Switching From Autosoft DMS

A conversion guide written for the store that has to keep selling cars while the accounting system moves underneath it.

Moving off Autosoft is not the same kind of project as swapping a website vendor or a CRM. The dealer management system is where deals get posted, where the accounting lives, where parts and repair order history sits, and where your factory reporting comes from. When it moves, every department feels it in the same week, and the ones that feel it hardest are usually the ones nobody invited to the planning meetings.

That is the honest starting point and it should set your expectations for timeline. Stores that treat a conversion as an IT task and give it six weeks tend to spend the following six months cleaning up balances, chasing missing history and retraining people on habits they learned wrong. Stores that treat it as an operations project with a named owner, a written sequence and a budget for overtime tend to come out the other side without drama.

We will say this plainly at the top because it shapes everything below. LeadLocate is not a dealer management system and we do not sell one. There is no general ledger here, no accounts payable, no payroll, no deal posting to accounting, no parts counter, no repair orders and no title work. What follows is buyer education written by people who watch dealers go through this every year, plus a straight account of the one layer we can hold steady while the rest of your stack is in motion.

Autosoft has been in the dealer management business a long time and is generally positioned as a franchise capable system priced below the two largest vendors, with a reputation among users for direct pricing and a support organization small enough that a store can reach a human. A lot of single point franchise dealers and small groups run on it for exactly those reasons, and plenty of them are happy.

Ownership, packaging, certification lists and pricing in this category change more often than most dealers realize. Do not take any of it from a comparison page, including this one. Ask the vendor directly what is current, get the answer in writing, and while you are at it ask when your existing agreement renews and what the notice period is. That date is the single most useful fact in the whole project, because it sets every other deadline you have.

It is also worth naming a common situation. Plenty of stores leave a system they had no real quarrel with because a group acquired them, or because a manufacturer program pushed them toward a specific platform. If that is you, the evaluation is different. You are not choosing, you are converting, and the entire job becomes data and training rather than feature comparison. If you are genuinely shopping, our Autosoft alternative overview covers the evaluation side.

Five reasons come up over and over, and four of them are legitimate grounds for a change.

Total cost, including the parts nobody quotes. The monthly line is rarely the problem. The problem is integration fees, per transaction charges, third party data access charges and modules you pay for and never turned on. Add all of it before you compare anything.

Third party access. If the vendors you want to work with cannot get data in and out at a price you accept, that is a business constraint, not a preference. Get specifics on what each candidate charges your other vendors, because that cost lands on you eventually.

Group standardization. One system across rooftops makes consolidated reporting possible and makes staff movable between stores. This is a real reason and it usually wins.

Capability gaps. Something your operation depends on genuinely is not there, or is there but nobody can make it work at your volume.

The one that is not a reason: process problems blamed on software. Deals posting late, receivables aging, reconciliations behind, follow up dying after two touches. A new system makes those problems more visible, which does help, but it does not fix them. Switching to solve a discipline problem is how a store ends up converting twice in three years.

Everything else in a conversion is schedulable. Data is the part that can genuinely go wrong, and your leverage on it is highest in the ten minutes before you sign, not the day you give notice.

Get specific answers in writing on all of it. What exactly can you extract, in what format, and at what cost. Does the extract include historical repair orders and parts history or only open records. Does deal history come with the associated documents. Do customer records come with communication history attached, or just names and numbers. How many years back. How long after termination do you retain access to the system to pull anything you missed.

Then ask the harder question: who owns the data. The answer should be you, without qualification, and it should be in the agreement rather than in a salesperson's reassurance. Our page on dealership DMS data ownership works through the contract language, and DMS data migration services covers what a conversion vendor can and cannot carry across.

One practical warning. Clean the data before you move it, not after. A conversion is the one moment when duplicate customer records, dead phone numbers and abandoned inventory records are easy to drop instead of inheriting. Moving garbage costs the same as moving good records and you pay for it twice.

The sequence that works looks roughly the same at every store, and the stores that skip steps are the ones telling war stories a year later.

1. Pick the date around your accounting calendar. Month end and manufacturer reporting deadlines drive this, not the vendor's install schedule. Converting mid month with a factory report due the following week is a self inflicted wound.
2. Extract and verify before you commit. Pull the export, open it, count the records, and have the controller confirm balances tie out. Verification is not the vendor's job.
3. Run parallel where you can. Not everything can run twice, but posting a sample of deals both ways for a week catches setup errors while they are still cheap to fix.
4. Train on your own data. Training on the vendor's demo store teaches people the software. Training on your records teaches them your job.
5. Go live on a slow day with extra hands scheduled. Every conversion has a bad first week. Staff it.

The DMS cutover checklist and the broader guide to switching dealer management systems lay this out in order and are written to be used with any vendor.

Sales tends to get the attention because sales makes noise. The trouble usually starts somewhere quieter.

Parts gets hit hardest and gets consulted least. Bin locations, supersessions, special order records, obsolescence aging and the interfaces to your suppliers all have to come across, and a parts manager who was not in the planning will spend a month rebuilding by hand.

