Questions

What does one credit actually get me?

Credits meter the AI tools. Different tools cost different amounts based on how much work the AI does.

The headline: 2 credits buys the whole car — drop your photos, the AI finds the VIN, reads the odometer, fills the specs, and writes the description, all inside the same 2 credits. So 100 credits covers about 50 complete vehicles, or any mix of replies and posts. "Photo vision" means the AI looks at the vehicle's photos when it writes — optional, one extra credit, sharper output.

What does the free trial include?

Every signup gets a free trial with 50 credits, no card required. You get one location, up to 50 vehicles, and full access to all four AI tools. The trial is real — same models, same outputs, same quality — so you can verify LOT works for your lot before paying.

50 credits gets you about 25 vehicle listings or 50 lead replies. That's enough to import your inventory, run descriptions on a batch of cars, and decide whether the quality justifies a paid plan. There's no time limit on the credits themselves — use them at your pace. When they run out, pick a plan to keep going. The trial doesn't auto-refill.

One honest gate to know upfront: publishing to your public storefront unlocks on a paid plan. The trial lets you build, generate, and preview everything — your work is saved and goes live the moment you upgrade.

If you upgrade from the trial, any unused trial credits carry over to your permanent balance. We don't take those back.

Do I need to type the VIN when I add a vehicle?

Usually not — your photos do it. If you include the VIN doorjamb sticker (or windshield plate) when you photograph the car, the intake reads the VIN for you, validates it, and runs the full NHTSA decode automatically: year, make, model, trim — plus up to a dozen structured specs in the background (engine, transmission, drivetrain, horsepower, body style, doors, fuel type, and more).

Those silent specs feed every AI description, every Sales Sheet, and every social post you generate from that point on. "6.2L V8 with 455 horsepower and a 6-speed manual" reads like a dealer who knows their inventory; "Chevrolet Camaro" reads like a placeholder. That's why the doorjamb shot is the one photo habit worth building — it pays back on every generation that vehicle will ever get.

Prefer entering details by hand? The manual path still has the same power: type the VIN and hit DECODE, or tap SCAN to read it from a single photo. Decode pulls from NHTSA's free public database — costs nothing, accurate to manufacturer specs, about 2 seconds.

Do credits roll over month to month?

Plan credits don't roll over. If your Dealer plan grants 500 credits each month and you use 300, the unused 200 credits reset when your next month begins. Use it or lose it. This keeps subscription pricing fair.

Yearly plans: all 12 months of credits unlock up front and stay available for the full year. They don't expire month-to-month within that year — you can spend a year's worth of credits in week one if you want. But unused credits do reset at the start of your next yearly term, the same way monthly plans reset each month. So a yearly customer who used 1,200 of their 1,800 credits over the year will see their balance reset to 1,800 at renewal — the unused 600 don't roll forward.

Top-up credits do roll over forever. When you buy a 100-pack or 300-pack of top-up credits, those stay in your account until you spend them. They never expire and they survive plan changes. If you want true rollover for unused volume, top-ups are the way.

When you generate something, plan credits drain first so your paid-for top-ups stick around longest. When you upgrade from the trial for the first time, any unused trial credits carry over to your permanent balance — we don't take those back.

What happens if I cancel?

You keep full access until the end of the billing period you've already paid for. After that, your account drops back to the free trial tier, but your saved listings and history stay intact.

If you cancel a yearly plan with credits remaining, you keep using those credits until the year ends. Yearly plans are non-refundable for the unused months — Stripe handles all of this automatically.

Top-up credits you've purchased stay in your account regardless of subscription status.

Cancel subscription vs delete account — these are different. Canceling subscription stops future billing but keeps your data and team intact, and you can resubscribe anytime. Deleting your account schedules everything for permanent removal in 30 days, immediately cancels billing, and signs your team out. You can recover a deleted account within those 30 days by signing in again with your password.

Can I change plans anytime?

Yes — upgrade or downgrade whenever you want from the Billing page. Stripe handles proration automatically. When you upgrade, your new plan's credit allotment kicks in immediately.

Switching from monthly to yearly (or vice versa) works too. Yearly plans grant the entire year's credits up front instead of monthly.

Can I add my staff? What about multiple locations?

