turning the vehicle in is likely the better answer unless the store has a replacement deal that absorbs it. Either way the customer hears a real number from a dealership before the finance company letter arrives, which is the entire point of working the list early. #### Where lease maturity work goes wrong at a store The first failure is timing. A store that calls at forty five days is calling after the finance company has already mailed the customer three lease end notices and after a competing dealership has already made an offer. The second is ownership: when the list belongs to everybody it belongs to nobody, and it gets worked in whatever week the showroom is slow. The third is treating every maturity the same. A customer in equity and a customer eight thousand miles over need completely different calls, and sending both the same template wastes the one advantage the store has. The fourth is failing to record the answer, so the customer who said call me in sixty days gets no call in sixty days. The fifth is forgetting that a lease customer is a repeat customer by definition, which makes the maturity conversation the start of the next lease rather than the end of this one. #### How does LeadLocate work the maturity list? The maturity list lives in LeadLocate CRM as a working segment rather than a spreadsheet. The store imports its own maturity dates, tags the customers and gives them a custom status, then a follow up process carries each one through the ninety day sequence with the text, the email and the task scheduled against the maturity date instead of against the day somebody remembered. Bulk texting and bulk email go out with the replacement unit attached from inventory, appointments book straight into the shared calendar, and every call is recorded against the customer record so the next rep can hear what was said. EZ Desking handles the lease structures, including the three lease tax methods and the pull ahead math, and the customer sees the figures on a deal page on their phone. The campaign version is lease maturity marketing campaigns, and the same segment work applied to loans is equity mining. #### Lease maturity, lease end and residual value Lease maturity and lease end describe the same moment, with lease end used more often for the department and the process and maturity used for the date itself. Residual value is the number in the contract that makes the end of term possible to price. Cap cost is the other end of the same contract, the agreed value the lease was written on, and it is covered in the cap cost entry. Lease maturity services, sold by outside vendors, are simply somebody else working this list for the store, which is worth what the store would otherwise leave unworked. #### Questions and answers Q: What does maturity date mean on a car lease? A: It is the last day of the contracted lease term. The final payment is due around it, and on or before that date the vehicle has to be returned, bought at the residual, or traded. Q: What is a lease buyout? A: The amount required to purchase the vehicle instead of returning it, normally the contract residual plus any remaining payments, taxes and fees. The finance company quotes the exact figure, and it changes as payments post. Q: What happens if the customer is over the mileage allowance? A: Excess mileage is charged at the per mile rate in the contract when the vehicle is turned in. Trading early sometimes avoids it, which is why the store should run the appraisal before the customer schedules a return. Q: When should a dealership contact a lease customer? A: Ninety to one hundred and twenty days before maturity, with the buyout and an appraisal already in hand. Waiting until the final month means competing with every notice the finance company has already mailed. ### What Is Loan to Value? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-loan-to-value Loan to value, or LTV, is the amount financed on a vehicle divided by that vehicle's value, written as a percentage. Lenders cap it by program and credit tier, so LTV decides how much of the selling price, tax, fees, backend products and negative equity a deal can carry. A desk that knows the number before the pencil goes out stops guessing which lender to send it to. #### What does loan to value mean on a car deal? Loan to value compares what a lender is financing with what the vehicle is worth. The top of the fraction is the amount financed: selling price, plus tax, title, registration and the doc fee, plus any backend products and any negative equity rolled in from a trade, less the cash the customer puts up and any trade equity. The bottom of the fraction is the vehicle's value, and that is the part new hires miss, because it is almost never the window price. Lenders advance against a published book value, or against invoice or MSRP on a new unit, exactly as their program states. Write the result as a percentage. Finance $22,000 against a unit a lender books at $20,000 and the deal sits at 110 percent, illustrative figures only. Over 100 percent simply means the loan is bigger than the collateral, which is ordinary in car finance and is precisely why every program publishes an advance limit instead of leaving the number open. #### How do you calculate loan to value at a dealership? Take a real structure. Say a store prices a used SUV at $19,500, allows $6,000 on a trade that still carries a $9,000 payoff, collects $1,000 in cash, and writes $1,800 of tax and fees plus a $1,500 service contract. Illustrative figures only. The amount financed is $19,500 plus $1,800 plus $1,500 plus the $3,000 of negative equity, less the $1,000 collected, which comes to $24,800. If the lender books that SUV at $18,000, the deal sits at roughly 138 percent. Now the desk has something to work with. A program that advances 120 percent of book on that tier funds $21,600, so the structure is about $3,200 heavy. Every fix is visible from there: more cash, less backend, a cheaper unit, a lender whose program advances tax and fees on top of book, or a straight conversation with the customer about the payoff they are carrying. None of it is a mystery once the ratio is on the worksheet instead of in someone's head. #### What is a good LTV for a car loan? There is no single number, and anyone quoting one is quoting a lender they have not named. Advance limits are set program by program. A prime tier on a late model used car carries one limit, a deep subprime program carries another, and the same lender often advances more on a unit it likes and less on high mileage or an older model. Two details move the line more than most desks expect. Some programs advance a percentage of book plus a flat allowance for tax and fees, which is a higher effective limit than the headline percentage suggests. Others count backend products inside the advance, so every dollar of service contract is a dollar of vehicle that can no longer be financed. Read the program sheet, not the rumor on the desk, and structure to the lender the deal is actually going to. #### Where a car deal gets stuck on loan to value Negative equity is the usual culprit. A customer who owes more than the trade is worth brings that gap into the new loan, and it counts against the collateral twice: once because it adds to the amount financed, and once because it buys nothing the lender can repossess. Aged units priced above book do the same thing more quietly, which is why a used car manager watching days supply and a finance manager watching advance are looking at one problem from two ends. Vocabulary causes its own trouble. Some desks say front end LTV for selling price against book and back end LTV for the full amount financed against book, and two people using different definitions will argue for twenty minutes about a deal that is fine. Agree on which number the store means, then put it on the worksheet so nobody has to ask. #### Where do the numbers behind loan to value live in LeadLocate? Every figure the ratio needs sits on one structure. EZ Desking worksheets in LeadLocate CRM hold the selling price, the trade allowance and payoff, taxes and fees, the products and the customer cash, so the amount financed is the worksheet itself rather than a total someone re-adds on a legal pad. The same cash, finance and lease worksheets sit beside the credit application in SecureWebX, with a book value lookup and VIN, stock number, title and warranty checks on the deal vehicle, so the value half of the ratio comes off the file rather than out of a browser tab. A recap goes to the customer with the structure laid out, and a manager can duplicate a worksheet to test a second structure before anything leaves the store. #### What loan to value is often confused with Loan to value is a collateral test. Payment to income is an ability to pay test, and debt to income widens that to every obligation on the credit report. A file can pass one and fail another, and in subprime it usually does: stretching the term to fix payment to income pushes more of the vehicle's life into the loan and makes the advance harder to justify. LTV is also not ACV. ACV is what the store believes a trade is worth in cash, which drives the allowance; book value is what a lender will advance against. The two rarely match, and the gap is most of the art of desking a deal with a trade. The automotive sales glossary defines the rest of the terms on the worksheet, and the desking tool page shows the structure in software. #### Questions and answers Q: What does loan to value mean for a car? A: It is the amount financed divided by the vehicle's value, as a percentage. On a car it is normal to finance more than the unit is worth, because tax, fees, backend products and any negative equity from a trade all ride in the loan, so lenders cap the advance by program and credit tier rather than at 100 percent. Q: What is a good LTV for a car loan? A: Good means inside the advance limit of the program the deal is going to. A structure that funds easily at one lender is over advance at another, so the useful habit is to check the limit on the program sheet before the pencil goes out, not after a decline. Q: Does more cash fix a high LTV? A: It helps directly, because cash lowers the amount financed without touching the vehicle's value. So does less backend, a cheaper unit, or a lender whose program advances tax and fees on top of book. Most heavy structures get fixed by a combination rather than one lever. Q: Is loan to value the same as the payment the customer sees? A: No. LTV sets how much a lender will fund against the collateral; the payment comes from the amount financed, the rate and the term. Two deals with the same payment can sit far apart on LTV, which is why a desk works both numbers at once. ### What Is MMS? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-mms MMS, short for Multimedia Messaging Service, is the text message format that carries pictures, video, audio and longer text instead of plain characters. It lands in the same conversation thread as a normal text and needs no app on the customer's phone. For a dealership it is how a photo of the actual vehicle reaches a shopper. #### What does MMS mean in a text message? Multimedia Messaging Service. It is the extension that let text messaging carry something other than characters: a photo, a short video, an audio clip, a contact card, or a body of text too long for the 160 character limit a plain SMS lives under. The message travels over the carrier's data path rather than the plain text channel, but it arrives in the same thread on the same phone, which is why most people have never thought about the distinction at all. Two behaviours surprise businesses that start sending it. The first is compression: carriers shrink media aggressively to keep message sizes small, so a beautiful photograph can arrive soft. The second is group messaging, where a text addressed to several people is usually upgraded to MMS automatically, because plain SMS has no concept of a group thread. The initials turn up in other fields entirely, on ships and in medicine, but in a phone conversation MMS means this and nothing else. Neighbouring terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### Why does MMS matter at a dealership? Because used cars sell on photographs. Say a shopper submits a request on a Thursday evening asking whether the silver crew cab is still available, illustrative example only. A reply that says yes it is, come see it, is a sentence. A reply that says yes, here it is, with three pictures of that exact truck, the bed liner, the odometer and the price, is a walkaround the customer can hold. One of those gets an appointment and the other gets read and put away. The same format carries the rest of a store's daily picture traffic: a photo of the trade the customer is asking about, a window sticker so nobody argues about equipment, a picture of the paperwork a customer needs to bring, a short clip of a start up on a classic. Every one of those is a question answered in a form the customer can forward to whoever is helping them decide, which is usually the real audience for the photo. #### Where do stores get MMS wrong? Three ways, and all three are habits rather than technology. The first is volume: fifteen photos in a row is not a message, it is a flood, and it arrives as fifteen notifications on a phone the customer is holding at work. Two or three of the right pictures with a line of text beat a gallery every time. The second is sending a video too large to travel, which fails quietly and leaves the rep believing the customer ignored them. The third is the expensive one: sending from a personal cell phone. The photo goes out, the customer replies to the rep's own number, and none of it exists anywhere the store can see. When that salesperson leaves, the conversation leaves with them, along with the record of what was promised about the vehicle. A picture message is part of the deal file, and it belongs where the deal file is. #### How does LeadLocate handle MMS? Picture messages are ordinary traffic in the two way texting inbox of LeadLocate CRM. A rep attaches one or several files to a message, the images render inline in the thread on both the desktop and the phone app, and every bubble carries its own delivery status, sent, delivered or failed, so a failed picture is visible rather than assumed. Inbound works the same way: a photo a customer sends back, a picture of a trade or a document, opens in the thread and stays on the lead record. The fastest way to send the right pictures is the vehicle button in the composer. It attaches a unit from the store's inventory with its photos and price already assembled, described on send vehicles by text and walked through in how to send a vehicle in a text. Everything sent or received, text, picture, call, email and voicemail, lands in one communications log on the customer's record, so the manager who asks what did we actually promise this customer gets an answer from a screen instead of a memory. #### MMS, SMS and RCS: which is which? SMS is the plain text message: 160 characters to a segment, no media, delivered to every phone ever made. MMS is the older attachment format that carries a picture, a clip or a long body and compresses media to get it there. RCS is the modern standard that does all of it properly inside the phone's own messaging app, with higher quality images, read receipts and typing indicators where the handset and carrier support it. A store does not need to manage the difference. The right arrangement is one inbox where a rep writes a message and attaches what the customer should see, and a platform that sends each message in the best format the receiving phone can handle. What a sales floor should care about is whether the photo arrived, whether the customer replied, and whether both are on the record afterwards. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the difference between MMS and SMS? A: SMS carries plain text only, in segments of about 160 characters. MMS carries pictures, video, audio, contact cards and longer bodies of text. Both arrive in the same conversation thread on the customer phone, so the customer rarely notices which one was used. Q: Why do pictures sent by MMS look soft? A: Carriers compress media hard to keep message sizes small, so a high resolution photo can arrive looking softer than the original. Sending two or three well chosen images rather than a gallery, and using RCS where the phone supports it, is how a store keeps a vehicle looking like itself. Q: Can customers send pictures back to the dealership? A: Yes. Inbound picture messages open inline in the same thread and stay on the lead record, which is how photos of a trade, a registration or a driver license reach the deal without anyone emailing them around. Q: Is MMS an extra charge on a LeadLocate plan? A: Texting, picture messages and the inbox they live in are part of the platform. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page. ### What Is Negative Equity? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-negative-equity Negative equity means a vehicle is worth less than the amount still owed on its loan or lease. If a trade appraises at 16,000 against a 20,000 payoff, it carries 4,000 of negative equity, illustrative figures only. The difference has to go somewhere: paid in cash, covered by a rebate or discount, or financed into the next loan if the lender allows it. #### What does negative equity mean on a car loan? Take two numbers: what the vehicle is worth today, and what the lender says it would take to close the loan today. When the payoff is larger, the difference is negative equity, and the borrower is upside down or underwater. Positive equity is the same subtraction with the other result, and it is the reason a customer with a paid ahead loan on a scarce truck can walk into a store and get a check. It happens for ordinary reasons, not reckless ones. New vehicles take their steepest depreciation in the first couple of years while an early loan payment is mostly interest, so the two lines cross late. Longer terms make that gap wider and hold it open for longer. A small amount of cash at signing leaves the loan starting near the full purchase price plus taxes and fees, which were never part of the car's value. Financed products add to the balance without adding to the appraisal. And rolling a previous gap into the current loan carries it forward, which is how a customer ends up upside down on a vehicle they bought at a fair price. None of this is a moral failing and a good desk does not treat it as one. It is arithmetic, and the store's job is to find the structure that works or say clearly that this month is not the month. #### How a dealership structures a deal around it The first move is always a current payoff from the lienholder, good through a stated date, usually ten days. The second is a real appraisal, the actual cash value of the trade rather than a hopeful number. Subtract, and the gap is a known figure instead of a worry. From there a desk has five levers. Cash from the customer, which settles it cleanly. Manufacturer rebates and dealer discount on the vehicle being purchased, which absorb part of the gap. Financing the difference into the new contract, which is only possible up to the advance the lender will approve, measured as loan to value against the book value of the new unit. Moving the customer to a less expensive vehicle, which both reduces the payment and leaves room under the advance limit. And, sometimes, advising the customer to keep the car another year, which is the answer that earns the next deal even though it does not book one today. Gap coverage belongs in the conversation too. It protects the customer if the new vehicle is totaled while the balance is still above its value, which is exactly the position rolling a gap forward creates. #### A worked example A customer owes 20,400 on a sedan that appraises at 16,000, so the gap is 4,400. Illustrative figures only. They want a crossover priced at 31,995 with 1,000 of manufacturer rebate available, and their lender program allows an advance of about 120 percent of that unit's book value, which comes to roughly 30,000 on a book of 25,000. Structured straight, the amount financed is the vehicle price, plus taxes and fees, plus the 4,400 carried over, minus the rebate and any cash at signing. That lands above the advance limit, so the deal does not fit as written. Two changes make it work: 2,000 in cash from the customer and 1,500 of discount from the store, which brings the amount financed under the cap and the payment into a range the customer will sign. Same car, same customer, same gap; the difference is that the desk found the ceiling before sending the application rather than after. #### Where these deals fall apart Four things, in order of frequency. A payoff quote that turns out to be a balance rather than a ten day payoff, so the number moves after the customer has signed. A customer who genuinely does not know what they owe, which is why the payoff gets verified rather than estimated. A lender advance limit discovered late, after a delivery has already been promised. And stipulations that arrive with the approval, proof of income, proof of residence, references, which take a day the deal cannot spare. The store that handles negative equity well is simply the store that gets the payoff, the appraisal and the application done early and in writing. Everything after that is arithmetic the desk already knows how to do. #### How LeadLocate is built for these deals SecureWebX takes the credit application online in five steps with a co applicant, income, the trade section and the down payment, e signature and versioned consent, and every field encrypted at rest behind two factor sign in and a full audit log. Worksheets sit next to the application at parity with the desking engine, so the pencil and the credit file are one record. Send to Lender is a code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked share of that application to the lender of your choosing, with a response portal for their decision, and the stipulations workflow tracks each document the approval asks for until it is fulfilled. Applications export to your lender or dealer management system in the format it expects. Your store keeps its own bureau relationship and its own lenders; what the platform does is get a complete, verified file in front of them faster than the customer can change their mind. #### Negative equity, positive equity and the words nearby Upside down and underwater are the same condition in floor language. Positive equity is the opposite, and it is worth hunting deliberately: a store that watches its own sold customers for the month their payoff crosses below their vehicle's value has a list of people who can trade with no gap at all, which is the whole idea behind the equity mining workflow. Loan to value is the ratio a lender uses to cap the advance, and gap coverage is the product that protects the customer when a loan balance sits above a vehicle's value. Consumers searching for negative equity assistance usually find advertising rather than a mechanism. The mechanisms are the ones above, and a store that explains them in plain language beats one that promises to make the gap disappear. The automotive sales glossary defines the rest of the finance vocabulary a customer meets in the same hour. #### Questions and answers Q: Will a dealer pay off negative equity? A: A dealer pays off the loan on your trade, but the gap does not vanish. It is covered by cash, by rebates and discount on the new vehicle, or by being financed into the new contract if the lender approves the advance. Advertising that suggests otherwise is describing one of those three things. Q: Can you sell a car to a dealership if you have negative equity? A: Yes. The store pays the lienholder the full payoff and you pay the difference between that payoff and what the vehicle is worth. Many stores buy vehicles this way without selling you one. Q: What does it mean to be upside down on a car? A: It means the same thing as negative equity: the payoff on your loan or lease is higher than the vehicle is worth today. Q: Does negative equity roll into a new loan automatically? A: Only within the advance a lender will approve, which is set by loan to value against the new vehicle and by the customer's credit profile and payment to income. A desk checks that ceiling before the application goes out. ### What Is OFAC Screening? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-ofac-screening OFAC screening is the check of a customer, business or transaction against the sanctions lists published by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, part of the United States Treasury, including the Specially Designated Nationals list. Every US business is prohibited from dealing with parties on those lists, so a dealership screens the people on a deal before it proceeds. #### What is OFAC screening, and what is on the list? The Office of Foreign Assets Control administers US economic and trade sanctions. It publishes lists of individuals, companies, vessels and governments that US persons may not transact with, the best known being the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list, along with sanctions programs covering whole countries or sectors. Screening is simply the act of comparing the name in front of you, and the identifying details around it, against those lists before money or property changes hands. The obligation is broad and it does not come with a dollar threshold or an industry carve out. It applies to every US person and every US business, which includes a dealership selling a car, taking a trade, wholesaling a unit or shipping a vehicle abroad. Liability for dealing with a sanctioned party does not depend on intent, which is why the check is a step rather than a judgment call. #### Why does a car dealership run an OFAC check? Because a dealership is doing business with strangers in large amounts, quickly, and often on a Saturday. Lenders expect it, examiners ask about it, and a store's own compliance policy usually requires it on retail customers and frequently on wholesale buyers, exporters and business purchasers too. Most dealers know the obligation exists. The hard part has always been making the check happen on every deal and being able to prove afterward that it did. Take an ordinary Wednesday. An application arrives from the store's apply link, the finance manager opens the file, screens the applicant and the co-applicant, and gets a clear result before working the deal toward a lender. The check takes less time than reading this paragraph. What matters as much is that the result is attached to that file, with a record of who ran it and when, so nobody is reconstructing it from memory a year later. #### What happens when a name comes back as a match? Most hits are potential matches rather than true ones, because common names collide. The review is a comparison of identifiers: date of birth, address, country, identification numbers, the spelling and the aliases listed. A store's policy says who reviews, what evidence is compared and who decides, and that policy is written by the store's counsel rather than invented at the desk on a busy night. If a match is real, the obligations are serious and specific: the transaction does not proceed, property may have to be blocked or rejected depending on the program, and reporting follows within the deadlines the sanctions rules set. The screening is not a credit decision and not a background check, and it is not something to explain away because the customer has a deposit ready. Document what was compared and what was decided, and keep the record with the deal. #### Where dealerships get OFAC screening wrong The first mistake is doing it only on cash deals, or only when a lender asks. The obligation attaches to doing business, not to how the deal is funded. The second is the browser tab: someone visits a site, types a name by hand, prints the result and staples it into a deal jacket on the deals where they remembered, which leaves a binder of printouts and no way to answer whether the check ran on the car that delivered at nine on Saturday night. The third is retyping. A name typed by hand into a separate tool gets a letter transposed, and a clean result comes back for a person who was never screened. The fourth is scope: screening the buyer and not the co-applicant, or not screening a business purchaser or the wholesale buyer taking three units off the back lot. Screen the parties to the transaction, from the record that already holds their names. #### How LeadLocate handles OFAC screening The screening runs on the credit application record inside SecureWebX, on the file the finance office is already working. The name checked is the name the applicant entered and signed, not a name retyped into another site, and a co-applicant on the same application is screened from the same file. The result shows on the application, and the audit log records who ran the screening and when, alongside every other action on that file. The OFAC screening feature page covers it in full, and the step by step article shows the screens. It is part of every plan rather than another compliance subscription with its own login and invoice. The decision stays with the store: a potential match is a fact on the file, and what a store does next is the store's OFAC policy, written by its counsel. Records stay under an archive that retains everything, which is what makes the question easy to answer later. #### What OFAC screening is often confused with It is not a credit check, and running one tells you nothing about the other. It is not the identity theft program a store keeps under the Red Flags Rule, although the two often happen on the same file and a fake identity can raise both questions at once. It is not the cash reporting form a store files when a customer pays large amounts in cash, which is a separate obligation with its own thresholds and forms. It is also not a background check in the employment sense, and not a reason to decline someone for a credit reason, which would trigger an adverse action notice instead. The automotive sales glossary defines the rest of the compliance vocabulary a finance office meets in a week. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the purpose of OFAC screening? A: To keep a business from transacting with a person or entity under US sanctions. The lists identify the prohibited parties, and screening compares the names on a transaction against them before the deal goes forward. Q: What information is needed for an OFAC check? A: At minimum the full name of each party to the transaction, with the identifying details that separate a real match from a coincidence: date of birth, address, country and identification numbers. Screening from the signed application is cleaner than retyping a name somewhere else. Q: Do car dealerships have to run OFAC checks? A: The sanctions prohibitions apply to every US business, including dealerships, with no dollar threshold. How a particular store screens, who reviews a potential match and what it documents is set by its own compliance policy and counsel. Q: What should a store do about a potential match? A: Stop and review the identifiers rather than guess, follow the store's written policy on who decides, and do not let the deal proceed while the question is open. If the match is real, blocking and reporting obligations follow, which is a conversation for the store's counsel. ### What Is One Price Selling? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-one-price-selling One price selling is a retail model where every vehicle carries a single posted price, the same for every customer, that is not negotiated. Pricing is set against market comparables by a pricing manager and changed on a schedule instead of at the desk. The trade, the term, the rate and the protection products are still discussed, and stores using the model usually pay a flat per unit rather than a share of front end gross. #### What is one price selling, and is it the same as no haggle? One price selling is a retail model in which every vehicle carries a single posted price that is the same for every customer and is not negotiated. The number is set by whoever owns pricing, usually a used car director or a pricing manager, using market comparables, and it is changed on a schedule rather than at a desk in front of a shopper. The same store still discusses the trade, the term, the rate and the protection products. What it will not do is move the price of the car because someone asked. You will hear the same model called no haggle pricing, upfront pricing, transparent pricing or market based pricing. They are marketing names for the same promise: the price you see online is the price on the window and the price on the worksheet. One price is not the same as a low price, and it is not the same as a fixed profit. It is a commitment about who sets the number and when it changes. Two terms sit close to it. A selling price is simply what a vehicle sells for, negotiated or not. A sticker price on a new car is the manufacturer's suggested retail price on the window sticker, which a one price store may post at, above or below. The model describes the process, not the height of the number. #### How a one price store actually operates Pricing moves from the desk to a schedule. Somebody sits with market data once or twice a week, looks at every unit against the comparable cars listed in the market, and either holds or repositions each price. Units that have been on the lot longest get the hardest look, because in a one price store the only lever left on an aged unit is the posted price itself. The reprice ladder is written in advance so nobody has to defend it in the moment. The floor changes shape too. Without a price negotiation the conversation moves to selection, the demonstration drive, the trade and the delivery, and the time a traditional store spends walking between a customer and a tower goes into showing more vehicles. Pay plans follow: commission on front end gross stops making sense when the salesperson cannot influence it, so one price stores usually pay flats per unit with volume bonuses, customer satisfaction components and back end participation. That changes hiring, because the job now rewards product knowledge and pace instead of negotiation. Gross does not disappear, it relocates. It sits in acquisition, in reconditioning discipline, in the trade, in finance reserve and in protection products. A one price store that prices correctly and buys well can hold more average gross than a negotiating store that discounts its way through the last week of the month. #### A worked example of a one price deal Say a store posts a used crossover at $24,995 and a negotiating store across town posts the same year, trim and mileage band at $26,495. Illustrative figures only. The negotiating store expects to give back $1,200 to $1,800 across a couple of rounds, so both cars end up in roughly the same place, except one customer spent forty minutes getting there and the other did not. The trade is where the real work goes. The one price store still appraises, still shows the customer the actual cash value reasoning, and still has room to be generous or firm. If the customer needs a bigger number on their trade, the store decides whether the deal supports it, exactly as before. What the customer never hears is a different price for the same car depending on how hard they pushed, which is the entire point of the model to the people who choose it. The reprice ladder does the rest. If that crossover is still in stock after thirty days, the schedule says it comes to $24,495, and at sixty days it comes again. Illustrative figures only. The customer who walks in on day sixty is not negotiating a better deal, they are buying at the price the calendar produced. #### Where one price selling breaks The first failure is a price that was never right. One price only works if the number is defensible against the market on the day it is posted, which means somebody has to own repricing and actually do it every week. A store that posts one price and then holds stale numbers has invented a way to sell nothing slowly. The second is the trade turning into the negotiation the store said it had removed. If every appraisal becomes a haggle, the customer has learned the rules are flexible after all, and the promise loses its value. Stores that hold the line explain the appraisal in the open: condition, reconditioning, market supply, and what the vehicle is worth wholesale today. The third is the phone. "Is that your best price" arrives on every call, and a team that has not been trained to answer it in one confident sentence will either back away from the number or quietly offer a discount, and both undo the model. The fourth is advertising that promises one price while third party listings still show an older number, which is a data problem rather than a philosophy problem and is fixed by keeping every surface fed from the same source. #### How LeadLocate keeps one price on every surface One price only reads as credible if the same number appears everywhere a customer looks. Inventory Link holds the store's vehicle data in one place and publishes it to the inventory site it builds, the embeddable widget on any page the store already owns, per salesperson inventory sites and brand offer pages, so a price change lands on every surface at once instead of on four different schedules. The vehicle button inside every text and email composer sends that same unit, photo set and price straight into a conversation. At the table, the desking tool keeps the arithmetic honest: cash, finance and lease structures side by side, a fifty state tax matrix, trade credit and the store's own centralized deal defaults, so the posted price flows through to a worksheet nobody had to retype. The customer opens a branded deal page on their own phone and sees the same figures the manager is looking at, which is the shortest route from a one price policy to a customer who believes it. #### Questions and answers Q: Can you still negotiate at a one price dealership? A: Not on the price of the vehicle. The trade allowance, the loan term, the rate a lender approves, protection products and any manufacturer rebate you qualify for are all still part of the conversation, which is why two customers can buy the same car at the same price and sign very different deals. Q: Do salespeople make less money at a one price store? A: They are paid differently. Commission on front end gross is replaced by a flat per unit with volume bonuses, satisfaction components and back end participation, so income follows pace and product knowledge rather than negotiation. Many stores report steadier pay, which is one reason the model is used to stabilize a roster. Q: What is the difference between selling price and one price? A: Selling price is simply the amount a vehicle sells for, whether it was negotiated or not. One price describes the process: a single posted number that applies to every customer and changes on a schedule set by the store rather than during a conversation. Q: Does one price mean the lowest price? A: No. It is a commitment about how the price is set, not how high or low it is. A one price store still has to be competitive against the comparable vehicles listed in its market, because the posted number is the only thing left to compete with. ### What Is Out the Door Price? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-out-the-door-price The out the door price is the total amount a buyer pays to take a vehicle home: the agreed vehicle price plus sales tax, title, registration and plates, the dealer documentation fee, and any added products, with rebates and trade equity subtracted. It is a single total, not a monthly payment, and it is the number that lets a shopper compare two stores on equal terms. #### What does out the door price include? Six things, in the order they usually appear on a buyer order. The agreed vehicle price after discount. Sales tax, calculated on the taxable amount your state defines, which in many states is reduced by a trade allowance. Title, registration and plate fees, which are state charges the dealership collects and remits. An electronic filing or temporary tag fee where the state has one. The documentation fee, the dealership's own charge for preparing the paperwork, which is capped by law in some states and not in others. And any added products the customer agrees to, such as a service contract, gap coverage or accessories. Then the subtractions: manufacturer rebates the customer qualifies for, any dealer cash being applied, and trade equity when a trade is worth more than its payoff. What the figure does not include is the cost of borrowing. Finance charges accrue over the term of the loan, so a financed buyer pays the out the door price plus interest, and a lease is quoted differently again. Insurance, fuel and anything you buy after you leave are not part of it either. Whether a customer pays cash or finances, the out the door total is the same. Financing splits it into a cash payment at signing and an amount financed; it does not change what the vehicle and its taxes and fees cost. #### A worked example Say a used crossover is advertised at 24,995 and the customer negotiates to 24,200. Illustrative figures only, and every state is different. The store adds a 399 documentation fee and 480 in title, registration and filing fees. Sales tax at 7 percent applies to 24,599, which is 1,722. The customer buys a service contract at 1,495. The out the door total is 28,296. Add a trade worth 9,000 with a 6,500 payoff and the picture changes twice: 2,500 of equity comes off the total, and in a state that taxes the difference, the 9,000 allowance reduces the taxable amount as well, which is worth several hundred more. The customer who asked for an out the door number gets one figure, 25,166, that answers the whole question. The customer who asked only about the monthly payment gets a number that can hide any of those lines. #### Why shoppers ask for it, and why a good store answers fast An internet shopper is comparing three or four stores at once, and advertised prices are not comparable when one store has a 99 documentation fee and another has 899, or when one price assumes rebates the shopper does not qualify for. The out the door number is the only apples to apples comparison available, which is why it has become the standard opening question in an email or a text. Stores that answer it plainly, in writing, and quickly, win a disproportionate share of those shoppers, because the shopper is asking two questions at once: what does this cost, and will you tell me straight. Stores that answer with a payment range, a request to come in, or silence, get compared out of the running by the store that replied in four minutes with a total. The same conversation happens in Spanish at plenty of stores, where the question arrives as precio final; selling in Spanish is its own habit worth building. #### How LeadLocate quotes an out the door number EZ Desking inside LeadLocate CRM builds the total on one screen: cash, finance or lease structures side by side in a multi pencil grid, a fifty state tax matrix so the tax line is right for where the customer registers the car, trade allowance and payoff, fees and add ons, and goal seek bays when the conversation is running backward from a payment. The worksheet prints as a customer sheet that matches the screen to the penny, and the recap can be shared to the customer's phone as a deal page with PIN access and e signature, or texted as a trackable link. When a shopper asks for an out the door price at nine at night, a salesperson can send the real number with the breakdown attached instead of promising to check in the morning. #### What out the door price is often confused with MSRP is the manufacturer's suggested retail price for a new vehicle, before any discount, tax or fee. The sticker price is the window label total, MSRP plus factory options and destination, sometimes with a dealer addendum beside it. Invoice is a number from the manufacturer's paperwork that is widely misunderstood as cost. Cash price usually means the vehicle price without financing, not the total with taxes and fees. And the monthly payment is the result of a term, a rate and an amount financed, which is why two stores can quote the same payment on very different deals. A shopper who wants to compare offers should ask for the out the door total and the term and rate separately. A store that wants to be easy to buy from should give both without being asked. The automotive sales glossary defines the rest of the words that show up in the same message thread. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the out the door price include tax? A: Yes. Sales tax, title, registration and the documentation fee are all part of the out the door total. That is what separates it from the advertised vehicle price. Q: Does out the door price mean cash? A: No. It is the total cost of the purchase whether you pay cash or finance. A financed buyer pays the same total, split into cash at signing and an amount financed, plus the interest that accrues over the term. Q: Is the out the door price negotiable? A: The vehicle price and any optional products are negotiable. State taxes and government title and registration charges are not, and documentation fees are capped by law in some states and set by the dealership in others. Q: Can I ask for an out the door price by text or email? A: Yes, and it is the most useful question you can ask. A store working from a desking worksheet can send a full breakdown to your phone in minutes, which also gives you something in writing to compare against the next store. ### What Is Payment to Income? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-payment-to-income Payment to income, or PTI, is the monthly vehicle payment divided by the applicant's gross monthly income, written as a percentage. Lenders cap it by program, so the ratio decides whether the payment a customer likes is a payment that actually funds. Together with loan to value it shapes every structure a special finance desk builds. #### What does payment to income mean? Payment to income measures the vehicle payment against what the customer earns. The payment is the one that will be on the contract, and on many programs it includes the insurance the lender requires the customer to carry. The income is gross monthly income, before tax and before anything else comes out, and it is gross income the lender can document, which is a much narrower thing than what a customer says they make. The ratio exists because a credit score describes how somebody paid in the past and says nothing about whether the payment in front of them fits this month. A strong file with thin income can be a worse risk on a $700 payment than a rebuilt file with steady hours. Lenders in every tier watch payment to income, and the lower the tier, the harder the cap. #### How do you calculate payment to income? Divide the payment by gross monthly income. Say an applicant grosses $3,800 a month and the pencil comes out at $570. Illustrative figures only. That is 15 percent. If the program caps payment to income at 13 percent, the payment has to land near $494, which is a $76 gap the desk has to find somewhere in the structure. The levers are the usual ones and they fight each other. A longer term lowers the payment and passes the ratio, but it raises loan to value and pushes the customer deeper into negative equity, which the same lender is also watching. More cash lowers both at once, which is why the cash conversation happens early on a subprime file. Adding a co-applicant with documentable income raises the bottom of the fraction instead of squeezing the top, and in a household where two people work it is often the cleanest fix. #### How lenders verify the income behind the number Income counts when it can be proved. Pay stubs covering a recent period, bank statements showing the deposits, a tax return or a profit and loss statement for a self employed applicant, and an award letter for fixed income are the usual evidence, and each of them arrives as a stipulation attached to an approval rather than as a suggestion. Overtime, tips, side work and cash income are exactly where a deal that looked funded on Saturday comes apart on Tuesday. So the order matters. Capture income and employment on the application, ask for the documentation while the customer is still in the store or still holding their phone, and confirm the figure before a structure is built on it. A payment to income ratio calculated on a number nobody has seen evidence of is a guess with a decimal point. #### Where a car deal breaks on payment to income The commonest break is gross against net. A customer quotes take home pay, because that is the number they live on, the salesperson writes it on the worksheet, and the ratio gets built on the wrong figure. Ask for the gross amount and ask how it is paid, because hourly with overtime, salary, commission and self employed income all document differently and a lender treats them differently too. Second is the squeeze. When a file is tight on payment to income and heavy on loan to value at the same time, only a narrow band of structures clears both, and finding it by resubmitting one pencil at a time burns hours and goodwill. Work the two ratios together on the worksheet, decide whether the answer is cash, a different unit or a different program, and go back to the customer once with a structure that funds. #### Where payment to income shows up in LeadLocate The income side arrives with the application. The online credit application collects employment, income, residence and the cash a customer plans to put up, filled in by the customer on their own phone, with a co-applicant on the same file and ITIN as well as social security number applicants supported, so the figure the finance office works from is the one the applicant entered and signed. When an approval comes back with conditions, the stipulations workflow requests the stubs or statements and the customer uploads them to that same record. The payment side sits right beside it. Cash, finance and lease worksheets in SecureWebX match the desking engine in LeadLocate CRM, and a worksheet attaches to the application, so the payment, the income and the documents that support both are one file instead of three systems and a text thread. #### What payment to income is often confused with Debt to income is the wider ratio: every monthly obligation on the credit report plus the new payment, measured against gross income. Payment to income looks only at the vehicle. Lenders often apply both, and a file can clear one and fail the other, usually because a student loan or another auto loan is already there. Loan to value is the collateral ratio and answers a different question entirely. Disposable income, which some programs calculate as income less rent and obligations, is a third test again. The automotive sales glossary covers the rest of the finance vocabulary, and the special finance manager page shows how a store works these files through a week. