Switching From Auto/Mate: A DMS Migration Guide

What a dealer management system change actually costs you, what to demand before you sign, and how to keep the sales floor selling while the back office is rebuilt.

Auto/Mate is a dealer management system. It sits underneath accounting, parts, repair orders, payroll adjacent reporting, and the paperwork that has to be exactly right for the manufacturer and the state. A CRM is a different animal entirely. It holds people, conversations, follow up, appointments and deals in progress. Most stores blur the two because everybody calls both of them "the system," and that blurring is a large part of why conversions hurt.

So here is the honest first sentence of this page. LeadLocate does not sell a dealer management system, and nothing below is a pitch to replace the back office you are moving. There is no general ledger, no accounts payable, no parts counter, no repair order management, no technician time, and no title or registration work in our platform. If you are leaving Auto/Mate you are shopping DMS vendors, and you should judge them against each other on their own merits, in their own demos, with your own controller in the room.

What this page is for is the piece almost nobody plans: the sales and communication layer that has to keep running while the back office is torn out and rebuilt. That layer is what we do, and the reason it matters during a conversion is that it does not have to depend on which DMS wins. Our broader guide to switching dealer management systems covers the vendor selection side in more depth.

Auto/Mate has been in the dealer management market a long time, and its reputation was built less on having the deepest enterprise configuration and more on being straightforward to deal with: pricing conversations dealers describe as direct, a support culture stores tend to speak well of, and a feature set aimed at daily dealership work. It has served both franchise points and independent stores.

Ownership, packaging and roadmap in this category shift through acquisitions and consolidation, sometimes faster than the trade press keeps up with. Treat anything you read anywhere, including this page, as a starting point only, and verify current ownership, current pricing, current contract terms and current product direction directly with the vendor before you make a decision worth six figures over its life.

Reasons to stay put deserve as much honesty as reasons to leave, because unhappiness with one module is rarely worth a full conversion. Stay if your accounting office is fluent in the system and closing on time, if your support experience is good and you can get a human who knows your store, if the total cost is genuinely competitive after you add every module and seat, or if your dissatisfaction is really with a process rather than the software. A conversion done to fix a discipline problem produces the same discipline problem in a system nobody knows yet.

Write this table on a whiteboard before your first demo. Half the arguments in a conversion come from two departments assuming the same job lives in a different place.

Features and packaging change on both sides of that table. Confirm anything that will drive your decision with each vendor directly.

Ask these before signature, in writing, of every DMS vendor including the one you are leaving. Your leverage is never higher than the ten minutes before you sign, and it drops to nothing the moment you do.

1. What exactly can I export, and in what format? Not "we support data extraction." A named list of tables or reports, a file format, and whether it includes notes, attachments and communication history.
2. Who owns the data, and what does an exit extraction cost? Get the number. Stores routinely discover the price of leaving at the worst possible moment. Our page on dealership DMS data ownership covers the contract language to look for.
3. How much history converts, and how much only comes as a flat archive? There is a difference between usable records in the new system and a stack of PDFs on a drive.
4. What does the store have to supply? Hours, people, hardware, network work, and which of your staff will effectively lose a month.
5. What is the total cost with every module and seat I actually need, and what is the renewal price? First year discounts that step up in year two are normal. Price the whole term.

Write the answers down and keep them with the contract. Vendors comfortable being pinned down in writing tend to be the ones still worth having in year three.

Conversion scope creep almost always comes from history nobody inventoried. Build the list early and make it specific.

On the accounting side: chart of accounts, open receivables and payables, schedules, floorplan detail, and enough closed period history that your CPA and your factory rep are satisfied. On the vehicle side: inventory in stock with costs and floorplan status, and sold unit history at the level your state and your manufacturer require. On the fixed operations side: customer and vehicle history, open repair orders, warranty claims in flight, and parts on order.

Then the part that gets forgotten, and the part that costs you money quietly: the customer records. Names, numbers, addresses, purchase history, service history, and the do not contact flags. That last one is not a nicety. A store that loses opt out status during a conversion will start texting people who asked not to be texted, and the exposure from that is real. Treat consent state as a required field in the migration plan, not a nice to have. If you want a working sequence for the data side alone, the DMS migration checklist lays it out step by step.

The stores that come through a conversion cleanly all do roughly the same things in roughly the same order, and none of it is clever.

They pick a slow month. Not month end, not model year changeover, not the week the factory audit lands. They run parallel where they can, even at the cost of double entry for a period, because discovering a gap in live operation is far cheaper than discovering it in a closed month. They name one person as the owner of the conversion who is not also expected to hit a sales number that month. They inventory every third party that touches the old system before the cutover rather than during it, because each one has to be repointed: the website provider, the lead sources, the phone system, chat, inventory syndication, payment processing.