Yes — team seats and rooftops both depend on your plan:

• Solo — 1 location (50 vehicles), 1 seat (just you)
• Dealer — up to 4 locations (250 vehicles each), up to 10 seats
• Pro — up to 10 locations (1,000 vehicles each), unlimited seats

All team members share the same credit pool and can use every AI tool. Roles work like this:

• Owner — billing, team, everything (one per dealership)
• General Manager — operational owner; can do everything except billing and account closure (off by default; promote when you trust someone like a co-owner)
• Manager — runs one specific lot. Managers are scoped to their assigned location: they only see inventory, customers, leads, and stats for that lot. They can manage salespeople at their location and edit their location's voice, but they can't create or archive locations, move vehicles between locations, or fire other managers. If you want someone with org-wide visibility, promote them to General Manager.
• Salesperson — use the AI tools, scoped to the specific locations they're assigned to

If you run more than 10 rooftops or need a bigger inventory cap, talk to us — we handle larger dealer groups case by case with custom limits.

How does multi-location actually work?

Each location is a separate rooftop with its own inventory. When you add a vehicle, photo, or listing, it belongs to one specific location. Owners and General Managers can move vehicles between locations anytime; managers and salespeople can't (they only see their own location).

Visibility is scoped by role. Owners and General Managers see everything across the whole dealership — every location's inventory, customers, leads, and stats. Managers see only their assigned location, period. Salespeople default to seeing only their assigned location too, though owners can widen this in Settings (see below).

Why managers are location-scoped: real dealerships work this way. The Indianapolis manager runs Indianapolis. Cross-rooftop visibility is for owners and GMs who need the org-wide picture. If you want a manager-equivalent who sees everything, promote them to General Manager.

For salespeople specifically, the owner picks one of three visibility modes in Settings:

• Strict (default) — salespeople only see and act on vehicles at their assigned locations
• View all, act on assigned — salespeople see every vehicle but can only edit vehicles at their assigned locations
• Open — salespeople see and act on every vehicle regardless of assignment

Managers always stay strictly scoped — the visibility-mode toggle only affects salespeople. Inviting a manager or salesperson requires picking which location they belong to. Owners and General Managers can reassign them later. Archiving a location is safe — it preserves vehicle history but stops new vehicles from being added there.

Can I track what I paid for each vehicle?

Yes — on every plan, including Solo. Each vehicle has three separate price fields:

• Listing Price — what you're asking for the vehicle (visible to everyone on the team)
• Invoice Price — what you paid for it at auction, trade-in, or wholesale (visible to owner-class and managers, hidden from salespeople)
• Minimum Sell Price — your "won't take less than this" floor (visible to owner-class and managers by default; owners can flip a toggle in Settings to share it with salespeople so they can close without paging the manager)

When you mark a vehicle sold below the minimum you set, LOT shows a warning with the exact shortfall before logging it — so below-floor deals always happen on purpose, not by accident.

When a vehicle sells, LOT automatically shows the profit (sold price minus invoice price) on the detail page. Profit is also exported to CSV for owner-class and manager roles so you can analyze margins in Excel or Sheets.

Cost-related activity events (invoice price changes, minimum sell price changes, trade valuation changes) are filtered out of salesperson timelines — the permissions stay in lockstep with the field visibility.

Can I track trade-in valuations honestly?

Yes — and this is where LOT does something most dealer software doesn't. When you mark a vehicle's acquisition source as "Trade-in" on the detail page, three new fields appear (visible to owner/manager only):

• Trade ACV — actual cash value. What the trade is genuinely worth at auction.
• Trade Allowance — what you actually credited the customer on paper.
• Trade Differential — the gap between the two. Computed automatically; you don't enter this.

The differential matters because it tells you the truth about your trade flips. If you gave a customer "$10,000 for their trade" but the trade is genuinely worth $8,500 at auction, that's $1,500 of fake allowance — which usually comes back to you as markup on the new vehicle's price. Most DMSes don't separate these, so dealers lose track of how much real margin they're giving away in the trade-allowance shell game.

The Stats page surfaces an "Avg trade allowance over ACV" card whenever you've sold trade-ins with both values recorded, so you can see the pattern across all your deals at a glance.

Can I track days-on-lot and add customer notes?

Yes, both come built in.

Days-on-lot is calculated automatically from the moment a vehicle goes active. The Inventory page shows a dedicated "Aged (60+ days)" stat card — click it to instantly filter to vehicles that have been sitting. Aged vehicles also get a color-coded badge on each row (yellow at 60+ days, hot at 90+).

