Dealership DMS Migration Checklist

Seven workstreams, in the order they have to happen, written by people who watch stores go through this and keep the sales floor running.

Start with the disclosure so you can weigh everything that follows. LeadLocate is not a dealer management system. We do not do general ledger, accounts payable or receivable, payroll, bank reconciliation, deal posting to accounting, floorplan or vehicle accounting, sales tax filing, parts inventory, repair orders, service scheduling, technician time, warranty claims, or title and registration work. We sell lead generation and a CRM that sits alongside whatever system your store runs.

This page exists because our customers go through these projects and ask us how to protect the sales side while it happens, and because the checklists published by vendors tend to skip the parts that are inconvenient for vendors.

The checklist assumes you have already chosen a system, or are close to it. If you are still evaluating, start with switching dealer management systems for the decision itself and the vendor evaluation scorecard for the comparison. If your go live date is already set and you want the weekend itself, skip to the cutover checklist, which covers the seventy two hours this page deliberately does not.

Work the seven workstreams below in parallel, but with the sequencing noted inside each. Assign one named owner per workstream. Not a department, a person.

Do this before you sign anything with the new vendor, because your leverage with the incumbent drops to zero the moment they know you are leaving.

• Read the termination clause and write down the exact notice period and the exact notice method. Some require certified mail, and an email that was ignored has cost stores an extra year.
• Confirm the end date in writing and get an acknowledgment, not just a sent message.
• Ask what deconversion or data extract fees apply, in writing, with a number attached.
• Ask what format the extract comes in and get a sample file before you commit to a date. A promised extract that arrives as unreadable fixed width files with no field documentation is a real and common outcome.
• Ask how long you retain read only access after termination, and what it costs to extend. Twelve to twenty four months of lookup access is worth paying for.
• Establish who at the incumbent is accountable for the extract, by name, and get their direct contact.
• Check whether any third party contracts are bundled inside the platform agreement and will terminate with it, which frequently catches stores out.

Record all of it in one document. The contract termination plan covers the negotiation side in more detail.

Three questions decide this workstream, and they should be answered before a date is chosen: what comes across, what comes across as history only, and what stays behind entirely.

• Inventory: every unit in stock with cost, floorplan detail, reconditioning, pack and days in inventory. Verify total inventory value matches to the penny after load.
• Customer and prospect records, including opt out and consent status. Losing consent status is a compliance problem, not a data problem.
• Open repair orders, open parts orders and special orders in flight on the cutover date. Decide now whether they migrate or close out in the old system.
• Parts inventory with quantities, bin locations, cost and supersession history.
• Accounting: the chart of accounts, open receivables and payables, schedules, and how many months of closed history come across as detail rather than as balances.
• Employee and payroll records, deal history, and warranty claim history in flight.
• Vendor and lienholder records.

Then clean before you move. Migrating dirty data means paying to store your mess in a new place, and duplicates multiply during a conversion rather than disappear. Cleaning up before migration is the single highest return task on this page. Run at least two full test loads before the real one, and reconcile balances after each rather than eyeballing them.

Accounting drives the go live date, not sales, and a controller who is not involved from week one will be involved at 2am during cutover instead.

• Pick the cutover point deliberately: month end is the usual answer, and a period that avoids a factory statement deadline is better than one that does not.
• Map the chart of accounts field by field. Resist the temptation to redesign it during a conversion, because two large changes at once make every problem harder to diagnose.
• Reconcile every schedule before you move. Anything unreconciled on the old system becomes unreconcilable on the new one.
• Decide how many months of financial history load as detail. Most stores take balances plus a limited period of detail and keep read only access for the rest.
• Plan the first factory financial statement on the new system as a specific task with an owner and a rehearsal, not as a hope.
• Confirm bank reconciliation, payroll and tax filing setup with real test transactions before go live.
• Agree the parallel period. Running both systems for one accounting cycle costs money and is nearly always worth it. Parallel run covers how to do it without doubling everyone's workload.

The controller checklist goes deeper into the accounting side than this page has room for.

This is the part that is visible to customers, which makes it the part everyone remembers.

• Rebuild your deal structures, fee defaults and tax setup, then test them against real recent deals rather than clean examples. Compare the new system's numbers to the deals you already closed and reconcile every penny of difference before you accept it.
• Verify state and local tax handling, trade credit rules and lease taxation, because these vary by state and a wrong default produces deals that are wrong for weeks before anyone notices.
• Reprint every document your store uses: buyer's order, retail installment contract, we-owe, delivery paperwork. Check alignment on the actual printers in the actual offices, not on the demo machine.
• Test the F and I handoff end to end with a live-like deal, including product selection and lender paperwork as your process requires.
• Confirm how deals post to accounting, and have the controller check the first ten by hand.
• Decide what happens to in-flight deals on cutover weekend: which system finishes them, and who says so.

Keep desking sane during the transition. Our desking engine covers loan and lease with a fifty state tax matrix, semimonthly payment frequency, trade-in credit caps and three lease tax methods, and it runs independently of your dealer management system, which is why a lot of stores use the desking tool as a stable reference while the back end is in flux.

