Inventory Feeds: Connect Any Feed, or None at All

Your vehicles reach the platform through whatever feed you already have, through your own website when you have none, or by hand. The feed is a convenience, never a requirement.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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 them, from CRM Only at $199 to the plans that include exclusive local leads.

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.

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.

Do I need an inventory feed to use LeadLocate?

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.

Which feeds can Inventory Link connect?

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.

What if my feed has a wrong stock number or a bad description?

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.

Where do I see whether the feed ran?

On the Feeds page of the Inventory Link portal, which lists your feeds and the last refresh for each.

Where does the inventory show up once it is in?

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.

Is Inventory Link an extra charge?

No. Inventory Link is part of every LeadLocate plan. Plans are month to month and listed on the pricing page.

Connect the feed you already have, import from your website, or add units by hand. Inventory Link is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month, and no DMS access is needed.

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