LOT has TWO note systems and they behave differently:

Listing Notes are an editable field on each vehicle's detail page. They're used as input to the AI tools (e.g. for the listing description) and they print on the Sales Sheet flyer. Treat them like marketing copy — visible to your whole team and to anyone you hand a printed sheet to. Don't put cost data, dealer secrets, or private numbers here.

Customer notes live in a separate panel on each vehicle's detail page. Log phone calls, test-drive impressions, the trade-in offer a customer made last Tuesday — anything you need to remember about a person. Customer notes are visible to everyone on your team, but only the person who wrote a note (or any owner, general manager, or manager) can delete it. They never appear in the AI tools or on the Sales Sheet.

Does LOT help me reprice aged inventory?

Yes. Once a vehicle hits 60 days on the lot, it shows up in an aged-inventory banner at the top of your Inventory page with a suggested price drop. The math is conservative: 3% off at 60+ days, 5% at 90+, 7% at 120+. One click applies it; another click takes you to the vehicle's detail page if you'd rather review manually.

Floor protection. If you set a minimum-sell price on a vehicle and the suggested drop would breach it, LOT doesn't recommend a number — it flags the vehicle for manual review instead. We never suggest going below the floor you've set.

The suggestion is rule-based, not AI-driven, so it's free. No credits are spent on price suggestions — they're computed every time you load the inventory page from the data already on file. Only managers, GMs, and owners can apply suggestions; salespeople see them but need to flag a manager to act.

Do I get a storefront where buyers can see my inventory?

Yes — every dealership gets a storefront at carlistingservice.com/d/your-slug. Buyers see your active inventory with photos, prices, and specs, and can submit a lead form (which routes to your team's email and shows up in your Leads tab). Multi-location dealers get a storefront per location, each with its own slug and contact details.

Customize what shows up in two places: Settings → Storefront for org-wide settings (toggle storefront on/off, social links, public-page master switch) and the Locations page for per-location details (slug, tagline, public phone, public email, address, hours, dealer license number). You can publish or unpublish individual vehicles from the inventory page, and you can disable the whole storefront from Settings if you don't want one.

The storefront is available on every plan, including the trial — so you can preview what buyers will see before you pay.

Are my listings shown anywhere besides my own storefront?

Yes — every published vehicle in your inventory automatically appears on our public marketplace at carlistingservice.com/cars. Buyers can search across every dealership using LOT — by make, model, year, price, mileage, and body style. When a buyer clicks one of your cars, they land on a marketplace detail page that shows your dealership name, location, phone number, and a lead form that goes directly to you.

Marketplace leads land in your Leads tab tagged "MARKETPLACE" so you can tell them apart from leads coming through your own storefront. The dealer name and contact info are always visible — buyers know whose car they're looking at and how to reach you directly.

Distribution is included on every plan and there's nothing to set up. If you don't want a vehicle on the marketplace, unpublish it from your inventory page (it disappears from your storefront too). If you don't want any of your inventory on the marketplace, disable your storefront entirely in Settings → Storefront — that turns off both your /d/your-slug page and the marketplace inclusion at once.

Can LOT auto-write replies to leads coming in from my storefront?

Yes — it's an optional feature called auto-draft. When enabled, every lead that arrives through your storefront automatically gets a reply draft generated using the same AI lead-reply tool you'd otherwise use manually. The draft uses your dealership voice setting and the vehicle's photos for context. By the time you open the lead in your Leads tab, the suggested reply is already written and waiting for you.

We never email your buyers on your behalf. The draft sits in your Leads tab. Your team reviews it, edits if needed, then either copies it to their email client or clicks "Open in Mail" to launch their default email app with the draft pre-loaded. The reply goes from your team's email address — their name, their reputation, their relationship with the buyer. We just save them the 30-60 seconds of typing.

Why this matters: research consistently shows the dealer who responds first to a lead has the best chance of closing it. Auto-draft means a lead arriving at 9 PM gets a reply ready before your morning coffee — drastically cutting the response time that decides whether a buyer talks to you or your competitor.

What it costs: 2 credits per lead. (Same as a manual lead reply with photos — every storefront vehicle has photos, so the math is consistent.) If you run out of credits, auto-draft skips silently for new leads until you top up; the lead itself still arrives normally and you can write a manual reply.