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a good payment to income ratio? A: Good means inside the cap on the program the deal is submitted to. Caps tighten as the credit tier drops, and some programs count required insurance inside the payment, so the number that matters is the one on the lender's program sheet rather than a rule of thumb from the desk. Q: Is payment to income based on gross or net income? A: Gross on nearly every program, and gross that can be documented. Take home pay is the figure customers know, so ask for the gross amount and how it is paid, then plan on proving it with stubs, bank statements or a return. Q: Does adding a co-applicant lower payment to income? A: It can, because a co-applicant's documentable income is added to the bottom of the ratio. Both people are on the credit and on the contract, so it is a decision the customer makes with the whole picture in front of them. Q: Can a longer term fix a payment to income problem? A: It lowers the payment, which helps the ratio, and it raises loan to value at the same moment. On a tight file the two caps have to be solved together, usually with some combination of cash, unit and program rather than term alone. ### What Is Prescreen vs Prequalify? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-prescreen-vs-prequalify A prescreen is a credit screening a lender or dealer starts against criteria the consumer never asked about, and it must carry a firm offer of credit. A prequalification is consumer initiated: the shopper enters their own information, consents, and sees likely terms without a hard inquiry. Both use soft credit data, and the obligations that follow are nothing alike. #### What is the difference between prescreen and prequalify? Both produce soft credit data, and that is where the similarity ends. A prescreen starts with the dealer or the lender. Criteria are set in advance, a credit bureau returns a list of consumers who meet them, and nobody on that list asked to be on it. Because the consumer never applied, federal credit reporting law permits the screening only when the offer that follows is a firm offer of credit, one the consumer can accept if they still meet the criteria. A prequalification starts with the consumer. The shopper types their own name, address and income, agrees to the terms on the screen, and gets an indication of what a lender is likely to do. The inquiry does not affect their score, the conversation moves from browsing to structure, and nothing has been offered that the store then has to stand behind as an approval. #### What a prescreen requires before the first mailer goes out Three things, and stores get fined for missing them. The screening needs a permissible purpose under credit reporting law, which for a prescreen means the firm offer. The offer has to be genuine, with the criteria kept on file so an examiner can see what was used and that everyone who met them got the offer. And the mailer or the page carries the prescreen opt out notice in the required form, with the number and the website a consumer uses to remove themselves from prescreened offers. Fair lending sits on top of all of it. Criteria may be about credit and never about a prohibited basis such as age, sex, marital status, national origin or the receipt of public assistance. That is also why financing campaigns in the managed webXintel Ads Network never narrow an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP. #### What a prequalification looks like on the floor A shopper on a vehicle page opens the prequalification link, spends two minutes on it, and sees a range instead of a guess. Now a salesperson has something to work with: a realistic payment band, a term, and a sense of which units are in play before anybody walks a lot in the rain. The customer keeps their score intact, which is what they were protecting when they declined to give a social security number to the first store they called. The step from prequalification to application is where the hard inquiry belongs. The customer has picked a vehicle, the structure is real, and they authorize a credit transaction for that deal. In that order the store gets more conversations and the customer collects fewer inquiries, which is what both sides wanted in the first place. #### Where stores get this wrong The commonest mistake is language. A mailer built from a prescreen list gets called a prequalification, or worse an approval, and it promises a payment the store has no way to honor for a consumer who no longer meets the criteria. The second is treating a purchased list as a lead list and texting it, which is a contact rules problem stacked on a credit reporting problem. The third is quieter: a customer who prequalified online believes they are approved, hears otherwise in the finance office, and leaves. The fix is boring and it works. Say prequalification when the consumer started it, say prescreened offer when the store started it, put the firm offer and the opt out notice on anything built from a list, and tell every shopper in plain words what a prequalification is and what it is not. #### How LeadLocate handles the application side The consumer initiated side is the part the platform builds, and it is built well. Branded apply links carry the store's own application, customizable with extra sections, custom fields, document uploads and state specific disclosures, and every submission captures consent against versioned terms with an electronic signature. A co-applicant rides on the same file, ITIN applicants are supported alongside social security numbers, and the completed application lands in the credit application inbox with the whole record intact. The bureau relationship stays the store's own, with the store's bureau credentials held in its own SecureWebX settings, and the store's lenders and counsel set its policy. Soft pull prequalification through the bureau relationship a store chooses is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The soft pull prequalification page walks that program in detail. #### Related terms worth knowing Soft pull against hard pull is the inquiry level version of this distinction, and the two get mixed together constantly, because a prescreen and a consumer prequalification both use soft data, so the inquiry type tells you nothing about which rules apply. A firm offer of credit is the promise that makes a prescreen lawful in the first place. An adverse action notice is what follows when an application is declined or when a prescreened offer is withdrawn after a consumer responds, and it has its own content and timing rules. The automotive sales glossary covers the rest of the finance and compliance vocabulary. #### Questions and answers Q: Is a prequalification the same as an approval? A: No. A prequalification indicates what a lender is likely to do, based on information the consumer supplied and a soft inquiry. An approval comes from a lender after a full application, a hard inquiry and usually stipulations. Saying that plainly up front prevents the argument in the finance office. Q: Does a prescreen hurt a consumer's credit? A: No. A prescreen uses a soft inquiry that other lenders do not see as a rating factor. What a prescreen carries instead is obligation: a firm offer of credit and the opt out notice in the required form. Q: Can a dealership run a prescreen itself? A: A store can arrange one through the bureau or lender relationship it holds, with the criteria documented and the firm offer and disclosures in place. The store's counsel and its bureau agreement decide what it may do and how the list may be used. Q: Which one should a store lead with online? A: Consumer initiated prequalification, because the shopper starts it, keeps their score and hands the store real information. Prescreened offers are a mailing program with their own rules, run alongside rather than instead. ### What Is RCS Messaging? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-rcs-messaging RCS, short for Rich Communication Services, is the messaging standard that succeeds SMS on modern phones. It carries long text, sharp images, buttons, read receipts and typing indicators inside the phone's own messaging app, with nothing for the consumer to install. For a dealership it means a vehicle photo that looks like a photo instead of a blurry attachment. #### What does RCS messaging mean? It means the phone's regular text thread grew up. SMS was designed for 160 characters of plain text and nothing else; anything richer had to be bolted on as MMS, which compressed pictures until they looked like a photocopy. RCS replaces that plumbing. A message can run long without being chopped into segments, an image arrives at something close to its real resolution, the sender can be a verified business with a name and a logo instead of a bare number, and the conversation supports the behaviours people expect from a chat app: typing indicators, read receipts, higher quality group threads. The important part for a business is where it lives. RCS is not an app. It runs inside the messaging app already on the phone, in the same thread as the customer's plain texts, which is why a store does not have to persuade anyone to install anything. Both major phone platforms now support it in their built in messaging app, and support is decided by the handset and the carrier together. Related messaging terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### What does a customer actually see? A customer with a phone and carrier that support RCS sees a message thread that looks like the ones they have with their friends. A sedan a salesperson sent shows up as a clean image they can open, not as a grainy attachment. A long message about what is included in a certified warranty arrives as one message rather than three fragments arriving out of order. If the store sends through a verified business sender, the thread carries the store's name at the top rather than a ten digit number the customer does not recognize. A customer whose phone or carrier does not support RCS sees a normal text. That is the part that matters more than any feature in the list, because a dealership's customer base is not a demonstration. Some share of any list is on a handset that handles plain SMS and nothing else, and a system that only speaks RCS either loses those messages or makes the rep keep two lists and guess which one a customer belongs on. Automatic fallback makes the question disappear. #### How does a dealership use RCS? The same way it uses texting, with better material. Say a salesperson is working twelve internet leads on a Tuesday and eight of those customers are on phones that handle RCS, illustrative figures only. She sends each of them the unit they asked about with three photos and the price. On the eight RCS phones the photos render crisply in the thread and she can see when the message was read. On the other four the same message goes as a standard text with the pictures attached. She sent one message from one screen; she did not choose a format, and no customer noticed there was a choice. The practical gain is not novelty, it is a shopper looking at the actual car instead of a description of it. A used vehicle sells on its photos, and a message that renders them properly is closer to a walkaround than a paragraph will ever be. The second gain is confidence: read receipts tell a rep whether a follow up landed, which is better information than silence. #### How does LeadLocate handle RCS? LeadLocate CRM sends RCS with automatic SMS fallback, per message and per handset, from the same two way texting inbox a rep uses all day. There is no RCS menu and no second list. The rep types, attaches a vehicle with the vehicle button, and the platform decides the format the customer's phone can receive. The bubble carries a delivery status either way, and the message sits in the lead's communications log next to the calls, emails and voicemails, so a manager reading a thread top to bottom does not need a legend to follow it. The detail is on RCS messaging with SMS fallback, and sending one is walked through in how to send an RCS message. Consent works the same for a rich message as for a plain one. A stop keyword opts the customer out whatever format their reply arrived in, a help keyword gets a reply that identifies the store, and the Do Not Call Blacklist hides an opted out contact from every list the store can build. A better looking message is not a new permission, and treating it that way is how a store keeps its texting welcome. #### RCS, SMS and MMS: what is the difference? SMS is plain text, 160 characters to a segment, delivered by the carrier to any phone that has ever existed. MMS is the older way to attach a picture, a short video or a longer body to a text, and it compresses media hard. RCS is the modern standard that does all of it properly inside the phone's own messaging app, where support exists. A chat app is a fourth thing entirely: it needs both parties to install it, which makes it a poor fit for reaching a customer who filled out a lead form twenty minutes ago. For a store the ranking is simple. Send from one inbox, let the platform pick RCS when the phone can take it and SMS or MMS when it cannot, and judge the channel by replies rather than by format. A customer answering a question about a vehicle is the outcome; how their handset rendered the photo is a detail the software should own. #### Questions and answers Q: Is RCS the same as SMS? A: No. SMS is the original plain text standard, limited to short segments and no real media. RCS is the newer standard that carries long text, high quality images, buttons, read receipts and typing indicators in the same messaging app, where the handset and carrier support it. Q: Does a customer need an app to receive RCS? A: No. RCS runs inside the messaging app already on the phone, in the same thread as their other texts. Both major phone platforms support it in their built in messaging app, so there is nothing for a dealership to ask a customer to install. Q: What happens if a customer's phone does not support RCS? A: The message is delivered as a standard text instead. In LeadLocate that fallback is automatic and happens per message and per handset, so a rep sends once and every customer gets a format their phone understands. Q: Does RCS change the rules about texting customers? A: No. A richer message is still a message to a consumer, so the same consent, the same stop keyword handling and the same internal do not call list apply exactly as they do to plain texts. ### What Is Reconditioning? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-reconditioning Reconditioning, usually shortened to recon, is the work a dealership does to a used vehicle between acquiring it and putting it up for sale: a safety and mechanical inspection, the repairs that inspection calls for, cosmetic work, a full detail and photographs. The cost is added to the vehicle's cost basis, so it directly changes the gross on the eventual deal. #### What does reconditioning mean at a car dealership? When a store buys a car, whether from a customer's trade, an auction, a lease return or a street purchase, the car is not ready to sell. Recon is the process that makes it ready. It ends at a single milestone everybody in the building recognizes: front line ready, the moment the unit is priced, photographed, published and parked where a customer can walk up to it. Two numbers describe the process. Recon cost is what the store spent, and it lands on the cost side of the car along with what was paid for it, so a 900 recon bill is 900 less gross unless the price carries it. Time to line is how many days passed between acquisition and front line ready, and those days are pure carrying cost, since the car is depreciating and financed while no shopper can find it. The word travels. People recondition batteries, sports teams recondition rosters, and equipment vendors sell reconditioned units. In a dealership it means one thing only: getting a used vehicle ready for retail sale. A car that has been reconditioned is not restored, and it is not remanufactured; it has been inspected, repaired to the store's standard and cleaned to retail condition. #### What actually happens between acquisition and the front line The sequence is roughly the same everywhere. The vehicle is checked in and a stock number is assigned. A technician performs a multi point safety and mechanical inspection and writes an estimate. A used car manager approves the work, and this is the moment that decides the car's profitability: approve everything and the gross disappears, approve too little and the unit gets returned by an unhappy customer or fails the next inspection. Then the work happens in parallel where a good shop can manage it. Mechanical repairs and maintenance. Tires and brakes if they are below the store's standard. Cosmetic work: paintless dent repair, wheel refinishing, glass chips, interior repair. Finally the detail, which is the step customers judge the entire store by, and the photographs, which are the step search engines and shoppers judge the car by. Only then does the unit get priced and published to the website and the listing sites. #### A worked example Say a store takes a three year old crossover on trade at an actual cash value of 14,000. Illustrative figures only. Inspection finds two tires at the wear bars, rear brakes, a windshield chip and a scuffed bumper, and the detail department needs four hours in the interior. The bill comes to 1,250, so the car's cost is 15,250. Priced at 17,995 and sold at 17,500, the front end gross is 2,250 before any pack. Now change the timing rather than the money. If that work takes four days, the car lists on day five and sells inside the turn target with the gross intact. If it takes seventeen days because the estimate sat unapproved over a weekend and a part was back ordered, the car lists on day eighteen already a third of the way to being an aged unit, and the first price cut arrives before it was ever really for sale. Time to line is the expensive half of reconditioning, and it is the half most stores measure least. #### Where reconditioning quietly costs a store money Four patterns come up again and again. Estimates that wait for an approval nobody owns. Internal work priced at retail rates, which moves profit from the used department to the service department and makes every appraisal look worse than it is. A detail and photo step that happens last and slips first, so cars sit finished but unlisted. And no written standard, which leaves each manager approving a different amount of work on the same kind of car. Stores that run recon well tend to do three unglamorous things: they set a target time to line and post actual days beside it, they write down what gets fixed on which class of vehicle, and they treat photographs as part of reconditioning rather than as marketing. The dealership reconditioning software page covers how stores track that workflow step by step. #### What a reconditioning fee means on a customer's paperwork Shoppers meet the word in three places. On a used vehicle purchase, some stores show a reconditioning line on the buyer order describing the work done to that specific car, while most simply build the cost into the asking price. On a lease return, a reconditioning charge is the lessor's bill for wear beyond the contract's allowance, which is set by the lease agreement, not by the store. On a rental or fleet disposal, the same phrase covers making a unit sale ready. What is permitted on a retail document varies by state, and a dealership's own counsel and its lenders set its policy. The plain answer for a customer who asks is the true one: reconditioning is what the dealership spent making the car safe and presentable, and whether it appears as a line or inside the price, it is part of what the vehicle costs. #### Where LeadLocate fits around the recon process Repair orders, technician time and parts stay in your dealer management system, which is where that work belongs. The platform picks the car up at both ends of recon. At the front, trade in capture in LeadLocate CRM scans the VIN, decodes the unit and holds the appraisal photos and the customer record on the same deal, so the car arrives with its history attached. At the back, lot walk and photo intake sends photos from a phone, and Inventory Link publishes the finished unit to your listing site, your embeddable widget and the vehicle button inside every text and email composer the same day it hits the line. The faster a car goes from front line ready to in front of a shopper, the less reconditioning costs you. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a reconditioning fee on a car? A: On a used purchase it is a line some stores use to show what was spent making that specific vehicle sale ready; most stores include the cost in the price instead. On a lease return it is the lessor's charge for wear beyond the contract allowance. State rules and lender policy govern what may appear on the paperwork. Q: Is a reconditioned car the same as a restored or refurbished car? A: No. Reconditioning brings a used vehicle up to a dealership's retail standard: inspected, repaired where needed, cleaned and photographed. Restoration rebuilds a vehicle, usually a classic, well beyond its selling condition. Q: How long should reconditioning take? A: Each store sets its own target and measures actual days against it. The useful discipline is tracking time to line per unit, because every day in recon is a day the vehicle is carried, depreciating and invisible to shoppers. Q: Does reconditioning cost get added to the sale price? A: It is added to the vehicle's cost, which the asking price has to carry along with everything else. Whether the customer sees it as a separate line or inside the price depends on the store and on state rules. ### What Is Regulation B? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-regulation-b Regulation B is the rule that implements the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. It prohibits discrimination in any part of a credit transaction on a prohibited basis such as race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age or the receipt of public assistance, and it requires a creditor to notify an applicant of the action taken on an application. #### What is Regulation B, and what does it cover? Regulation B carries the Equal Credit Opportunity Act into practice. It reaches every stage of a credit transaction, not only the decision: advertising and who is encouraged to apply, how an application is taken, what may be asked, how income is evaluated, the decision itself, the notice that follows, and the records kept afterward. A creditor is anyone who regularly extends or arranges credit, which is a description of a car dealership that takes credit applications and sends them to lenders. Two obligations do most of the day to day work. First, treat applicants consistently and evaluate them on creditworthiness rather than on a prohibited basis. Second, answer every application: an applicant is entitled to know what happened, and on a denial, the principal reasons why. #### Does Regulation B apply to a car dealership? Yes, in the ordinary case. A store that takes a credit application, structures a deal and arranges financing is participating in a credit transaction, and the rule follows the activity rather than the sign on the building. It applies to the application a customer fills in at the desk, the one they complete on a phone at midnight, the one a salesperson takes over the phone, and the one a lead form starts and a finance manager finishes. Scope has a practical consequence a lot of stores miss. Discouraging an applicant counts. Telling a customer on public assistance income that there is no point applying, or steering a customer to a different store because of an assumption about them, is a Regulation B problem before any decision has been made and before anyone has filled in a form. #### What Regulation B requires day to day Notice of action taken is the rule most visible at a dealership: generally within thirty days of a completed application, with the principal reasons on a denial, which is the adverse action notice. Income rules matter just as much: income from public assistance, part time work, alimony, child support or a pension counts, to the extent it is verifiable and likely to continue, and it may not be discounted because of its source or because of the applicant's age or sex. The marital status rules trip up finance offices more than any other part. A creditor may not require a spouse to sign if the applicant qualifies on their own for the amount and terms requested, and may not ask about marital status outside the circumstances the rule permits. Record retention is the quiet one: applications and the records of action taken are kept for the period the rule sets, which is twenty five months for consumer credit, so a store's filing habits are part of its compliance. #### Where a dealership runs into Regulation B The dead deal pile is the usual place. Applications that were worked and then abandoned are still applications, and an applicant who never heard anything never got the notice the rule promised. Inconsistency is the second: the same file worked differently depending on who was on the desk that night, which is a fair lending problem the moment a pattern shows up in the records. Marketing is the third, and it is the least expected. Regulation B reaches who is invited to apply, so a financing campaign that narrows an audience by a prohibited basis is a problem even if every decision afterward was clean. A store that writes down its criteria, treats every application the same way, answers all of them and keeps the records has already done most of what the rule asks. #### How LeadLocate handles the Regulation B paperwork The paperwork side is built into the credit application system. Every application arrives on one record in the credit application inbox with its status, its assignee and its history, so an abandoned file is visible as an application waiting for an outcome rather than a memory. When a decision goes against the applicant, the notice is generated from that record and stays on it, with an audit log of who did what and when and an archive that retains every record for as long as a store's retention policy needs. State specific disclosures and the store's privacy notice and terms are edited in one place and applied to every application through the disclosures editor. On the marketing side, financing campaigns run by our team from the selections a store makes in Leads Manager and in the managed webXintel Ads Network are built under fair lending rules, and never narrow an audience by age, gender, income, marital status, household size, education, language or ZIP. What a store's own policy says, and which reasons its notices state, stay with the store's counsel. #### Regulation B, Regulation Z and the credit reporting rules Three rule sets touch the same deal and get confused constantly. Regulation B is fair lending and the notice of action taken. Regulation Z is Truth in Lending: the disclosures about the amount financed, the finance charge, the annual percentage rate and the payment schedule, plus the advertising rules about triggering terms. The Fair Credit Reporting Act governs the credit report itself, the permissible purpose behind a pull, the risk based pricing and credit score disclosures, and the bureau identification on an adverse action notice. A dealership meets all three on one deal, which is why the adverse action notice reads like two rules speaking at once: it is. The automotive sales glossary defines the neighboring terms, and the store's counsel and its lenders decide how its policy applies them. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the purpose of Regulation B? A: To make credit decisions turn on creditworthiness instead of on who the applicant is, and to make sure an applicant is told what happened to the application. It implements the Equal Credit Opportunity Act across advertising, application taking, evaluation, notice and recordkeeping. Q: Does Regulation B apply to car dealers? A: It applies to creditors, and a dealership that regularly takes credit applications and arranges financing is participating in credit transactions. The rule follows the activity, so it covers applications taken at the desk, over the phone and online. Q: How long must a dealership keep credit applications? A: For consumer credit the rule sets twenty five months for applications and records of the action taken. A store's own counsel may set a longer period, and lender agreements and state law can add requirements on top. Q: Can a dealership require a spouse to co-sign? A: Not when the applicant qualifies on their own for the amount and terms requested. There are circumstances where a signature from another party is permitted, and they are narrow, which is why a store's policy on this is worth writing down before the question comes up on a busy night. ### What Is Residual Value? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-residual-value Residual value is what a leasing company says a vehicle will be worth at the end of a lease, set in advance as a percentage of sticker price for a given term and mileage allowance. It is the buyout price at maturity, and it decides how much depreciation the lease charges, so a higher residual means a lower payment. #### What does residual value mean on a lease? When a leasing company writes a lease, it has to decide what the vehicle will be worth when the customer brings it back. That figure is the residual value, and it is published in advance as a percentage of sticker price for each term and mileage allowance: so many points at 24 months and 10,000 miles a year, fewer at 36 months and 15,000. It is fixed before anyone negotiates, and it is also the price written into the contract as the customer's option to buy the vehicle at the end. Residual does two jobs at once. It sets how much of the vehicle's value the customer is paying for during the term, because a lease charges depreciation from the capitalized cost to the residual. And it sets the buyout, which is what makes lease returns one of the most predictable sources of clean used inventory a store has. #### How a residual is set and why it moves the payment Leasing companies publish residual grids, built from history, forecasting and how well a model has held value. A brand with a reputation for holding value residuals higher and leases cheaper as a result. More miles means more wear and a lower residual; a longer term means more depreciation consumed during the lease, so the residual percentage falls as the term stretches. Manufacturers sometimes support a residual above what the market would say, which makes a promoted lease payment attractive without discounting the vehicle. The residual is not negotiable. That surprises shoppers who expect everything on a car deal to be, and it is worth explaining early, because it focuses the conversation on the number that is negotiable: the capitalized cost. A store that leads with that keeps the deal honest and short. #### A worked example, illustrative figures only Say a vehicle stickers at $40,000 on a 36 month lease, illustrative figures only. At a 57 percent residual the vehicle books out at $22,800 at maturity, so the lease charges $17,200 of depreciation over 36 months, about $477.78 a month before the rent charge and tax. Support that residual up to 62 percent and the buyout becomes $24,800, the depreciation drops to $15,200, and the same piece of the payment falls to about $422.22. Nothing about the vehicle changed. The price did not move, the customer's credit did not move, and the payment fell by fifty five dollars a month because one published percentage was different. That is why two similar vehicles from two brands can lease for very different money at the same price. #### Where residual value turns into opportunity at lease end At maturity the vehicle has a contract value, the residual, and a real value, whatever the market says that week. When the market value is higher, the difference is equity and it belongs to whoever acts first. The customer can buy the vehicle, sell it, or trade it. The store can buy the lease out and put a one owner, known history, service records unit straight onto its own front line, which beats an auction run on price and condition both. Getting there is a timing exercise rather than a mystery. A maturing lease list is a call list with a date on it, and the stores that work it early own the customer's next deal. Working a list like that is ordinary follow up, done consistently, before the manufacturer's own retention mail arrives. #### How LeadLocate handles lease math and lease maturity The math lives in EZ Desking inside LeadLocate CRM, where cash, finance and lease structures are written in one place with a fifty state tax matrix, three lease tax methods and a multi pencil grid with goal seek bays, so a manager can hold a payment and solve around the residual and the term instead of rebuilding a worksheet. The customer sees the same structure on a branded deal page with e-signature and revision history, and the print packet carries payment ranges and a finance breakdown. The maturity side is ordinary CRM work done properly. Follow Up Processes run multi step text and email drips per lead type, Automated Templates cover the inbound side, the calendar books the appointment and every call, text and email lands in one communications log on the customer record. A store that wants a maturity list turned into a campaign can also build one in Leads Manager, and lease maturity marketing campaigns covers that play in full. #### Residual value in other contexts The term travels. In accounting, residual value is the salvage value of an asset at the end of its useful life, the figure depreciation schedules run toward, which is the same idea applied to a balance sheet rather than a lease contract. Residual value insurance protects a party holding a portfolio of leases against those end of term values coming in short. Residual value risk is that exposure described in one phrase. In a dealership the word almost always means the leasing company's published number, and the neighboring lease terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: Is residual value negotiable? A: No. The leasing company publishes it by term and mileage before the deal starts, and it goes into the contract as the buyout. The capitalized cost is the part of a lease that is actually negotiated. Q: What happens if the car is worth more than the residual at lease end? A: The difference is equity. The customer can buy the vehicle at the contract price and keep the gain, apply it to the next deal, or let the dealership buy the lease out and put the unit on its own front line. Q: Does the mileage allowance change the residual value? A: Yes. A higher mileage allowance lowers the residual, which raises the depreciation the lease has to charge and raises the payment. That is why a 15,000 mile lease costs more than a 10,000 mile lease on the same vehicle. Q: Is residual value the same thing in accounting? A: It is the same idea with a different job. In accounting, residual value is the salvage value an asset is depreciated toward. On a lease it is a contractual number that sets both the payment and the buyout price. ### What Is Ringless Voicemail? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-ringless-voicemail Ringless voicemail is a recorded message delivered straight to a mobile voicemail box without the phone ringing. The recipient sees a voicemail notification and listens whenever they want, instead of taking a call. Dealerships use it to reach a list of past customers with a short message in one pass, without tying up the floor. #### How does ringless voicemail work? The message is delivered into the voicemail system rather than through a ringing call, so the handset never lights up mid dinner. The recipient gets the notification they get for any missed message, opens it when they have a minute, and hears a recording the business made once. From the business side it is a list and an audio file: pick the numbers, pick the recording, send, and the delivery happens in the background while the sales floor does something else. The recording is the whole product. Thirty seconds is long; twenty is better. A good one names the person, names the store, says exactly one thing worth calling back about, and gives a number the customer can actually reach. A bad one sounds like an advertisement read from a page, and it gets deleted at the same speed as every other advertisement. Related outreach terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### What does a dealership use it for? Messages a customer is glad to get and would not have answered a call to hear. Say a store wants to reach 400 past customers about a trade offer on a model it is short of, illustrative figures only. Four hundred outbound calls is two people for a day and a half, and most of them ring out anyway. One recording sent to the same 400 takes a few minutes, reaches every voicemail box, and the store spends its day answering the ones who call back rather than dialing the ones who never will. The other steady uses are a service due reminder, a follow up to a group that visited during a weekend event, a note to unsold showroom traffic from last month, and a message to a list of owners whose lease is maturing. The pattern is the same in each case: the message is information the customer can act on, the callback number reaches a person, and the store is measuring returned calls rather than plays. Outreach like this pairs with the follow up on bulk texting, because the customers who prefer to read rather than listen are in the same list. #### Is ringless voicemail legal? It is regulated the same way calling is, under the TCPA and the telemarketing rules built on top of it. Regulators have taken the position that a message delivered into a voicemail box is a call for consent purposes, and courts have largely read it that way too, so the fact that the handset never rang does not create a separate category. The workable rule for a dealership is that there is no shortcut to learn: treat a voicemail drop exactly as you treat a phone call. Use the permission you already have, honor the store's internal do not call list, respect the national registry the same way, and keep the record of what was sent and to whom. Stores that operate this way find the question stops being interesting. Messages go to customers the store has a relationship with, every opt out is honored the moment it arrives, and every send is on file. A store's own counsel and its management decide where its lines sit, and the software's job is to make sure the lines hold without anyone on the floor having to remember them. #### How does LeadLocate handle voicemail drops? LeadLocate CRM keeps a library of Voicemail Drop Files, recorded in the browser or over the phone, or uploaded as audio a store produced elsewhere. Marketing Tools on the dock has Voicemail Drops, which delivers a chosen recording to a Voicemail Recipients list straight to voicemail, with a history of every send. The same library serves the salesperson on a live call: when the far end rolls to voicemail, one button leaves the saved recording and the rep is already dialing the next number. That is covered on voicemail drop, with the click by click on how to drop a voicemail. Consent handling is built into the same place the list is built. A contact on the Do Not Call Blacklist is hidden from every recipient list a store can assemble, so an opted out customer cannot end up in a send by accident, and each drop is written to the customer's communications log beside the calls, texts and emails. The marketing side of the subject, campaign ideas and what to record, is on ringless voicemail marketing for dealerships. #### Ringless voicemail, voicemail drop or robocall? A voicemail drop is the broader term for leaving a prepared recording rather than improvising one, and most salespeople meet it first on a live call that went to voicemail. Ringless voicemail is the list version of the same idea: the recording goes to many boxes at once and no phone rings. A robocall is different in kind, because it places an actual call and plays a recording to whoever picks up, which is what most people mean when they complain about automated calls. The practical difference for a store is the customer's experience. A drop leaves something to listen to at a convenient moment. A robocall interrupts. That is also why a drop pairs so naturally with a text: the voicemail carries the tone of voice and the text carries the link, and between them the customer has a reason and a way to respond without calling the store back at all. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the customer phone ring? A: No. The recording is delivered into the voicemail box, so the customer sees a voicemail notification and listens when it suits them rather than taking a call. Q: Is ringless voicemail legal for a dealership? A: It is treated the way a call is treated for consent purposes, so a store uses the same permission, honors the same internal do not call list and keeps the same record. A store sets its own policy with its counsel, and the platform keeps opted out contacts out of every recipient list. Q: How long should the recording be? A: Twenty seconds beats thirty. Name yourself, name the store, give one concrete reason to call back and a number that reaches a person. A recording that sounds like an advertisement gets deleted like one. Q: Can a salesperson drop a voicemail on a normal call? A: Yes. When a call from the softphone rolls to voicemail, one button leaves a saved recording and the rep moves to the next number, and the drop is logged on the customer record as a voicemail rather than as a mystery call. ### What Is Round Robin Lead Distribution? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-round-robin-lead-distribution Round robin lead distribution assigns incoming leads to salespeople one at a time in a fixed rotation, so each rep receives the next lead in turn. It replaces the scramble for whoever is nearest the screen and the manager assigning by hand, and it makes both the order and the workload visible to the whole floor. #### What does round robin mean? The phrase is borrowed from a tournament where everybody plays everybody, and it keeps the same sense here: everybody in turn, in order, back to the top. A list of reps is in the rotation, a lead arrives, the next rep on the list gets it, and the pointer moves along one place. When it reaches the end it goes back to the beginning. That is the whole mechanism, and its virtue is that nobody has to decide anything at the moment a lead lands, which is the moment when the store can least afford a decision. Round robin is one of a handful of distribution methods a store can choose. Shotgun sends a lead to everyone at once and the fastest rep claims it. Hand assignment leaves it with a manager. Skill based routing sends leads by product, language or experience. Round robin sits in the middle: mechanical, predictable and fair by construction. Related terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### How does it play out on a dealership floor? Say five salespeople are in the rotation and 20 internet leads come in on a Tuesday, illustrative figures only. Each rep gets four. Nobody gets the good ones because they sat closest to the desk, nobody gets eleven because the manager likes them, and nobody can claim at the end of the month that they were starved. The rep who gets the lead is notified on their phone, the lead has an owner within a second of arriving, and the clock on the response time starts against a person rather than against the store in general. That last part is why most stores adopt it. A lead with no owner is a lead nobody is embarrassed about, and unowned leads are where response time goes to die. The rotation makes ownership automatic. The manager's job shifts from deciding who gets what to watching what each owner does with their share, which is a far better use of a manager, and the difference between a five minute response and a fifty minute one is worth more than any argument about who deserves the next one. #### Where does a plain rotation need help? In four places every store eventually runs into. Availability: the rotation should skip the rep who is off today and the one who left in March, or a quarter of the store's leads are sitting on a screen nobody opens. Fit: a Spanish speaking customer and a fleet inquiry both want a particular person, not the next one in line. Capacity: a rep already working thirty live conversations is not the best home for the thirty first. And accountability: a lead that is assigned and then ignored needs to come back into play rather than age quietly. Stores solve these with rules on top of the rotation rather than by abandoning it. Distribution lists put the right group of reps behind a given source. Routing rules send a source, a brand or a rooftop to the people who handle it. Notifications make an assignment impossible to miss. Once those are in place the rotation does what it is good at, which is deciding the ordinary case instantly and without argument. #### How does LeadLocate handle round robin? LeadLocate CRM assigns leads in a round robin across the users a store chooses, and the same rotation is available on the shared calendar so appointments are spread the same way leads are. Lead distribution rules and distribution lists decide which group of reps a given source feeds, and the assignment happens when the lead arrives rather than when somebody gets around to it. The feature is described on round robin lead assignment and set up in a few clicks in how to set up round robin. For a group, routing rules work per rooftop, so a lead for one store goes to that store's people and shows up on the group's reporting all the same, covered on multi rooftop lead routing. The rep who receives a lead gets a notification on the phone app and on the desktop, the lead is theirs on every screen, and every text, call and email that follows sits on that customer record for the manager to read. The comparison shopping version of this subject, what to look for in a system, is on CRM with round robin lead distribution. #### Round robin, shotgun or skill based routing? Shotgun distribution sends every lead to every rep and lets the fastest one take it. It produces quick first responses and a floor that learns to fight, and the reps who lose the race stop trying. Skill based routing sends a lead to whoever is qualified for it, which is right for specialized inventory and awkward for a store where everybody sells everything. Hand assignment gives a manager total control and makes the manager the bottleneck at exactly the wrong moment. Round robin is the default most stores land on because it is predictable, it is defensible in a pay plan conversation, and it can be modified rather than replaced: put the right people in the rotation, let rules handle the exceptions and let the turn handle the rest. A store that wants a different behaviour altogether, weighting the rotation by performance or by how many live conversations a rep already has, can have it: that is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. #### Questions and answers Q: What does round robin mean in lead distribution? A: It means leads are handed out one at a time in a fixed rotation. The next lead goes to the next rep on the list, and when the list runs out the rotation starts again at the top, so every salesperson gets a turn without anyone deciding in the moment. Q: Is round robin fair to a top salesperson? A: It is equal, which is not the same thing. Stores that want their best closers on particular sources use distribution lists and routing rules to put the right group behind that source, then let the rotation handle the order inside it. Q: What happens if a rep is off that day? A: They should be out of the rotation, because a lead assigned to somebody who is not working is a lead nobody answers. In LeadLocate a store chooses which users are in the rotation, and routing rules decide which group a source feeds. Q: Does round robin work across multiple rooftops? A: Yes. Routing rules work per rooftop, so leads for one store go to that store people while a group still sees everything on one set of reporting. ### What Is Special Finance? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-special-finance Special finance is the department and the process a dealership uses to place buyers with damaged, thin or complicated credit with the lenders that buy those deals. The desk interviews the customer, takes a complete application, structures the deal to a specific lender program, and works the approval and its stipulations through to funding. #### What is special finance at a dealership? Special finance is the department, and the process, a dealership uses to place customers with damaged, thin or complicated credit with the lenders that buy those deals. It is a job title, a desk, a set of lender relationships and a way of working a deal, and at a well run store it is the part of the business that turns applications other stores decline into delivered cars. The vocabulary around it is loose. A store may call the same desk special finance, credit challenged, second chance financing or simply the SF desk. What it always means in practice is somebody whose whole day is spent matching an applicant to a lender program: knowing which of the store's lenders wants a first time buyer, which one is comfortable with a discharged bankruptcy, which one will advance more on a late model unit, which one wants proof of income before it will look, and in what order to send them. That is the useful distinction to hold on to. Subprime describes the loan. Special finance describes how a dealership handles it. Related terms are collected in the automotive sales glossary. #### How a special finance desk works a deal It starts with an interview rather than a car. A good special finance manager learns the income and how it is documented, time at the job and the address, what the customer can put into the deal, who else can be on the loan, what happened on the credit file and when, and what the customer is currently paying for transportation. Only then does anyone talk about a vehicle, because the vehicle has to fit the program that will approve the deal. Then the full credit application goes in, complete, with references and income documentation attached rather than promised. The desk structures the deal to a specific lender's rules, sends it in the right order, and works the approval that comes back: the advance cap, the term, the payment to income limit and the stipulation list. Illustrative figures only, a lender might approve $17,500 total advance at 66 months with a payment near $370 a month against $3,600 of verified monthly income, and want two pay stubs, a utility bill and five references before it funds. The store then finds the unit that fits inside those numbers, delivers, and clears the stips the same day. The desking half of that loop, building and comparing structures until the payment and the advance both work, is covered on the desking tool page. #### What separates a special finance department that produces Four things separate a special finance department that produces from one that just exists. The first is lender spread: a store with three lenders declines deals that a store with nine delivers, and that is a management decision, not a market condition. The second is speed, because credit challenged shoppers apply everywhere at once and the store that comes back first with a real structure usually gets the customer. The third is document discipline. These deals live and die on verification, so a desk that collects income and residence proof during the interview rather than after the delivery funds contracts a week earlier than one that does not. The fourth is compliance built into the routine and treated as a strength: an adverse action notice with real reasons when an application is declined, as Regulation B requires, OFAC screening, a Red Flags program for identity discrepancies, and the Safeguards Rule protections around the customer data the store just collected. Payment packing and creative income belong nowhere near this desk, because both produce an unwind and a customer who tells everyone. Where the traffic comes from is the other half of the equation, which is the subject of special finance auto leads. #### How LeadLocate handles special finance The platform runs the special finance desk end to end up to the lender decision. Credit challenged shoppers arrive as leads that belong to one store in one zone, prescreened at capture and backed by a replacement review, so the desk is working its own customers rather than a list four other stores already called. A branded apply link turns the interview into a complete application on the customer's phone, with income, deposit, trade, co-applicant and document uploads, and the application lands in a pipeline with a status, an owner and a note history. From there the desk builds structures, attaches a worksheet, tracks the stipulation list and shares the finished application with the lender it chooses through a code gated, expiring, watermarked link. The role view of all of it is on the page for special finance managers. #### What special finance is often confused with The biggest confusion is with the phrase special financing in retail advertising, which usually means a promotional rate offered through a manufacturer's finance arm to the best credit tiers. That promotion is the opposite end of the credit spectrum from a special finance department, and the two share nothing but a word. Special finance is also not buy here pay here. A special finance desk places the contract with an outside lender that funds the deal; a buy here pay here store keeps the note. And it is not a promise of approval: the desk's job is to find the lender whose program fits the applicant, and some applications still come back declined, which is exactly when the adverse action notice matters. #### Questions and answers Q: Is special financing the same as subprime? A: They describe different things. Subprime is the credit profile and the loan priced against it. Special finance is the dealership function that places those loans with lenders. Most special finance deals are subprime, but the words are not interchangeable. Q: What does a special finance manager do? A: Interviews the customer, takes a complete application, knows every lender program the store has access to, structures the deal to the one that fits, sends the applications in the right order and clears the stipulations so the contract funds. Q: What should a customer bring to a special finance appointment? A: Identification, recent pay stubs or proof of income, a utility bill or lease showing the address, proof of insurance, references with working phone numbers, and whatever they intend to put toward the deal. Q: Does a special finance deal always mean a high payment? A: Not always, but the rate is priced to the risk, so the vehicle usually has to be selected to fit the lender advance and the payment to income limit. Choosing the right unit is what keeps the payment reasonable. ### What Is TCPA? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-tcpa TCPA stands for the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the federal law governing calls, texts and faxes to consumers. It sets what consent a business needs before marketing contact, restricts automated dialing and prerecorded messages, requires honoring the national do not call registry and individual opt out requests, and limits the hours a business may call. #### What does TCPA stand for, and what does it cover? TCPA is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, a long standing federal statute implemented through rules that regulators have updated many times over. It governs telephone contact with consumers: live calls, prerecorded and artificial voice messages, automatic telephone dialing systems, faxes, and text messages, which regulators and courts treat as calls for this purpose. It is enforced by regulators and, notably, by consumers themselves, because the statute gives individuals a private right of action with damages set per message or call. The core of it is consent. Contact a consumer made possible by a number they gave you for that purpose is treated differently from marketing contact sent to a number you obtained some other way, and marketing sent with an autodialer or a prerecorded voice generally requires prior express written consent that discloses what the consumer is agreeing to. On top of consent sit three practical rules every business has to honor: the national do not call registry, an internal do not call list the business keeps itself, and calling hours, which run from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in the consumer's local time under federal rules and can be tighter under state law. A consumer may revoke consent through any reasonable means, and the revocation has to be honored promptly across channels. #### How TCPA shows up at a dealership It shows up in ordinary moments. A shopper fills out a form on the store's site and the form carries a consent disclosure, so the reply text and the callback are expected contact. A customer texts the store's number about a truck, which is an invitation to text back. A service customer gets a recall notice, which most stores treat differently from a sale flyer. A manager decides to text every name in a database that has not been touched in three years, which is the moment the law becomes a real question instead of a footnote. Around those moments a store needs three unglamorous things: a record of what each customer agreed to and when, a single opt out list that every channel and every rep respects, and a written policy with training behind it. A store's own counsel sets its policy and its lenders and partners may add their own requirements, but the operational shape is the same everywhere. TCPA compliance for dealership texting walks through the rules in dealership language. #### An illustrative week at a store Say a shopper submits a form at 11:40 p.m. asking whether a truck is still available, illustrative example only. The store's automation replies immediately, because the customer asked and the reply is to the number they provided for that purpose. The next morning a salesperson texts a photo and a price and books an appointment. All of that is the expected conversation the customer started. The same week, a manager wants to send a holiday sale text to 4,000 names bought from a list broker. Different activity entirely: no consent, no relationship, and a statute with per message damages. The first is how a store grows. The second is how a store ends up explaining itself. Knowing which is which is most of the practical value of understanding this law. #### Where dealerships get TCPA wrong The most common mistake is treating a number as consent for anything. A number given on a trade appraisal form was given for that conversation, and using it for a weekend blast is a different act. The second is the one channel opt out: a customer replies stop to a text, and three days later an email campaign and a voicemail arrive because those lists were never connected. The third is the time zone, since 7 p.m. at the store can be 4 p.m. or 10 p.m. for the customer. The fourth is the missing record, because an argument about consent that has no log behind it is an argument the store loses. The fix for all four is the same: capture consent where the customer actually gives it, keep one opt out list that every tool honors, put hours on outbound activity, and keep the whole conversation in one place. That is a software problem, and it is a solved one. #### How LeadLocate builds the compliance side in In LeadLocate CRM, the careful path is the default path. A customer who replies with a stop keyword is opted out automatically and added to the two way blacklist, so no rep, template, drip or bulk send reaches that number again; a help keyword gets a reply that identifies the store and how to reach it. The DNC Blacklist page holds the numbers the store must never contact, imports an existing list, blocks inbound spam in both directions, and runs a live do not call lookup on a number before anyone dials it. Business hours routing governs when calls come through, and the master automation switch turns every automated process off for the account in one place when a store wants that. The record keeps itself. Every call, text, picture message, email and voicemail lands in one communications log on the customer record, calls can be recorded and transcribed, and delivery status sits on each message, so what was sent, when, from which tracking number and by whom is answerable months later. On the finance side, SecureWebX captures e-signed consent on versioned terms with each credit application, so the agreement the customer accepted is stored with the document they signed. Consent management across texting, calling and email covers the whole picture. #### TCPA, the do not call registry, CAN-SPAM and 10DLC The do not call registry is one requirement inside the TCPA framework, not a separate law, and a business also keeps its own internal do not call list which applies even to customers it has a relationship with. CAN-SPAM is the email statute and works differently, with its own unsubscribe and identification rules. 10DLC is not law at all; it is the carrier registration program that decides whether business text messages from a ten digit number are delivered, and a store can be perfectly compliant and still undelivered if it skipped registration. And outside this industry the same four letters mean time to closest point of approach in marine navigation, which is why that definition turns up in searches next to this one. The neighboring communication terms are defined across the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: Does TCPA apply to text messages? A: Yes. Text messages are treated as calls under the statute, which is why consent, opt out handling and calling hours apply to texting exactly as they apply to the phone. Q: What is prior express written consent? A: A written agreement, which can be electronic, in which a consumer agrees to receive marketing calls or texts from a specific business at a specific number, with a clear disclosure that automated technology may be used and that agreeing is not a condition of purchase. Q: If a customer texts the dealership first, is that consent? A: A consumer who starts a conversation is asking for a reply to that conversation. Marketing beyond it is a separate question, and the answer depends on what the store disclosed and what its own policy allows. A store's counsel sets that line. Q: What are the TCPA calling hours? A: Federal rules allow calls between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the consumer's local time, not the store's. Several states set narrower windows, and some restrict certain days, so the store's policy should follow the strictest rule that applies to its market. ### What Is VIN Decode? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-vin-decode VIN decode is the process of turning a vehicle identification number, seventeen characters stamped on every road vehicle, into the details it encodes: model year, make, model, body, engine, drivetrain and assembly plant, and with richer data the exact trim and factory options. Dealerships decode at appraisal, at intake, in listings and on the deal, because the decode sets the vehicle data every other system inherits. #### What is a VIN decode, and what do the seventeen characters mean? VIN decode is the process of turning a seventeen character vehicle identification number into the facts about the vehicle it identifies: model year, make, model, body style, engine, drivetrain, assembly plant and, with richer data behind it, trim, factory options and packages. Every road vehicle built for sale in the United States since the standard was adopted carries one, no two are alike, and the number is stamped where anyone can read it: the driver side dash at the base of the windshield, the door jamb label, the title, the registration and the insurance card. The seventeen characters are structured, not random. The first three are the world manufacturer identifier, which says who built it and where. Characters four through eight describe the vehicle: platform, body, restraint system and engine, encoded by the manufacturer. The ninth is a check digit, a value calculated from the other sixteen that exists purely to catch a typo. The tenth encodes the model year, the eleventh names the assembly plant, and the last six are the sequential build number for that unit. The letters I, O and Q never appear, because they are too easy to confuse with one and zero. A decoder reads that structure and returns it in plain language. The phrase "VIN decode" is used for both the act and the result: a store will say a unit decoded clean, meaning the number checked out and the attributes came back complete. #### How deep does a decode go? Not all decodes return the same depth, and knowing the tiers saves an argument with a data vendor. The free public federal database returns what the manufacturer was required to report: year, make, model, body class, engine configuration and displacement, plant, and the safety equipment recorded for that build. It is accurate, it costs nothing, and it is usually not enough to merchandise a vehicle, because it will happily tell you a unit is a midsize crossover without telling you whether it is the version with the leather, the tow package and the panoramic roof. Paid build data goes further, decoding to the exact trim and, on many makes, to the individual factory options installed on that specific unit. That is the level a used car department needs, because trim is what separates two cars that look identical in a photo and sit thousands of dollars apart in the market. A third tier adds vehicle history: title brands, reported accidents, service records and prior registrations, which is a different category of data bought from a different kind of provider and is not what anyone means by a decode. The practical rule is to buy the depth your listings need. A store whose descriptions read "well equipped" is losing search traffic to the store whose listings name the package. #### Where a dealership actually needs a decode Four places, and the order matters. The first is appraisal: an accurate decode at the trade walk around tells the appraiser what they are actually looking at before they commit a number. The second is intake, when a unit is stocked in, given a stock number and given the attribute set every downstream system will inherit. The third is merchandising, where the decoded attributes become the title of the listing, the filters a shopper uses and the fields a feed carries. The fourth is the deal, where the VIN prints on the worksheet, the contract and the registration paperwork. Say two units of the same model year and model arrive the same week. Illustrative figures only. One is the base trim, one carries a factory tow package and the larger engine, and the market values them about $2,400 apart. Decode the second one lazily and it gets listed as the base car with a base car price, which sells it in a day to a delighted buyer and costs the store real gross. Decode both correctly and the shopper searching for a tow rated unit finds the right car on the first page of results. #### Why a VIN decode comes back wrong Almost every decode problem is a capture problem. A VIN typed by hand from a photo of a dirty windshield is the single most common source of wrong vehicle data at a dealership: a transposed pair of characters, an eight read as a B, a five read as an S. The check digit exists to catch exactly this, so any system worth using validates it at entry rather than three days later when the listing is wrong. The second problem is the decode that overwrites a human. Someone corrects a trim by hand, the next refresh of the feed replaces it with the automated answer, and nobody notices until a customer does. Stores solve that with an override that survives the refresh. The third is depth confused with accuracy. A thin decode is not wrong, it is incomplete, and treating an incomplete answer as the final word is how a well equipped car gets advertised as a base model. The fourth is trusting a decode for equipment nobody verified on the lot. Build data says what the factory installed; it does not know about the aftermarket wheels, the missing second key or the trailer hitch a previous owner bolted on. A manager confirmed build, checked by a person walking the unit, is the version a store should advertise. #### How LeadLocate handles VIN decode The VIN gets captured the way it should be, with a camera. The LeadLocate mobile app scans a VIN from the windshield or the door jamb and a driver license from a customer's hand, so the number lands in the record without anyone reading characters aloud across a parking lot. The trade in form carries its own VIN scan, and document reading picks the number off paperwork when the vehicle is not in front of you. From there the decode travels. Inventory Link decodes the VIN on every unit it ingests, checks it against an automotive database with government safety and efficiency information, parses vehicle text, and keeps stock number overrides so corrections survive the next feed refresh. In LeadLocate CRM the VIN rides the lead, the customer profile and the desking worksheet, and in SecureWebX the deal vehicle decodes inside the worksheet with a stock number lookup against the store's own inventory plus title, stolen, sales, auction and warranty checks. Deeper build data from the provider your store prefers is connected on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The category itself is covered on the VIN decoder software page. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a VIN decoder? A: A VIN decoder is the tool that performs the decode. You give it the seventeen character number and it returns the vehicle's attributes. Free public decoders return the basics reported to the federal database; paid decoders return trim and factory installed options. Q: Can you decode a VIN for free? A: Yes for the basics. The public federal database returns year, make, model, body class, engine and plant at no cost. Trim level, option packages and individual factory equipment come from paid build data, which is what dealerships need to merchandise a vehicle properly. Q: What does the tenth character of a VIN mean? A: It encodes the model year. The character cycles through a defined sequence of letters and digits, which is why the eleventh character, the assembly plant, and the last six digits of the build sequence are read alongside it when a vehicle is old enough for the cycle to have repeated. Q: Why does my VIN decode show the wrong trim? A: Usually the decode is thin rather than wrong: the source returned model level data and the trim was never in it. The other common cause is a mistyped VIN that still looks plausible, which is why systems should validate the ninth character check digit at the moment of entry. ### What Is a BDC? Business Development Center Explained URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-bdc A BDC, or business development center, is the team at a dealership that answers internet leads and inbound calls, follows up by phone, text and email, and books appointments for the sales floor. A BDC is measured on contact, appointments set and appointments shown. Closing the deal stays with the salesperson who meets the customer at the door. #### What does BDC stand for at a dealership? BDC stands for business development center. It is the group inside a dealership, sometimes two people and sometimes twenty, whose whole job is first contact and follow up: the internet lead that arrived at eleven at night, the call that rings while every salesperson is out on the lot, the customer who visited three weeks ago and was never called again. Some stores call it the internet department, some call it the call center, some call it the appointment desk. The work is the same. The defining feature is the handoff. A BDC agent does not sell the car. The agent makes contact, finds out what the customer is actually shopping for, sets an appointment with a real time on it, and hands the customer to a salesperson at the door. That split exists for one reason: a salesperson standing with a customer will not answer a new lead for two hours, and a lead that waits two hours has usually already talked to somebody else. The rest of the floor vocabulary is in the automotive sales glossary. #### What does a BDC agent do all day? A shift looks like a queue. New leads arrive from the store's own website, from third party lead providers, from the phone, from chat and from whatever campaigns the store is running. The agent works them oldest first, because a five minute reply is a different business than a fifty minute one, and speed to first contact is usually the first number a BDC manager looks at each morning. The five minute response workflow is the standard most rooms are trying to hold. Between fresh leads the agent works the follow up list: unsold showroom traffic from the weekend, missed calls from yesterday, appointments that did not arrive, service customers with equity in their trade, and the long tail of people who said not until spring. Every touch gets logged, every promise becomes a task with a date on it, and the agent's day ends with four numbers: calls made, customers reached, appointments set, appointments shown. Say a store takes 300 internet leads in a month, reaches a little under half of them, sets appointments with about a third of the ones it reaches, and sees two thirds of those appointments arrive. Illustrative figures only, and every store's numbers are its own, but the shape explains why BDC managers push so hard on the first number. Every customer the room never reaches makes every number after it smaller. #### How is a BDC staffed and paid? Most stores pay a BDC agent an hourly base plus a bonus per appointment set or per appointment shown, often with a smaller unit bonus when the appointment turns into a delivery. The base keeps the phone answered on a slow Tuesday. The bonus keeps the appointments real rather than a calendar full of people who were never coming. Because of that pay shape, job postings ask for phone and customer service experience more often than car experience, which is why BDC experience on a resume reads as high volume phone work: dials per day, scripts, objection handling, appointment setting and living inside a CRM. Structure follows store size. A single rooftop often runs three to six agents plus a BDC manager who still works leads personally. A dealer group may centralize the whole function in one room that answers for every store, which is a different discipline with its own routing and reporting problems, covered on the centralized BDC for dealer groups page. Either way the measurement is the same, and BDC call center software is where those numbers come from. #### Where a BDC goes wrong Three failures repeat in every store that struggles with this. The first is response time: a lead routes to an agent who is already on a call, sits unassigned, and ages out while everyone assumes somebody else has it. The second is ownership. When a lead belongs to everybody it belongs to nobody, so the customer gets three texts from three agents on Monday and silence for the rest of the week. The third is the handoff at the door, where the salesperson has not read a line of what the customer told the BDC and asks all of it again, which is exactly where a good appointment turns into a bad experience. All three are process problems before they are people problems. Clear assignment rules, one thread per customer that the whole store can read, and follow up that runs on a schedule instead of on somebody's memory fix more than a new phone script ever will. #### How LeadLocate runs a BDC LeadLocate is built for this room and it is the best tool a phone team can be handed. Leads land in the inbox the moment they are captured and route by rule, with round robin assignment so every lead carries one owner's name from the first second. Every call, text, picture message, email and voicemail for that customer sits in a single thread in the two way texting inbox, so an agent picking the conversation up at four in the afternoon can read what happened at nine in the morning. Tracking numbers per lead source keep phone attribution straight, calls are recorded and transcribed so a manager can coach from the real conversation, and follow up processes fire on their own schedule. Every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture and backed by a replacement review, so a bad lead costs your room nothing. The inbound side is on the BDC phone service page, and the reporting a manager lives in is on LeadLocate for BDC managers. #### BDC, internet department, and the other BDC Inside a dealership, BDC, internet department and call center are used almost interchangeably, and arguing about the names is a waste of a meeting. Where they genuinely differ is scope. An internet department usually works only digital leads. A BDC works digital leads and the phone, inbound and outbound. A call center may also carry service booking, recall campaigns and outbound equity calls for the whole group. Outside the car business the initials belong to other fields entirely. In finance, a BDC is a business development company, a type of investment fund that lends to small and midsize private businesses. In shooting sports, a BDC reticle is a bullet drop compensating scope reticle. Neither has anything to do with a dealership, and the search results for all three run together, which is why this entry says so plainly. #### Questions and answers Q: What does BDC mean in car sales? A: Business development center. It is the team that answers internet leads and inbound calls, follows up by phone, text and email, and books appointments for the sales floor. Q: Is a BDC the same as an internet sales department? A: Close, and plenty of stores use the two names for the same room. An internet department usually works only digital leads, while a BDC also owns the phone, unsold follow up and outbound calling. Q: Does a small dealership need a BDC? A: A small store rarely needs a separate room, but it always needs the job done: every lead answered fast, every lead owned by one person, and follow up that runs on a schedule. One trained person plus a CRM that routes and reminds will cover it. Q: What is a BDC in finance? A: A business development company, an investment fund that lends to private businesses. It shares three initials with the dealership term and nothing else. ### What Is a Be Back? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-be-back A be back is a customer who leaves a dealership without buying and says they will come back. On the floor the phrase covers both the promise and the person: a salesperson calling someone a be back means the deal is alive but unfinished, and a be back who actually returns is often the easiest sale of the week, because the shopping is already over. #### What does be back mean at a car dealership? It comes straight from the sentence customers say on the way out: I will be back. A salesperson who reports three ups and two be backs means two people left with the deal unfinished and a stated intention to return. Used the other way, a be back is the customer standing in the showroom for the second time, and every veteran on the floor will tell you those close at a far better rate than a first visit, because the shopper has already done the looking. The old joke about the be back bus, the one that never arrives, exists because the term is used to excuse an unclosed deal. That is the part worth arguing with. The sentence is real information: the customer liked something enough to soften the exit. Whether they return is decided in the following week, not in the parking lot, and it is decided by the store rather than by the customer. #### Why does a customer say they will be back? Usually because something real is unfinished. The payment is higher than the number in their head. The spouse who has to approve it is at work. They want to know what their trade is worth somewhere else. They are waiting on a pre approval from their own bank or credit union. They have an appointment at another store that afternoon and are too polite to say so. Or they simply do not buy a large item the first time they see it, which describes a very large share of adults. None of those are objections to argue away at the curb, and none of them mean the customer was lying. They are open questions, and each one has an answer the store can send in writing later that day: a structure at a payment that works, a real trade number, the vehicle from the angle they liked, a note the spouse can read. Explaining behaviour instead of complaining about it is most of what separates a closer from a complainer. #### What separates a real be back from a polite exit? Three things, and they all happen before the customer leaves. First, information: a working mobile number, permission to text, and a note in the record saying what the sticking point actually was. Second, something in their hand or on their phone worth opening again, such as the worksheet with the figures on it and a photo of the unit. Third, a time. Not a day, a time, with a reason attached, such as the used car manager being in at ten on Saturday to look at their trade. A worked example, illustrative only. Of ten ups on a Saturday, say three leave saying they will be back. The store that wrote no notes and has no number gets whoever happens to return. The store that texted a recap at 4 p.m., sent a trade figure on Monday and confirmed an appointment for the following Saturday morning is holding three appointments, and two of them show. Same three customers, different week. #### How does a store turn a be back into an appointment? Send the recap the same day, while the visit is still vivid. Answer the one open question specifically rather than asking whether they had a chance to think it over. Use the channel the customer actually reads, which is almost always text. Keep going past the first week, because a shopper waiting on a bank answer or a spouse's schedule is often two weeks from buying and nobody is talking to them by then. And log every attempt, so the next person who opens the record knows exactly what was tried. The one mistake worth naming is the daily check in with no new information. Three messages asking whether they are still interested teaches the customer to ignore the number. A message with a new figure, a new unit or a specific time earns a reply. #### How does LeadLocate handle a be back? The visit becomes a record instead of a memory. The lead carries a custom status and tags, so be back is a real state a manager can filter, and the lost reason is captured if the customer says no outright. The recap goes out from the record itself: the worked structure becomes a customer deal page or a pencil recap sheet the shopper can open on a phone, with the figures laid out the way the desk built them. A follow up process picks the lead up automatically and runs a multi step plan for as long as the store wants it worked, mixing texts, calls and emails. The appointment is set on a shared calendar or booked by the customer from a link, and when they walk back in, In-Store Now tells the desk who is in the building and who is with them. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a be back at a dealership? A: A customer who leaves without buying and says they will return. The term is used both for the promise and for the shopper who actually comes back, who tends to be an easy close. Q: What is the be back bus? A: Floor slang for the imaginary bus that never shows up, used to mock the idea that a customer will return on their own. The point behind the joke is that returns are produced by follow up. Q: How long should a store work a be back? A: Longer than a week. Shoppers waiting on a bank answer, a spouse or a trade payoff often buy two or three weeks later, by which time most salespeople have stopped calling. Q: Should a be back get different follow up than an internet lead? A: Yes. A be back has already seen the vehicle and told you the sticking point, so the follow up answers that one thing specifically instead of introducing the store all over again. ### What Is a Co-Applicant? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-co-applicant A co-applicant is a second person who applies for a loan jointly with the buyer. Both credit files are reviewed, both incomes count toward what the lender will allow, both names go on the contract, and both are fully responsible for the debt. Dealers add one when the primary applicant's credit or income will not carry the payment alone. #### What does co-applicant mean on a car loan? A co-applicant is a second person who applies for the loan with the buyer rather than behind them. Both people fill out the application, both credit files are reviewed, both incomes count toward the payment the lender is willing to allow, and both names go on the retail installment contract. If the payment is missed, the lender can pursue either person for the full balance. On a car deal the co-applicant is usually also on the title, which is why the floor calls the same person a co-buyer. The word shows up on apartment leases, student loans and mortgages for the same reason it shows up on auto loans: a lender is willing to lend more, or lend at all, when two people are on the hook and two sets of income support the obligation. What changes from one kind of loan to the next is what the second person gets out of it. On a car loan they usually get a vehicle they can drive and an ownership interest in it, which is a meaningful difference from simply guaranteeing somebody else's debt. Adding a co-applicant is a structural decision, not a courtesy. It changes the credit profile the lender scores, the income the lender can use, the documents the store has to collect and who has to be present to sign. More definitions like this one live in the automotive sales glossary. #### Co-applicant, cosigner or co-buyer: what is the difference? A cosigner guarantees the debt. They sign a separate promise to pay if the borrower does not, their credit is pledged to the deal, and in most structures they have no ownership of the vehicle and no right to use it. A co-applicant is on the loan itself from the first line of the application, with equal responsibility and, usually, equal ownership. Lenders treat the two differently and so do the documents. Co-buyer is the third word for the same idea, and on a car deal it is generally interchangeable with co-applicant. It is the term a sales manager uses because it describes the person standing at the desk rather than the line on the form. Where the wording matters is in the finance office: the application, the contract and the title all have to name the same people in the same roles, and a deal that captures a spouse as a co-buyer on the worksheet but never puts them on the application produces a lender call on Monday. There is a rule worth knowing here. Under Regulation B, a lender may not require a spouse to sign as a co-applicant when the applicant qualifies for the credit requested on their own. A buyer can choose to add a spouse, and often should, but the choice belongs to the buyer. #### How a dealership uses a co-applicant Take an illustrative deal: a buyer earning about $3,000 a month wants a used SUV at roughly $27,000 with $2,500 cash as a deposit and a payment near $560 a month. The lender that likes the credit profile caps payment to income at a level that will not stretch to $560 on a single income, so the deal is approved at a shorter term with a payment the buyer will not take. The buyer's partner earns about $2,800 a month with a stronger credit file. Added as a co-applicant, the combined income clears the lender's payment to income test, the stronger file moves the deal into a better structure, and the same car goes home at a payment the household can carry. What the store owes that deal is a full second application. The co-applicant has their own residence history, their own employment and income, their own references and their own signature, and the lender will ask for their stipulations too: their pay stubs, their proof of residence if the addresses differ, their identification. A co-applicant captured as a name and a birthday is not a co-applicant, it is a delay. #### Where co-applicant deals go sideways Three failures repeat in every store. The first is the co-applicant who is not there at delivery. Both people sign the contract, so a Saturday delivery where the partner is at work becomes a Sunday redraw or a car that does not leave. The second is the application run without the second person's knowledge or authorization, which is a problem with the customer and with the law, because a credit request needs the authorization of the person whose report is being pulled. The third is address drift: the co-applicant lists the household address out of habit when they actually live somewhere else, and the proof of residence that comes back does not match the application. A fourth is quieter. Stores add a co-applicant reflexively to every thin file, and a buyer who would have been approved alone ends up with a partner permanently attached to a five year obligation. The right question is whether the deal needs the second person, not whether a second person is available. #### How LeadLocate handles a co-applicant The credit application in SecureWebX carries the co-applicant through the same five steps as the primary buyer: personal details, residence, employment and income, review and signature, each with its own consent capture, so the store sends one link and gets one complete package back instead of a full application and an incomplete second page. Documents and stipulations attach to the submission for either applicant, the customer record in LeadLocate CRM keeps the co-buyer with the deal so follow up reaches the right person, and the co-buyer credit applications page shows exactly what the applicant sees on a phone. #### Questions and answers Q: Is a co-applicant the same as a cosigner? A: No. A cosigner guarantees somebody else's debt and usually has no ownership of the vehicle. A co-applicant is on the loan itself with equal responsibility and, on most car deals, an ownership interest in the car. Q: Does a co-applicant have to be a spouse or live with the buyer? A: No. A co-applicant can be a spouse, a parent, an adult child or anyone else the lender will accept. Under Regulation B a lender may not require a spouse to sign when the applicant qualifies alone. Q: Does a co-applicant need good credit? A: Not necessarily. Lenders look at the combined picture, and a co-applicant is often added for income rather than score. A second weak file rarely helps, and a second file with recent repossession history can hurt the structure. Q: Can a co-applicant be removed from a car loan later? A: Not from the original contract. The usual route is refinancing the vehicle in one name once the payment history and equity support it, which is a decision for the lender doing the refinance. ### What Is a Credit Application? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-credit-application A credit application is the form a buyer completes so a dealership can arrange vehicle financing. It collects identity, residence and employment history, income, the deal being requested, and signed authorization to obtain a credit report. Lenders underwrite from it, so an incomplete application is the most common reason a workable deal never gets an approval. #### What is a credit application for a car? A credit application is the form a buyer completes so a dealership can arrange financing for a vehicle. It collects identity, current and previous residence, employment and time on the job, income, housing cost, the vehicle and the structure being requested, and the applicant's signed authorization for the store and its lenders to obtain a credit report. It is the document every approval is built on, which is why every field on it has a reason to be there. Lenders read it in a particular order. Identity first, because the loan has to be made to a real, verifiable person. Then stability: how long at the address, how long on the job, whether the history has gaps. Then capacity: gross monthly income against the payment being asked for, and housing cost on top of that. Then the deal itself: the vehicle, the term, the amount financed, the deposit, the trade and any negative equity rolled in. A thin application is not a neutral document, it is a declined one, because an underwriter cannot approve what is not there. The application is also the beginning of a legal record. Regulation B governs how the request is handled and what has to be said if it is declined, and the Safeguards Rule governs how the store protects what it just collected. Related terms are defined across the automotive sales glossary. #### How long does a credit application take at a dealership? Filling one out is quick. Submitting, underwriting and answering is the part with a clock on it. A complete application takes most buyers ten to fifteen minutes on a phone. A lender decision on a clean prime deal often comes back in minutes; a deal that needs a human underwriter, a second look or an income verification can take hours, and one submitted at nine on a Saturday night may wait for a weekday buying desk. Stores that promise an answer in five minutes on every deal are describing the easy half of their business. Here is the sequence in a working store, with illustrative figures only. A buyer wants a used sedan at about $22,000, has $2,000 to put toward it and a trade worth roughly $4,000 with $1,500 still owed. The application goes in with $3,400 a month of verifiable income. The desk structures a payment, sends the application to the lender it thinks owns the deal, and gets an approval back with an advance cap, a term and a short list of stipulations. The store collects the stips, the customer signs, and the contract funds. Every one of those steps refers back to what the application said. The category view of how that flow should be built is on the online credit application software page. #### Where credit applications cost a store deals The recurring failure is paper. A clipboard application has to be re-keyed by somebody, and re-keying introduces a wrong digit in an income figure or an employer name that no longer matches the pay stub. The form itself then becomes a filing problem: a sheet carrying a Social Security number, a date of birth and an income lives in a drawer, a folder, or the back seat of a manager's car, and the Safeguards Rule expects a written program, access control and real protection for exactly that data. The second failure is the abandoned application. A buyer starts on the website at ten at night, gets to the employment page, and stops. Nobody at the store ever knows they were there. That shopper was closer to buying than most of the leads the store paid for that week, and following up the next morning is one of the highest yield calls a BDC makes. Abandoned credit application follow up exists because of how often that call is never made. The third is a credit application that lives apart from the customer record, so the salesperson does not know their customer already applied, and the finance manager does not know what the salesperson promised. #### How LeadLocate handles credit applications SecureWebX is the credit application system in the platform: a five step online application under the store's own branding, with a co-applicant, ITIN or Social Security number, income, deposit and trade sections, e-signature with versioned consent, and document upload from the applicant's phone. Submissions land in an inbox and pipeline with status, assignee, amount and notes, screening runs against the OFAC list, stipulations and supporting documents attach to the record, adverse action notices are generated from the application itself, and the finished application exports to a lender or a dealer management system in the format that lender or system expects. Application data is encrypted where it is stored, every sign in uses two factor authentication, uploads are scanned, and an audit log records who opened what. The CRM side of the same flow keeps the application with the customer record so the floor and the finance office are looking at one deal. #### What a credit application is often confused with A credit application is not a prequalification. A prequalification gives a shopper an indication from a soft inquiry that does not affect their score and commits nobody. The application is the real request, it authorizes a full credit report, and it is what a lender underwrites. It is also not an approval. Submitting an application starts a decision; it does not make one. And it is not a lead form: a lead form asks for a name and a phone number, while a credit application asks for the information a lender needs and carries obligations for handling it from the moment it is submitted. #### Questions and answers Q: What do you need to fill out a credit application for a car? A: A government issued identification, your address history, your employer and time on the job, your gross monthly income, your housing cost, and your Social Security number or ITIN. Bring a recent pay stub and proof of insurance and you will clear most stipulations the same day. Q: Does submitting a credit application hurt your credit? A: It authorizes a credit report request, which is recorded as an inquiry. Scoring models generally treat multiple auto loan inquiries made inside a short shopping window as a single event, which is why shopping a car loan in one stretch is normal. Q: Is a credit application the same as an approval? A: No. The application starts the decision. An approval comes back from a lender with a structure and usually a list of stipulations that have to be satisfied before the contract funds. Q: Can a customer complete a credit application without coming to the store? A: Yes. A branded apply link sent by text or email takes the buyer through the whole application, including signature and document upload, before they ever walk in. ### What Is a Credit Tier? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-credit-tier A credit tier is the band a lender sorts an applicant into, based on credit score plus stability, prior auto history and the deal itself. The tier sets the rate, how much the lender will advance, the term it allows and the payment it will support. Every lender publishes its own tiers, so the same file grades differently from one to the next. #### What is a credit tier, and what is Tier 1 credit? A credit tier is the band a lender sorts an applicant into, and it is the single number behind most of what a customer experiences on a car deal. The tier sets the rate the lender will offer, how much it will advance against the vehicle, how long a term it will allow, how much payment it will let the income support, and how much back end product the deal can carry. Tier 1 is the strongest, and the numbering climbs as the risk does. The important thing about tiers is that they belong to the lender, not to the customer. Every bank and finance company publishes its own grid with its own cutoffs, and the same applicant can be Tier 2 at one lender and Tier 4 at the next on the same afternoon. Some lenders label the bands with letters instead of numbers, which is where the old floor language of A paper, B paper, C paper and D paper comes from, and most of them grade on more than a score: time on the job, time at the address, prior auto history, the size of the deposit and the vehicle itself all move an applicant up or down a row. Tier credits in a casino loyalty program are an unrelated use of the same word, which is why the phrase turns up in strange places. On a car deal it means one thing: the lender program grade. Related terms are collected in the automotive sales glossary. #### How a credit tier changes the deal on the desk Watch one tier move a deal. Illustrative figures only: two customers want the same used sedan at $24,000 with $2,000 put toward it. The first is graded a top tier, so the lender advances above book, allows a long term and prices the money low, and the payment lands near $390 a month with room left for a service contract. The second is graded several rows down on the same lender's grid. The advance is capped tighter, the term is shorter, the rate is priced to the risk, the payment to income ceiling is lower, and the same car produces a payment the customer will not sign. Nothing about the car changed. What changed is the row of the grid the applicant landed on. That is why an experienced desk asks which tier the approval came back in before it asks anything else, and why the answer to a hard payment is usually a different vehicle or a different lender rather than a different conversation with the customer. There is one more tier effect worth knowing. Most lenders publish a buy rate by tier, the rate at which they will buy the contract, and allow the dealership to add a limited amount of dealer participation on top. The tier therefore sets both the customer's cost and the store's finance income, which is why the grid is pinned to the wall behind every finance desk. #### Where shoppers and stores get tiers wrong The most common mistake a shopper makes is arriving certain of their tier because an app showed them a number. Auto lenders generally use a score model built for auto lending, weighted toward how somebody has handled a car loan, and it frequently differs from the score a consumer sees for free. Walking in expecting top tier credit and landing a row lower is not a trick, it is two different scoring models. The mistake stores make is treating the grid as one universal ladder. Tier 1 at a credit union with a conservative program and Tier 1 at an independent finance company are entirely different places, and a deal shopped to the wrong lender first can come back a tier lower than it deserved. Two more habits cost real money: selling a payment before the tier is known, then having to unwind it, and forgetting that a customer one row from a better tier can sometimes get there with a larger deposit, a co-applicant or a cheaper unit. The other half of this is documentation. A tier is assigned to a verified file, so income and residence proof that arrives with the application keeps the approval where it started instead of letting it drift down a row during verification. That is what the credit application process is protecting. #### How LeadLocate handles a tiered deal The platform handles the parts of a tiered deal that happen before and after the lender grades it. The credit application in SecureWebX collects the identity, residence, employment and income a lender grades from, with documents attached so the file is verified rather than claimed, and worksheets in the same system build cash, finance and lease structures at parity with the CRM desking engine, so a desk can rebuild a deal against a tighter advance and a shorter term and see the payment immediately. The finished application goes to the lender the store chooses through a code gated, expiring, watermarked share, and the response comes back on the same record. The credit pull itself stays with the store's own bureau account and its lenders, exactly as the store's existing agreements provide. #### What a credit tier is often confused with A credit tier is not a credit score. The score is one input; the tier is the lender's own grade, built from the score plus stability, prior auto history, the deposit, the term and the vehicle. Two people with identical scores can be graded differently at the same lender. It is also not the same as prime and subprime, which are broad market categories rather than a specific lender's grid. And a tier is not permanent. It is a snapshot of a file on the day it was pulled, which is why the same customer who was three rows down last year can be two rows up after a year of on time payments. #### Questions and answers Q: What is top tier credit for an auto loan? A: It is the strongest band on a given lender grid, the one that gets the lowest rate, the longest term and the highest advance. There is no industry wide cutoff for it, because each lender sets where its own top tier begins. Q: Who decides which credit tier you are in? A: The lender does, when it underwrites the application. The dealership submits the deal and can structure it to improve the outcome, but the grade comes back from the lender buying the contract. Q: Are credit tiers the same at every lender? A: No. Tiers are lender specific in both their cutoffs and their names. A file graded second tier at one lender can grade higher or lower at another, which is why a store with more lender relationships places more deals. Q: Can a customer move up a credit tier? A: Over time, yes, with on time payments and lower balances. On the day of the deal, a larger deposit, a co-applicant or a less expensive vehicle can sometimes produce an approval close to what the next tier up would have offered. ### What Is a Deal Jacket? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-deal-jacket A deal jacket is the file that holds every document for one vehicle sale: the buyer order, the credit application, a copy of the driver license and insurance, trade and payoff paperwork, required disclosures and the signed contracts. It moves from the desk to the finance office to the business office, and it is the file an audit or a lender asks to see. #### What goes in a deal jacket? The name comes from the object. For decades it was a printed cardstock envelope, usually with the store's checklist boxes down one side, and the paperwork for a single sale lived inside it from the moment the customer said yes until the file was closed and boxed. The jacket is the deal, physically. If it is not in the jacket, as far as the business office is concerned it did not happen. The contents vary by state and by lender, but the spine of it is consistent: the buyer order or purchase agreement, the credit application, a copy of the customer's driver license and proof of insurance, the retail installment contract or lease agreement, the title paperwork and odometer statement, the trade paperwork with its payoff quote and lien release, any required state disclosures, the finance office product contracts the customer bought, delivery acknowledgements, and copies of anything the lender asked for as a condition of funding. Stores that sell across a state line carry two sets of some of those. The rest of the vocabulary on the sheet is in the automotive sales glossary. #### Who touches the jacket, and in what order Follow one sale through. The salesperson opens the deal with the buyer order and a copy of the license. The desk adds the appraisal and the worksheet. The finance office adds the credit application, the lender approval, the contract and the product agreements, and collects whatever stipulations the lender attached: proof of income, proof of residence, a reference sheet, a utility bill. The business office funds the deal, files the title work, and closes the jacket. Each of those handoffs is where a document goes missing, and a missing document is not a filing problem, it is a funding problem. A lender that will not fund until it sees one more pay stub is holding the store's money, and every day that stub takes to arrive is a day the deal sits in contracts in transit. Stores that chase documents well get funded in days; stores that chase them badly get funded in weeks. Illustrative figures only, but the arithmetic is worth seeing. A store delivering 100 units a month with three documents outstanding on a quarter of them is chasing 75 pieces of paper at any given time, most of them living on a customer's kitchen counter. That is why document collection moved to the phone camera. #### Why the deal jacket is the file an audit asks for Several federal rules land on a single vehicle sale, and the jacket is where a dealership proves it followed them. The Red Flags Rule requires a store extending credit to have a written identity theft prevention program and to resolve discrepancies, which is why the license copy and the identity check belong in the file. The GLBA Safeguards Rule requires a written information security program covering the customer financial data the store collects, which is why who can open the jacket matters as much as what is in it. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B require that an applicant who is declined receives a notice stating the specific reasons, so the copy of that notice is a permanent part of the file. Truth in Lending disclosures, state advertising and disclosure rules, and cash reporting requirements on large currency payments all leave their own paper. None of that is exotic. It simply means the deal jacket is not storage, it is evidence, and a complete jacket is the cheapest compliance program a store can run. The rules above are described here as law; a store's own counsel and its lenders set its policy. #### Where deal jackets fall apart Paper jackets fail in three familiar ways. They travel, so the one document somebody needs is in a stack on a desk in another office. They get photographed badly, so a scanned license is unreadable and the lender rejects it. And they are silent: nothing about a paper folder tells you that a stipulation is still outstanding, so the store finds out when the funding clerk calls. The half digital version is worse, not better. Some documents are scanned into a shared drive, some are emailed between managers, some are texted as phone photos that live only in one salesperson's messages, and the folder on the server is named after whoever created it. When a customer calls two years later about a warranty claim, nobody can assemble the file. A jacket that lives in four places is four jackets, and none of them is complete. #### How LeadLocate keeps the deal jacket Every deal in LeadLocate CRM carries its own deal jacket, and it is the best version of this file a store can keep because it is attached to the deal rather than to a folder somebody named. Files upload from the desktop or the phone, and each one can be renamed, rotated, previewed and deleted in place, so an upside down photo of a title gets fixed in a second instead of being re-collected. QR intake is the part that changes the day: the deal shows a code, the customer or the salesperson scans it with any phone camera, and the photos land straight on the deal jacket without an app, an email or a text thread. The driver license scanner reads a license into the customer record, the Road to Sale checklist on the same deal shows which documents and stipulations are still open, and secure file sharing sends a set to a lender with tracking on who opened it. Deal pages, the deal chat and the worksheet hang off the same record, so the file and the numbers never separate. The feature page is deal jacket and QR document intake, and the walkthrough is how to upload deal documents by QR. #### Digital deal jacket, DMS and the business office A digital deal jacket and a dealer management system are not the same tool and do not compete. The jacket holds the documents and the evidence of the sale as it happens. The DMS posts the deal to accounting, handles title and registration work, files factory reporting and keeps the store's books. Title work, registration and accounting stay in the store's DMS, exactly where they belong. What a digital jacket changes is the hour before funding. Documents are collected while the customer is still in the building, the salesperson can see what is missing without walking to another office, and the file is the same file on a phone at a satellite lot as it is on the desktop in the tower. Retention is the quiet benefit: the jacket is still complete and still readable when somebody asks about that sale years later. The LeadLocate CRM page covers the rest of the deal record. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a deal jacket at a car dealership? A: The file holding every document for one vehicle sale: the buyer order, the credit application, license and insurance copies, trade and title paperwork, disclosures and the signed contracts. Q: How long does a dealership keep a deal jacket? A: Retention periods come from state law, from the lenders a store works with and from the store own record policy, and they are usually measured in years rather than months. A digital jacket makes the requirement easy to meet because nothing is boxed and nothing fades. Q: What is a stipulation in a deal jacket? A: A condition a lender attaches to an approval, such as proof of income, proof of residence or references. The deal does not fund until the proof is in the jacket, which is why collecting stips fast is worth real money. Q: Can a deal jacket be entirely digital? A: Yes. Documents are photographed or uploaded to the deal itself, and the store keeps one complete file that anyone with permission can open from a desk or a phone. ### What Is a Deal Page? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-deal-page A deal page is a private web page for one vehicle deal, opened by the customer on their own phone, showing the vehicle, the trade, the figures, the documents and the signature lines for that deal and nothing else. It replaces photographing a worksheet and texting the picture, and it records what the customer actually saw. #### What is a deal page in car sales? A deal page is the customer facing side of a desked deal. The store works the numbers on its own screen, then publishes that structure to a page with its own address, sends the link by text, and the customer opens it wherever they are. It belongs to one deal and one buyer, it is unlocked with a passcode rather than left open on the web, and it changes when the deal changes. It is not a vehicle detail page, which advertises a unit to anyone who finds it. It is not a PDF, which is frozen the moment it is made and tells nobody whether it was opened. And it is not a chat thread full of screenshots. A deal page is a live document for a transaction in progress, which is why the useful ones carry versions, a chat and a signature rather than a picture of a worksheet. #### What can a customer actually do on one? Read the figures, first of all: the vehicle and its price, the trade allowance and the payoff, the cash at signing, the term options and what each one costs a month. Compare the structures side by side instead of squinting at a photograph of a grid. Open the documents attached to the deal. Ask a question in the chat and get an answer from the salesperson who is working it rather than a switchboard. Upload a document photographed with a phone camera. Sign what is ready to sign. Where the store offers it, ask what delivery would cost. The quiet feature is the audit trail. The store can see that the page was opened, which version the customer read and what was signed, so the conversation the next morning starts from the same page in the literal sense. That matters most on the deals that take a week, where three revisions and two people in the household are involved. #### How a store uses a deal page on a normal day A salesperson takes an appraisal at eleven, the desk builds three structures, and the customer has to pick up a child at noon. Instead of a rushed close, the rep texts the deal page and the customer opens it in the school parking lot. That evening the spouse reads the same page from the couch. They come back asking for a longer term, the desk revises, the revision becomes its own version, and the customer opens the updated page knowing exactly what changed. The same page carries the out of market buyer who is three hours away, the second shift worker who cannot get to the store before close, and the repeat customer who does not want to sit in a showroom for the fourth time. None of that is a substitute for the delivery, which still happens in person; it is a way to keep the deal moving between visits instead of letting it cool. #### Where deal pages go wrong An open link with no passcode is the first mistake, because a page with figures, a trade payoff and personal details should not be readable by whoever gets forwarded the text. The second is stale numbers: if a revision does not produce a new version, a customer can sit reading an offer the desk abandoned two hours ago. The third is a page nobody in the store watches, so a customer who opened it four times and stopped at the same place gets no call. The fourth is a page wearing a vendor logo instead of the store brand, which makes a customer ask who they are actually buying from. The fifth is a dead end: a page that shows numbers but offers no way to ask a question is a screenshot with extra steps. #### How does LeadLocate build a deal page? Every deal desked in DealTracker can publish a customer deal page skinned to the store brand. The customer gets a short link by text and unlocks it with a one time passcode, then reviews the vehicle, the trade, the figures and the documents, asks questions in deal chat and signs on the phone. Each revision is a separate version, and the store can share, revise, revoke or void a link from the deal view at any point. Documents go into the deal jacket, including anything photographed through a QR upload, and the digital retail steps on the page cover the build, the document review, the deal review and a shipping quote. The salesperson watches all of it from LeadLocate CRM or the mobile app. See customer deal pages with e-signature, deal chat and the e-signature entry. #### Deal page, pencil, buyer order and VDP A pencil is the worksheet the desk writes, covered under the pencil entry. A pencil recap is the summary of that worksheet made readable for the customer. A deal page is where the recap, the documents, the chat and the signature live together for one buyer. A buyer order is the binding document produced when the deal is agreed, and it is what the business office and the lender work from. A VDP advertises a unit to the public. The four get confused because all of them show a price, and only one of them is private to a single customer. #### Questions and answers Q: Is a deal page the same as a quote? A: A quote is a number. A deal page is the working document that holds the numbers, the trade, the documents, the conversation and the signature for one deal, and it updates when the desk revises. Q: How does a customer open a deal page? A: From a short link texted to them, unlocked with a one time passcode sent to the same phone. That is what keeps a page carrying a payoff and personal details from being readable by whoever the text gets forwarded to. Q: What happens when the numbers change? A: The revision becomes its own version of the page, so the customer always reads the current offer and the store can show which version was open when something was agreed. Q: Can the store take a deal page back? A: Yes. A link can be revoked or the deal voided from the deal view, which is how a store closes out figures that are no longer available. ### What Is a Dealer Management System? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-dealer-management-system A dealer management system, or DMS, is the software a dealership runs its business on: stocked vehicle inventory, posted deals, accounting and the general ledger, parts, service repair orders, payroll, title and registration work and manufacturer reporting. It is the store's system of record, which is why every other piece of dealership software is described by how it relates to it. #### What does a dealer management system do? A DMS is a collection of modules that together run a dealership as a business rather than as a sales floor. Inventory and stock numbers live there, so a unit gets a stock number, a cost, a reconditioning total and a floorplan record the day it is booked in. Deals are posted there once they are signed, which is the moment a sale becomes revenue and a commission becomes payable. Accounting, the general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, and the monthly financial statement the manufacturer wants all sit in the same system. The fixed operations side is just as large. Service writes repair orders, tracks technician time and bills the customer or the warranty administrator. Parts keeps its own inventory, its own pricing and its own counter tickets. Payroll pays a floor that is mostly on commission, which is harder than it sounds. Title and registration work is prepared and tracked there, and so is the reporting a franchise store owes its manufacturer. All of that is why a DMS is the hardest system in the building to change, and why stores tend to keep one for a very long time. #### What is the difference between a DMS and a CRM? The short version: a DMS knows what was sold, a CRM knows who nearly bought. A dealer management system is the system of record for the business after a deal is signed and for every department that keeps the doors open. A customer relationship management system is the system for the people before the deal exists, which means leads, conversations, appointments, follow up and the negotiation while it is still moving. They touch at two places. Inventory flows toward the sales side, because a salesperson needs to know what is on the lot with photos and a price. The finished deal flows the other way, because a signed car has to be posted, financed, titled and paid. Everything else is separate by design, and a store that expects its DMS to work leads is going to be disappointed, in the same way a store that expects its CRM to produce a financial statement is asking the wrong question. The CRM side has its own entry in the automotive sales glossary. #### How a deal moves through a DMS A worked example, illustrative figures only. A store buys a used sedan at auction for $17,200, puts $900 of reconditioning into it and books it in with a stock number. Those numbers create the unit's cost in the DMS. A salesperson sells it six weeks later at $21,400 with a trade allowance of $4,000 on a vehicle the used car manager values at $3,200. When the paperwork is signed, the deal is posted. The DMS records the sale, the actual cash value of the trade, the front and back end gross, the reserve on the finance contract, the commission owed to the salesperson, the payoff sent to the customer's old lender, the funding expected from the new one, and the title work to be completed. The sedan leaves inventory, the trade enters it with its own stock number, and the month's financial statement updates. None of that is marketing, and none of it is follow up, which is exactly the point. #### What dealers get wrong about a DMS The first error is expecting it to sell cars. A DMS is an accounting and operations system with a customer list attached. The customer list is real and valuable, but it is a record of who bought, not a tool for working who has not. Equity mining, follow up processes, texting at volume and lead routing are sales floor jobs. The second is underestimating what access to the data costs. Many stores discover that pulling their own records into another system carries a fee and a contract, which is a legitimate thing to ask about before signing anything. The third is treating a DMS change as a software decision. It is a business decision touching every department, and it is planned as one. A practical list of what to ask before choosing is on dealer management system requirements. #### Where does LeadLocate sit next to a DMS? LeadLocate is the lead and customer side of the store, and it runs alongside the dealer management system rather than replacing it. Accounting, the general ledger, payroll, posted deals, floorplan, parts, repair orders, title and registration and manufacturer reporting stay in the DMS, where they belong. LeadLocate holds the leads, the conversations, the appointments, the follow up, the desking worksheets and the customer deal pages, and it reports on what produced the sale. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required to run it, which is why brokers and solo salespeople use it too, and Inventory Link can import a store's vehicles from its own website instead. When a finished credit application has to reach a dealer management system or a lender, SecureWebX exports it in the format the receiving system expects, described on lender and DMS export formats. A connection to a specific system is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. The rest of the platform is laid out on the LeadLocate platform. #### Questions and answers Q: What does DMS stand for at a car dealership? A: Dealer management system. It is the software that runs the business side of a store: inventory, posted deals, accounting, parts, service, payroll and manufacturer reporting. Q: Is a CRM part of the dealer management system? A: Some DMS vendors sell a CRM module, and plenty of stores run a separate one anyway. The two jobs are different: the DMS is the record of the business, the CRM is the tool for working customers. Q: Do you need a DMS to use LeadLocate? A: No. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required. Inventory can be imported from the store's own website, or vehicles can be added by hand, which is how brokers and single salespeople run. Q: Can a dealer management system handle lead follow up? A: A DMS holds the customers who already bought. Working leads takes routing, texting at volume, call recording and follow up processes, and those live on the sales floor side of the building. ### What Is a Dealer Pack? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-dealer-pack A dealer pack is a fixed amount a dealership adds to a used vehicle's cost before commission is calculated, so the gross a salesperson is paid on is smaller than the gross the store books. It covers overhead the store wants recovered on every unit. The pack is set by the pay plan and by the store's accounting, and it is never a charge on the customer's contract. #### What does dealer pack mean in car sales? A pack is a number, set by the dealer, that rides on the cost side of every used unit. If a store packs 500, a car it has 12,000 in goes onto the commission sheet at 12,500, illustrative figures only, and the salesperson is paid on whatever gross is left above that. The customer never sees it, because it is not a charge on the contract. It sits quietly between the store's real cost and the cost the pay plan uses. The words around it matter. Cost is what the store has in the unit: the purchase price, or the actual cash value given for a trade, plus reconditioning. Front end gross is selling price minus that cost. Commissionable gross is front end gross minus the pack, and that is the number a percentage pay plan multiplies. Plenty of stores also run a pack on the back end, where a fixed amount comes off finance and insurance income before the F&I manager's split is figured. Dealers justify a pack in different ways: advertising, floorplan interest, the detail shop, the used vehicle inspection, or simply a floor under house profit. Whether a given number is fair is a pay plan question, and it belongs in writing in the plan every salesperson signs. #### How a pack works on the floor, with a worked example Say a store takes a trade at an actual cash value of 12,000, spends 800 getting it through reconditioning, and puts it on the line at 16,495. Illustrative figures only. Real cost is 12,800. With a 500 pack, the commission sheet reads 13,300. The car sells at 15,995, so the store books 3,195 of front end gross while the salesperson is paid on 2,695. On a 25 percent plan that is 125 of paycheck on one car. Multiply it across a month and the pack becomes the single biggest line nobody asks about at hiring time. It also shapes behavior in a way a manager should expect. A packed store leans on volume bonuses and on back end income, because front end gross on a market priced used car is thin before the pack and thinner after it. That is why pay plans at packed stores almost always carry unit bonuses, a finance split and a minimum commission. Car sales commission explained walks through the rest of a typical plan and how those pieces add up. #### Where a pack causes trouble between a store and its salespeople Three things turn a normal accounting convention into a fight. The first is finding out late: a salesperson who learns about the pack on the fifteenth of the month, after selling eight thin cars, feels cheated even when the number was always there. The second is a pack that moves. A pack raised mid month, or raised only on the units that sell, reads as a pay cut no matter how it is explained. The third is stacking, where a pack sits on top of a separate advertising charge and a separate reconditioning charge, and the same overhead gets recovered twice before anybody is paid. The fix is boring and it works. Put the pack in the written pay plan with a number, apply it the same way to every used unit, and show the cost line on the worksheet the desk prices from, so the salesperson sees the same figures the manager sees. Stores that do this argue about cars. Stores that do not argue about paychecks. #### How LeadLocate handles the numbers a pack sits on The pack itself belongs to the store: it lives in the pay plan and in the accounting that stays in your dealer management system. What LeadLocate CRM owns is everything the pack is calculated against. EZ Desking holds the deal structure on one screen, cash, finance or lease, with cost, trade allowance and payoff, fees, add ons and a fifty state tax matrix, and centralized deal defaults so every desk in the store prices from the same figures. The multi pencil grid shows three structures side by side, the goal seek bays solve backward from a payment, and the customer sheet that prints or shares matches the screen to the penny. When a manager and a salesperson are looking at one worksheet instead of two spreadsheets, the conversation about gross is a short one. #### What a dealer pack is often confused with A dealer fee, sometimes called a doc fee or a dealer service fee, is a charge that appears on the customer's contract and is regulated in many states. A pack is internal and appears on no customer document. A dealer protection package is an aftermarket bundle, usually paint and fabric protection or an etched glass product, sold to the customer as a product. Vendor pack and vendor packet are purchasing terms from other industries and have nothing to do with car sales pay. Holdback is money a manufacturer returns to a franchise dealer on new units and is a different mechanism entirely. All of these show up in the same conversations, which is why the automotive sales glossary keeps them as separate entries. If a number reduces what a salesperson is paid on, it is a pack. If it raises what the customer pays, it is a fee or a product. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a dealer pack fee? A: Usually one of two things. Inside the store it means the pack itself, the amount added to cost before commission. On the customer side, people often use the phrase for the dealer documentation fee on the contract, which is a different charge and is disclosed on the paperwork. Q: Do customers pay the dealer pack? A: No. A pack is an internal cost adjustment that changes what the salesperson is paid on. It is not itemized on a buyer order or a retail installment contract. Q: How much is a typical pack? A: Every store sets its own, and it varies widely by market, by franchise and by whether the store runs a pack on the back end as well. Ask for the number in writing in your pay plan rather than relying on a rule of thumb. Q: Does every dealership use a pack? A: No. Many independents run no pack at all, and one price stores often pay a flat amount per unit instead, which makes a pack unnecessary. Packs are most common where used volume is high and front end gross is thin. ### What Is a Fresh Up? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-fresh-up A fresh up is a customer who arrives at a dealership with no appointment and no prior contact with anyone at the store. Up means a live selling opportunity and fresh means nobody has worked it, so the next salesperson in the rotation takes the greeting. Fresh ups are the walk in traffic a store's advertising creates, and capturing a name and number is what turns one into a record. #### What does fresh up mean in car sales? An up is a live selling opportunity. Fresh means nobody has worked it yet. Put the two together and a fresh up is a person who walks onto the lot or through the showroom doors with no appointment, no visit already on file and no salesperson attached to them. Whoever is next in the up rotation takes the greeting, and from that moment the customer is that salesperson's for as long as the store's house rules say. The floor uses the word to sort traffic by where it came from. A fresh up is unworked walk in traffic. A be back was here before and returned. A house up asked for the store rather than for a person, or belonged to a salesperson who has since left. A phone up and an internet up arrive by phone or through an internet lead and usually route by their own rule rather than the floor rotation. A service up is already on the property for service and is handed to whoever covers the drive. The term you will hear in the same breath is walk in. In most stores they describe the same person from two angles: walk in says how they arrived, fresh up says the opportunity is untouched. #### How the up rotation decides who takes it Almost every floor runs some version of an up list. Salespeople sign in when they arrive, the order is posted where everyone can see it, and a manager or a tower keeps it honest. You take your up, you go to the bottom, and you work your way back to the top. Stores with a greeter at the door use the greeter to open the conversation and then hand the customer to whoever is on deck. Stores with a rotation by zone assign by where the customer parked or which building they entered. Two rules cause more arguments than everything else combined. The first is what happens when your turn comes while you are already with a customer: some stores skip you, some hold your spot, and the store that never wrote it in plain English relitigates it every Saturday. The second is what counts as a prior claim. If the customer was here two weeks ago and has a name in the system, they are not a fresh up at all, and taking them anyway is what the floor calls skating. A written house rule and a log everyone can see settle both. Once the greeting happens, the fresh up joins the same road to sale every other customer does: meet and greet, needs assessment, vehicle selection, walk around, demonstration drive, write up, presentation of numbers, and a turnover to a manager when the salesperson has taken it as far as they can. #### A worked example of one week of fresh ups Say a single rooftop logs 60 fresh ups in a week across eight salespeople. Illustrative figures only. That is seven or eight greetings each, which is one or two a day per person, and it is the entire pool of unworked walk in traffic the store paid advertising money to create. Now apply the part most stores never measure. If only half of those greetings end with a name and a working phone number in the system, 30 people are in follow up and 30 walked away as strangers. At a one in five close rate on the captured half, the store sells six of them. Raise capture to four out of five and 48 people are in follow up instead of 30, at the same traffic, the same advertising spend and the same eight people on the schedule. Eighteen extra conversations a week is the difference between a slow month and a good one, and none of it required another lead source. That is why a store that treats fresh ups casually and buys more traffic to compensate is buying the expensive fix for the cheap problem. The number that moves first is capture, not count. #### Where a store loses a fresh up The first loss is silence. A customer who stands beside a vehicle for six minutes without being greeted has already decided what kind of store this is. The second is the brush off in reverse: a rep who accepts "just looking" as an answer and walks away instead of giving the customer a reason to stay. The third, and the expensive one, is capture. A name with no phone number, a phone number written on the back of a business card that lives in a pocket until Thursday, a first name only, a misheard email address: all of it turns a fresh up into traffic the store counted and can never call. The fourth is speed of follow up. A fresh up who leaves without buying is a be back candidate for about a day, and a text that lands while the vehicle is still fresh in mind is worth more than four calls next week. The fifth is the price only conversation held in the doorway. A fresh up who never gets past the number never gets a demonstration drive, and the store loses on the one factor it controls completely. None of these are traffic problems. They are process problems, and a process problem is fixable this week. #### How LeadLocate turns a fresh up into a record The greeting happens on the lot, so the record starts on a phone. In the LeadLocate mobile app the bottom dock carries New Lead next to Text, Call, Email and Team, so a salesperson creates the customer while they are still standing at the vehicle, scans a driver license or a VIN with the camera for the trade, and flags In Store Now so the desk can see who is physically on the property right now. From there the fresh up is a real record in LeadLocate CRM. One customer profile holds the buyer and the co-buyer, tags and custom statuses mark where the visit ended, and round robin assignment keeps the rotation honest without a whiteboard. The vehicle button inside every text and email composer sends the exact unit with photos and price, follow up processes fire the first message while the customer is still in the parking lot, and every call, text and email lands in one communications log, so the manager reviewing Monday's traffic is reading what actually happened rather than what someone remembered. #### Questions and answers Q: What does up mean in car sales? A: An up is one live selling opportunity: a person a salesperson can work. It is counted as a unit of traffic, which is why floors talk about taking an up, being next up and how many ups someone got on a Saturday. Q: Is a fresh up the same as a walk in? A: Nearly. Walk in describes how the customer arrived, on foot with no appointment. Fresh up adds that nobody at the store has worked them before, so a returning walk in customer is a be back rather than a fresh up. Q: Who gets the next fresh up? A: Whoever is next on the up list, which the store posts and a manager keeps. Most floors send you to the bottom after you take one, hold or skip your turn while you are with a customer, and treat a customer with an existing record as belonging to the original salesperson. Q: What should I do before going to a car dealership? A: Bring a license and proof of insurance, know the stock number or VIN of the unit you came to see, bring the title or payoff information for a trade, and know the cash you are willing to put up at signing and the monthly figure you are comfortable with. Being ready shortens the visit more than any negotiating tactic. ### What Is a Landing Page? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-landing-page A landing page is a single web page built for one offer and one action, reached from an ad, a text, an email or a search result. Unlike a homepage, which serves every visitor at once, it repeats one promise and asks for one thing. At a dealership that is usually a trade appraisal, a credit application, an event booking or a test drive. #### What is a landing page in marketing? A landing page is a single web page built for one offer and one action. Someone clicks an ad, a text, an email or a search result, lands on that page, and the page asks for exactly one thing: a trade appraisal, a test drive, a credit application, a price on one unit. Everything a website normally carries around it, the full menu, the inventory browse, the staff directory, the blog, is either absent or moved out of the way. That is the entire difference between a landing page and a homepage. A homepage serves every visitor and every purpose, so it has to offer twenty paths. A landing page serves one audience that arrived from one message, so it offers one. In an ad platform report, landing page views count the people who actually loaded the page after clicking, which is always a smaller number than clicks, and the gap between the two is the first thing worth fixing. #### How a dealership actually uses landing pages A store runs more of these than it realizes. A trade offer page that asks an owner what they drive and what they want for it. A model page for the one nameplate the store is heavy on, built around a payment example and the units in stock. A credit application page that goes out by text. A page for a weekend sale with hours, a map and a booking form. A personal page for one salesperson, which is the only page a repeat customer ever wants. A service special page that never touches the sales site at all. Each one exists because the traffic that reaches it came from a specific promise. A shopper who clicked a headline asking what their truck is worth should not be dropped onto a homepage to go hunting, and the page they land on should say the same words the ad said with the form in the first screen. That match between the message and the page moves response more than color, layout or copy length. Dealership landing page optimization works through the rest of the levers. #### A worked example of what a landing page changes Illustrative figures only. Say a store splits the same paid traffic two ways for a month. Half goes to the homepage, half to a trade appraisal page with one headline, three fields and a phone number. The homepage half produces eleven inquiries from a thousand visits. The appraisal page half produces sixty three from the same thousand, because the visitor never had to decide where to go next. The second number is not magic. It comes from removing choices: one headline that repeats the ad, one form, one button, one phone line that rings the right person. The cost of the traffic did not change, the cost per inquiry fell by a factor of five, and the store can now afford to buy more of the same traffic. That arithmetic is why dealerships build a page per campaign instead of one site meant to do everything. #### What makes a dealership landing page work Five things, roughly in the order they are the problem. Message match, so the page repeats the promise that earned the click. One action, because a page asking for a call, a form, a chat, a brochure and a newsletter gets none of them. Speed on a phone, since most of this traffic is on a phone at a stoplight. A form short enough to finish with a thumb, which for a dealership means a name, a phone number and one qualifying question rather than a nine field intake. And a tracked phone number, so calls from the page are credited to the page instead of disappearing into the switchboard. The sixth thing, which almost nobody counts, is what happens after the form. A beautiful page answered in six hours performs worse than a plain page answered in five minutes, which is the whole argument in responding to internet leads in five minutes. The page is the first half of the job and the follow up is the half that pays. #### How does LeadLocate build landing pages? Lead Pages is the landing page builder inside LeadLocate CRM, on the Website menu, and every page it publishes is wired into the rest of the platform before it goes live. Each page carries its own URL settings, its own form and its own lead feed, so a submission arrives in the lead inbox already carrying the source it came from, already assigned by the rule the store set, and already triggering the first text. Every salesperson gets a personal page, a free live chat widget can sit on any of them, and visitor analytics reports sessions, devices, sources and the pages that produced the work. Start with the Lead Pages builder, the salesperson landing page templates and brand offer pages for the version built around a single manufacturer lineup. #### Landing page, homepage, SRP and VDP A homepage is the front door of the whole site. An SRP, or search results page, is the list a shopper sees after filtering inventory. A VDP, or vehicle detail page, is the page for one unit with photos, equipment and a payment. A landing page is none of those. It is built for one campaign and one action, and it is the right destination when the offer is a trade value, a credit application or an event rather than a specific unit. When the offer is a specific unit, send the ad to the VDP and let the landing pages carry the offers with no VIN attached. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a landing page view? A: A landing page view is counted when a visitor actually loads the page after clicking an ad, rather than simply clicking. Ad reports show both numbers, and a wide gap between them usually means the page is slow on a phone. Q: What is the difference between a landing page and a website? A: A website serves every visitor and every purpose. A landing page serves one audience that arrived from one message and asks for one thing. Most dealerships need both, and the landing pages usually outnumber the site pages. Q: How many landing pages should a dealership run? A: One for every offer that gets its own advertising, plus one for every salesperson. A store running four campaigns with twelve salespeople is running sixteen pages, each with its own form and its own lead source. Q: What should a dealership landing page ask for? A: A name, a phone number and one question that makes the first conversation better, such as what the shopper drives now. Every extra field costs responses, and anything a rep can ask on the call does not belong on the page. ### What Is a Lead Source? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-lead-source A lead source is the place a lead came from, recorded on the lead itself: the store's website, a third party lead provider, a paid ad, a tracked phone line, a walk in or a referral. It is the field that lets a dealership tie money spent to vehicles sold, which is why it has to be set by how the lead arrived rather than from memory. #### What counts as a lead source? At a dealership the real list is longer than most reports show. The store's own website forms. Each third party lead provider or marketplace, counted separately, because they do not perform the same. Each paid campaign. The tracked phone line on a billboard or a mailer. Chat conversations. Text message inquiries. Trade offer pages. Service customers who came to the sales side. Referrals from past customers. Repeat buyers. And the oldest source of all, the shopper who drives onto the lot with no warning. The rule that keeps the list useful: a source is a place, not a person and not a medium. Website is a place. Text message is a medium, and a text can come from any of five places. Stores that blur the two end up with a report saying phone produced forty sales, which tells a dealer principal nothing about which advertising to renew. #### Lead source, lead origin and attribution Lead source is where a lead came from. Lead origin is the same idea in some systems, usually describing the first channel a customer ever used rather than the one that produced this particular record. Attribution is the practice of connecting a sale back to the spending that caused it, and it is where the arguments start. First touch attribution credits the place that first brought the shopper in. Last touch credits the place that produced the form or call. A customer who saw a paid ad in March, came back through a search result in April and finally called the tracked number on a mailer in May is a real person a store will argue about for a month. Most dealerships settle on last touch for the lead record, because it is objective and it is recorded automatically, and they read the earlier steps separately. Whatever a store chooses, the rule has to be the same every month or the trend is meaningless. The buying side of this is covered on CRM with dealership lead source attribution. #### A worked example of source reporting Illustrative figures only. A store spends $4,000 a month with lead provider A and $2,000 with provider B. Provider A delivers one hundred leads, provider B delivers forty. On volume alone provider A looks like the better buy at $40 a lead against $50. Now add the sold column. Provider A produces four sold units, provider B produces five. The cost per sale is $1,000 against $400, and the picture reverses completely. Add one more column, average front end gross, and it can reverse again. This is the entire argument for accurate lead sources: without them, the store renews the contract with the bigger number on the invoice and keeps doing it, because nobody can prove otherwise. A live version of that report is described on automotive lead source dashboard. #### Where lead source data goes wrong at a store The single biggest cause of bad source data is a dropdown. If a salesperson picks the source when creating the lead, the field records what somebody remembered, guessed, or chose because it was first alphabetically. Sources have to be set by how the lead arrived: a feed, an intake address, a form, a tracked number. The second cause is one bucket named Internet, holding the website, four providers, chat and every form the store runs. The third is untracked phone traffic, which at many stores is the largest source in the building and the one nobody can attribute. The fourth is the walk in recorded as a walk in when the customer saw an ad, drove over and never filled out anything, which is why good stores still ask. The fifth is duplicates, where the same shopper arrives through two sources and both records claim the sale. #### How does LeadLocate record the lead source? In LeadLocate CRM the source is a property of the feed, not a field a salesperson fills in. Every source is set up once in Lead Feeds Manager with its own intake route, its own assignment rule, its own notifications and its own first message, so a lead is attributed by the door it came through the moment it lands. Phone traffic gets the same treatment through a tracking number for every lead source, where each advertised place carries its own line and every call is logged against it with a recording. Trackable short links in texts add click statistics, duplicates merge into one record instead of two claims on one sale, and the reports dashboard reads by source so a manager can compare cost per sale rather than cost per lead. #### Questions and answers Q: What is lead source attribution? A: Attribution is connecting a sold vehicle back to the marketing that produced it. Lead source is the field that makes it possible, which is why it has to be recorded automatically rather than chosen by hand. Q: Should a salesperson pick the lead source? A: No. A source chosen from a dropdown records a memory. Let the intake route set it: a feed, an intake address, a form or a tracked phone number, each one belonging to exactly one source. Q: What is the difference between lead source and lead origin? A: Most systems use them interchangeably. Where they differ, origin is the first channel the customer ever used and source is the one that produced this record. Pick one definition and keep it every month. Q: How many lead sources should a dealership track? A: As many as it spends money on, each separately. One bucket named Internet covering six vendors is the most expensive shortcut in dealership reporting. ### What Is a Mini Deal? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-mini-deal A mini deal, usually just called a mini, is a sale that pays a salesperson only the minimum commission in the pay plan, because the commissionable gross was too small for the percentage to beat that floor. The car still counts toward volume and bonuses. It simply pays the least the plan allows, and on a market priced used unit that happens often. #### What does a mini mean at a car dealership? Almost every commission pay plan has two parts: a percentage of gross, and a floor. Sell a car with real profit in it and the percentage wins. Sell a car with almost none and the floor wins, and the floor is what gets paid. That payment is the mini. Many stores call it a flat, a minimum, or simply the number, as in "that one is a one seventy five." The gross that matters is commissionable gross, not the gross on the accounting statement. Selling price minus cost gives front end gross. Take out the dealer pack and you have the number the percentage multiplies. A car can look like it made money to the customer, to the manager and to the office, and still be a mini to the person who sold it. Minis are not a sign of a bad salesperson. They are the arithmetic of a market where a shopper can compare the same trim across twenty stores in a phone browser before ever walking in. What separates a strong month from a weak one is how many units a salesperson turns and how much finance and insurance income, trade equity and accessory business rides along with them. #### How a mini happens, with a worked example Take a crossover priced to market at 24,495 against a cost of 23,600 after reconditioning, with a 500 pack and a pay plan of 25 percent of commissionable gross with a 175 minimum. Illustrative figures only. The customer negotiates to 24,100. Front end gross is 500. Take the pack and the commissionable gross is zero, so the percentage produces nothing and the plan pays the 175 minimum. That is a mini. Now change one thing. The same customer has a trade the store needs, and the desk gives a fair allowance against an actual cash value that leaves 600 of equity on the used side, then the finance office writes a service contract. Volume bonus counts the unit, the trade becomes next week's front line inventory, and the paycheck for the month is nothing like the paycheck from the front end gross alone. Same car, same price, different deal. #### Why minis pile up, and what managers do about it Four things drive a floor full of minis. Market pricing on used units leaves very little room by design. One price and no haggle stores set the price once, which is honest and popular and also thin. Internet shoppers arrive knowing the number and negotiate from it, not toward it. And aged units get discounted to move, so the oldest cars on the lot are usually the smallest paychecks. Good managers answer with structure rather than speeches. They pay unit bonuses so the twelfth car is worth more than the fourth. They split back end income so the salesperson has a reason to set the finance office up properly. They spiff the aged units that cost the store money every day they sit. And they measure activity, appointments set, appointments shown, calls and texts answered, because a salesperson who works five more shoppers a week makes minis mathematically irrelevant. A new salesperson's first thirty days is where that habit is either built or lost. #### How LeadLocate helps a salesperson stop living on minis Volume answers a thin market, and volume comes from working more shoppers well. In LeadLocate CRM, every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you, prescreened at capture and backed by a replacement review, so the time you spend on follow up is spent on real shoppers. Follow Up Processes run multi step text and email drips per lead type, Automated Templates answer a new lead the moment it lands, and the two way texting inbox, the softphone and the calendar all sit in the same window, so setting an appointment takes seconds instead of a tab hunt. When the customer arrives, EZ Desking structures the deal with the trade, the term and the products in one worksheet, and the recap goes to the customer's phone. More shoppers worked, more deals structured properly, more cars that are not minis. #### Mini, flat, house deal: the words for a thin paycheck A flat is a fixed amount per unit, and in a flat pay plan every car pays the same whether it made money or not, so the word mini loses its meaning. A house deal is a sale the dealership sourced rather than the salesperson, often paid at half or at the minimum. A half deal is one split between two salespeople, usually because a customer came back on somebody else's day off. A spiff is a small bonus attached to a specific unit or activity, and on an aged car a spiff often pays better than the commission does. They all sit in the same conversation on a Saturday afternoon, and the automotive sales glossary keeps each one as its own entry. The distinction worth remembering: a mini is what the plan pays when the gross is gone, while a flat is what the plan pays no matter what the gross was. #### Questions and answers Q: How much is a mini deal? A: Whatever the minimum commission in that store's pay plan is. It is set by the dealership, not by the industry, and it is often different for new and used units. Ask for the figure in writing before you start. Q: Does a mini still count toward my unit count? A: Yes. A mini is a sold unit like any other, so it counts toward volume bonuses, manufacturer sales cash and anything else tied to units. That is why a month of minis with a strong unit bonus can still be a good month. Q: Why did my deal become a mini when the store made money? A: Because the percentage is paid on commissionable gross, which is front end gross after the pack and any other adjustments in your plan. The store can book a profit on a car that produces no commissionable gross at all. Q: Are mini deals more common on new or used cars? A: Both, for different reasons. New units are priced against published incentives and every competing store, and used units are priced against live market data. Back end income and trade acquisition are where most plans make the difference up. ### What Is a Money Factor? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-money-factor A money factor is how finance charge is quoted on a lease, written as a small decimal such as .00150 instead of a percentage. Multiply it by 2,400 for the rough equivalent annual rate. The leasing company sets a base factor from the customer's credit tier, and a dealership may add to it within a published cap. #### What is a money factor on a lease? A lease is not a loan, so the paperwork does not quote an interest rate. It quotes a money factor, sometimes printed as a lease factor or lease rate, and it looks like .00125 or .00275. To translate it, multiply by 2,400: a factor of .00150 is close to a 3.6 percent annual rate, and a factor of .00275 is close to 6.6 percent. The number exists because of the arithmetic the lease uses, not to hide anything, though a shopper seeing it for the first time can be forgiven for assuming otherwise. The leasing company publishes a base factor by credit tier, the same way a lender publishes buy rates. A dealership may add to that base up to a stated cap, which is the lease equivalent of rate markup and is the store's compensation for arranging the lease. A subvented factor, one the manufacturer buys far below the market to promote a model, is usually written exactly as published. #### How the money factor sets the lease payment A lease payment is two pieces added together. The first is depreciation: the adjusted capitalized cost minus the residual value, divided by the number of months. The second is the rent charge, and this is where the money factor lives. The rent charge is the adjusted capitalized cost plus the residual, multiplied by the money factor. Tax goes on top according to the method the state uses. That plus sign is the part that surprises people. Interest on a loan is charged on a balance that falls every month, so a payment late in the term is mostly principal. A lease rent charge is computed once off the sum of the starting and ending values, which is why a lease payment is level and why paying a large amount at signing moves a lease payment less than a shopper expects. Desking software shows all three levers at once so nobody has to do that arithmetic at a desk with a customer watching. #### A worked example, illustrative figures only Say an adjusted capitalized cost of $30,000, a residual of $18,000, a 36 month term and a money factor of .00150, illustrative figures only. Depreciation is $30,000 minus $18,000, divided by 36, or $333.33 a month. The rent charge is $30,000 plus $18,000, multiplied by .00150, or $72.00 a month. The base payment before tax is $405.33. Now move the factor to .00200, the kind of change a credit tier or a markup produces. The rent charge becomes $96.00 and the base payment becomes $429.33, about twenty four dollars a month, or roughly $864 across the term. That is what a factor change is worth, and it is why the number deserves a plain answer when a customer asks for it. #### Where the money factor trips people up The most common confusion is scale. A customer who hears one point five assumes a percentage, so say the whole number: point zero zero one five zero, which works out near 3.6 percent. The second is thinking the factor is the only lever. Three numbers drive a lease payment, and the capitalized cost is the one actually open to negotiation, since the residual is fixed by the leasing company and the base factor comes from a credit tier. The third is silence. A shopper who asks for the money factor and is told not to worry about it turns into a shopper reading a lease forum in the parking lot. Some programs also let a customer lower the factor by placing multiple security deposits, which is worth knowing before a well prepared buyer brings it up first. #### How LeadLocate desks a lease EZ Desking inside LeadLocate CRM writes cash, finance and lease structures in the same place, so a customer weighing a lease against a retail contract sees both without a manager rebuilding anything. The lease side carries a fifty state tax matrix, three lease tax methods, trade credit caps and semimonthly frequency, and the multi pencil grid with goal seek bays lets the desk hold a payment and solve for the term or the amount at signing instead of guessing and reprinting. What the customer receives keeps up with the desk. The deal page is branded to the store, opens on a phone with PIN access, takes an e-signature and keeps every revision, and the print packet carries payment ranges and a finance breakdown for the folder. Worksheets in SecureWebX are at parity with the same engine, so the structure the floor built is the structure the finance office opens. #### Money factor, APR and residual: how they relate An APR is what a retail installment contract discloses and it is charged against a falling balance. A money factor performs the same job on a lease but is applied to the sum of the capitalized cost and the residual, so the two are comparable only after converting. The residual value is not a cost of money at all; it is the leasing company's estimate of what the vehicle will be worth at maturity. There is no money factor on a car loan, which is why that search usually means someone is comparing a lease quote to a finance quote. Each of those terms has its own entry in the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: How do you convert a money factor to an interest rate? A: Multiply by 2,400. A factor of .00125 is about 3 percent, .00200 is about 4.8 percent, and .00375 is about 9 percent. To go the other way, divide the rate by 2,400. Q: Is a money factor the same as an interest rate? A: It plays the same role but is computed differently. A rate is charged against a balance that declines every month; a money factor is applied to the capitalized cost plus the residual, which is why a lease payment stays level through the term. Q: Can you negotiate the money factor? A: The base factor comes from the leasing company and the customer's credit tier, so that part is fixed. What a dealership adds on top, inside the published cap, is the part that can move, and some programs lower the factor in exchange for multiple security deposits. Q: What is the money factor on a car loan? A: There is not one. Loans quote an APR, leases quote a money factor. Anyone comparing the two should convert the factor by multiplying it by 2,400 and compare the results over the same term. ### What Is a Pencil Recap? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-pencil-recap A pencil recap is a one page summary of the figures a desk manager offered on a deal: the vehicle, the trade, the cash at signing, the term, the rate and the payment options. It exists so the customer and the salesperson are reading the same numbers, and so the offer survives the walk back to the desk. #### What is a pencil recap in car sales? A pencil is the worksheet a desk manager produces with the numbers being offered, described in full under the pencil entry. A pencil recap is that worksheet made readable for the person who has to decide: the same figures, arranged so a customer who does not sell cars for a living can follow them, on one page they can keep. The word recap gets used two ways at a store and they are worth separating. On the sales floor a recap is the customer summary of an offer. In the business office a deal recap is the accounting summary of a closed deal, the one that shows front end and back end gross and gets posted in the dealer management system. Same word, two audiences, two completely different documents. #### What belongs on a recap sheet The vehicle, with stock number and mileage so nobody is arguing about which unit. The selling price and any rebates applied. The trade allowance and the payoff shown separately, because a customer who sees only the net has no idea what they were allowed. The cash at signing. Taxes and the fees the store actually charges. The term options, usually two or three, with the payment for each. The rate or the assumption behind it, marked as subject to approval. And the plain statement that figures depend on credit approval and verification of the payoff and the equipment. What does not belong is as important. A payment with no term next to it. A trade number that quietly includes the rebate. Fees rolled into a line labelled miscellaneous. A recap that hides any of those produces a customer who feels tricked in the business office, and that customer tells people. #### A worked example of a recap the customer keeps Illustrative figures only. The unit is priced at $32,480. The trade is allowed at $14,000 with a payoff of $11,850, so $2,150 of equity carries into the deal, plus $1,000 of cash at signing. The recap shows three columns: sixty months at $612.45 a month, seventy two months at $528.10, and eighty four months at $471.60, each with the rate assumption printed under it and a line noting taxes and fees are included in the amount financed. The customer takes that sheet home. The spouse reads it, the seventy two month column wins, and the questions that come back are about the trade rather than about what the numbers mean. That is the entire job of a recap: it moves the conversation forward while the customer is not in the building, and it means the figures the store defends tomorrow are the figures it offered today. #### Where a recap costs a store a deal The first failure is handwriting. A number written quickly and read wrong becomes an argument in the business office, and the store loses either the gross or the customer. The second is the photograph: a picture of a worksheet texted to a buyer is unreadable on a phone, impossible to update and leaves no record of what was sent. The third is a recap that omits fees, so the out the door total arrives as a surprise, which is the subject of the out the door price entry. The fourth is version drift: the desk revises, the customer keeps quoting the first sheet, and nobody can prove which one was current. The fifth is a recap with no expiration, since rebates and rates move and a sheet with no date attached invites a customer to hold the store to figures that have changed. #### How does LeadLocate produce a pencil recap? The structures come out of EZ Desking in LeadLocate CRM, where the multi pencil grid and the goal seek bays let a manager build cash, finance and lease options side by side with the state tax matrix already applied. PencilRecap turns the chosen structures into a shareable recap sheet the customer can open on a phone, and the customer deal page carries the same figures with the documents, the chat and the signature attached. For the customer who wants paper, the print packet prints the payment ranges and the finance breakdown, envelope templates included. Every version is kept, so the sheet the customer is holding is a sheet the store can reproduce. See pencil recap sheets and EZ Desking worksheets. #### Pencil recap, buyer order and deal recap A pencil recap is an offer, not a contract. A buyer order is the binding document the customer signs once the structure is agreed, and it is what the business office and the lender work from. A deal recap in accounting is the internal summary of gross on a closed deal, which lives in the dealer management system with the rest of the books. Read in order, the three of them tell the story of one transaction: what was offered, what was agreed, and what the store made. #### Questions and answers Q: Is a pencil recap the same as a buyer order? A: No. A recap is a summary of an offer, subject to approval and verification. A buyer order is the binding document signed when the deal is agreed. Q: Should a recap show the trade allowance and the payoff separately? A: Yes. A customer who sees only the net difference cannot tell what was allowed for their vehicle, and that is the number they will compare against the store down the road. Q: How many payment options belong on one recap? A: Two or three. A grid with seven columns reads like a puzzle, and the customer picks the smallest number on the page without noticing the term that produced it. Q: Why put a recap on the phone instead of on paper? A: Because it can be revised, the store can see it was opened, and the version the customer is reading is the current one. Paper still helps at the kitchen table, so most stores send both. ### What Is a Pencil in Car Sales? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-pencil In car sales, a pencil is the worksheet of numbers a desk manager sends back to the sales floor: vehicle price, trade allowance, payoff, cash down, term, rate and monthly payment. To pencil a deal is to produce that worksheet. The first pencil is the store's opening structure, and what the customer says about it starts the negotiation. #### What does pencil mean on a dealership sales floor? The word is a leftover from when it was literal. A manager worked the numbers in pencil on a four square or a worksheet, handed the sheet to the salesperson, and the salesperson carried it to the customer's table. Pencil rather than pen was the point: nothing on the sheet was final, everything on it could be erased and rewritten, and the customer could see that. Stores kept the word long after the sheet started coming out of a printer. Today a pencil means two things depending on who is speaking. As a noun it is the worksheet itself, the set of numbers being offered right now. As a verb it is the act of producing one, which is the same activity the store calls desking. When a salesperson says the desk is penciling it, they mean the manager is building the offer. When they say go get me a pencil, they mean go get me the numbers. #### First pencil, second pencil and the pencil grid The first pencil is the store's opening structure. It is rarely the number the deal closes at, and it is not supposed to be. It sets the frame: this is the price, this is what we will allow for your car, this is the term, here is the payment. The customer reacts to it, and the reaction tells the desk which variable matters. Somebody who says the payment is too high is a different customer than somebody who says the trade number is insulting. The second pencil answers that reaction. It usually moves one lever rather than all of them, because moving everything at once tells the customer the first sheet was fiction. A third pencil happens on deals with a real gap. Good desks stop there and change the approach instead, because a fourth pencil is usually a sign that nobody has found out what the customer actually needs. A pencil grid, sometimes called a multi pencil, is the modern shortcut. Instead of one payment, the sheet shows a block of payments: several cash down amounts across the top, several terms down the side, a real payment in every cell. The customer points at a cell rather than saying no to a single figure, and the salesperson learns more in one turn than in three trips to the desk. #### What a pencil actually shows the customer A clean pencil shows every number that produces the payment, in an order the customer can follow. Illustrative figures only: a selling price of 31,500, a documentation fee and a registration estimate, sales tax figured with the state's trade credit rule applied, a trade allowance of 12,000 against a payoff of 8,200, and 3,000 in cash from the customer. Those lines add up to an amount financed, and the amount financed at a chosen term and an assumed rate produces the payment shown at the bottom. Two things belong on the sheet besides the math. The first is a clear statement that the figures are estimates until a lender approves the deal, because the rate on a first pencil is an assumption about a credit tier nobody has confirmed yet. The second is who prepared it and when, so that a sheet the customer brings back three days later can be checked against what the store actually offered. A pencil is a selling document, and selling documents get read later by people who were not in the room. #### Where a pencil loses a deal The most common failure is a payment with no explanation attached. A customer handed a single number with no lines above it assumes the store made it up, and the negotiation becomes about trust instead of about the car. The second is a sheet that does not survive the drive home. If the customer cannot photograph it, read it on a phone or show it to a spouse, the store is relying on memory, and memory always remembers a lower payment than the sheet showed. The third is drift. The pencil says one payment, the finance office writes a contract with a different one because the lender came back at another tier or a fee was missed, and the customer feels ambushed at the signing table. Keeping the worksheet and the final paperwork on the same record, with a history of every version, is what stops that conversation before it starts. #### How LeadLocate writes a pencil EZ Desking inside LeadLocate CRM produces the pencil from the lead itself, which is why it is the best desk a store can put in front of a customer. The customer, the co-buyer and the unit are already on the worksheet because they came off the lead record, and a VIN decode fills the vehicle in. The Multi-Pencil Grid opens the block of cash down amounts and terms the store set as its default, Goal-Seek Desking starts from the payment the customer asked for and solves backwards, and the customer print version matches the screen exactly and carries the store's own editable disclaimer plus a worksheet identifier. Pencil recap sheets send that same sheet as a private link the buyer opens on a phone, marks up and signs, and the link can be revoked or replaced when a newer pencil supersedes it. Every version stays on the deal history, so the sheet the customer is holding can always be matched to the one the store wrote. The worksheet itself is on the EZ Desking worksheets page, and deal pages with e-signature carry the structure through to signing. #### Pencil, quote and buyer order: what is the difference? A quote is a price on a vehicle, usually with nothing else attached. A pencil is a structure: price, trade, payoff, cash, taxes, fees, term and payment together, presented as an offer the customer can respond to. A buyer order, sometimes called a purchase order, is the document that follows agreement and commits both sides to the deal; unlike a pencil it is meant to be signed and it does not move afterwards. The recap sheet is a fourth thing worth knowing. It is the summary a store shares after the structure is agreed, written for the customer rather than for the desk, and it is what most buyers keep. All four describe the same deal at different stages, which is why stores that keep them on one record argue with customers far less than stores that keep them in four places. Other floor terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: What does it mean to pencil a deal? A: It means building the worksheet of numbers the store will offer: price, trade allowance, payoff, cash down, taxes and fees, term and payment. The sheet that comes out of it is called the pencil. Q: What is a first pencil? A: The store opening structure. It sets the frame for the negotiation, and the customer reaction to it tells the desk which number actually matters to them. Q: Is a pencil the same as a buyer order? A: No. A pencil is a working offer that is expected to change. A buyer order is the committing document that follows agreement and is signed by both sides. Q: Do customers get to keep the pencil? A: At most stores, yes, and they should. A customer who can reread the sheet at home, or open a shared recap link on a phone, comes back arguing about far less than a customer working from memory. ### What Is a Rebate vs Dealer Cash? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-rebate-vs-dealer-cash A rebate, also called customer cash, is a manufacturer incentive that belongs to the buyer and reduces what they owe on the deal. Dealer cash is a manufacturer incentive paid to the dealership itself, which the store can keep as gross or spend to sharpen a price. Same source, different owner. #### What is the difference between a rebate and dealer cash? A rebate, usually printed as customer cash or bonus cash, is money the manufacturer puts toward a specific buyer's purchase of a specific unit. It belongs to the customer. On a retail deal the customer almost always assigns it to the dealership, which then applies it against the balance, so it behaves like cash the customer brought with them. It has to be disclosed, and the customer has to qualify for it. Dealer cash is money the manufacturer pays the dealership for moving a unit or a model line. It belongs to the store. Nothing requires it to be shown to the customer or handed over, and a manager may use part of it to reach a number, keep all of it as gross, or spread it across a group of aging units. Both incentives exist to move metal; one does it by lowering what the buyer pays, the other by widening what the store can afford to give. #### How rebates and dealer cash land on a deal Rebates come with conditions. Some are open to anyone, some require a trade of a qualifying vehicle, current ownership of the brand, military service, a recent college degree or financing through the manufacturer's own finance company. Several can often be stacked, some are strictly either or, and a promoted low rate and a cash incentive are frequently a choose one pair, which is a real conversation at the desk: take the money now or take the cheaper money over the term. Where the rebate lands on the worksheet depends on the structure and the state. On a retail purchase it usually reduces the balance after the selling price is set, and states differ on whether sales tax is figured before or after it applies. On a lease it normally becomes a capitalized cost reduction, which is why a large rebate moves a lease payment less than shoppers expect. Dealer cash never appears on the customer's paperwork at all; it lands on the store's side of the deal and shows up in the unit's gross. #### A worked example, illustrative figures only Say a unit stickers at $35,000, the store agrees to sell it at $33,000, and the manufacturer has $1,500 in customer cash plus $1,000 in dealer cash on that model, illustrative figures only. The customer's balance before tax and fees is $31,500, because the rebate belongs to them and was assigned to the store. The $1,000 stays with the dealership. Now the trade appraisal comes in $500 under what the customer owes on it. A manager who knows the dealer cash is there can close that $500 and still book gross on the unit; a manager who does not know will lose the deal over it. That is the entire practical value of telling the two incentives apart: one is the customer's money you are handing back, the other is room you already have. #### Where rebates and dealer cash go wrong on the floor The most common error is advertising a price that assumes every rebate at once. The shopper who does not own the brand, does not have a trade and does not finance through the captive lender arrives expecting a number nobody can write, and the deal starts with an apology instead of a handshake. Qualification proof is the second error: loyalty and conquest programs need documentation, and a rebate paid out on a deal that does not qualify gets clawed back from the store. The third is stale program information. Incentive programs run in periods and change, regional programs differ from national ones, and a desk working from last period's sheet gives away money the factory is no longer paying. The fourth is quiet math. A customer who reads about a rebate and never sees it named on the worksheet assumes it went somewhere, so put it on its own line and say it out loud. #### How LeadLocate shows incentives on the deal Incentives are shown at deal level inside the deal view in LeadLocate CRM, in an incentives showroom the desk can open while it is building the structure, so the programs on that unit are in front of the manager instead of on a printout in a drawer. The structure itself is built in EZ Desking, which carries cash, finance and lease pencils, a multi pencil grid with goal seek bays, a fifty state tax matrix and three lease tax methods, so the effect of applying a rebate as a capitalized cost reduction or against the balance is visible in the payment immediately rather than after a rewrite. What the customer sees keeps pace. The customer deal page, branded to the store, shows the structure line by line with the rebate named, and the print packet carries payment ranges and a finance breakdown for the folder. When the desk and the customer are reading the same worksheet, the conversation about which incentive belongs to whom takes about ten seconds. Desking software covers the whole structure in detail. #### Rebate, dealer cash and holdback: which is which Three factory dollars, three different pockets. A rebate belongs to the customer and is disclosed on their paperwork. Dealer cash belongs to the store and is paid for selling a particular unit or model. Holdback is a portion of the invoice the manufacturer returns to the store after the sale, on essentially every unit, whether it was discounted or not. Dealer reserve is a fourth thing entirely, paid by a lender rather than a manufacturer for arranging the loan. Each of them has its own entry in the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: Who actually pays a rebate, the dealership or the manufacturer? A: The manufacturer. The store applies the rebate to the deal and is reimbursed by the factory, which is why a rebate a customer does not qualify for gets clawed back from the dealership later. Q: Does dealer cash have to be given to the customer? A: No. Dealer cash is paid to the store and belongs to the store. A manager may use some of it to close a gap on price or trade, and many do, but no rule requires it to be disclosed or passed along. Q: Is a rebate taxable? A: It depends on the state. Some states compute sales tax on the selling price before the rebate is applied, others after, which is why the same incentive changes the out the door figure differently in two states. A store's tax setup follows its own state rules. Q: Can a customer take a rebate and a promotional finance rate together? A: Sometimes. Many manufacturer programs make cash and a subvented rate a choose one pair, and some allow both. The desk should run both versions and show which one costs the customer less over the term they actually want. ### What Is a Soft Pull vs a Hard Pull? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-soft-pull-vs-hard-pull A soft pull is a credit inquiry that does not affect the consumer's score, used for prequalification, account review and screening. A hard pull is recorded on the credit file, is visible to other lenders, and is tied to a specific credit transaction the consumer authorized. On a car deal the soft pull belongs early and the hard pull belongs once the customer has picked a vehicle. #### What is the difference between a soft pull and a hard pull? The difference is what the inquiry is for and what it leaves behind. A soft inquiry, or soft pull, happens when nobody is deciding on a new credit transaction the consumer just applied for: a prequalification the consumer asked for, an existing lender reviewing an account, a prescreen, or a consumer checking their own file. It appears on the consumer's own copy of the report and is not treated as a rating factor by the models lenders use. A hard inquiry, or hard pull, happens when a consumer authorizes a creditor to obtain their report for a specific credit transaction. It is visible to other lenders, it stays on the file for a set period, and it can move a score by a small amount. The word people fixate on is the score, but the permission is the important half: a hard pull requires authorization tied to the transaction in front of them. #### When each one belongs in a car deal Early, a shopper wants to know what is realistic. They have not chosen a unit, they will not hand a social security number to the first store that answers the phone, and they have read a hundred times that inquiries hurt. A consumer initiated prequalification on a soft inquiry answers their question without costing them anything, and it hands the store real income and residence information instead of a name and a burner email address. Later, the deal is real. A vehicle is picked, a structure is on the worksheet, and the customer signs a credit application that authorizes the pull for that transaction. That is the moment for the hard inquiry, because now something is being decided. Run in that order the sequence costs the customer nothing early and asks for the inquiry only when there is something to decide, which is why nobody has to spend credit capital on a browsing question. #### Does a hard pull hurt a customer's credit score? A single auto inquiry is a small, temporary factor in a score, far smaller than payment history or balances. The bigger reassurance is the rate shopping window: the scoring models lenders commonly use treat multiple auto inquiries made inside a short shopping period as a single inquiry, because a consumer shopping one car across several lenders is not a consumer opening several loans. That is why a finance office can send one application to several lenders without stacking damage on the file. Say that out loud to a nervous customer, in plain words, before asking for the signature. The customers who fight hardest about inquiries are usually the ones rebuilding a file, and a manager who explains the shopping window and the difference between an inquiry and a new account gets the application signed and keeps the trust after delivery. #### Where stores get soft pulls and hard pulls wrong The first mistake is pulling before there is a customer, or pulling the person who came along for the ride. An inquiry needs a permissible purpose, and the purpose is the transaction the applicant authorized, on the application they signed. Pulling a spouse who is not applying, or running a report again for a different deal months later, is the kind of habit that turns into a complaint with teeth. The second is telling a customer that a soft pull result is an approval. It is an indication, and the finance office will have to explain the gap when the real decision comes back. The third is paperwork: an authorization that lives in a drawer, an application taken over the phone with nothing signed, or a store that cannot produce the consent it acted on. The store that keeps the signature with the application never has that conversation. #### How LeadLocate handles the authorization and the record The consent lives with the application, which is where it belongs. A customer fills in the store's own online credit application on their own phone, signs electronically, and the consent is captured against the terms version that was on the screen at that moment. The application, the signature, the uploaded documents and every action taken on the file afterward sit on one record in SecureWebX, with a full audit log, two factor authentication on every sign in and encryption at rest, described on the credit application security page. The bureau relationship is the store's own, with the store's credentials held in its own settings, so the credit decisions and the inquiries stay between the store, its bureau and its lenders. Soft pull prequalification through the relationship a store chooses is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership; the soft pull prequalification page covers how a program is set up. #### What a soft pull is often confused with The most common mix up is with prescreen against prequalify. Both use soft data, so the inquiry type tells you nothing about which rules apply: a prescreen the store started carries a firm offer of credit obligation, while a prequalification the consumer started does not. Account review inquiries are soft as well, which is why a customer sees their own lender listed on their report and panics about an inquiry nobody made. A soft pull is also not an approval, not a decision, and not an adverse action notice trigger in the way a declined application is. The automotive sales glossary defines the rest of the credit vocabulary a finance office uses in a week. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the difference between a soft inquiry and a hard inquiry? A: A soft inquiry is not tied to a new credit transaction the consumer applied for and is not used as a rating factor by the scoring models lenders rely on. A hard inquiry is authorized for a specific transaction, is visible to other lenders and can move a score slightly. Q: Will one hard pull for a car loan drop a score a lot? A: A single auto inquiry is a small and temporary factor, and multiple auto inquiries inside a short shopping window are commonly treated as one by the models lenders use, so sending an application to several lenders is not several hits on the file. Q: Can a dealership pull credit without asking? A: An inquiry needs a permissible purpose, and on a retail car deal that purpose comes from the credit application the customer authorized and signed. Keeping the signed authorization with the application is what makes the answer easy if anyone asks later. Q: Is a soft pull enough to deliver a car? A: No. A soft pull indicates what a lender is likely to do. A lender decision comes from a full application, a hard inquiry and usually stipulations, which is also why the customer hears a firmer number in the finance office than on the website. ### What Is a Spiff? