Vehicle Days Supply Calculator

The formula takes ten seconds. Running it at the level where you can actually do something about the answer is the part most stores skip.

Days supply is simple arithmetic. Take the number of units you have in stock, divide it by the number of units you retailed over a trailing period, and multiply by the number of days in that period.

Days supply = (units in stock / units retailed in the period) x days in the period

So thirty units in stock against twenty retailed in the last thirty days gives you forty five days supply. That is the whole calculation, and you can do it on a napkin.

The trap is in the second number. Units retailed over what window, and which units. Most stores run this once, lot wide, on a thirty day look back, get a number in the high thirties, decide inventory is fine, and go back to work. That number is a blend of everything: a truck segment that is starving, a sedan segment that is drowning, and four aged units that have not been touched since spring. The average is fine and every part of it is wrong.

Days supply is not a report card. It is a question generator. A single lot wide number generates no useful questions, which is why the stores that get value out of this run it in slices.

The window you divide by changes the answer more than anything else, so decide deliberately rather than defaulting.

Thirty days is responsive and noisy. It catches a change in demand quickly, which is what you want when a segment is moving. It also swings hard on a single strong or weak week, and a small store retailing fifteen units a month can see the number move twenty percent because two deals landed on the first of the month rather than the last of the previous one.

Forty five days is the compromise most used car managers settle on. Enough smoothing to be stable, enough responsiveness to be current.

Sixty days is the seasonal view. Useful for planning purchases and for judging whether a segment shift is real, and too slow to run a lot on day to day.

Run at least two windows side by side. When the thirty day number is much lower than the sixty day number, demand is accelerating and you are about to be short. When it is much higher, something has cooled off and you have time to react before the aging gets expensive. The gap between the two windows carries more information than either one on its own, and almost nobody looks at it.

One more decision: count retailed units, not gross deals. Wholesale disposals and dealer trades are not demand, and folding them in makes a thin segment look healthy right before it empties.

The numbers below are made up to show the method. They are not benchmarks, they are not from any store, and you should replace every one of them with your own.

The lot total says fifty days, which sounds unremarkable and would pass without comment in most managers' meetings. Underneath it, trucks are about to run out, compact sedans are sitting on more than three months of supply, and the minivan line is so thin that a single deal moves the number by ten days.

Three different decisions are hiding in that table and the blended number surfaces none of them. Buy trucks. Move sedans, and be honest about whether the problem is price or merchandising. And treat the minivan number with suspicion, because at four units retailed the arithmetic is not stable enough to act on alone.

There is no universal target, and be careful with anyone who gives you one without asking about your store.

What the right number depends on: how fast you can replace a unit once it sells, how much floorplan cost you carry per day, how volatile prices are in your segment right now, and how much of your inventory arrives from trades you cannot control versus purchases you can. A store that can source a replacement truck in three days can run far leaner than one waiting on auction runs a week out.

The general shape most used car managers work toward: lean enough that you are turning, deep enough that a shopper can find a choice rather than an ultimatum. Too lean and every walk is a lost deal because you did not have the color, the trim or the price point. Too heavy and you are paying floorplan and depreciation on units that are getting harder to sell every week they sit.

Rather than chasing a target number, watch the direction and the spread. Is a segment trending thinner over three consecutive readings. Is the spread between your best and worst segment widening. Is your aging profile getting worse while your days supply looks stable, which happens when new arrivals mask old units. Aged inventory cost covers the money side of that last one, and inventory turn covers the reporting habit.

The right level of detail is the level at which somebody in your building can make a decision. That usually means body style plus price band, and sometimes model.

Price band matters more than most stores account for. Twelve compact sedans is one situation if they are all between eight and twelve thousand and a completely different one if half of them are over twenty. Those are two different customers with two different sources of demand, and blending them produces a number that describes neither.

Age band is the other cut worth making. Units under thirty days, thirty to sixty, and over sixty. A segment with acceptable days supply and a fat over sixty bucket is not healthy, it is two problems cancelling each other out in the arithmetic.

Where the data lives is the practical obstacle. Most stores are pulling stock counts from one system and retail counts from another, and by the time the spreadsheet is assembled it is Wednesday and the numbers are from Friday. My Inventory Link ingests and stores your inventory feed and exposes a public inventory API, which means your live stock data can feed whatever you use to run this rather than being trapped inside a single vendor's reporting. Being clear about the boundary: it is a feed, storage and publishing layer, not an inventory management or pricing product, and it does not calculate days supply for you.

A twenty three day supply of trucks is not an inventory report, it is a buying instruction with a deadline. The question is where the trucks come from, and auctions are the expensive answer that everyone reaches for first.

The cheaper source is the one already in your database and in your market. Three specific plays, in rough order of cost.

Your own customers. Every store is sitting on a list of people who bought a truck from them three or four years ago. That list is searchable, it is yours, and those customers already know you. A campaign to owners of the exact segment you are short is the least expensive acquisition channel in the business, and most stores run it approximately never. Trade in acquisition marketing covers the mechanics.