Service needs open repair orders, warranty claims in flight, technician setup, labor operation codes and pay plans configured before the first car hits the drive on go live day. Open claims in transition are a specific source of lost money.

Accounting carries the real risk. Chart of accounts mapping, schedules, control accounts and the first close on the new system. Assume the first month end takes twice as long.

F&I needs forms printing correctly on day one, which sounds trivial until a deal cannot be funded because a form prints half an inch off.

Assign a named owner in each department, not a committee. The department checklists for service and parts exist because these two are where conversions actually hurt.

Here is the part that is genuinely useful to you regardless of which DMS you pick. The single best thing you can do for revenue during a conversion is make sure the customer facing side of the store does not depend on the system that is being replaced.

LeadLocate runs independently. No DMS integration and no inventory feed are required to operate, which means the lead inbox, the phones, the texting and the follow up cadences do not care what your accounting system is doing this week. Salespeople keep working leads in the same tool on Monday that they used on Friday, and the one thing that never has to stop during a conversion is the thing that pays for the conversion.

What that layer actually includes: a lead inbox with routing rules and distribution, SMS and MMS threading with RCS and automatic SMS fallback, a click to call softphone with call recording and transcription, voicemail drop, an email inbox and composer with an email validator and a phone validator for list hygiene, automations, follow up processes and drip sequences, appointments and reminders, and DealTracker desking covering loan and lease with a fifty state tax matrix. Pencil a payment without touching the DMS at all.

If you are also changing CRM in the same year, do not do both at once. Our CRM migration checklist explains the sequencing.

So there is no ambiguity after a page of conversion advice.

We do not provide: general ledger, accounts payable or receivable, payroll, bank reconciliation, deal posting to accounting, vehicle and floorplan accounting, sales tax filing, title and registration processing, factory reporting, parts inventory or the parts counter, repair order management, service scheduling against shop capacity, technician time and dispatch, warranty claim handling, or digital vehicle inspection. Any vendor telling you we do those is describing a different product.

We do provide: exclusive local leads in a territory you define, a full CRM around them, the communication stack above, desking, deal jackets and print templates, customer facing deal pages with e-signature, lead pages, personal salesperson websites, a free live chat widget, and three layers of reporting. Alongside it, SecureWebX handles secure credit applications, shareable apply links, document collection and a compliance module with versioned consent, and AutoMail handles IVR, call routing and forwarding.

Pricing is month to month with no long term contract, starting at $199 for CRM Only and $799 for plans that include inbound buyer leads. See the pricing page, or contact us and ask whether we fit before you sit through anything. We cannot guarantee lead volume or sales results, and no vendor honestly can.

Take these into every demo. The answers separate vendors faster than any feature grid.

What is the total monthly cost with every module we actually need, and what does it look like at renewal? What is the term, and what is the notice period to leave? What does it cost my other vendors to get data in and out, and will you put that number in writing? Exactly what can I export if I leave, in what format, how many years back, and does it include repair order and communication history? Who owns the data? What is the conversion timeline you are committing to, and what happens if it slips? Who from your side is physically in my store during go live week, and for how many days? What does support look like at 6pm on a Saturday when a deal cannot print?

Write down the answers and date them. Vendors comfortable being pinned down in writing are usually the ones still worth having in year three. And ask us the same questions, because a vendor that will not answer its own checklist has not earned the demo.

Is LeadLocate a replacement for Autosoft DMS?

No. We are not a dealer management system and we do not sell one. There is no general ledger, no deal posting to accounting, no parts, no repair orders and no title work. We provide the lead generation, CRM, communication and desking layer that runs alongside whichever DMS you choose.

How long does a DMS conversion usually take?

Plan in months rather than weeks. The contract notice period, your accounting calendar and the data extraction usually set the timeline more than the vendor's install schedule does. Assume the first month end close on the new system takes about twice as long as normal.

What data should we insist on extracting before we leave?

Customer records with communication history, deal history with associated documents, repair order and parts history with as many years as you can get, and open items in flight such as warranty claims. Get the format, the cost, the year range and the post termination access window in writing before you sign anything.

Can we change our CRM at the same time as the DMS?

You can, but we would not. Two conversions in one quarter means nobody can tell which system is causing a problem, and adoption suffers on both. Move one, let it settle for a quarter, then move the other.

Do we need a DMS integration for LeadLocate to work?

No. Neither a DMS integration nor an inventory feed is required, which is exactly why the sales and follow up side can keep running untouched while your accounting system is being converted. If you do have an inventory feed, Inventory Link can ingest it and advertise your actual vehicles.

Will switching DMS improve our sales numbers?

Not by itself, and we cannot guarantee any result. A conversion changes the tooling, not the habits. If deals post late or follow up dies after two touches today, expect the same on the new system with a better looking screen around it.

See the lead inbox, the phone and texting stack and the desking tool running independently of any DMS. Month to month, no long term contract.