Digital Retailing Software for Car Dealerships

Let buyers handle the early parts of a deal from their own phone, with the numbers your desk built and a finance office that starts from a complete file.

Digital retailing software lets a car buyer handle part of the purchase online: see a real payment on a real vehicle, build and review the deal, send documents, apply for credit, ask questions and sign. The store keeps control of the numbers, and the customer stops waiting for a desk to come free.

The phrase gets stretched across a lot of products, so it helps to separate the jobs inside it:

• Payment presentation: a monthly figure with tax, fees, term, rate and trade equity in it, built by your desk.
• Deal building and review: the customer works through the structure on a page that belongs to their deal alone.
• Documents and credit: pay stubs, proof of residence and the credit application, sent from home.
• Agreement: an e-signature that records exactly which version of the deal the customer accepted.
• Contracting and funding: the retail installment contract and the lender's final terms, which your finance office completes with its lenders.

LeadLocate covers the first four inside one deal record and hands the fifth to your finance office as a complete file. That is how automotive digital retailing software earns its place in most stores: the buyer does the slow, private parts at home, and your people spend their time on the parts that need a person.

It fits franchise dealers running new and used deals through one process, independent and used car stores, buy here pay here lots on semimonthly schedules, RV and boat dealers selling to buyers a few hours away, auto brokers working deals for clients they may meet only at delivery, and salespeople who want to send a deal rather than a photo of a worksheet. As online car sales software it runs inside the same CRM your team already uses for every text, call and email.

Here is how digital retailing software splits the work in LeadLocate, stage by stage: what the customer does from their phone, what your people do, and where the information goes next.

Every row before the last one lives in one place, so nobody retypes a figure between steps. The payment the customer read is the payment the desk built, the documents they uploaded sit on the deal the manager opens, and the signature is attached to the exact version they saw.

Leave your number and a lead specialist calls you back to answer your questions about pricing, coverage, and setup. Mon - Sat, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM Pacific.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.

A lead comes in at 9:40 on a Saturday morning from a shopper two hours away who wants a specific SUV on your lot. Here is how the deal moves.

9:46. The salesperson replies with the vehicle inserted as a card, photo and price included, and asks about her trade. She sends the year and the mileage.

10:20. He uses Start New Deal from the lead, so her name, number and vehicle fill in automatically, and desks it in EZ Desking with two finance terms and a lease column. In the deal view he opens Digital Retail Controls and turns on the build step, document review, deal review and the shipping quote. Then he opens Share, uses Generate a new customer link, and taps Send to Customer.

10:31. She taps the link, chooses Text Me a Verification Code, enters the code and taps Open My Deal. Your deal steps walk her through the vehicle, the figures and the trade. She adds her trade with photos and a VIN scan, uploads a pay stub into document review, and asks in Deal Chat whether a longer term is possible.

10:50. The desk adds a 72 month option. The revision becomes its own version, so she reads the new numbers knowing exactly what changed. The salesperson texts her the store's apply link, and she completes the SecureWebX application in Spanish, the language she is most comfortable in.

Monday, 9:15. The finance manager opens the application inbox, finds a complete file with its consent record, and uses Send to Lender to share it securely with the lender the store chose. The structure is already on a worksheet pushed from desking, so nobody keys it twice. The lender answers through its response portal and the desk sets the final structure.

Monday, 2:00. The salesperson turns on Require a signature. She signs the deal page on her phone, the signed snapshot lands in the Signature area, and she requests a shipping quote with her address. By the time she sits down with your finance office, the conversation is about delivery rather than paperwork.

On the desk

• EZ Desking for cash, finance and lease, with a multi pencil grid and goal seek bays
• A 50 state tax matrix, three lease tax methods, trade credit caps and semimonthly payment frequency
• Centralized deal defaults, so every salesperson starts from the store's fees and settings
• OEM incentives at deal level, from the Incentives Showroom inside the deal view
• The Road to Sale checklist on every deal

On the customer's phone

• A customer deal page branded to your store and opened with a texted passcode
• Digital Retail Controls for the build step, document review, deal review and a shipping quote, switched on per deal
• E-signature on the deal page, with every revision kept as a version and share, revoke and void controls
• Deal Chat with link previews and photo drops
• A trade-in form with photos and a trade VIN scan
• Pencil recap sheets the customer can sign one worksheet at a time

In the finance office

• SecureWebX credit applications in English or Spanish, with co-applicants, ITIN or SSN, and versioned consent
• Branded apply links with your own sections, custom fields, document uploads and disclosures
• Send to Lender: a code-gated, expiring, revocable, watermarked share to the lender you choose
• Stipulations with upload to fulfill, adverse action notices and OFAC screening
• Worksheets pushed from desking, and exports in the format your lender or DMS expects
• Print packets with payment ranges and a finance breakdown, plus the deal jacket with QR intake

On request, our team builds a specific document list per deal type, a custom section on the checkout page, or a particular hand-off to your finance office when a customer finishes the review step.

Everything in digital retailing is packaging around one question the customer is asking: what will this cost me every month, and is that number real?

Many online payment tools miss here in a way that costs the store twice. The website quotes a payment that leaves out tax, fees and the customer's actual credit picture. The customer arrives anchored on that number, the desk produces the real one, and now your salesperson is negotiating against your own website.