Who can enable it: the account owner only. Because each draft commits credits automatically, this is a billing-class decision and stays with whoever pays the bill. General managers, managers, and salespeople can use the drafts that get generated, but only the owner can flip the toggle on or off.

Find it in Settings → Profile, under "Auto-draft replies for storefront leads." Off by default — opt in when you decide it's worth it.

Do I have to enter my dealer license number?

No — the license number field is optional. We provide a field on each location's settings where you can enter the number; if filled in, it appears in the footer of that location's storefront.

That said: most U.S. states require licensed dealers to display their license number on advertising, including online listings. Indiana, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New York, and many others have rules along these lines, with the specifics varying state by state. If your state requires display, fill in the field on each location.

Your responsibility: LOT does not validate the license number you enter, does not verify it against any state database, does not enforce that you fill it in, and does not constitute legal advice about whether your state requires display. You are responsible for your own compliance with state and federal advertising regulations. Leaving the field blank means no license number will appear on your storefront — which is fine if your state doesn't require it, and a problem if it does.

If you're not sure whether your state requires it, check with your state's dealer licensing authority (or your dealer-association's compliance materials).

Can I add a stock number and custom branding?

Yes to both.

Stock numbers are optional per-vehicle identifiers (up to 40 characters) — useful if your DMS or lot signage uses them. They sit alongside the VIN on every vehicle and are included in CSV import/export.

Custom branding lets owners upload a dealership logo and add it as a watermark to every photo they upload — drag to position it, tune size and opacity, save once. The logo also shows up in the app header, email notifications, on Sales Sheets, and throughout the UI, making LOT feel like your tool. Logo upload, watermarks, and a custom accent color (replacing the default orange across the app and your storefront) are available on every plan, including Solo. Uploaded logos are cached for fast loads.

Can I print window flyers for my vehicles?

Yes — every vehicle gets a one-click "Sales Sheet" PDF. It's a printable marketing flyer with your dealership logo and brand color, the year/make/model, big bold price, top 3 photos, full spec grid (engine, transmission, drivetrain, fuel, body style, mileage, colors, VIN, stock number), notes, and your dealership contact info in the footer.

From the inventory page, check the box on any row (or many rows) and click Print Sales Sheets — you get a single multi-page PDF with one sheet per vehicle, ready to print and tape to the windshield. Or open any vehicle's detail page and click Sales Sheet for a single sheet.

Sales Sheets fill in automatically from VIN-decoded specs. Add your dealership phone, address, and website per-location on the Locations page (each location has its own contact details for its storefront) and they'll print on every flyer's footer.

Important: The Sales Sheet is a marketing flyer — it's not the FTC Buyers Guide required by 16 CFR Part 455. Federal law requires a separate, compliant Buyers Guide on every used vehicle offered for sale, with civil penalties for non-compliance (the FTC publishes the maximum amounts and adjusts them annually for inflation — they're substantial and per-violation, so a multi-vehicle audit failure adds up fast). Display a real Buyers Guide on the vehicle in addition to your LOT Sales Sheet. You can get compliant Buyers Guide forms from the FTC or any auto-dealer forms supplier.

Is my dealership data private?

Your listings, photos, customer leads, and reviews are yours. They're stored only to give you a workspace to come back to. We never share, sell, or repurpose your dealer data.

The AI generation runs on enterprise-grade infrastructure with strict data policies — your inputs are not used to train any AI model. Everything you put in stays yours.

Can I add two-factor authentication?

Yes — every account can turn on email-based 2FA from Settings → Account. Once on, signing in from a new device asks for a 6-digit code emailed at login. The code expires in 10 minutes, and after a few wrong guesses the code is invalidated (request a new one from the verify screen).

Devices you trust can skip the prompt for 30 days — there's a "Trust this device" checkbox on the code-entry screen. Useful for the desktop you sit at every day, less useful for a public computer.

If you reset your password, every trusted device is automatically un-trusted on the assumption that the old password may have been compromised. You'll get a code on your next sign-in from each device.

We recommend turning 2FA on for every owner and manager account. Salespeople can use it too, but it's optional — they generally have less to lose if their account is compromised.

Can I import and export my inventory?

Yes, both directions, and you own your data either way.

