Fixed operations buying guide

Car Dealer Parts Software

Parts & wholesale for dealerships: Parts inventory, sourcing, ecommerce, wholesale and obsolete-stock management.

Parts software decisions turn on fill rate and on OEM connection. A franchise dealership typically carries thousands of active parts and stocking errors show up as lost repair orders when a needed part is not on the shelf.

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How to choose car dealer parts software

Parts systems help by forecasting demand, setting target service levels by part category, and generating purchase orders, and manufacturers run retail inventory management programs that use pooled data from many dealers to recommend stock and create orders. Find out whether the software connects to your manufacturer's ordering, catalog and inventory-recommendation programs and to electronic parts catalogs, and who certifies the connection.

Related searches: parts inventory · wholesale parts · parts ecommerce

What to check before you buy

Check how the parts counter, the service advisors and the technicians see availability from one screen, and how a special order is tracked to the repair order. Ask how wholesale customers, such as repair shops and body shops, are priced and invoiced.

Look at the reports: fill rate, obsolescence, lost-sale logging and turns by category. Check what happens to the parts inventory and accounting data if the DMS changes.

Parts inventory is one of the hardest things to convert.

Look at the counter experience as well as the reports. Watch a parts professional look up a part, check stock, quote a price, add a core charge and invoice a body shop, and count the steps, since a system that is slow at the counter creates delays for the service lane, and delays at the counter are among the most common reasons a repair order sits waiting. Check how special-order parts are received and matched to repair orders.

Ask how the system manages returns, cores and obsolete stock, because those quiet flows tie up cash. A good system flags parts that have not sold in a set period, supports return programs with the manufacturer on a schedule and shows the value of aging stock by category. Check that the reports can be run by the parts manager without a vendor's help, and that the numbers reconcile to the general ledger each month.