LeadLocate runs the customer's number off the same engine the desk uses. Your people enter the fees, rebates and rate. The engine handles loan and lease, the 50 state tax matrix, three lease tax methods, state trade credit caps and semimonthly frequency. The deal page shows what the desk built because it is fed by the worksheet rather than retyped from it.

Payments on the page are estimates until the lender sets final terms, and the printed sheet says so in plain words. What the customer can count on is that the figure on their phone and the figure on your desk came out of the same calculator. The desking tool page walks through the math in detail.

The strongest digital retail setups are clear about the hand-off. Contracting, funding and the lender's final terms stay with your finance office and the lenders it already works with. Accounting, deal posting and title work stay in your DMS. LeadLocate works alongside both.

What changes is what arrives at that hand-off. Instead of a name and a phone number, your finance office receives a desked structure, a signed deal page, the documents in the deal jacket and a complete credit application with its consent record. SecureWebX exports that application to your lender or your DMS in the format each one expects, including STAR XML, fixed width, CSV and JSON.

The deal page is a review flow. The customer reviews the numbers and tells the store how they intend to pay, and money changes hands the way your store already handles it, under your existing process and counsel.

What we need from the store: your deal defaults, meaning the doc fee, taxes and the fees you charge; the lenders you send to; the documents you want from a financed buyer; your disclosure language for the apply link; and the people who desk deals.

What our team does: builds your SecureWebX apply links with your sections, fields and disclosures, helps you set your deal defaults, connects your inventory so every deal starts from a real unit, and trains your managers and salespeople in Live Training sessions, with the video training library ready for new hires.

Then roll it out in order, because a full launch nobody was trained for drifts back to the old way within a month:

1. Start with the deal page. Have one manager send a deal page on every deal that does not close the same day. You can see when the customer opened it, which changes the next morning's follow up.
2. Add apply links next, first for internet leads and credit challenged buyers, where a private application matters most.
3. Turn on the digital retail steps once both are habits: document review first, then the build step, and the shipping quote if you deliver.

Track three numbers through the whole thing: time to first response, applications started, and deal pages signed. They tell you far more about adoption than a login report.

Digital retail is one part of the LeadLocate CRM, so the deal sits next to everything else you know about the customer: every call, text, email and voicemail on one timeline, the vehicles they asked about and the appointments on the calendar. Each piece on this page has its own detail page:

• Customer deal pages with e-signature, passcodes, revisions and revoke
• Digital retail checkout, the steps a customer works through on the page
• Online credit application software in SecureWebX
• Send to Lender, the secure share to the lender you choose
• Deal Chat for questions while the customer is on the page

Inventory comes from Inventory Link, so a deal starts from a real unit with its decoded build and photos, whether your vehicles arrive by feed or are imported from your website.

Desking, customer deal pages, the digital retail steps and SecureWebX are part of every LeadLocate plan. Your bill is built from a few clear parts:

• The plan: Inbound, Marketplace Acquisitions, and Buyers and Sellers Hybrid add a monthly Marketing Effort Level to the platform, and CRM Only is the software for a store with its own lead flow. All of them are month to month with no long term contract.
• Users: each plan includes a login to start, and more users are an add-on.
• Usage credits: prepaid packs for bulk texting, bulk email, ringless voicemail deliveries and phone and email validation, bought in My LeadLocate when you run those tools.

Standalone digital retail tools often arrive with their own monthly fee, website plugin and login. Set that against the plans on the pricing page, or watch a deal page go out by text and come back signed in the pre-recorded live demo.

Which parts of a car deal can a customer finish online?

With LeadLocate, a customer can read a real payment, work through the build step, add a trade with photos, upload documents, complete a credit application in English or Spanish, ask questions in Deal Chat and sign the deal page, all from their own phone. Contracting and funding then happen with your finance office and its lenders.

Does the customer need an app or an account?

No. The deal page arrives as a short link by text or email and unlocks with a passcode texted to the buyer or co-buyer number on the deal. The credit application opens from an apply link the same way, in the browser on their phone.

How does the online payment stay consistent with the desk?

Both come from the same desking engine. The deal page is fed by the worksheet your desk built, with the tax matrix, lease tax method, trade credit cap and payment frequency already applied. Payments are estimates until the lender sets final terms, and the printed sheet says so.

Can we use it with our current website and DMS?

Yes. Digital retailing in LeadLocate works alongside the website and DMS you run today. Send deal pages and apply links by text, put an apply link on any page, and export finished applications in the format your lender or DMS expects. An inventory feed and DMS access are not required.

What happens when the deal changes after the customer opens it?

The desk revises the worksheet and the revision becomes its own version, so the customer sees exactly what changed. You can revoke every link for a deal or void a page at any point, and a signed snapshot stays on the record as what was agreed.

Can a co-buyer open the deal page?

Yes. Add the co-buyer to the deal before you share it and the page unlocks with a passcode sent to the co-buyer mobile number too. The SecureWebX credit application has its own co-applicant section, so both applicants are on one file.

What should we measure after launch?

Time to first response, applications started per hundred leads, and deal pages signed. Those three show whether the team is actually using the tools. Results depend on your people, inventory and market, so measure your own store before and after you switch it on.

We will desk a real deal, text you the customer page, and let you sign it from your own phone. Month to month, no long term contract.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.