How to Scan a VIN in LeadLocate

Read the seventeen characters from the door jamb with a phone, add the miles, and the vehicle fills itself in on the lead and the worksheet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Do I need a barcode scanner to scan a VIN?

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.

Does the scan capture the mileage?

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.

What does the decode fill in?

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.

Can a VIN be read from a document instead of the car?

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.

The VIN scan is part of every LeadLocate CRM plan, month to month. Capture the next trade from the lot with the phone in your pocket.

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