Your service drive. The vehicle you need is parked in your own shop several times a week. Capturing that as an opportunity rather than as a repair order is a communication problem, not an operations one, and it is covered on service to sales campaigns.

Local owners who raised their hand. Our Marketplace Acquisitions program delivers opt in seller leads: local owners who filled out a vehicle offer request and asked to be contacted by a dealership about selling their car. They come to you exclusively inside your territory, nothing is filtered or scored, and every submitted lead in the zone is delivered. That is explained properly on the seller leads page.

Days supply tells you which of those to aim at. Running the acquisition campaign at the segment you are short, rather than at everybody, is the entire difference between a useful program and a mailing.

A hundred and five day supply of compact sedans is a demand problem, a pricing problem or a merchandising problem, and you have to work out which before you spend money.

Check merchandising first because it is free. Do those units have real photos, a written description by someone who has seen the car, and a video. A unit with eight photos taken in the rain is not being rejected by the market, it is being ignored.

Check pricing second, against what comparable units are actually transacting for rather than what you have in it. The sunk cost conversation is the hardest one in the used car business and delaying it never once made it cheaper.

Then generate demand at that specific segment rather than at the whole lot. SMS and email campaigns with recipient management, RCS messaging with automatic SMS fallback, bulk email, drip sequences, voicemail drop and outbound calling from the softphone all point at the same list. Lead pages let you stand up a landing page for the segment with its own URL rather than pointing paid traffic at a generic search results page. Everything captured becomes a CRM lead with distribution rules and follow up processes behind it.

Before you spend on media, run the email validator and the phone validator over the list. Sending a heavy campaign to a stale database is how a store damages its sending reputation and blames the channel. Both validators are built in.

So there is no confusion after a page of method. We do not sell inventory management or inventory pricing software. There is no days supply dashboard, no pricing engine, no market pricing recommendations and no appraisal tool in the platform. We do not sell a dealer management system, so nothing here touches floorplan accounting or vehicle costing. If you want a dedicated inventory analytics product, buy one from a vendor who builds it. Used car inventory management software covers that category on its own terms.

What we provide is the two sides of the days supply answer. On acquisition: exclusive opt in seller leads in your territory, trade campaigns to your own database, and the CRM to work them. On demand: campaigns, lead pages, texting and calling, follow up automation, desking with a fifty state tax matrix, customer facing deal pages, and reporting. Plus Inventory Link for feed ingest, storage, a public inventory API and per salesperson inventory sites.

An inventory feed and DMS access are not required to operate any of it. That is deliberate, and it is why individual salespeople and brokers run on the platform alongside stores.

The stores that get value from this do not run a sophisticated model. They run a simple one, on a schedule, and then act on it.

1. Once a week, same day. Monday morning, before anything else consumes the day.
2. By segment and price band, on a forty five day trailing window, with a thirty day number beside it.
3. Two decisions out loud. What are we short of, and what is aging. Not a discussion of the whole table.
4. One acquisition campaign and one demand campaign, aimed at those two answers, launched that week rather than considered.
5. Read last week's results first, before launching this week's. A cadence without follow through is a meeting.

Our pricing is month to month with no long term contract. CRM Only is $199 a month, the acquisition program starts at $999, buyer leads start at $799, and the combined program starts at $1,599, with current figures on the pricing page.

We cannot guarantee acquisition volume, turn rate or sales results. Those depend on your market, your pricing and your team. What we can do is make the campaign that answers a thin segment take twenty minutes instead of a week. Tell us which segment is starving and we will show you what we would run against it.

What is the formula for vehicle days supply?

Units in stock divided by units retailed over a trailing period, multiplied by the days in that period. Thirty units against twenty retailed in the last thirty days is forty five days supply.

Which trailing window should we use?

Forty five days is the usual compromise. Run a thirty day number beside it, because the gap between the two tells you whether demand is accelerating or cooling, which neither number shows on its own.

What is a good days supply number?

There is no universal target. It depends on how fast you can replace a unit, your floorplan cost, price volatility in the segment, and how much inventory arrives from trades you do not control. Watch the direction and the spread between segments rather than chasing a figure.

Should we count wholesale units in the retail number?

No. Wholesale disposals and dealer trades are not retail demand, and including them makes a thin segment look healthier than it is right before it empties.

Does LeadLocate calculate days supply for us?

No. We do not sell inventory management or pricing software and there is no days supply dashboard. Inventory Link handles feed ingest, storage and a public inventory API, and the platform handles the acquisition and demand campaigns you run once you know the answer.

What is the cheapest way to fix a thin segment?

Your own database and your service drive first, then opt in seller leads from local owners who asked to be contacted about selling. Auctions are usually the most expensive source and the first one most stores reach for.

Bring us the segment you are short of and we will map a territory, show you the opt in seller leads coming out of it, and give you a straight number. Month to month.