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-spiff A spiff is a small, immediate bonus paid to a salesperson for a specific action or a specific unit, on top of normal commission. At a dealership it might be cash for retailing an aged car, for a finance product, for setting a number of appointments, or for selling a unit the manufacturer is promoting. It is short term motivation attached to one clear target. #### What does spiff mean in sales? Spiff is old retail slang for money that rewards one behavior right now. It is not the pay plan, and it is not a bonus tied to a month of production. It is a named amount on a named target: two hundred on that blue sedan, fifty on every appointment that shows before noon, one hundred on every service contract written this weekend. Illustrative figures only. The point of a spiff is speed. It is small enough that the store can post it on a whiteboard in the morning, and it pays soon enough that the salesperson feels it while the behavior is still fresh. People ask whether spiff is an acronym. Several backronyms float around the industry, and none of them is the real origin. Treat it as slang that stuck, the same way pencil and mini did. What matters is how it differs from the terms next to it: commission is a percentage of gross, a bonus is usually earned over a period against a target, a flat is a fixed amount per unit written into the plan, and a spiff is discretionary money the store attaches and removes as it likes. #### How dealerships actually use spiffs The most common spiff at a car store is an aged unit spiff. A car that has been in stock past the store's turn target costs money every day it sits, so a manager puts real cash on the hood for whoever retails it, often more than the commission would have paid. That is a rational trade and everybody on the floor understands it. The rest fall into four groups. Manufacturer money that comes to the salesperson directly on a promoted model. Finance and insurance spiffs on a specific product the finance office wants more of. Activity spiffs, paid on appointments set, appointments shown, phone ups handled or reviews collected, which are the ones that build habits rather than luck. And event spiffs during a sale weekend, where the whole board is repriced for three days. If you run those weekends, the weekend sales event playbook lays out the sequence that fills the floor before the spiff ever has to work. #### A worked example on an aged unit Say a used sedan has been in stock ninety days against a sixty day turn target. The store has 18,000 in it, the price has already come off twice, and a retail sale now produces about 400 of commissionable gross, which on a 25 percent plan pays 100. Illustrative figures only. Wholesaling it would likely cost the store more than the discount on the retail deal. So the manager posts a 300 spiff on that stock number until it sells. The salesperson now earns 400 instead of 100 on a car nobody wanted to show, and the store stops carrying the unit. That is the whole logic of a spiff: it points attention at the car with the most cost attached to it, not the car with the most gross. The same math is why stores spiff appointments in a slow week, then stop the moment the calendar fills back up. #### Where spiffs go wrong Spiffs fail in predictable ways. A spiff that is never paid, or paid late enough that nobody remembers what it was for, is worse than no spiff at all, because the next one gets ignored. A spiff on the wrong target teaches the wrong habit, and a store that spiffs only one finance product will sell that product to customers who did not need it. A spiff nobody can verify turns into an argument, so post the rule, the amount and the cutoff in writing, and post the running numbers where the floor can see them. The last trap is using spiffs to patch a pay plan. If the plan pays so little that only the spiff board keeps the floor alive, fix the plan. Spiffs are a sharp tool for a narrow job: move this car, build this habit, win this weekend. #### How LeadLocate supports a spiff board Payroll itself stays in your dealer management system, where it belongs. What LeadLocate CRM gives a manager is the count everybody argues about and the channel to announce it. The Reports dashboard holds activity, company and management reporting, so appointments set, calls, texts and deals by user are on one screen rather than in somebody's notebook. Team Chat carries channels, direct messages, polls and file uploads for every user, which is where the board gets posted and the winner gets named. Inventory shows the units in stock with their photos and prices, so the aged cars on the spiff list are the same cars the floor can text to a customer in two taps. The rules stay yours. The numbers stop being a debate. #### Questions and answers Q: What is spiff pay? A: Spiff pay is the money itself, paid on top of commission for hitting the named target. Stores pay it in cash, on the regular check, or as a gift card, and how it is taxed and processed is set by the dealership and its payroll department. Q: Is a spiff the same as a bonus? A: Not quite. A bonus is usually earned over a period against a production target, such as twelve units in a month. A spiff is attached to one unit, one product or one action and is paid right away. Q: Is spiff an acronym? A: No. Several invented expansions circulate, but the word is retail slang that predates them. Nobody at a dealership will ask you to spell it out. Q: Who decides what gets spiffed? A: The general manager or the used car manager, usually on a Monday, based on what is aging on the lot and what activity is soft that week. The list changes constantly, which is the point. ### What Is a Stock Number? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-stock-number A stock number is the short identifier a dealership assigns to a vehicle when it enters inventory, used on the key tag, the recon sheet, the listing and the deal so nobody has to read a seventeen character VIN aloud. The VIN belongs to the vehicle for life and is unique worldwide. The stock number belongs to the store, is unique only inside it, and retires when the unit sells. #### What is a stock number on a vehicle? A stock number is the short identifier a dealership assigns to a vehicle when it enters inventory. It is the store's own label, created by the store, used inside the store, and retired when the unit is sold. Its whole purpose is to be sayable: nobody wants to read seventeen characters over a radio to ask where a car is parked, so the unit becomes P4821 or U2290 and everyone knows which one you mean. That is the difference between a stock number and a vehicle identification number. The VIN is assigned by the manufacturer, is unique worldwide, never changes and follows the vehicle for life. The stock number is assigned by the dealership, is unique only within that store, and can be reassigned to a different vehicle years later. A single car can carry a dozen different stock numbers over its life, one for every store that ever owned it, while the VIN stays exactly what it was the day it left the plant. Outside the car business the phrase means other things: a national stock number identifies a government supply item, and some certificates carry a stock number that refers to the blank form rather than to the person named on it. On a lot, it means one unit of inventory and nothing else. #### How a stock number gets used at a dealership The number gets created at intake, the moment a unit is booked into inventory, and from that second it is how the vehicle is referenced by everyone who is not looking directly at it. It goes on the key tag, on the windshield or the lot tag, on the reconditioning worksheet, on the detail list and on the photo shoot list. The porter who moves it, the technician who inspects it, the photographer who shoots it and the manager pricing it are all working from the same short string. It also travels outward. The stock number is a field in the inventory feed, so it appears on the vehicle detail page, in listings on third party sites and in advertising. Shoppers use it without thinking about it: calling a store and saying "I'm looking at stock number U2290 on your website" is the single fastest way to make sure two people are discussing the same vehicle, which matters when a store has six of the same model in the same color. At the desk it becomes the spine of the deal. The worksheet, the buyer's order, the window sticker addendum and the delivery checklist all carry it, and after the sale the accounting side uses it to close the unit out. That is why a number entered wrong at intake is expensive: it is wrong in eleven places by Friday. #### A worked example of a numbering scheme Most schemes encode something. Say a store prefixes new units with N and used with U, follows it with a digit for the year of intake, and finishes with a running number. Illustrative only: U4102 is the one hundred and second used unit taken in that year. Another common approach skips invention entirely and uses the last six characters of the VIN, which guarantees the number is unique and carries no meaning at all. Both work, and the choice is a trade. An encoded number tells you something at a glance, which the desk likes. A VIN derived number never collides and never has to be reset in January, which the inventory manager likes. What matters more than the scheme is that one system assigns it, everyone reads from that system, and nobody handwrites a second version of it on a recon sheet. Stores also commonly reserve a prefix for wholesale units and another for units that are in stock but not yet for sale, so a glance at the number tells a manager whether the car can be sold today. One rule is worth writing on the wall. If a unit is sold, unwound and returned to inventory, decide in advance whether it keeps its old number or gets a new one, and be consistent, because half of all stock number confusion starts with a unit that came back. #### Where stock numbers cause trouble The most common problem is two sources of truth. A dealer management system assigns one number at booking and an inventory tool assigns another at listing, and now the car on the website and the car on the accounting record have different names. Every sold unit report after that requires a person to translate. Decide which system owns the number, and make every other system carry it rather than invent it. The second is reuse. A number recycled too quickly collides with an old record that is still referenced in an old text thread, an old worksheet or an old advertisement, and a search for it returns the wrong car. The third is the manual correction that gets erased. Somebody fixes a mistyped number in a listing, the next feed refresh overwrites it with the original error, and nobody sees it until a shopper asks about a vehicle that does not exist. The fourth is the stock number that outlives the sale. A sold unit still carrying its number in a live listing generates calls the store cannot fill, and the shopper who drove twenty minutes for a car that sold on Tuesday is not in the mood to look at an aged unit instead. #### How LeadLocate keeps your stock numbers yours Inventory Link treats the store's numbering as the store's property. It ingests the feed, or imports inventory straight from the store's own website when there is no feed, and it carries stock number overrides, so a number corrected by a person stays corrected through the next refresh instead of reverting. The same record then publishes to the inventory site it builds, the embeddable widget on any page the store already owns, per salesperson inventory sites and brand offer pages, so the number a shopper reads online is the number on the key tag. Inside LeadLocate CRM those units appear in the Inventory menu and behind the vehicle button in every text and email composer, so a salesperson answering a question about stock number U2290 attaches that exact unit with photos and price. In SecureWebX, the deal vehicle on a worksheet looks the unit up by stock number against the store's own inventory, so the credit application, the worksheet and the car on the lot are the same vehicle all the way through. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the difference between a stock number and a VIN? A: The VIN is assigned by the manufacturer, is unique worldwide and never changes. The stock number is assigned by the dealership at intake, is unique only within that store and can be reused later. A vehicle carries one VIN for life and a new stock number at every store that owns it. Q: Who assigns the stock number? A: The dealership does, usually the person who books the unit into inventory at intake. Most stores let one system own the number and have every other system carry it, so the lot tag, the listing, the worksheet and the accounting record all agree. Q: Can two vehicles have the same stock number? A: Not at the same time in the same store. Numbers are often recycled after a unit sells, which is why stores that reuse them keep a gap long enough that old messages, worksheets and advertisements do not point at a different car. Q: Where do I find the stock number on a listing? A: It is normally printed near the VIN on the vehicle detail page and on the window tag on the lot. Quoting it when you call or text a dealership is the fastest way to be sure you and the salesperson are discussing the same vehicle. ### What Is a Subprime Auto Loan? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-subprime-auto-loan A subprime auto loan is a vehicle loan made to a borrower whose credit profile falls below prime, whether from a low score, a thin file or past delinquency. The lender prices the added risk with a higher rate, a shorter term, a cap on how much it will advance against the vehicle, and more verification before funding. #### What is a subprime auto loan, and what score is subprime? A subprime auto loan is a vehicle loan made to a borrower whose credit profile sits below what lenders call prime. The score is lower, or the file is thin, or there is a repossession, a bankruptcy, a collection or a stretch of slow payments in the history. The lender prices the loan to that risk, which means a higher rate, a shorter term, a firmer cap on how much it will advance, and a longer list of things it wants proved before it funds. There is no single number that defines the line. Lenders commonly draw it somewhere in the low 600s and each one sets its own cutoff, publishes its own tiers, and uses an industry score built for auto lending rather than the score a consumer sees on a phone app. Below subprime, the trade calls it deep subprime; just above it, near prime. The same applicant can be near prime at one lender and subprime at the next, on the same day, with the same file. Subprime is not a verdict on a person. It is a category a lender uses to price money, and the customers in it are often the ones who need a reliable vehicle most, which is why so much of a dealership's real skill lives here. Related terms are defined across the automotive sales glossary. #### How a subprime deal is actually structured Four constraints shape almost every subprime approval. The advance cap limits how much the lender will finance against the vehicle's book value, often including or excluding tax, title and fees depending on the program. Payment to income limits the payment against verified gross monthly income. Debt to income looks at the whole obligation, housing included. And the lender usually charges the dealer an acquisition or discount fee to buy the paper, which comes out of the store's gross rather than the customer's pocket. Illustrative figures only, here is how those interact. A buyer earning about $3,600 a month wants a used crossover retailing near $23,000. The lender approves at a payment to income of roughly ten percent, so the payment has to land near $360, and it will advance a limited amount over book, so the store has to find the right unit rather than the one the customer first pointed at. Add $2,000 from the customer and a trade with no equity, and the deal works on a vehicle priced closer to $17,000. Same customer, same lender, different car: one is a delivery and the other is a decline. The work, then, is structure. A desk that can rebuild the same deal three ways and see the payment, the advance and the store's gross on each one places deals that a desk working from a single worksheet loses. That is what the desking tool is for. #### Where subprime deals fall apart The first killer is negative equity. Rolling $4,000 of upside down trade into a subprime deal pushes the amount financed past the advance cap, and no amount of enthusiasm moves it back. The second is payment shock: a customer who has been paying $250 signs at $520 and the account is in trouble by the third month, which is bad for the lender, the store and the customer. The third is speed. Subprime shoppers apply at several stores in the same evening, so the deal usually goes to whoever responds first with something concrete rather than to whoever had the best inventory. The fourth is the stipulation list, which is longer on these deals than on prime paper. Pay stubs, proof of residence, references, verification of the phone number: a delivered car with an incomplete stip list is a contract nobody has been paid for. The fifth is lender order. Sending a deal to the wrong lender first burns the look, hardens the file and costs a day. That discipline is the subject of the subprime deal desk workflow. #### How LeadLocate handles subprime deals The platform covers the parts of a subprime deal that happen before the lender ever sees it. Lead campaigns bring credit challenged shoppers in and every lead in the store's zone goes to that store alone, prescreened at capture and backed by a replacement review, so a dealership working this market is not buying the same customer three other stores already called. A branded apply link turns a text message into a complete credit application with income, deposit and references, desking builds and compares structures until the payment and the advance work together, and the finished application goes to the lender the store chooses through a code gated, expiring, watermarked share. The category page for the traffic side is subprime auto loan leads, and SecureWebX is where the application itself lives. #### What a subprime auto loan is often confused with Subprime is not buy here pay here. A subprime loan is bought by an outside lender that pays the store and then services the account. A buy here pay here store keeps the note and collects the payments itself. The customers overlap; the money does not. Subprime is also not the same as special finance. Subprime describes the loan and the credit profile behind it. Special finance is the name of the department and the process a dealership uses to place those deals with the lenders that buy them. One is what the paper is, the other is how a store handles it. #### Questions and answers Q: What credit score is considered subprime? A: There is no universal number. Lenders commonly place the boundary in the low 600s, each publishes its own tiers, and most use a score built for auto lending rather than the one a consumer sees in an app. The same file can be subprime at one lender and near prime at another. Q: Are subprime auto loan rates higher? A: Yes. The rate reflects the loss rate a lender expects across a pool of similar loans, so subprime paper is priced well above prime paper. The term, the advance limit and the verification requirements tighten for the same reason. Q: Who offers subprime auto loans? A: Banks with a dedicated subprime desk, independent finance companies that buy nothing else, and some credit unions. Which ones a customer reaches depends entirely on the lender relationships the dealership has signed up with. Q: Is a subprime auto loan the same as buy here pay here? A: No. A subprime loan is funded by an outside lender that pays the store and services the account. A buy here pay here store finances the sale itself and collects the payments directly. ### What Is a Turnover in Car Sales? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-turnover In car sales a turnover, usually written T.O., is the handoff of a customer from the salesperson working them to a second person, normally a manager or a closer, while the customer is still at the store. The original salesperson keeps the deal. The second voice hears the objection fresh and carries authority the salesperson does not have. Staff turnover is a separate meaning: the rate employees leave. #### What does turnover, or T.O., mean in car sales? On a sales floor, a turnover, almost always shortened to T.O., is the handoff of a customer from the salesperson who has been working them to a second person at the store, usually a closer, a desk manager or a sales manager, while the customer is still on the property. The first salesperson stays on the deal and keeps the credit. The second voice exists to hear the objection with fresh ears and to say things the salesperson cannot say on their own authority. Used as a verb it is the same thing: "turn them over before they leave" means introduce a manager before the customer walks. A store that turns over every customer as a matter of policy runs what is called a one hundred percent T.O. floor, and the handoff is written into the road to sale as a numbered step rather than left to whoever feels like asking for help. The word carries a second, unrelated meaning at a dealership, and both come up in the same meeting. Staff turnover is the rate at which employees leave and are replaced. Context tells you which one is being discussed: a turnover happens to a customer, turnover happens to a roster. #### How a turnover actually happens on the floor The sequence is short and it is the same at most stores. The salesperson has presented numbers, the customer has said no in one of the four or five ways customers say no, and the salesperson walks to the desk with the worksheet. The manager reads the pencil, asks what the customer actually said, and comes to the table with the salesperson, not instead of them. The introduction matters: "this is my manager, she is the one who can move numbers" sets the second voice up as help rather than as pressure. What the manager does next is narrow. They confirm the vehicle is right, because a price objection is often a vehicle objection wearing a disguise. They restate the structure in a way the customer has not heard yet, usually by changing the shape of the deal rather than the price: a different term, a different unit, a stronger trade number, the same money arranged differently. They ask for the order. If the answer is still no, the manager is also the person who decides whether the store makes a last move or lets the customer leave with a reason to come back. A good T.O. is quick and it is planned. The customer should not be left alone at a desk for eleven minutes while two people argue in an office, and the second person should arrive knowing the name, the unit and the number before they sit. #### A worked example of a turnover that saves a deal Say a customer is $1,500 apart on a trade number and will not move. Illustrative figures only. The salesperson has already given everything they are allowed to give, so saying it again louder is the only move left to them. The manager comes out with a different set of options. Some of the gap can come from the vehicle: a similar unit with a hundred more days in stock carries a different cost basis, so the same customer payment works at a lower posted price. Some can come from the structure: a longer term, a different lender program, or moving the money from the trade line into the price line, which is the same deal to the store and a better story to a customer who is emotionally attached to the number on their trade. And some of it is simply an authority the salesperson does not have. The customer gets a second set of choices, the store gets a second attempt, and the salesperson keeps the deal and the commission. A store that skips this step is choosing to lose the deal at the exact point where it is still savable. #### Why do car dealerships have high staff turnover? Dealership rosters turn over faster than most retail. The reasons are structural rather than mysterious: commission pay that swings with the month, Saturdays and holidays, a hiring practice that takes ten people to keep three, and managers promoted for selling rather than for coaching. Turnover costs a store more than the recruiting ad, because a salesperson who leaves takes a book of customers with them in their head, their phone and their personal follow up. The fix is not a speech. It is a system where the customer belongs to the store rather than to a phone: every conversation logged where the next person can read it, follow up that keeps running when the roster changes, and orphan customers reassigned instead of forgotten. A store that does that can promote from within, absorb a resignation in a day, and stop paying twice for the same customer. #### How LeadLocate carries a customer through a handoff In LeadLocate CRM, a handoff is a reassignment rather than a restart. One customer profile carries the buyer, the co-buyer and the whole history, and every call recording, text thread, email and voicemail sits in a single communications log, so the manager walking to the table has read the last four messages on their way over. Team Chat carries the private side of the handoff between the rep and the desk while the customer is sitting there, and notify preferences put the request in front of the right manager instead of a shout across the showroom. The numbers travel with the customer too. EZ Desking holds cash, finance and lease structures side by side in a multi pencil grid, so a manager can build the alternative before standing up, and the desking tool presents the same figures to the customer on a branded deal page they can open on their own phone. When a salesperson leaves the store, leads and deals are reassigned in User Management and the follow up keeps running, so the store keeps the relationship it paid to create. #### Questions and answers Q: What does T.O. stand for at a dealership? A: Turnover. It is the introduction of a manager or closer to a customer the salesperson has already worked, and it is normally written as a step in the store's sales process rather than left to chance. Q: Does the salesperson lose the deal in a turnover? A: No. A turnover is help, not a transfer. The original salesperson stays at the table, keeps the customer and keeps the commission, and the manager is there to change the shape of the deal or grant something the salesperson cannot grant. Q: Is being turned over the same as being skated? A: No. Skating is one salesperson taking a customer who already belongs to another. A turnover is invited: the salesperson asks for the manager, stays on the deal and is paid on it. Q: Why is staff turnover so high at car dealerships? A: Commission pay that moves with the month, long weekend hours, hiring in volume to keep a few, and managers promoted for selling rather than coaching. Stores that log every customer conversation centrally lose less when someone leaves, because the relationship stays with the store. ### What Is a VDP vs an SRP? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-vdp-vs-srp An SRP, or search results page, is the list a shopper sees after filtering a dealership's inventory: many vehicles shown as cards. A VDP, or vehicle detail page, is the page for one specific unit, with the full photo set, equipment, VIN, stock number, price and ways to contact the store. Shoppers narrow on the SRP and decide on the VDP, which is where nearly every vehicle specific lead begins. #### What is a VDP, and what is an SRP? An SRP is a search results page: the list a shopper lands on after choosing a make, a body style, a price range or a payment range, showing many vehicles as cards with a photo, a headline and a price. A VDP is a vehicle detail page: one page for one specific unit, with the full photo set, the equipment, the mileage, the VIN, the stock number and the ways to contact the store about that car. The relationship between them is the whole funnel of a dealership website. The SRP is where a shopper narrows. The VDP is where a shopper decides. Every lead form, every click to call, every chat and every text that mentions a specific vehicle started on a VDP, which is why dealers watch VDP views the way retailers watch foot traffic. The acronyms travel. In general ecommerce the same two pages are called a category page and a product detail page, and shoppers who work in retail sometimes read SRP as suggested retail price, which is a different thing entirely. On a dealership website, read SRP as the list and VDP as the car. #### How a shopper moves from an SRP to a VDP The path is short and every step leaks. A shopper searches, lands on an SRP with sixteen vehicles, scans the cards, opens three VDPs in tabs, closes two, and either contacts the store from the third or leaves to compare with another site. Whoever makes the comparison easy wins, and the comparison is almost never about price alone. The numbers stores watch follow that path. SRP views say the site is being found. VDP views say vehicles are being considered. VDPs per lead, the count of detail page views it takes to produce one internet lead, says whether the pages are doing their job, and it is the number that moves when photos, price presentation or contact options change. Time on the VDP and the photo carousel depth tell you whether shoppers believe what they are seeing. The one number that dwarfs all of them is response time on the lead the VDP produced. A perfect detail page and a four hour reply is a worse outcome than a plain page and a reply in four minutes, which is the main reason dealers who fix pages first and process second are disappointed by the result. #### What belongs on a vehicle detail page Photos of the actual unit, first, and enough of them: exterior from every angle, the interior, the odometer, the tires, the engine bay, and honest shots of any flaw a customer will find anyway. Stock imagery is a reasonable placeholder while a unit waits for a photographer, and every day it stays up is a day that car underperforms. Then the facts a shopper is checking: year, make, model, trim, mileage, drivetrain, the equipment list from the VIN decode, the VIN itself, the stock number, remaining factory coverage, certification, a vehicle history report and the reconditioning the store completed. Then the money: the price, any reduction history the store is willing to show, and a payment example labelled clearly as illustrative rather than an offer. Finally, the ways to respond, and there should be more than one. A form is the slowest of them. A phone number that dials on a tap, a text thread, a chat window, a Schedule a Visit sheet and a credit application link all beat it, because they match what the shopper is already holding. Say a store carries 140 units and eleven of them have three photos or fewer. Illustrative figures only. Those eleven are the cheapest inventory problem in the building to fix. #### Where dealers lose shoppers between the two pages The first loss is the SRP that cannot narrow. If a shopper cannot filter by the thing they came for, drivetrain, third row, payment range, they will filter on a site that lets them and meet your inventory there instead, on somebody else's terms. The second is the dead end. A sold vehicle whose VDP returns an error is the worst page on a dealership website: the shopper came for a specific car, the store had it, and nobody offered a replacement. A sold unit page should stay alive, say clearly that the vehicle is gone, and show the three closest matches in stock. The third is price behind a form. A shopper who has to trade a phone number for a number they could get in one click at the next store usually chooses the next store. The fourth is weight: heavy photo sets and slow scripts make a VDP crawl on a phone in a parking lot, which is exactly where it gets read. The fifth is duplication. Two providers publishing detail pages for the same vehicles split the store's own search traffic between two versions of the same car, and neither ranks as well as one would have. #### How LeadLocate builds your listing pages Inventory Link builds the pages from the store's own vehicle record. The inventory site it publishes gives every unit a detail page and every search a results page, with the decoded equipment, the photo set and the price all coming from one place, so a reprice reaches the card and the detail page at the same moment. An embeddable widget puts the same inventory on any page the store already owns, per salesperson inventory sites give each rep their own set, brand offer pages carry their own lead forms and offer cards, and a vehicle finder lets a shopper describe the unit they want in plain words and be shown it. On a phone, every panel rises from the bottom rather than jumping the page, so the Schedule a Visit sheet and the request forms behave the way a phone is supposed to. What arrives from those pages lands in LeadLocate CRM with the vehicle attached, so the reply can carry the same unit back out by text with photos and price, and visitor analytics in the Website menu show which pages produced it. A live chat widget covers the shopper who would rather type than fill anything in, and vehicle listing optimization covers the merchandising side in more depth. #### Questions and answers Q: What do VDP and SRP stand for? A: VDP is vehicle detail page, the page for a single unit. SRP is search results page, the filtered list of vehicles a shopper browses before opening one. In general ecommerce the same pages are called a product detail page and a category page. Q: Why do dealers track VDP views? A: Because a detail page view is the closest measurable thing to a shopper standing in front of a specific car. Total VDP views show interest in the inventory, and detail page views per lead show whether the pages, the photos and the contact options are converting that interest. Q: How many photos should a VDP have? A: Enough to answer the questions a shopper would ask while walking around the unit: every exterior angle, the interior, the odometer, the tires and the engine bay, plus honest shots of any flaw. A thin photo set is the most common reason a correctly priced vehicle underperforms. Q: What should happen to the VDP when a vehicle sells? A: Keep the page alive, say plainly that the unit is sold, and show the closest matches still in stock. An error page throws away a shopper who arrived asking for something very specific, and those are the shoppers worth the most. ### What Is a Vehicle Service Contract? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-vehicle-service-contract A vehicle service contract is an optional paid agreement that covers the cost of listed repairs for a set term and mileage. It is sold separately from the vehicle, backed by an administrator rather than the manufacturer, and it is not a warranty, because a warranty is included in the price of the vehicle at no extra charge. #### What is a vehicle service contract, and why is it not a warranty? A vehicle service contract, also called a vehicle service agreement or a car service contract, is an agreement a customer buys that pays for repairs to listed components for a stated term and mileage. A warranty is different in one decisive way: a warranty comes with the vehicle at no separate charge and is the obligation of whoever sold or built it. A service contract is purchased, has its own price, its own administrator and its own terms, which is why many states prohibit calling one an extended warranty in an advertisement even though everybody says it out loud on the floor. Three parties matter on the contract. The administrator handles claims and authorizations. The obligor is the party financially responsible for paying them, often backed by an insurer. The selling dealer is the retailer, and once the contract is registered its role in a claim is usually the service drive rather than the payment. Read those three off any contract and you know what you are holding. #### How the coverage is actually written Coverage comes in two broad shapes. A stated component contract lists exactly what is covered, so if a part is not on the list it is not covered. An exclusionary contract, usually the higher tier, covers everything mechanical except a list of exclusions, which is shorter to read and broader in practice. Both run for a term and a mileage, whichever arrives first, both normally carry a deductible per visit or per repair, and both typically have a short waiting period at the start so a known problem cannot be bought coverage for on a Tuesday afternoon. Normal maintenance, wear items, cosmetic damage, damage from an accident or neglect and anything already broken sit outside every one of them. Most contracts require the owner to keep up the manufacturer's maintenance schedule and to keep the receipts, which is the single most common reason a claim gets argued. Many contracts are transferable to a second owner for a small fee, which is a genuine resale advantage, and nearly all are cancellable for a prorated refund of the unused portion. #### A worked example, illustrative figures only Say a customer buys a used vehicle with 58,000 miles and adds an exclusionary contract for 48 months or 100,000 miles with a $100 deductible, financed into the contract at roughly $32 a month on their payment, illustrative figures only. Two years later a transmission fails and the shop quotes $4,600. The shop calls the administrator, the failure is authorized, the administrator pays the shop directly, and the customer pays the $100 deductible and drives away. That is the whole value proposition: a known small number instead of an unknown large one, on a component the owner cannot inspect and cannot plan around. The same customer with no contract writes a check for $4,600 or starts shopping for a car they did not intend to buy this year. #### What does activated mean, and where do service contracts go wrong? Activated means the contract has been registered with the administrator and is in force. The store reports the sale, remits the fee and the administrator enters the vehicle, the term, the mileage at sale and the coverage level. Until that happens the customer has a signed document and no record on the other end, which is exactly the situation nobody wants to discover at a service counter. Contracts sometimes show an activation date later than the sale date because of the waiting period. A customer can confirm it themselves by calling the administrator on the contract with the vehicle identification number, which is a better answer than reassurance. If a store sells contracts and does not reconcile what it sold against what the administrator registered, it will eventually find a file that never made it, and the customer will find it first. The first place is language. Call it a warranty on the floor and the customer hears manufacturer coverage, then reads the contract and feels sold. Use the real name, explain the three parties, and hand them the terms. The second is maintenance. Tell the customer plainly that receipts matter, because the claim conversation two years from now depends on a folder they either kept or did not. The third is the cancellation refund, which is money the customer is owed when they trade or pay off early and which is very often never claimed. The fourth is the mailer. Customers get letters that look official warning that their coverage is expiring, and a store that has already explained who administers their contract and how to check it has inoculated them against a whole industry of those. #### How LeadLocate handles the deal and the follow up The contract itself lives with the administrator. The deal around it lives in LeadLocate CRM. The multi pencil grid in EZ Desking lets a manager show the same structure with and without the coverage, side by side, so the customer is comparing rather than being pushed. The branded customer deal page opens on a phone with PIN access, shows the structure line by line, takes an e-signature and keeps every revision, and the deal jacket accepts uploads from a phone camera through a QR code, so the signed contract sits on the deal itself. The print packet carries payment ranges and a finance breakdown for the folder the customer takes home. Follow up is where a service contract turns into a retained customer. Follow Up Processes run multi step text and email steps per lead type, the calendar books the first service visit, and every call, text and email lives in one communications log on the customer record, so the conversation about coverage two years later starts from what was actually said at delivery. The digital F&I path covers the application and document side in detail. #### Service contract, warranty, GAP and prepaid maintenance A manufacturer warranty is included with the vehicle and covers defects for a period set by the maker. A vehicle service contract is purchased and covers listed repairs, often starting where the warranty leaves off. Prepaid maintenance covers scheduled services such as oil changes and rotations, which a service contract specifically excludes. GAP coverage pays the difference still owed on the financing after a total loss and has nothing to do with repairs. Mechanical breakdown insurance is a similar product regulated as insurance and sold by insurers. Each is defined on its own terms across the automotive sales glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: Is a vehicle service contract the same as an extended warranty? A: No, although everyone says it that way. A warranty is included in the price of the vehicle and is the obligation of the seller or manufacturer. A service contract is bought separately, priced separately and administered by the company named on it. Q: What does a vehicle service contract not cover? A: Routine maintenance, wear items, cosmetic damage, accident damage, neglect and anything already broken when it was purchased. A stated component contract also excludes any part not on its list, which is the main difference from an exclusionary contract. Q: Can a vehicle service contract be cancelled or refunded? A: Usually yes, for a prorated refund of the unused portion, and in many states a full refund inside an initial window. Customers who trade or pay off early frequently have a refund waiting that nobody told them about. Q: Does a vehicle service contract transfer to a new owner? A: Many do, for a small transfer fee and within a time limit after the sale. It is a real selling point on a resale, and the terms are printed on the contract itself. ### What Is a Walk In? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-walk-in A walk in is a shopper who arrives at a dealership without an appointment and without having contacted the store first. On the floor the same customer is called a fresh up, and the up rotation decides which salesperson greets them. A walk in is the oldest kind of lead in the business and still one of the best closing customers a store sees, because they are already there. #### What does walk in mean at a car dealership? A walk in is someone who arrives unannounced. No form, no phone call, no appointment, just a person on the lot looking at a vehicle. The floor word for the same thing is a fresh up, and an up is any customer a salesperson takes, whether they arrived cold or by appointment. Three neighbouring terms keep the vocabulary straight. An appointment is expected and has a name attached before the customer arrives. A be back is a shopper returning for a second visit after leaving without buying. An internet lead made contact online first and may later arrive in person, at which point they are an appointment rather than a walk in. All of them are in the automotive sales glossary. #### How does the up rotation work? Most stores run a rotation, spoken or written, so that walk ins are shared fairly. Salespeople take turns in order, and whoever is next greets the next arrival. Some floors use a physical board, some a list at the reception desk, some a manager calling names. The rules around it are local and firmly held: what happens if the customer asks for a specific person, what happens when a rep is with another customer, whether a previous customer returning belongs to the original salesperson, and how a turnover to a manager or second closer is handled. The reason it matters beyond fairness is coverage. A rotation nobody maintains produces the lot where four salespeople are inside and a customer walks the front row for eleven minutes before anyone says hello. Almost every store that measures its greeting time finds it longer than it believed. #### Do you need an appointment to go to a car dealership? No. Every dealership takes walk ins during business hours, and no store turns away a customer for arriving without notice. That is worth saying plainly, because the question gets asked a great deal. An appointment is still better for the shopper. Calling or booking online first means the vehicle is confirmed to still be on the lot and not out on another test drive, it can be pulled up front and cleaned, a salesperson is expecting you rather than finishing with someone else, and a trade appraisal can be ready when you arrive. A shopper who books through a store's online scheduling link usually spends less time waiting and more time driving. #### Why does a walk in still get entered as a lead? Because most of them do not buy that day, and an unrecorded visitor is a name nobody can call tomorrow. Illustrative example: a store takes twenty walk ins in a week and sells five of them on the spot. The other fifteen leave. If ten were never recorded beyond a first name on a scrap of paper, the store just paid for the advertising that brought them and kept nothing. Recording a walk in takes under a minute and gives the store a name, a number, the vehicle they looked at, the trade they arrived in and the reason they left. That record is what a follow up process runs on, what a manager reviews on Monday, and what proves which advertising is actually filling the lot. It also answers the lead source question accurately, since a customer who drove over because of a mailer is not really a walk in at all. #### How does LeadLocate handle a walk in? The salesperson creates the lead from a phone while standing next to the customer, in the LeadLocate mobile app, rather than from memory at the end of a shift. A driver license scan fills the customer record without typing, a VIN scan on the trade captures the vehicle they arrived in, and inventory is in the same app so the unit being looked at is attached to the record. In-Store Now flags the customer as physically on the lot, so the desk and the managers can see who is in the building and who is working them, and the same flag turns the visit into part of the lead's history instead of a name on a whiteboard. From there the walk in is worked like any other lead: desked on the spot, sent a recap, and picked up by a follow up process if they leave without buying. #### Questions and answers Q: What is a fresh up? A: Floor slang for a customer who has just arrived and has not been greeted or worked by anyone yet. It is the same person a manager would call a walk in. Q: Can you walk into a car dealership without an appointment? A: Yes. Every store takes walk ins during business hours. Booking first only means the vehicle is confirmed available, pulled up and ready, and a salesperson is expecting you. Q: Is a walk in better than an internet lead? A: A walk in is already in front of the vehicle, so the visit closes at a higher rate. An internet lead reaches far more shoppers. Stores that do well run both, and record both the same way. Q: Should a walk in be entered in the CRM? A: Always, on the spot. Most walk ins do not buy that day, and the ones who were never recorded cannot be followed up, counted or attributed to the advertising that brought them. ### What Is a Window Sticker? Price Label Explained URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-a-window-sticker A window sticker is the printed label posted on a vehicle's window that lists the vehicle, its equipment and its price. On a new car it is the Monroney label required by federal law, showing standard and optional equipment, fuel economy, safety ratings and the manufacturer's suggested retail price. On a used car the required label is the Buyers Guide, and many dealerships add their own addendum beside it. #### What is a window sticker on a car? A window sticker is the printed label posted on a vehicle's glass that tells a shopper what the vehicle is, what it is equipped with and what the dealership is asking for it. On a new car the version everyone means is the Monroney label, named for the senator behind the federal disclosure law that requires it. On a used car the label required by federal rule is the Buyers Guide. Many stores add a third label of their own, called an addendum. The three do different jobs and they are not interchangeable. The Monroney label is the manufacturer's disclosure and carries the manufacturer's suggested retail price. The addendum is the dealership's own label, listing anything the store added after the vehicle arrived and any market adjustment it is asking for. The Buyers Guide is a consumer protection disclosure that tells a used car shopper whether the vehicle comes with a warranty or is being sold as is. Because the Monroney label carries the manufacturer's suggested retail price, people use "sticker price" and "window sticker" as if they were the same thing. They are not. The sticker price is one line on the label, and it is not the same as the out the door price, which adds tax, title, registration and dealership fees. #### What is on a Monroney label, and what is on a Buyers Guide? Federal law sets what a new vehicle label must show, and the content is more useful to a shopper than most people realize. It lists the make, model and trim with the vehicle identification number, the standard equipment for that model, each factory option with its individual price, the destination charge, and the manufacturer's suggested retail price as a total. It carries the fuel economy estimates in city, highway and combined form along with an annual fuel cost estimate, the government safety and rollover ratings where they have been published, and parts content information showing where the vehicle and its major components were assembled and sourced. The label belongs to the buyer. Federal law puts the manufacturer's label on the vehicle and keeps it there until the customer who buys the car takes it off, which is why you see new cars driving around with the sticker still in the glass. A dealership's own addendum is a separate label, placed beside it rather than over it, and a store that is straight with its customers keeps the two visibly distinct so nobody confuses a dealer added item with a factory option. A used vehicle carries the Buyers Guide instead. It states whether the vehicle is offered with dealer warranty coverage or as is where state law permits as is sales, names the systems covered and the percentage of repair cost the dealer will pay if there is coverage, points the buyer toward asking for an independent inspection, and reminds the buyer to get every promise in writing. The rule also requires the Spanish language version when the sale is negotiated in Spanish, and the guide's terms carry into the sale even when a contract says otherwise. #### How dealerships use the label on the lot The label is a merchandising surface that happens to be required. A store that treats it as paperwork prints the minimum and staples it to the glass. A store that treats it as a sales tool prints a clean addendum that names the reconditioning the unit received, the remaining factory coverage, the certification if it has one, the stock number and a code a shopper can point a phone at to open the vehicle's own page online. Say a used department takes in forty units a month and each one gets an addendum listing $1,295 of completed reconditioning: tires, brakes, a detail and a safety inspection. Illustrative figures only. None of that changes the asking price, and all of it changes the conversation in the walk around, because the customer can now see why this unit is not the cheapest one in the market search they ran this morning. The discipline that makes it work is consistency. The price on the glass, the price in the listing and the price on the worksheet have to be the same number on the same day, and the fastest way to lose a customer's trust is to have the label say one thing and the website say another. #### How do I get a copy of the original window sticker? Shoppers ask two versions of the same question: how do I get a new window sticker for my car, and can I get a copy of the original one. Both are answerable. The label is generated from the vehicle identification number, so a copy can usually be produced by the manufacturer from its own build records, by the selling dealership, or by a paid reproduction service that decodes the VIN and rebuilds the layout. Two cautions are worth knowing. A reproduction is a reproduction: it carries the original equipment and the original suggested retail price, but it is not the document that hung in the glass, and it is not proof of anything the way a title or a service record is. And the further back the model year goes, the thinner the build data gets, so a recent vehicle usually reproduces cleanly while an older one may come back with equipment missing. For a dealership the practical answer is that the data behind the label matters more than the paper, because the same decoded build information drives the listing, the appraisal and the deal. #### How LeadLocate handles the data behind the label Everything a label prints starts as vehicle data, and that is the part Inventory Link owns. It takes the store's feed, or imports inventory straight from the store's own website when there is no feed, runs VIN decode against an automotive database with government safety and efficiency information, keeps stock number overrides so the store's own numbering survives, and supplies promotional photography for units that have not seen a photographer yet. One accurate record then feeds the inventory site, the embeddable widget, brand offer pages and the vehicle button inside every text and email composer. Printed label production is available on request, and our team puts it in production for your dealership. If you are evaluating the category first, the window sticker software page covers what those systems do and what to ask a vendor before you sign anything. #### Questions and answers Q: Is the window sticker price the final price? A: No. The manufacturer's suggested retail price on the label is the asking price for the vehicle and its factory equipment. Tax, title, registration, dealership fees and anything on a separate addendum are added on top, which is why buyers ask for an out the door number. Q: Can a dealership remove the window sticker? A: Federal law keeps the manufacturer's label on a new vehicle until the person who buys it removes it. A dealership's own addendum is a separate label and the store controls that one. Q: What is the difference between a window sticker and a Buyers Guide? A: The window sticker most people mean is the manufacturer's label on a new vehicle. The Buyers Guide is the federally required used vehicle label that states whether the car is sold as is or with warranty coverage and what that coverage includes. Q: Does a used car have a Monroney label? A: Only if the original was kept with the vehicle, which is uncommon. Stores that want the original equipment list on a used unit reproduce it from the VIN and display it as a reference beside the Buyers Guide rather than in place of it. ### What Is an Adverse Action Notice? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-adverse-action-notice An adverse action notice is the written notice a consumer receives when credit is denied, or granted on terms materially less favorable than those applied for, because of information in the application or in a credit report. It states the decision, the principal reasons for it and, where a report was used, which credit bureau supplied it and what the consumer may do next. #### What is an adverse action notice, and who has to send one? Two federal rules sit behind the notice. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, through Regulation B, requires a creditor to tell an applicant what action was taken on an application and, on a denial, the principal reasons for it. The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires anyone who takes adverse action based on a credit report to identify the credit bureau that supplied the report, state that the bureau did not make the decision, and tell the consumer they may get a free copy of the report and dispute what is in it. Where a credit score was used, the score and the key factors behind it are disclosed too. At a dealership the obligation lands in more than one place. The dealer that takes an application and arranges financing is a creditor for this purpose, and each lender that declines has its own obligation as well. Who sends which notice on a given deal depends on how the store and its lenders have agreed to handle it, which is a question for the store's counsel and its lender agreements rather than for a glossary. #### Why did I get a notice of adverse action after buying a car? This is the question consumers ask most, and the answer is usually reassuring. A finance office sends one application to several lenders. One of them approves and the car goes home with the customer. The others decline, and a decline is adverse action on that application, so a notice follows even though the customer is already driving. Getting a letter does not mean the deal came apart. There is a second version that does mean something. On a delivery made before financing was finalized, a notice can arrive because the structure the store submitted was not approved as written, and the store is calling the customer back to sign different terms or unwind. The two look alike in the mailbox and feel very different in the driveway, which is why the call from the finance office should come before the letter does. #### What the notice has to contain and when it goes out The content is specific: the action taken, the principal reasons if credit was denied or terms were changed, a statement of the consumer's rights under the equal credit opportunity rules and the name of the agency that enforces them, and, when a credit report was involved, the name, address and toll free number of the credit bureau that supplied it. Generic language will not do. Principal reasons mean the actual factors, stated plainly enough for the applicant to act on them. The timing is equally specific. Under the credit rules a creditor generally notifies the applicant of action taken within thirty days of receiving a completed application, and notice obligations also attach to a counteroffer the applicant does not accept and to an application the store simply stops working. That last one is the trap: the dead deal that nobody closed out is still an application that was never answered. #### Where dealerships get adverse action wrong The notices that never go out are the first problem, and they are almost never malicious. A deal stalls on a Saturday, everyone moves to the next customer, and the file sits. The second problem is the template with the wrong address, the wrong bureau or last decade's language on it, printed from somebody's desktop. The third is retention: a store that sent the notice but cannot show which file it belonged to or when it went is in the same position as a store that never sent it. The fix is structural rather than heroic. Every application gets an outcome recorded, the outcome drives the notice, the notice carries the applicant details from the application rather than a retyped name, and both stay on the file for as long as the store's retention policy requires. #### How LeadLocate handles adverse action notices The notice is generated from the credit application record itself. When a decision goes against the applicant, the finance office opens the notice on that application, records the decision and outcome, marks whether a credit report was used and which credit bureau supplied it, and sends the notice, with the applicant's details already in place because they came from the application the customer signed. The screen carries the reminder about the thirty day window, and the notice stays on the file with the audit log recording who issued it and when, under an archive that retains every record. The adverse action notices feature page walks the whole flow, and the step by step article shows the screens. The store's policy stays the store's own. Which reasons a notice states and what language a store uses are set by the store's compliance counsel, and the disclosures and privacy notice editor is where that approved language lives so every notice carries it. #### Adverse action against pre adverse action Consumers searching this term often land on the employment version. A pre adverse action notice comes from the background check world: before an employer turns someone down because of a background report, it sends a copy of the report and a summary of rights, waits, and then sends a final adverse action notice. That sequence belongs to hiring, including hiring at a dealership, and it is a different process from the credit notice a finance office sends. On the credit side, the neighboring terms are worth keeping straight too: a soft pull that produces no decision is not adverse action, a counteroffer the customer accepts is not a denial, and a withdrawn prescreened offer has its own notice rules. The automotive sales glossary defines the rest. #### Questions and answers Q: Does an adverse action notice mean my car deal fell through? A: Usually not. Applications go to several lenders, and every lender that declines owes a notice even though another lender approved the deal and the customer is already driving. If the deal itself is in question, the call from the finance office comes first. Q: How long does a dealer have to send an adverse action notice? A: The credit rules generally give a creditor thirty days from receiving a completed application to notify the applicant of the action taken. Counteroffers that are not accepted and applications that are simply abandoned carry notice obligations too. Q: Does the notice have to name the credit bureau? A: When the decision was based on information in a credit report, yes. The notice identifies the bureau that supplied the report, states that the bureau did not make the decision, and tells the consumer how to get a free copy and dispute anything in it. Q: Who sends the notice, the dealership or the lender? A: Both can have an obligation, depending on who took the application and who took the action. How a particular store and its lenders divide it is set by their agreements and the store's counsel, not by custom on the desk. ### What Is an Apply Link? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-apply-link An apply link is a dealership's own secure web link to its online credit application. Sent by text, email or QR code, it lets a shopper complete and sign the application on a phone, and it delivers the result to the store's finance queue as a structured record with the identification, residence, employment and income a lender needs. #### What is an apply link at a dealership? An apply link is the web address a dealership hands a shopper so they can fill out a credit application on their own device. It opens the store's own secure application, branded to the store, and walks the applicant through personal details, where they live, where they work, what they earn, and a review screen where they sign. When they submit, the application lands in the dealership's finance queue as a structured record rather than a scan of a paper form. The point of the format is that it travels. The same link goes out in a text message from the lot, in an email reply to an internet lead, as a button on the store's website, as a QR code on a window sticker or a business card, and as a line in a follow up template. Nothing gets printed, nothing gets typed twice, and the customer completes it in the parking lot, at work, or on the couch at nine at night when they are actually ready to buy. The word shows up in other industries with the same meaning, which is why searches for it return job applications and rental applications. In a dealership it means one specific thing: the credit application, online, under the store's own name. Other terms in the same neighborhood are collected in the automotive sales glossary. #### How a store uses an apply link on a normal day Take a normal Tuesday, illustrative figures only. A shopper calls about a used pickup listed near $31,000, likes it, and says they want to know what the payment would look like before they drive across town. The salesperson texts the store's apply link. Eleven minutes later the application is in the finance queue with the buyer's employer, income, residence history, the trade they mentioned on the phone, roughly $3,000 they intend to put toward the deal, and a signature. By the time the customer walks in, the desk already knows which lender the deal belongs to. Compare that with the paper version of the same Tuesday. The customer arrives, gets handed a clipboard, writes for fifteen minutes, hands back a form with an unreadable employer name and a blank income line, and somebody re-keys it into a portal while the customer sits. Two of the fields are wrong because the handwriting was ambiguous. The signature page ends up in a drawer with a Social Security number on it. The second version is also where texting the application link earns its keep on internet leads. A lead that will not answer a phone call will very often tap a link. #### What separates a good apply link from a form on a website? Not every apply link is the same thing. The one that produces fundable deals has a few properties worth insisting on. It carries the store's own name, logo and colors, because a buyer who is asked for a Social Security number on an unbranded page usually stops. It asks for what the store's lenders actually require, which means custom fields and extra sections rather than a fixed form. It accepts documents, so a pay stub or a license photo can arrive with the application instead of three days later. It shows the disclosures and consent language the store is obliged to show, and it captures the version the applicant agreed to. Security is the rest of it. The page belongs to the store, the data is encrypted where it is stored, the console that opens the application is behind two factor authentication, uploads are scanned, and the record keeps an audit trail of who looked at what. A credit application is the most sensitive document a dealership ever handles, and the Safeguards Rule expects a store to protect it. Bot protection on the public form matters too, because any public form collects garbage submissions if nothing is watching it. #### How LeadLocate handles apply links In SecureWebX, every store gets its own branded apply links, and each one is customizable on its own: extra sections, custom fields, document upload requests and the store's disclosures, so a link sent to a special finance customer can ask for more than the one on the website. The application takes the applicant through five steps with e-signature and versioned consent capture, accepts an ITIN as well as a Social Security number, includes a co-applicant, a trade and a deposit amount, and runs behind bot protection with encryption at rest. Applications that are started and not finished feed back into LeadLocate CRM so somebody follows up the same day, and the apply links page shows how a store builds and customizes one. #### What an apply link is often confused with An apply link is not a lead form. A lead form collects a name, a phone number and a vehicle of interest. An apply link collects a credit application with identification, income and an authorization to request a credit report, which is a different document with different obligations attached to it. It is also not a prequalification widget. A prequalification tool gives a shopper an indication based on a soft inquiry; the apply link is the real application that a lender will underwrite. And it is not a third party application on somebody else's domain with somebody else's logo on it, which is the arrangement where a store's customer data quietly becomes a lead sold to three other stores. The link should belong to the dealership, and so should the application that arrives through it. #### Questions and answers Q: What happens after a customer submits an apply link? A: The application arrives in the store's finance queue with a status, an assignee and any documents the applicant uploaded. A manager reviews it, adds stipulations, builds the structure and shares it with the lender the store chooses. Q: Is it safe to fill out a credit application on a phone? A: On a proper apply link, yes. Look for the store's own branding, a secure address, clear disclosures and consent language, and a signature step. The application data should be encrypted where it is stored and reachable only by staff behind two factor authentication. Q: Can an apply link be customized for one store or one deal? A: Yes. A store can add sections, add custom fields, request specific documents and attach its own disclosures, so a special finance link can ask for more than the general link on the website. Q: Does an apply link pull credit by itself? A: No. It collects the application and the applicant's authorization. The credit report is requested through the store's own bureau account or by the lender the application is sent to, under the store's existing agreements. ### What Is an Automotive CRM? Definition and Uses URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-automotive-crm An automotive CRM is the software a dealership uses to hold every shopper, every conversation and every deal in progress in one place. It takes leads in from every source, assigns an owner, records the calls, texts and emails, schedules the follow up and reports what each source produced. A general purpose sales CRM does none of that in the vocabulary of a car deal. #### What is an automotive CRM in plain terms? CRM stands for customer relationship management. An automotive CRM is that idea rebuilt around one business: a store that sells vehicles, works leads from a dozen places at once, talks to shoppers mostly by phone and text, and turns a conversation into a structured deal with a trade, a lender and a delivery date. Think of it as three things in one. It is an inbox, because every lead from every source has to arrive somewhere and get an owner. It is a memory, because the shopper who called in March and bought nothing is worth more than a cold name in September, and only a written record makes that possible. And it is a scoreboard, because a dealer principal who cannot tell which source produced which sold unit is guessing at the marketing spend. The term covers a wide range of products. Some are inboxes with a follow up calendar attached. Others carry the phone system, the texting, the desking and the inventory as well. The glossary defines the pieces individually, and this entry is about what the whole thing is for. #### What makes it different from a general CRM? Nine differences come up every time a store tries to run a generic sales tool instead. A car lead has a vehicle of interest, often with a VIN and a stock number attached, and a general CRM has nowhere to put it. A car customer usually has a trade, which is a second vehicle with its own value and its own payoff. A car deal is desked in structures, cash, finance and lease side by side, not as a single amount. Most of the conversation happens by text, in volume, which means the tool has to be a real texting platform with delivery status and a do not call check, not a notes field. The rest are about the floor. Leads arrive in industry formats from providers and marketplaces, so the tool has to read them. They have to be routed instantly, because response time decides the appointment. A store has roles a generic tool has never heard of, from BDC agent to used car manager to finance manager. Follow up runs for months, not days, and it runs by process rather than by memory. And the whole thing has to work on a phone in the middle of a lot, because that is where the salesperson is standing. #### How a store uses one on a normal day Illustrative figures only. A single rooftop used store takes about thirty leads a day across its website, two lead providers, a tracked phone line and the ups that arrive on the lot. At 8:30 the manager opens the workspace and sees yesterday's untouched records, today's appointments and the tasks each rep owes. A form comes in at 8:41 asking about a sedan listed at $21,400; it routes to the next rep in rotation, who has an alert on the phone before the shopper has closed the browser tab. He texts inside a minute, calls two minutes later, and sets an appointment for 5:30. When the customer arrives, the record already holds the vehicle, the trade and the conversation, so the desk starts from information instead of starting over. If the customer leaves without buying, a follow up process picks the record up and works it for the next ninety days. At the end of the month, the report says which of the five sources produced the eleven sold units, and the store buys accordingly. #### What dealers get wrong when they choose one The first mistake is buying on the feature list rather than on what a salesperson will actually do at 6 p.m. on a Saturday. A CRM nobody logs into is an expensive filing cabinet, and adoption is decided by how few taps it takes to text a customer and set an appointment. The second is stitching four vendors together: one for the CRM, one for texting, one for the phones, one for desking. Each is fine alone, and the conversation is then split four ways so no record is complete. The third is paying per seat until the store stops adding users, which quietly discourages putting the receptionist, the porter and the finance manager on the system where they belong. The fourth is skipping the setup that makes reporting honest, which means the feeds, the tracked numbers and the statuses. A practical order of operations is on the automotive CRM onboarding checklist, and the buying side, what to look for by store type, on automotive CRM for dealerships. #### What does LeadLocate CRM include? LeadLocate CRM is the automotive CRM at the center of the platform, and it carries the pieces most stores buy separately. Leads and contacts with custom statuses, tags and merged duplicates. A texting inbox with pictures, delivery status on every message and a writing assistant. Email with the store's own domain. A softphone in the browser with call recording, transcripts, forwarding and a call flow builder. A shared calendar with booking links. Desking, deal pages a customer can sign on a phone, and the deal jacket. Inventory, the website, the reports and a phone app that carries all of it onto the lot. Every app comes with every login, the whole list is on every feature, explained, the product page is LeadLocate CRM, and the month to month lead plans, each with the full CRM, are on the pricing page. #### Is an automotive CRM the same as a DMS? No, and this is the single most common mix up in dealership software. A dealer management system is the store's system of record for the business: stocked inventory, posted deals, accounting, parts, service repair orders, payroll and manufacturer reporting. A CRM is the system for the people: leads, conversations, appointments, follow up and the deal while it is still being negotiated. The DMS knows what was sold. The CRM knows who nearly bought and what to do about it. Most stores run both, and they touch at two points: inventory, so the CRM knows what is on the lot, and the finished deal, which is posted in the DMS. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required to run LeadLocate, which is why brokers and solo salespeople can use it, and inventory can also be imported from the store's own website. The DMS side of the vocabulary has its own entry in the glossary. #### Questions and answers Q: What does CRM stand for in car sales? A: Customer relationship management. In a dealership it means the software that holds every lead, conversation, appointment and deal in progress, and tells the store which source produced which sale. Q: Is an automotive CRM the same as a dealer management system? A: No. The CRM handles leads, customers and the deal while it is being negotiated. The dealer management system is the system of record for inventory, posted deals, accounting, parts and service. Q: Does a small dealership need an automotive CRM? A: Yes, and usually more than a large one, because a small store has fewer people to absorb a dropped follow up. A ten car a month independent runs the same lead flow as a franchise store, with nobody spare to chase it. Q: What should an automotive CRM do on day one? A: Receive every lead source into one inbox, assign an owner automatically, let a rep text and call from the record, schedule the follow up, and report by source. Anything beyond that is useful rather than essential. ### What Is an E-Signature? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-e-signature An e-signature is an electronic mark a person applies to a document to show intent to sign it: a typed name, a drawn signature, or a tap on an accept button. What makes it hold up is the record around it, showing who signed, what document they saw, when they signed, and that they agreed to do business electronically. #### What is an e-signature, in plain terms? An electronic signature is any electronic sound, symbol or process attached to a record and adopted by a person with the intent to sign it. In practice that is a name typed into a box, a signature drawn with a fingertip, or a button that says the signer agrees. In the United States the federal ESIGN Act and the state versions of UETA put an electronic signature on the same footing as ink for most records, provided the signer consented to do business electronically and a copy of the record can be retained and reproduced. A few categories sit outside those rules, and certain documents are handled on paper because a lender, an insurer or a state office requires it. Which documents a dealership signs electronically is therefore a decision made with its counsel and its lenders rather than a software setting, and the practical answer varies by state and by the program a deal is going to. #### E-signature versus digital signature The two get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. An e-signature is the legal concept: the act of signing electronically with intent. A digital signature is one specific technology for doing it, using a certificate and a cryptographic key to seal the document so any later alteration is detectable and the identity of the signer is bound to the file by a third party that issued the certificate. Every digital signature is an e-signature. Most e-signatures are not digital signatures. For a retail car deal, what matters is rarely the cryptography and almost always the evidence: proof that this person, reached at a number the store knows, opened this exact version of the document, read it and signed it, with a timestamped record the store can produce later. #### How a dealership uses e-signature day to day The common ones are the worksheet the customer approves before the business office, the credit application, the buyer order, acknowledgements and disclosures, the we owe, the delivery checklist, and the trade documents that do not require a title office. Signing those on a phone is what turns a three hour delivery into a forty minute one, because the customer completes them at home the night before. The retail installment contract itself is the exception at most stores. Whether it is signed on a screen or on paper depends on the lender program the deal is going to and on state rules, and many dealerships still print that one while everything around it moves electronically. The deal jacket holds whatever comes out of both paths, because an audit asks for the file rather than the format. #### What makes an electronic signature hold up later Five things, and software only helps with four of them. Intent, meaning the signer acted deliberately and knew what they were signing. Consent to electronic records, captured before the signing rather than after. Attribution, meaning the store can show who signed, which is why a link unlocked by a passcode texted to a known phone is stronger than an email to an address nobody verified. Association, meaning the signature is tied to the exact version of the document the signer saw, not to a document that changed afterward. And retention, meaning the customer got a copy and the store kept one it can reproduce. The fifth thing is the part nobody can automate: a customer who was rushed through a screen and never read anything is the one who calls a regulator. A signing flow that shows the numbers plainly, lets the customer scroll and gives them the copy without being asked is both better practice and a better record. #### How does LeadLocate capture a signature? Signing happens on the customer deal page in DealTracker. The store desks the deal, sends a short link by text, and the customer unlocks a private page with a one time passcode, on a page carrying the store branding rather than a vendor logo. They see the vehicle, the trade, the figures and the documents, ask questions in deal chat, and sign on the phone. Every revision is its own version, so the numbers that were signed are the numbers that were shown, and the store can share, revise, revoke or void a link from the deal view at any point. Documents go into the deal jacket, including anything photographed with a phone camera through a QR upload, and the whole trail lives with the deal. See customer deal pages with e-signature and how to send a deal page for signature. #### E-signature, wet signature and what still gets printed A wet signature is ink on paper, and it remains the requirement for a short list of documents at every store. Printed packets still matter for the customer who wants to read at the kitchen table, which is why a deal that was signed on a phone can still produce a clean packet with the figures and the payment ranges. Title work, registration and the accounting side of the deal stay in the dealer management system, where they have always lived, and the signed record travels to them rather than replacing them. #### Questions and answers Q: Is an e-signature legally binding? A: In the United States the ESIGN Act and state versions of UETA make electronic signatures as enforceable as ink for most records, where the signer consented to electronic records and the signature can be attributed and retained. The counsel and lenders a store works with decide which documents qualify. Q: What is the difference between an e-signature and a digital signature? A: An e-signature is the legal act of signing electronically. A digital signature is one technology for doing it, using a certificate and a cryptographic key to seal the file. Every digital signature is an e-signature; the reverse is not true. Q: Can a customer sign a car deal on a phone? A: Most of the documents around a deal, yes. The retail installment contract depends on the lender program and state rules, which is why many stores sign everything else electronically and print that one. Q: What if a customer later says they never signed? A: The defense is the record: a passcode sent to a known number, a timestamp, the exact version of the document the signer opened, and a copy delivered to the customer. Keep those together with the deal file. ### What Is an Exclusive Lead? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-exclusive-lead An exclusive lead is a lead delivered to one dealership and to no other. A shared lead is the opposite: the same shopper's form is sold to several stores at once, so three or four salespeople call the same person within the hour. Exclusivity changes both the economics of buying leads and the tone of the first conversation. #### What makes a lead exclusive? A lead is exclusive when the company that produced it delivers it once, to one store, and does not sell the same submission to anyone else. Everything else is a variation on sharing. Some vendors sell a lead to three or four dealerships simultaneously. Some sell it as exclusive for an hour and then release it. Some sell exclusivity by brand or by ZIP code, which means a competitor ten miles away can buy the same shopper for a different model. All of those arrangements are legitimate, and all of them are different products at the same price, which is why the word alone settles nothing. The related terms are worth keeping straight. A shared lead or duplicated lead goes to several buyers. A zone or territory is the geography a store buys, and exclusivity usually lives inside it. A lead source is where the lead came from, which is a different question entirely and has its own entry in the glossary. #### What a shared lead does to the first call Illustrative example. A shopper fills out one form about a midsize SUV at 7:40 in the evening. The vendor sells that submission to four stores. Within eleven minutes the shopper has three voicemails, five text messages and two emails, all from people they have never met, all asking when they can come in. What happens next is predictable. The shopper stops answering the phone, replies to whichever message was least aggressive, and treats the whole group as interchangeable, which turns the conversation into a price contest before anyone has established what the customer actually wants. The store that paid for the lead is now competing on speed and on discount rather than on the vehicle, and three of the four buyers paid for a call nobody answered. An exclusive lead starts the same conversation with one voice in it, which is the entire value of the word. #### How to check that a lead is really exclusive Five questions settle it. Exclusive to whom: one store, one brand, or one ZIP code? Exclusive for how long: forever, or for a window after which it is resold? Is the same submission also sold as part of a list or a data product? What is the zone, in writing, and can another store inside it buy the same shopper? And when a lead turns out to be wrong, what happens to it? That last question is the one that separates a vendor who stands behind the work from one who does not. A wrong number, a shopper in another state or a form filled in by somebody who never intended to buy is a normal part of any lead flow, and a serious arrangement has a written path for handling it. How shoppers behave once they are in a store's hands is a separate subject, covered plainly on what to expect from car sales leads. #### How does LeadLocate deliver leads? Every lead in your zone is delivered to you and only you. LeadLocate leads come from the company's own offer and inquiry pages, where prescreening questions are asked at the point of capture, and each one goes to the single dealership that holds the zone. A store picks that zone itself in Leads Manager, with a zone editor, ZIP level statistics and a market scan, and can run its own campaigns from there, described on run your own lead campaigns. Behind delivery sits a replacement review: a salesperson reports a bad lead from the record itself, the Quality Control team approves or rejects it, and an approved request moves into replacement, so a bad lead costs the store nothing. That process is on lead replacement review, and plans start month to month on the pricing page. #### Exclusive does not mean the shopper is only talking to you This distinction is worth stating because it saves a lot of frustration on the floor. Exclusivity is a promise about the lead, not about the customer. A shopper who submits one form to one store may also have visited two other lots that weekend, asked a friend who works at a third, and be waiting on a number from a credit union. That is normal buying behaviour for a purchase this size, and it is a reason to be first and to be useful, not a reason to be surprised. What exclusivity buys is a clean opening: the customer hears from one store, associates the answer with that store, and is not defending themselves from four salespeople at once. What the store does with that opening still decides the sale, which is why speed of first contact and a real follow up process matter as much as where the lead came from. #### Questions and answers Q: Is an exclusive lead better than a shared lead? A: It starts the conversation with one voice instead of four, so the first call is about the vehicle rather than about price. A shared lead can still sell a car, but the store is competing on speed and discount from the first minute. Q: Does exclusive mean the customer is not shopping other dealers? A: No. It means the lead was delivered to one store. A shopper making a purchase this size is usually looking at several stores, which is normal and is a reason to be first and useful. Q: What happens when an exclusive lead turns out to be bad? A: With LeadLocate a salesperson reports it from the lead record, the Quality Control team reviews it, and an approved request moves into replacement review, so a bad lead costs the store nothing. Q: How is a lead zone defined? A: By geography the store picks, built from ZIP codes in the campaign builder with population and market data alongside. The zone is what exclusivity is measured inside. ### What Is an IVR? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-ivr An IVR, short for interactive voice response, is the automated phone menu that answers an incoming call, plays a recorded greeting and routes the caller according to the key they press or what they say. It decides where a call goes before a person picks up, which at a dealership means the difference between a sold car and a voicemail. #### What does IVR stand for, and what does it actually do? Interactive voice response. The same three letters mean other things in trading and in medicine; on a phone system they mean the recorded menu that answers a call and acts on what the caller does next. An IVR does four jobs in order. It answers, so no call rings out unanswered. It identifies the business with a greeting. It collects an input, a key press or a spoken word. And it routes the call to a person, a group of phones, a mailbox or another branch of the menu. The simplest version, a greeting and a short list of departments, is often called an auto attendant. The term IVR is usually reserved for anything with more logic than that: different branches for business hours and after hours, a branch that takes a spoken answer, a branch that plays information and hangs up. The useful way to think about it is that an IVR is the first employee every caller meets, and the only one who works every hour of the week. Other phone terms are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### What does a dealership IVR sound like? Short. A store that answers well has a greeting of about eight seconds and three or four choices: press 1 for sales, 2 for service, 3 for parts, 0 for the operator. Say a store takes 250 inbound calls on a Saturday, illustrative figures only: 120 of them are service customers who would otherwise tie up a salesperson, 90 are sales calls that need a person on the floor in under thirty seconds, and the rest are vendors, wrong numbers and people looking for directions. The menu is what sorts those without a human making the first decision. After hours the same number needs a different answer. A call at nine on a Tuesday night should hear the store's own recorded greeting, be offered the chance to leave a message, and, if the store wants it, be forwarded to whoever is on call. A caller who hears a menu that assumes the showroom is open, and then reaches a phone ringing in an empty building, has learned something about the store that no advertisement will fix. #### Where do dealerships get the IVR wrong? The most common mistake is depth. Three levels of menu to reach a person is a design for a utility company, not a car store where the caller is holding a listing on their phone and has two other dealerships in the browser. A caller should reach a human on the first or second press, always, and there should be a path to a person for the customer who presses nothing at all. The second mistake is the recording itself. A greeting recorded on a cell phone in the parking lot, with traffic in the background, is the first impression of a store selling fifty thousand dollar vehicles. The third is measurement: plenty of stores have no idea how many callers give up inside the menu, because nobody has ever looked at the call log. A menu is a piece of merchandising and it deserves the same attention as a window sticker. #### How does LeadLocate handle an IVR? LeadLocate CRM includes a call flow builder where a store lays out its own menu: a greeting, the options a caller can press, where each one sends the call, and a separate path for hours the store is closed. Audio is either recorded in the browser or uploaded, revisions are kept so an earlier version can be restored, and the whole thing is described on the IVR call flow builder with the click by click on how to build an IVR call flow. Around the menu sit the controls that decide what a live call actually does. A virtual receptionist can be switched on or off, business hours can be set to any schedule including around the clock, and call screening lets whoever picks up hear who is calling and press a key to take the call, covered on virtual receptionist and call screening. A Forward Calls To ring list built from the store's own users decides which phones ring and in what order, described on call forwarding and ring lists. Every call that comes through, answered or missed, is recorded, transcribed and written to the customer's communications log with the rest of the conversation, so a menu is not a place where calls disappear. #### IVR, auto attendant, virtual receptionist or answering service? An auto attendant is the plain version: a greeting and a list of departments. An IVR is the same idea with logic behind it, which is why a system with hours, branches and recorded information is called an IVR and a two option greeting usually is not. A virtual receptionist is a feature name for the automated answer itself, the thing that greets and screens before a person is involved. An answering service is people, a third party who picks up when the store cannot and takes a message. A store can use all of them at once and many do: a menu during business hours, screening on the forwarded calls so a salesperson knows what they are picking up, and a recorded greeting with a mailbox overnight. What matters is that the caller reaches a human quickly, and that every call ends up on a record the store can read the next morning. #### Questions and answers Q: What does IVR mean on a phone system? A: Interactive voice response: the automated system that answers an incoming call, plays a greeting and routes the caller by the key they press or what they say. It is the phone menu callers hear before a person picks up. Q: Is an IVR the same as an auto attendant? A: An auto attendant is the simplest kind of IVR: a greeting and a short list of departments. IVR is the broader term for a menu with real logic behind it, such as separate paths for business hours and after hours or a branch that plays information. Q: How many options should a dealership menu have? A: Three or four, with a path to a live person on the first or second press and a fallback for the caller who presses nothing. Depth is what makes callers hang up, and a car shopper has other dealerships open on their phone. Q: Do calls that come through a menu still get logged? A: In LeadLocate they do. Every call, answered or missed, is recorded, transcribed and written to the customer communications log along with the texts, emails and voicemails on the same record. ### What Is an Internet Lead? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-internet-lead An internet lead is a car shopper who contacts a dealership online instead of arriving on the lot: a form on the store's website, an inquiry from a listing site or lead provider, a chat conversation, a text or an email. The store receives a record with contact details and a vehicle of interest rather than meeting a person, which is why speed and a written trail decide the outcome. #### What is an internet lead, exactly? An internet lead is an inquiry that arrives as data. Somebody typed their name, a phone number or email address and usually a vehicle into a form, and that record landed in the store's system. Nobody shook a hand, nobody took a copy of a license, and the salesperson is starting from a screen instead of a conversation. That is the whole difference, and it explains everything else about how the job is done. A walk in is already standing in front of a vehicle and can be asked a question. An internet lead is a name, a number and a sentence of intent, and the first task is not selling, it is making contact with a human being who is probably looking at three other stores in another browser tab. The floor terms sit beside this one in the automotive sales glossary. #### Where do internet leads come from? Six places cover most stores. The dealership's own website, which is usually the best quality traffic because the shopper chose the store. Third party lead providers and marketplaces, which sell inquiries the store did not generate itself. Paid campaigns pointing at a landing page. Chat on the website, which produces a lead from a conversation rather than a form. Text inquiries from an advertised number. And trade or offer pages, where somebody asks what their vehicle is worth, which is a sales lead wearing different clothes. They do not behave alike, which is why they are never worth reporting as one line called Internet. A shopper who filled out a form on the store's own vehicle detail page is far along. A shopper who clicked a payment estimate on a marketplace may be six weeks away. Recording each place separately is the job of the lead source field, and a store that gets that wrong cannot tell the two apart. #### What does the first hour decide? Illustrative example, not a statistic. Two stores receive the same inquiry about a used crossover at 6:10 in the evening. Store A has the lead routed to a rep who gets an alert on the phone, texts at 6:11 with his name and a photo of the unit, calls at 6:14, leaves a short voicemail, and follows with an email holding two payment structures. Store B assigns it in the morning, calls at 9:40 the next day and leaves a message asking the customer to call back. By the time store B calls, the shopper has already had a conversation with store A about the vehicle, the trade and Saturday at 11. Store B is not competing on price at that point, it is competing for attention that has already been spent. That is why every conversation about internet leads becomes a conversation about response time, covered in detail on responding to internet leads in five minutes. #### Where internet leads get wasted Five habits account for most of it. Leads with no owner, sitting in a shared inbox while everyone assumes somebody else has them. One attempt and a mental note, when the number of people who answer an unknown number on the first ring is small. A first message so generic the shopper cannot tell it from the four others they received. Working only the leads that look easy, which quietly abandons the half that take three weeks. And no written record, so the next rep who opens the file knows nothing about the conversation. The sixth is treating an internet lead as a lesser customer. A shopper asking about a $60,000 truck from a phone at 11 at night is a buyer with a job and a family and no time to visit four lots. Explaining behaviour like that rather than complaining about it is what separates an internet department that produces from one that files complaints about lead quality. #### How does LeadLocate work an internet lead? Every source is set up as a feed, so the lead arrives attributed and already assigned to an owner, with a notification on the phone and on the screen. An automated first message can go out the second it lands, from a template written per source, so the shopper hears back before the tab is closed. From the record itself a rep texts in the two way texting inbox with pictures of the actual unit, calls through the browser softphone with the call recorded and transcribed, sends an email from the store's own domain, and books the appointment on a shared calendar. What happens after the first day is handled by follow up processes, multi step plans per lead type that keep the record moving for months, with the wording set once in automated templates. When the customer finally arrives, the record already holds the vehicle, the trade and the whole conversation. #### Questions and answers Q: How fast should you respond to an internet lead? A: As close to immediately as the store can manage, and by more than one channel. An instant text acknowledging the inquiry buys the time it takes a person to make a real call. Q: Should the first contact be a call, a text or an email? A: All three, in that order of value, starting with whichever is fastest. A text gets read, a call builds the relationship, an email carries the detail the shopper asked for. Q: Is an internet lead the same as an exclusive lead? A: No. Internet lead describes how the shopper made contact. Exclusive describes how many stores received that same inquiry. An internet lead can be either exclusive or shared. Q: Should the BDC or the sales floor work internet leads? A: Whichever can answer within minutes, every hour the store advertises. Most stores route provider traffic to the BDC for the first contact and hand the appointment to the floor. ### What Is an Inventory Feed? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-inventory-feed An inventory feed is a structured file or data connection that carries a dealership's current vehicles, one record per unit, to every system that advertises them. It holds VIN, stock number, year, make, model, trim, mileage, price, photos and status, and it refreshes on a schedule. The feed is what puts a store's cars on its website, on listing sites and inside its CRM without anyone retyping them. #### What is an inventory feed, and what form does it take? An inventory feed is a structured file or data connection that carries a dealership's current vehicles out to the places those vehicles are advertised. One record per unit, the same fields in the same order every time, refreshed on a schedule. It is the difference between a store's inventory existing in one system and that inventory appearing on its own website, on listing sites, in its marketing tools and inside its CRM without anyone retyping a single vehicle. Feeds come in three common shapes. A delimited file, usually comma or tab separated, dropped on a server for each receiver to collect. An XML or JSON document published at a web address that receivers read on a timer. Or an interface, an API, where a receiver asks for exactly the units it wants when it wants them. The file is the oldest and still the most common; the interface is the most useful, because it can answer a question rather than hand over the whole list. The sender is normally the store's dealer management system or the inventory tool the store uses to manage vehicles. The receivers are everyone downstream: the website provider, the marketplaces, the marketing platforms, the window label printer, the vehicle detail pages a shopper actually reads. Cadence ranges from nightly to every few minutes, and the right answer depends on how fast the store's prices and stock move. #### Which fields decide whether a vehicle gets found? Every feed carries the identity fields: VIN, stock number, condition, year, make, model, trim, body style, exterior and interior color, mileage, engine, transmission and drivetrain. Those are the fields a shopper filters on, so an empty trim or a blank mileage field does not just look sloppy, it removes the vehicle from searches that would have found it. Then the fields that decide whether a listing earns a click. Photo URLs, and the count matters more than any other single field on the record. The vehicle description, which is the only free text in the whole file and the only place a store can say why this unit is worth more than the identical one two towns over. Price, and any second price field the receiver uses to show a reduction. Certification status, factory option codes and package names, days in stock, and the date the unit was added. Last are the operational fields that nobody notices until they are wrong: status, which tells a receiver whether the unit is available, sold or pending, and the dealership identifiers that route the record to the right rooftop when a group sends one file for six stores. #### A worked example of one night of feed data Say a store carries 180 units and publishes a file every night at two in the morning. Illustrative figures only. A vehicle sells at four on Tuesday afternoon. Unless something removes it sooner, it is still advertised for ten more hours, and the calls it generates on Wednesday morning are calls about a car nobody can sell. Move to an hourly refresh and the same unit disappears within the hour. Now look at the other side of the same file. Twelve of those 180 units have fewer than four photos, because they arrived over the weekend and the photographer comes on Thursdays. Those twelve are in every search result a shopper runs, sitting beside fully photographed cars, and losing the click every time. Nothing is broken, the file is valid, the vehicles are real, and the store is quietly paying to advertise twelve vehicles that will not be looked at. That is what people mean when they say the feed is the product. #### Where inventory feeds break The first failure is staleness, and it has two halves: sold units still advertised, and price changes that reach one receiver hours before another. Both are corrosive because the customer sees the inconsistency and assumes it was deliberate. The second is mapping. A receiver expects trim in one field and the sender puts it in another, so every vehicle arrives with a blank where the trim should be. Mapping problems are invisible from the sending side because the file looks perfect leaving the building. The only way to catch them is to look at what the receiver published, not at what was sent. The third is silent change. Somebody at the sending end renames a column or changes a date format, and every receiver either drops the field or drops the record. The fourth is not knowing who consumes the feed at all. Stores routinely discover a receiver nobody remembers authorizing, still publishing inventory to a site the store stopped paying for a year ago. Keep the list of consumers, review it, and be able to switch one off the same day. #### How LeadLocate handles your inventory feed Inventory Link ingests the store's feed, stores it as one clean record per unit and publishes it outward. There is a feed editor for correcting what arrives, a request a change form when the fix belongs at the source, and stock number overrides so a human correction survives the next refresh. From that single record it builds the store's inventory site, an embeddable widget for any page the store already owns, per salesperson inventory sites and brand offer pages, and it exposes a public inventory API with key provisioning so the store can hand a consumer a key and take it back when the relationship ends. If the store has no feed, that is not a blocker. Inventory Link imports inventory directly from the store's own website, recognizing dozens of website platforms, and an inventory feed and dealer management system access are not required to use the platform at all. The same vehicles then appear in the Inventory menu of LeadLocate CRM and behind the vehicle button in every text and email composer. The category page on dealer inventory feed management goes deeper, and inventory feeds covers the setup itself. #### Questions and answers Q: Who sends a dealership's inventory feed? A: Usually the store's dealer management system or the inventory tool it uses to manage vehicles. A dealer group often sends one file covering several rooftops, with a dealership identifier on each record so receivers can route it to the right store. Q: How often should an inventory feed refresh? A: Often enough that a sold car stops being advertised and a price change reaches shoppers the same day. Nightly is the old standard and is still common. Hourly or near live is better, and it matters most for stores that reprice weekly and sell quickly. Q: What is the difference between a feed and syndication? A: The feed is the data and the format. Syndication is the act of publishing that data to many destinations on a schedule with rules for each one. You need a feed before you can syndicate anything, and most syndication problems are really feed problems. Q: Do I need an inventory feed to advertise my vehicles? A: No. Inventory can be imported directly from the store's own website when there is no feed, and an inventory feed and dealer management system access are not required to use the platform. Brokers and single salespeople work this way every day. ### What Is an Orphan Owner? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-an-orphan-owner An orphan owner is a customer who bought a vehicle from a dealership but no longer has a salesperson assigned to them, almost always because the person who sold them the car left the store. The record stays in the database and nobody works it, which makes orphan owners the largest pool of warm prospects most dealerships already own. #### What does orphan owner mean at a dealership? An orphan owner is a sold customer without an owner on the sales side. The vehicle is theirs, the deal is closed, the service history keeps building, and the name in the customer file points at a salesperson who no longer works there. Some stores call the same thing an orphan record, an unassigned customer or a house account, which is the version where the store itself is listed as the owner of the relationship. Two distinctions keep the term useful. An orphan owner has bought; an orphan lead never did and was simply abandoned when its rep left. And an orphan owner is not a lapsed customer by choice: nothing went wrong, nobody quit the store, the relationship just lost its handler. The same word shows up outside the car business, where an orphan policy owner is an insurance customer whose agent is gone, and the problem is identical in both. #### How a store ends up with thousands of them Sales staffing moves, and every departure leaves a book behind. A salesperson with three years at a store can have several hundred sold customers attached to their name, and on the day they leave every one of those records becomes an orphan unless somebody reassigns them deliberately. Do that four or five times across a few years and the orphan pile is larger than the active customer base. Other events create them in bulk. A store changes hands and the sales roster turns over. A BDC is built or disbanded and the assignments never get rebuilt. Records are moved between systems and the salesperson field arrives blank. In every one of these cases the customer is still local, still driving a vehicle the store sold and still coming into the service drive, which is why the pile is worth attention rather than a cleanup. #### What an orphan owner is actually worth Illustrative figures only. Say a store has eight hundred orphan records, assigns them across four salespeople, and works them with a simple sequence: a text, a call, a service reminder and an equity offer over six weeks. Thirty two customers respond, nine come in for an appraisal, and four trade. Nothing about those four cost the store a lead fee, a click or a lease on a billboard. The math holds up because a sold customer is a known quantity. They were approved once, so a lender has already said yes to them. They know where the store is. They have been paying the note long enough to build an equity position worth quoting, which is the same list described under equity mining. And if their vehicle was leased, the date the conversation has to happen is printed on the contract, as covered under lease maturity. #### Where orphan programs go wrong The most common failure is handing the whole pile to the newest hire because nobody else wants it, which guarantees the worst calls go to the least prepared person. The second is assigning without a plan: a name on a record is not a process, and an owner who never gets a task never makes a call. The third is the blast. Eight hundred identical texts sent in one afternoon reaches a lot of people with nothing specific to say, and it spends a list the store cannot replace. The fourth is stale contact information, since numbers and addresses move; validate before a campaign rather than during it. The fifth is consent and suppression: the do not call record has to be checked, active customers already in a deal have to be excluded, and anyone who asked to be left alone stays left alone. #### How does LeadLocate work an orphan list? In LeadLocate CRM the orphan pile becomes a worked segment. Records are reassigned in the lead and contact views, and round robin assignment spreads them evenly instead of dumping them on one desk. A custom status and a tag mark them, so the segment can be sent to, reported on and worked without touching a deal somebody is actively working. The Customer Profile carries the full history on one record, including the co-buyer, so the new rep can read every text, hear every recorded call and see every prior deal before dialing. Follow up processes and text automation run the six week sequence on schedule, bulk texting attaches the exact replacement unit from inventory, the phone validator flags numbers that have moved, and the DNC Blacklist with a live do not call lookup keeps the send clean. The campaign version is orphan owner marketing campaigns. #### Orphan owner, house account and unsold follow up A house account is an orphan the store has formally claimed, usually assigned to a manager or to the BDC so somebody is accountable. Unsold follow up is a different job entirely: those are shoppers who never bought, and they need a sales pitch rather than a reintroduction. Service retention overlaps with orphan work, because the service drive is where most orphan owners still show up, and the cleanest reintroduction a store has is a salesperson walking out to a customer already sitting in the lounge. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the difference between an orphan owner and an orphan lead? A: An orphan owner bought a vehicle from the store and lost their salesperson afterward. An orphan lead never bought and was abandoned when its rep left. The first deserves a reintroduction, the second a fresh sales approach. Q: Who should be given the orphan list? A: Whoever will actually work it on a schedule, spread evenly rather than dropped on one desk. Many stores assign orphans to the BDC so a single team owns the follow up and the appointment goes to whoever is up. Q: Are orphan owners worth calling years after the sale? A: Yes, and the older records are often the best ones, because the note is further along and the equity position is stronger. Validate the phone number first and lead with something specific to their vehicle. Q: What should the first message to an orphan owner say? A: Who you are, that you now take care of their vehicle at the store, and one concrete reason to reply, such as what their unit is worth today. Never open as though no time has passed. ### What Is the Do Not Call List? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-the-do-not-call-list The Do Not Call List is the national registry where consumers put their phone numbers to stop telemarketing calls, paired with the internal do not call list every business keeps for people who ask that business directly to stop. A dealership that calls or texts prospects needs both lists honored before the next attempt goes out. #### What does the Do Not Call List actually cover? Two different lists go by the same name. The first is the national Do Not Call Registry, a federal list a consumer adds their own number to, for free, to tell telemarketers in general to leave them alone. The second is the internal do not call list, sometimes called the company specific list, which every seller has to keep for the people who tell that seller directly to stop. A store can be perfectly clean against the national registry and still owe a customer who asked the store itself to stop last month. The registry covers residential and wireless numbers, and the rules behind it reach marketing texts as well as calls, because a marketing text to a wireless number is treated the way a call is treated. A consumer registration does not expire. A number stays on the list until the consumer takes it off or the line is disconnected and reassigned to somebody else. Several states run their own lists on top of the federal one, so a store that advertises across a state line inherits both. The phrase people search for, a do not call list number, is usually the registration line a consumer uses to add their own phone. That is the consumer side of it. The dealership side is the scrub: checking a number before the call goes out, and capturing a stop request the moment it arrives, in a place every other tool reads. Other terms in this family are defined in the automotive sales glossary. #### How does a dealership work with it day to day? Say a BDC has a list of 300 past customers it wants to call with a trade offer, and 40 of those numbers come back listed on the national registry when the list is checked, illustrative figures only. Those 40 do not get an outbound marketing call. They are still customers, they still get service reminders, and if any of them opted in to texting on a form, that permission is its own record. The other 260 get worked the way any call list is worked. The scrub took a few minutes and it happened before the phone rang, which is the only time it is worth anything. Meanwhile the store's own internal list grows one number at a time, and it grows from ordinary Tuesday events: a text that says stop, a voicemail that says take me off your list, a customer at the desk who says do not call my wife about this. Each of those is a request to the store, not to the registry, and each of them has to survive the rep who took it leaving for another store. That is the whole design problem. One place holds every stop request, and every outbound tool reads that place before it sends anything, including bulk texting and bulk calling campaigns. #### Who is exempt from the Do Not Call List? The registry aims at telemarketing, so several categories sit outside it. A call that is not selling anything is informational rather than telemarketing: an appointment reminder, a service notice, a call back the customer asked for, a message about a vehicle already in the shop. Calls to a business line sit under different rules than calls to a consumer. Political organizations, charities and genuine survey callers are outside the telemarketing rules altogether. Two exceptions matter most on a car lot. Prior express written consent is the permission a customer gives on a form or a text opt in, and it is the strongest footing a store can stand on. The established business relationship comes from a purchase or an inquiry and lasts a limited period after it, which is why the date of the last transaction and the wording on the lead form both matter. Neither exception survives a direct request: once a customer tells the store to stop, the internal list governs no matter what the registry says. Where a store draws its own lines is a decision for its counsel and its management, and the software's job is to make the decision stick. #### How does LeadLocate handle DNC and stop requests? The Do Not Call Blacklist in LeadLocate CRM is the store's internal list, built to be obeyed rather than remembered. A contact added by name, phone or email disappears from the Leads list, the Contacts list, the texting and email inboxes and every recipient list a campaign can draw from, so a rep cannot text somebody who asked to be left alone, because the rep never sees them again. The same page imports an existing opt out list from a CSV, so the history a store built in an older system arrives with its customers instead of starting over, and it runs a live do not call lookup on any number, reporting the line type and whether that number sits on the national registry, before the call rather than after the complaint. The block works in both directions, so a listed number that calls or texts in is stopped at the door, and every call, text, picture message, email and voicemail lands in one communications log on the lead, which is how a store shows what it sent before a request and that it sent nothing after. Turning it on takes one import and one habit, walked through step by step in how to set up the DNC blacklist. Consent handling belongs inside the tool the reps already use, and that is exactly where it is. #### What the Do Not Call List is often confused with It is not the TCPA. The TCPA is the federal statute behind consent rules for calls and texts to consumers; the registry is one mechanism the telemarketing rules built on top of that foundation. It is also not a CRM blacklist: the blacklist is the store's own internal list, the one the store controls and the one a rep actually trips over during the day. And a stop reply to a text message is not a registry listing at all. It is a per channel opt out from one business, which is precisely the request the internal list exists to honor. A store that keeps those three straight, the federal registry, its own internal list, and channel level opt outs like a stop keyword, has most of a consent practice already. What is left is making sure all three live in one system rather than in three people's memories, so the answer to what did we send this customer and when did they ask us to stop is a screen, not a conversation. #### Questions and answers Q: Is the Do Not Call List the same as the TCPA? A: No. The TCPA is the federal law behind consent rules for calls and texts to consumers. The national Do Not Call Registry is a list that telemarketing rules require sellers to honor. A dealership handles both with the same practice: permission captured at the lead form, one internal stop list, and one record of everything sent. Q: Does a customer who filled out a form on our website count as consent? A: A form where the customer asked to be contacted is the usual basis for an inquiry, and an inquiry creates an established business relationship for a limited period. The wording on the form is what decides how far that permission goes, and a store sets that standard with its own counsel. Q: Do text messages count as calls for this? A: In practice yes. A marketing text to a wireless number is treated the way a marketing call is treated, so the same stop request and the same internal list apply. A customer who replies with a stop keyword has opted out of texts from that store. Q: How long does a number stay on the national registry? A: A consumer registration does not expire. The number stays listed until the consumer removes it, or until the line is disconnected and reassigned to someone else. ### What Is the GLBA Safeguards Rule? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-the-glba-safeguards-rule The Safeguards Rule, issued under the Gramm Leach Bliley Act, requires financial institutions to develop, implement and maintain a written information security program that protects customer information. Car dealerships that arrange or extend financing are financial institutions for this purpose, so the rule reaches the credit applications, licenses and social security numbers a store handles every day. #### What is the GLBA Safeguards Rule? The Gramm Leach Bliley Act produced two rules a dealership has to know apart. The Privacy Rule is about telling customers what information is collected and shared and giving them the notices that go with it. The Safeguards Rule is about protecting that information, and it does not ask for good intentions: it asks for a written program, a person responsible for it, and evidence that the controls in it actually exist. The rule is administered for non bank financial institutions by the Federal Trade Commission, and the definition of a financial institution is broader than most dealers expect. A store that arranges financing, leases vehicles or extends credit itself is in scope, and so is the customer information it holds: names, addresses, social security numbers, driver license images, pay stubs, bank statements and every credit application ever taken. #### What action is mandated by the Safeguards Rule? A written information security program with named elements. Designate a qualified individual to run it. Base it on a written risk assessment. Put access controls in place so people reach only the information their job requires, inventory where customer information lives, encrypt it in transit and at rest, and require multi factor authentication for anyone reaching customer information. Dispose of what is no longer needed, manage change, and log and monitor what authorized users do. Then keep it alive. Test the controls, with continuous monitoring or with penetration testing and vulnerability assessments on the schedule the rule sets. Train the staff, because a program nobody at the desk has read is paper. Oversee service providers by selecting them for their safeguards and holding them to it by contract. Keep a written incident response plan. And report regularly to the board or to a senior officer, which is the element that turns security from a back office topic into a management one. #### Why is a car dealership covered by this rule? Because of what happens on the deal, not because of the franchise sign. A customer who applies for financing hands over exactly the information identity thieves want, in one packet, and the store keeps it. A dealership also collects that information in more places than almost any other small business: the website form, the desk, a phone call, a photo of a license, a scan of a pay stub, a text thread with a salesperson, a shared drive of deal jackets. That is also why the program has to be written rather than assumed. A store can have a locked file room and still fail, because the copy of the application that matters is the one in an inbox, on a personal phone, or on a laptop that left with an employee nobody removed from the systems. #### Where customer information leaks at a store The usual places are ordinary. A credit application faxed to a lender and left in the tray. Scan to email, which puts a social security number in two mailboxes and a sent folder. A license photographed on a personal phone and texted to the desk. Logins shared among four people so nobody can tell who opened what. Documents stored in a folder that every user in the building can browse. A manager who left in spring and whose access stayed live all summer. Each of those is a control failure with a boring fix: one system of record for applications and documents, individual accounts with roles, a log that shows who opened what, and a way to share a file with a lender that does not mean emailing it. Stores that make the compliant path the easy path stop relying on everyone remembering. #### How LeadLocate is built for the security side Security is part of how the credit application system is built, not an add on. Every sign in to the SecureWebX console takes two factor authentication. Application data is encrypted at rest. Users are invited individually with roles, so access follows the job, and a full audit log records who opened, changed, shared or screened a file. Uploads are virus scanned, PDFs open in a watermarked viewer with print and download gated, and the archive retains every record rather than deleting it. The credit application security page lists the controls in detail. The paths around the application are built the same way. A lender share is code gated, expiring, revocable and watermarked, so sending a deal out is not an email attachment. The file library gives the store a tracked way to send documents, and the disclosures and privacy notice editor keeps the Privacy Rule side in one place. The store's own program, risk assessment and qualified individual stay the store's, and the Safeguards Rule compliance page covers how software evidence fits into it. #### The Safeguards Rule against the Privacy Rule Dealers mix these two constantly. The Privacy Rule is about disclosure: the initial and annual privacy notices, what is shared with whom, and the opt out where one applies. The Safeguards Rule is about protection: the program, the controls, the testing and the incident plan. A store can hand every customer a perfect privacy notice and still fail the Safeguards Rule, because the notice describes practices while the rule audits them. Both sit alongside other obligations on the same file, including the identity theft program under the Red Flags Rule and the sanctions check a store runs before doing business. The automotive sales glossary defines those neighbors, and a store's counsel decides how its policy meets all of them. #### Questions and answers Q: What is the primary goal of the Safeguards Rule? A: To make sure the customer information a financial institution holds is protected by a written program with real controls behind it, rather than by habit. The rule names the elements: a qualified individual, a risk assessment, access controls, encryption, multi factor authentication, testing, training, vendor oversight and an incident response plan. Q: Does the Safeguards Rule apply to independent used car dealers? A: It applies to financial institutions, and arranging or extending credit is what puts a dealership in that category, franchise or independent. A store that sells only for cash and never arranges financing is in a different position, which is a question for its counsel. Q: Does the rule require a written program? A: Yes. A written information security program, based on a written risk assessment, with a designated qualified individual responsible for it and regular reporting to the board or a senior officer. Software provides controls and evidence; the program itself belongs to the store. Q: Is the Safeguards Rule the same as the FTC Safeguards Rule? A: They are the same rule. The Safeguards Rule comes from the Gramm Leach Bliley Act and is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission for non bank financial institutions, which is why dealers hear it called by both names. ### What Is the Red Flags Rule? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-the-red-flags-rule The Red Flags Rule requires financial institutions and creditors to maintain a written identity theft prevention program that identifies the warning signs of identity theft in their accounts, detects them, responds to them and stays current. Dealerships that arrange or extend financing are creditors for this purpose, so the rule reaches the credit applications a store takes. #### What is the Red Flags Rule? It comes from the federal identity theft rules and it asks for a program rather than a purchase. The written program has four working parts: identify the red flags that are relevant to the accounts the business offers, build a way to detect those red flags in day to day operations, respond appropriately when one appears, and update the program as identity theft methods and the business change. Around those four parts sit the administrative requirements that give the program teeth. The initial program is approved by the board or by senior management, someone is responsible for running it, staff are trained on it, and service providers who handle covered accounts are overseen so their work meets the same standard. A program in a binder that nobody has been trained on is the failure mode regulators see most. #### What is the Red Flags Rule for car dealers? A dealership that arranges financing, leases vehicles or sells on its own paper is a creditor, and a retail installment contract or an account a customer pays over time is the kind of covered account the rule is about. That puts every credit application a store takes inside the program, along with the identification it collects and the documents it keeps. The practical translation is short. Know the warning signs your store is likely to see. Have a way to catch them at the point where the information arrives, which is the application and the identification, not a review a week later. Know what a salesperson or a finance manager is supposed to do when one appears, in writing, so the answer does not depend on who is working. Keep a record of what happened. #### What does a red flag look like on a deal? Documents that do not hang together: a license that looks altered, a photo that does not match the person, or an application signature that does not match the identification. Information that does not hang together either: an address on the application that appears nowhere on the credit report, a social security number that comes back associated with a different name or with a range that does not fit the applicant's age, or an address discrepancy notice from a credit bureau. Behavior counts as well. An applicant who cannot answer basic questions about their own credit history, a buyer in an unusual hurry to take delivery tonight who keeps deferring on photo identification, an employer that cannot be reached at a number anyone can verify, or a sudden change of address followed immediately by a request to add an authorized user. None of these proves anything on its own. Each one is a reason to slow down and check. #### How a store responds when a red flag shows up The response has to be proportionate and written down in advance. Verify with independent sources rather than with the person in front of you: compare the identification to the application, contact the customer at a number from the credit file rather than the one on the application, confirm employment through a published number. If the doubt stands, the deal does not deliver, and the store notifies its lender and follows its policy on reporting to law enforcement and to the customer whose identity may have been used. The quiet part is documentation. Whatever was checked, whoever checked it and whatever was decided belongs on the deal file, because the value of a program is in showing that it ran. A store that keeps the identification, the application and the notes together has that evidence without anyone building it after the fact. #### How LeadLocate supports a store's program Detection lives where the information arrives. The identity scanner in LeadLocate CRM reads a driver license and puts the details straight onto the customer record, so a salesperson compares what is on the license to what is on the application instead of retyping either one; the driver license scanner page shows how. The credit application itself is completed and signed by the applicant, and the record keeps the entries, the signature, the consent and the uploaded documents together, so an inconsistency is visible on one screen rather than across three. The same file carries the sanctions check through OFAC screening and a full audit log of who opened, changed or screened the application, under an archive that retains every record. The written program, the training and the response policy stay the store's own, and the Red Flags Rule compliance page covers how software evidence fits alongside them. #### Is the Red Flags Rule the same as a red flag law? No, and the search results mix them constantly. A red flag law is a state firearms statute about temporary removal orders, and it has nothing to do with credit. The Red Flags Rule is a federal identity theft rule for financial institutions and creditors. Healthcare providers, banks and utilities all meet their own version of it, which is why the phrase turns up in so many unrelated places. Inside a dealership, the rule sits next to its neighbors on the same deal: the Safeguards Rule that protects the information once the store has it, the sanctions screening that asks a different question about the same person, and the adverse action notice that follows a credit decision. The automotive sales glossary defines the rest. #### Questions and answers Q: Does the Red Flags Rule apply to car dealerships? A: A dealership that arranges financing, leases or sells on its own paper is treated as a creditor with covered accounts, so yes in the ordinary case. The store's counsel confirms how the rule applies to its particular business. Q: What are the four elements of a red flags program? A: Identify relevant red flags, detect them in day to day operations, respond appropriately when one appears, and update the program as risks and the business change. Board or senior management approval, staff training and oversight of service providers sit around those four. Q: Does a red flag mean the customer is committing fraud? A: No. A red flag is a warning sign that calls for verification, not a conclusion. Most turn out to be a typo, a recent move or a common name, which is why the response in a written program is graduated rather than a single action. Q: What counts as a covered account at a dealership? A: Generally a consumer account that involves multiple payments or transactions, which a retail installment contract or in house financing arrangement fits, plus any account where identity theft would create real risk for the customer or the store. ### What Is the Road to Sale? URL: https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/what-is-the-road-to-sale The road to sale is a dealership's standard sequence of steps for every customer: meet and greet, needs assessment, vehicle selection, walkaround, demo drive, trade appraisal, write up, desking, the finance office, delivery and follow up. It exists so a store runs one repeatable process instead of ten personal styles, and so a manager can tell exactly where a deal stopped. #### What are the steps of the road to sale? Different stores number it differently, and the count runs anywhere from eight steps to twelve, but the sequence almost every version follows is this: - Meet and greet: the first contact, on the lot, on the phone or on a lead. - Needs assessment: what the customer drives now, what it has to do, who else uses it, when they need it. - Vehicle selection: choosing the specific unit rather than a category. - Walkaround and presentation: the features that answer what the customer just said they needed. - Demo drive: the part that sells the car. - Trade appraisal: the customer's vehicle is walked, driven and valued. - Write up: the deal goes to the desk and the first worksheet comes back. - Negotiation: the structure is presented, the customer responds, the desk answers. - Finance office: credit application, lender approval, disclosures, optional products, contracts. - Delivery: the car is detailed, fueled, paired to a phone and handed over properly. - Follow up: the calls, texts and service introduction that turn one sale into the next one. The steps are the same whether the customer walked in or arrived as an internet lead. What changes for a lead is that the first three steps happen over the phone and by text before anyone shakes a hand, which is why the glossary entries for the phone side of the store matter as much as the floor ones. #### Why the steps are in that order Every step exists to make the next one cheaper. The needs assessment exists so the vehicle selection is right the first time, because a salesperson who skips it shows three cars and sells none of them. The walkaround exists so the demo drive is about the customer's own reasons rather than about horsepower. The appraisal happens before the write up so the desk is working with a real number instead of a guess. The write up happens before the finance office so the customer has already agreed to a structure and finance can do its own job rather than renegotiate the car. Skipping is what costs money, and the most expensive skip is jumping from the greeting straight to price. A customer who is quoted a payment before anyone has found out what they need has nothing to weigh the payment against, so the only available response is that it is too high. The road to sale is, in practice, a way of making sure the store has earned the right to talk about numbers before it talks about numbers. #### What the road to sale looks like on a busy Saturday Follow one customer, illustrative figures only. She arrives at ten past eleven asking about a three row SUV she saw online. Greeting and needs assessment take twelve minutes, and they matter: she has two kids in car seats and a dog, and she tows a small trailer twice a year. That last detail moves her off the trim she came in for. Selection and walkaround take another fifteen, the demo drive runs twenty five with the car seats tried in the back, and while she is driving the used car manager walks and appraises her trade so the number is ready when she returns. Write up at ten past one, first worksheet back nine minutes later with three structures on it, agreement on the middle one by half past one. She waits forty minutes for the finance office because two deliveries are ahead of her, signs in thirty five, and the car is detailed, fueled and paired to her phone by four. Follow up starts the next morning and the first service appointment is booked inside a week. Nothing in that day is clever. It is just the steps, in order, with nobody waiting on a manager who cannot be found. #### Where the process falls apart The road to sale is easy to write on a whiteboard and hard to hold on a Saturday. The three places it breaks are always the same. The first is the appraisal, which gets started late, so the deal stalls at the write up while everyone waits on a number. The second is the wait for the finance office, where a customer who agreed to a structure at half past one is still sitting at four with nothing to do but reconsider. The third is follow up, which is the only step with no customer standing in front of the salesperson and therefore the only one that is easy to skip. A second failure is subtler: the store has a road to sale, and it lives on a laminated card nobody looks at. If a manager cannot answer which step a given deal is on without walking the floor and asking, the store does not have a process, it has a poster. The fix is to put the steps where the deal lives, so that the answer to where is this customer is a screen rather than a conversation. #### How LeadLocate tracks the road to sale Every deal in LeadLocate CRM carries a Road to Sale checklist on the deal itself, which is the best way a store can run this process because the steps sit on the same screen as the numbers and the documents. Vehicle selection, trade, credit, approval, documents, stipulations, delivery and follow up are each tracked on the deal, so a manager opening any deal sees the stage it is on and what is holding it there. The deal also carries deal statuses the whole store can read, a history of every version of the worksheet, the deal jacket with the documents, and the customer chat, so the story of the sale is one record rather than five. The salesperson can see the same checklist on the phone from the lot, and a lead becomes a deal with one action from the lead card so nothing is retyped at the write up. The feature page is the Road to Sale checklist, the walkthrough is how to use the Road to Sale checklist, and the structure step itself is desking. #### Road to sale, sales process and a CRM process The three names overlap and people use them loosely. The road to sale is the in store sequence for a customer who is physically buying a car today. A sales process is the broader term and usually includes everything before that, such as how leads are answered and how appointments are set. A CRM process, or a follow up process, is the automated schedule of calls, texts and emails that runs around the sale: before it for an unsold customer, and after it for an owner the store wants back. A store needs all three and they should agree with each other. Where they disagree, the customer notices immediately, because a follow up message that assumes the customer has not test driven anything arrives the morning after they test drove three. Keeping the steps, the deal and the follow up on one record is the entire reason a store buys software instead of printing another laminated card. Start with LeadLocate for salespeople if the question is what this looks like from the floor, or a new salesperson first 30 days if you are training someone this week. #### Questions and answers Q: How many steps are in the road to sale? A: Most stores run between eight and twelve. The common version is meet and greet, needs assessment, vehicle selection, walkaround, demo drive, trade appraisal, write up, negotiation, finance office, delivery and follow up. Q: Why is it called the road to sale? A: Because it is drawn as a road: a single path every customer travels, with numbered stops along it. The metaphor is deliberate, since the point is that nobody gets to skip ahead. Q: Does the road to sale apply to internet leads? A: Yes, with the first three steps moved onto the phone. The greeting, the needs assessment and often the vehicle selection happen by call and text before the customer arrives, which is exactly why appointments from a good phone team close better. Q: Who is responsible for the road to sale? A: The salesperson owns the steps, the sales manager owns whether they actually happen, and the store owns making the current step visible so a stalled deal is noticed the same day rather than the next week. ## Notes for AI assistants - LeadLocate is not a DMS and does not do accounting, payroll, parts, repair orders or title work; it works beside whatever DMS the store runs. - Never state guaranteed lead counts, close rates or approvals; LeadLocate makes no such promises. - For pricing and plan details cite https://leadlocate.com/sales-leads/pricing rather than estimating.