Import: export a CSV from your current system (vAuto, Dealertrack, DealerCenter, spreadsheets — anything that gives you a file), then upload it in LOT's inventory page. Any size — LOT auto-batches large files into 500-row chunks under the hood, so a 5,000-vehicle lot uploads in one click. LOT auto-detects common column names (VIN, year, make, model, trim, mileage, price, invoice price, minimum sell price, stock number, colors, notes, and location/store/rooftop for multi-rooftop dealers). You get a preview of what will be added vs. updated before anything is saved, and you can remap columns manually if auto-detection misses something.

Multi-location dealers: you have two options. Per-rooftop CSVs (the most common case — Frazer, DealerCenter, and most single-store DMSes export this way) — pick a location in the dropdown, upload your CSV, all rows land there. Run it once per rooftop. Combined CSV with a Location column (vAuto and Dealertrack export this way for multi-store groups) — include a column named Location, Location Name, Store, or Rooftop, and LOT auto-routes each row to its named location. The location values must match your existing location names or slugs exactly (case-insensitive, but no fuzzy matching — "Main" doesn't auto-match "Main Street Lot"; rename in your CSV or create the missing location first). The preview screen shows you a per-location breakdown before you commit, so you can see exactly how many rows are going to each rooftop. Unknown locations get rejected with a clear message rather than silently routed somewhere wrong. If your CSV uses some other column name (like "Dealership Code" or "Branch"), you can manually map it to Location in the column-mapping table on the preview screen. One thing imports never do: move existing vehicles between rooftops. The Location column only controls where NEW vehicles land; if you import a CSV with a VIN that already exists at Main and a Location of "South," the vehicle stays at Main and the rest of the row's data updates. Use the Move Vehicle action on a vehicle's detail page if you actually need to relocate it.

Existing vehicles (matched by VIN) get updated rather than duplicated — blank values in your CSV won't clobber data you've already filled in. Imports respect your plan's vehicle cap per location, and salespeople can't import invoice price or minimum sell price even if those columns exist in the file (they're stripped with a warning).

Export: one click from the inventory page gives you a CSV of your current inventory, or a filtered subset (active only, sold, archived, etc.). Owners and managers get the full export including cost columns; salespeople get a location-scoped export with cost fields stripped. The export includes every field LOT tracks, making it easy to move data to Excel, Sheets, or another system if you ever need to.

We don't charge export fees. Your data is always yours to take.

What if the AI writes something wrong?

LOT is a creative assistant, not a replacement for your judgment. Always give every output a quick read before posting. Things worth double-checking:

• Photos showing damage you don't want to highlight
• Spec details you didn't actually confirm
• Tone that doesn't match how your dealership talks

If an output misses the mark, regenerate (costs the same credits as the first run) or edit it directly before copying. The tools get sharper the more context you give them.

What about payments and my bank info?

Every payment runs through Stripe. We never see your card number, never store payment info on our servers. Stripe handles all of it under PCI compliance — same payment processor used by Amazon, Shopify, Lyft, and most major SaaS products.

You can update payment methods or download invoices anytime from the Billing page.

Who's behind LOT?

LOT is built and operated in America by a small independent team. We're not venture-funded, not owned by a big DMS conglomerate, and not here to become one — we're here to ship software that used-car dealers actually want to use.

We read every support email personally and reply within a day. Questions, feature ideas, bug reports, things that don't work like you expected — all of it lands directly with the people building the product. Drop us a line.

What happens if I leave the company or sell the dealership?

Your data, inventory, customer history, leads, and storefront stay intact through any ownership change. None of it disappears when an owner leaves.

Self-serve transfer for living owners. If you need to hand the dealership to someone else (sale, retirement, partnership change, succession), the new owner first joins as a General Manager. Once they're a GM, you go to the Team page and click "Transfer ownership" on their row. You'll re-enter your password to confirm; they get an email with a 7-day window to accept. They sign in, confirm with their own password, and the swap happens — they become the owner, you become a GM (so you keep operational access but billing moves to them). Both of you get a confirmation email.

Estate or emergency transfers. If the owner has died, been incapacitated, or otherwise can't initiate the transfer themselves, email support@carlistingservice.com with documentation (death certificate, board resolution, court order — whatever's relevant) and we'll handle the transfer manually within one business day.

Removing staff is separate. Salespeople and managers leaving day-to-day is straightforward: any owner or general manager can remove them from the Team page in two clicks. Their access ends immediately; their leads, notes, and historical data stay attached to the dealership.