Inventory Link: Dealer Inventory Software and Merchandising

Your real vehicles, decoded and photographed, on your own inventory site, in a widget on any website, on brand offer pages, and one tap away in every text your salespeople send.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Say it plainly, because it matters when you are choosing what to depend on. Inventory Link is additive. It reads from your feed or your website; it never becomes the thing your website or your feed relies on to exist. If our side is unreachable for an hour, your dealership website keeps showing your cars, your feed keeps flowing to everyone else who consumes it, your lot is still full and your phones still ring. The vehicle cards already sent in texts and emails are in your customers' hands, and the leads already delivered to the CRM inbox are there for the store to work. When service returns, the next import or regenerate picks up the changes made in between. Nothing about the way your store sells a car has been moved onto our servers as a single point of failure.

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 starts at $199 a month 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.

Do I need an inventory feed or DMS access to use Inventory Link?

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.

My website is not on one of the twenty eight recognised platforms. What then?

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.

Where does my inventory show up once it is in Inventory Link?

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.

Can a broker with no lot really use dealer inventory software?

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.

Is there a mobile app for the inventory side?

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.

Is Inventory Link a separate subscription?

No. It is part of the LeadLocate platform subscription, month to month, with no long term contract. CRM Only starts at $199 a month and the lead plans add exclusive local buyer or seller leads on top. The pricing page carries the current figures for every plan.

Give us your website address or a feed and we will show you your real vehicles inside Inventory Link, on a brand page and in a text message, before you decide anything. Month to month, no long term contract.

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