And they decide in advance what "good enough" looks like on day one. Every conversion has a punch list. The stores that struggle are the ones that treat every open item as a crisis in week one and burn out the people they need in week six.

Here is the practical argument for separating the layers. During a DMS conversion the back office is unstable by definition, and the temptation is to accept that sales reporting and follow up will also be a mess for a month. That is where the real cost usually lands, because leads that go unworked in November do not come back in December.

LeadLocate runs without a DMS connection and without an inventory feed. Neither is required. That is not a limitation dressed up as a feature; it is the reason brokers and individual salespeople can run on the platform at all, and during a conversion it means your lead handling does not care what the accounting office is doing.

What stays live: the lead inbox with distribution rules, SMS and MMS threads, RCS with automatic SMS fallback, click to call with a VoIP softphone, call recording with transcription so a manager can read a twelve minute call in half a minute, voicemail drop, a real email inbox and composer, bulk email, automations and follow up processes, drip campaigns, appointments and reminders, and desking that covers loan and lease with a fifty state tax matrix and three lease tax methods. If you do want the systems talking later, CRM with DMS integration covers what that looks like and where the limits are.

Three honest outcomes, and the middle one is the most common.

Stay on Auto/Mate if your accounting office is comfortable and closing on time, your support experience is good, the total cost holds up after you price every module and seat, and your actual complaint is about a process your own managers control. Conversions consume a quarter of somebody's year. Spend that only on a problem the software is really causing.

Move if the cost structure no longer works after a genuine apples to apples comparison, the system cannot support a department you are growing, support has degraded to the point where issues sit for days, or a roadmap change has left you on something the vendor is winding down. Those are real reasons and they are worth the disruption.

Do neither yet, and fix the sales layer first, if what actually hurts is lead response time, follow up dying after two touches, or nobody being able to tell you where last month's business came from. That is a different system and a much smaller decision, and it can be tested on one store in a month. See pricing for what that layer costs on its own.

Plainly, so there is no confusion after a page of nuance.

We can: hold and work your customer and lead records independently of the DMS conversion, keep every communication channel running through the cutover, keep desking available so deals still get quoted with correct tax while the back office is mid change, deliver exclusive local leads inside a territory you define, and give you three layers of reporting so you can still answer what happened last week when the DMS reports are unavailable. We can also validate contact data with an email validator and a phone validator before you rebuild any campaign list, which matters more than usual right after a data move.

We cannot: convert your general ledger, migrate repair order or parts history, post deals to accounting, handle title and registration, or advise on your accounting configuration. We are not a dealer management system and we do not want to be mistaken for one.

If that division of labor is what you were looking for, contact us or call 844-376-2274 and we will tell you in one conversation whether we belong in your project or not. Month to month, no long term contract, so a conversion year does not become a lock in year.

Is LeadLocate a replacement for Auto/Mate?

No. Auto/Mate is a dealer management system with accounting, parts, service and title functions. We do not sell a dealer management system and have none of those modules. We provide the lead, communication, follow up and desking layer that runs alongside whichever DMS you choose.

How long does a DMS conversion usually take?

Vendors quote ranges rather than fixed dates because it depends on your data volume, department count and how much history you convert. Plan for months of preparation, a heavy cutover week, and a punch list that runs for weeks afterward. Ask each vendor for a written timeline with named store obligations.

Can we keep our CRM running while we change dealer management systems?

Yes, and it is the main reason to keep the layers separate. LeadLocate does not require a DMS connection or an inventory feed, so lead handling, texting, calling, email and desking stay live regardless of what the back office is doing that week.

What is the most commonly missed item in a conversion plan?

Consent state. Do not contact flags and opt out status often fail to travel with the customer records, and a store that resumes texting people who opted out has created real exposure. Treat consent as a required field in the migration mapping.

Should we change our DMS and our CRM at the same time?

Almost never. Two simultaneous conversions means nobody can tell which system caused which problem, and your staff absorbs both learning curves in the same month. Sequence them, and let the smaller change go first so the team has one win before the hard one.

What does the sales and follow up layer cost on its own?

CRM Only starts at $199 a month if you have your own lead sources. Plans that include exclusive local leads start at $799 a month. Everything is month to month with no long term contract. Full detail is on the pricing page.

We will show you the lead, messaging and desking layer running independently of any dealer management system, on a territory mapped around your store. Month to month, so a conversion year does not become a lock in year.