Fixed ops is where conversions go wrong quietly, because the damage is spread across hundreds of small transactions rather than one visible failure.

• Take a physical parts inventory before the move. Not a system count, a physical one. Whatever discrepancy exists today becomes permanent the day it loads.
• Verify bin locations, cost method, supersession chains and obsolescence data after load, with a spot check of high value bins by hand.
• Rebuild labor operations, labor rates by type, and menu pricing, then test a warranty job, a customer pay job and an internal job through to invoice.
• Confirm warranty submission and factory interfaces work before go live, and know what your backup process is if they do not.
• Test the multi line repair order that splits across pay types, because that is the transaction that breaks first.
• Check integrations with your scheduling tool, inspection tool, tire and parts catalogs and any text-to-pay product.
• Print an actual repair order and an actual parts invoice on the actual printers.

The service department checklist and the parts department checklist are written department by department. Again, none of this is our product; we are not a shop management system and do not sell one.

Build this list in week one, not during cutover weekend. Walk the building and ask every department what software touches their day.

• Website and inventory feed providers, and every third party marketplace your inventory syndicates to.
• Your CRM and every lead source posting into it, including third party lead providers, chat and any ADF XML feed.
• Phone system, call tracking and any texting product.
• F and I products, aftermarket providers, and lender submission tooling as your process uses it.
• Payment processing, service scheduling, inspection tools, key control, wash and detail systems.
• Reporting and reconciliation tools, and anything the group office pulls from.

For each one, record who owns the connection, the lead time to repoint it, the cost, and who to call when it breaks. Then get written confirmation from each vendor that they support your new platform, with a date.

One structural point worth making. Our platform does not require a dealer management system integration or an inventory feed to operate, which is why stores often leave the CRM and lead flow untouched through a conversion. It is one fewer moving part in a project that already has too many. Connecting the CRM to your dealer management system covers what changes and what does not.

Software conversions are people projects wearing a technical costume. The store that trains well and communicates early has a bad week. The store that does not has a bad quarter.

• Name a project owner with authority to make decisions, not a coordinator who has to ask.
• Name a champion in each department, and give them extra training first so there is somebody on the floor to ask.
• Train by role and by task, not by module tour. Advisors need to write a repair order, not a feature list.
• Schedule training close enough to go live that it is remembered, which usually means the last two weeks rather than two months out.
• Plan for the productivity dip. Two to four weeks of slower work is normal, and a store that budgets for it handles it better than one that pretends it will not happen.
• Reduce the schedule around cutover. Do not launch a sale the same week.
• Write down a simple escalation path for go live week: who to call, in what order, and what the vendor's response commitment is by hour.

The employee training plan covers the curriculum by role.

The last item on this checklist is the one dealers thank themselves for later. Whatever else happens during a conversion, customers must still be answered.

During the weeks around a cutover the back office is distracted and the phones do not care. Keep the lead and communication layer stable and independent: lead distribution rules still assigning, SMS and MMS still threading on the customer record, automations and follow up processes still firing, appointments and reminders still going out, IVR and call routing still catching inbound calls, and voicemail drop still working the list. None of that depends on the system your accounting office is replacing.

Two practical habits. First, put an experienced person on the phones during go live week rather than your newest hire, because a customer who hears confusion will assume the store is in trouble. Second, do not change the CRM in the same quarter as the conversion. Two migrations at once double the risk and halve the attention each one gets.

If you want the CRM and lead side documented before the project starts, pricing is published rather than quoted, everything is month to month with no long term contract, and you can contact us at 844-376-2274 if you would rather just ask what stays stable while the rest of the building changes.

How long does a dealer management system migration take?

Plan on three to six months from signature to a stable go live for a single rooftop, longer for a group. The variables are data condition, accounting complexity and how many integrations you have. Compressing it below three months usually moves the pain rather than removing it.

Does LeadLocate migrate our dealer management system data?

No. We are not a dealer management system and we do not perform back office conversions. This checklist is written for our customers who are going through one, and our role is keeping the lead and communication layer stable while it happens.

What is the single most valuable task on this list?

Cleaning your data before it moves, closely followed by getting your exit terms and extract format in writing before you sign with the new vendor. Both are cheap now and expensive later.

Should we run both systems in parallel?

For at least one accounting cycle, yes, if you can afford the workload. Parallel running is how stores catch mapping errors while there is still an authoritative system to compare against.

Will our CRM break during the conversion?

Ours does not need to be involved. No dealer management system integration or inventory feed is required to operate the platform, so lead routing, texting, calling and follow up keep running through the cutover. Verify the same question with your own CRM vendor if you use another.

When should we schedule the cutover?

Month end is the usual answer for accounting reasons, avoiding any period with a factory statement deadline. Do not schedule it during your busiest selling week, and do not run a sale the same weekend.

Our lead and CRM layer runs independently of your dealer management system, so a conversion does not have to slow the sales floor. Month to month, no long term contract.