The dealer management system that costs an import properly
Carventory is car dealer software for showrooms that import. It runs the whole financial cycle — vehicle stock management, landed cost per VIN, shipments tracked while still on the water, margin VAT on the sale, and the double-entry ledger underneath — against one chart of accounts.
- Auction¥1,450,000£7,652
- Freight¥180,000£950
- Customs duty£860
- Import VAT£1,892
- Clearing£340
- Local transport£185
- Cost at yard£11,879
- MOT · meter conversion£175
- DVLA · road tax£245
- Garage · warranty£630
- Total cost£13,003
Exchange rate 189.50 ¥/£ locked at purchase — every later cost lands on this VIN, never on a pool.
What Carventory does
Landed cost per VIN
Auction price and freight in the source currency, the exchange rate locked at purchase, then duty, import VAT, clearing and local transport — arriving at a cost at yard you can defend line by line.
Prep costs keep landing
MOT, speedometer conversion, DVLA registration, road tax, garage work, warranty and anything else attach to the same unit after it arrives. Total cost moves; it never has to be recalculated by hand.
Shipments that stay off the books
A purchase voucher marked On the way posts nothing. Its cars are absent from stock, from the trial balance and from every report, and cannot be sold. Marking it Arrived posts every line dated to the bill date.
Bill of Lading and container
B/L number, container or order reference, bill date and origin sit on the purchase voucher, so a shipment on the water is a record rather than an email thread.
Real double entry underneath
Buying is a compound voucher — debit the purchase and clearing expense accounts, credit the supplier or bank. Selling debits the customer and credits Sale · Cars. The ledger is the source of truth, not a report built after the fact.
The unit register
Chassis and engine numbers, registration, year, mileage, colour, engine size, gearbox, fuel — plus up to five photographs held against the vehicle and carried into the deal file.
Stock, sold and in transit
Three filtered views of the same register, each exportable, each showing cost at yard, total cost and ask price beside the status.
Reports that reconcile
Car stock, cars in transit, purchase and sale summaries, account ledger, trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet — the financial three gated to the roles that should see them.
Margin VAT on used stock
Used vehicles sold under the VAT margin scheme are handled as such — VAT computed on the margin rather than the full sale price, with the working retained for inspection.
Margin you can quote
Per-unit profit is computed from total cost against the sale, so a salesperson negotiating at the desk is working from the real floor rather than last month's average.
An import is not one purchase, it is a chain of them
The hammer price is the smallest part of what a Japanese import costs by the time it is on the forecourt. Freight, duty, VAT, clearing, transport, then an MOT, a speedometer conversion from kilometres, DVLA registration and road tax. Carventory records each of those against the individual vehicle as it happens, so cost at yard and total cost are always current.
- Source currency and locked exchange rate held on the unit
- Cost at yard separated from post-arrival prep
- Every cost traceable to the voucher that created it
- Auction¥1,450,000£7,652
- Freight¥180,000£950
- Customs duty£860
- Import VAT£1,892
- Clearing£340
- Local transport£185
- Cost at yard£11,879
- MOT · meter conversion£175
- DVLA · road tax£245
- Garage · warranty£630
- Total cost£13,003
Exchange rate 189.50 ¥/£ locked at purchase — every later cost lands on this VIN, never on a pool.
Cars on the water should not be in your accounts
Most showrooms either post an import the day they pay for it — inflating stock and distorting the trial balance for weeks — or keep it on a spreadsheet until it lands and hope someone remembers. Carventory defers the posting instead. Nothing hits the general ledger until the shipment is marked arrived, which is a deliberate, irreversible, permission-guarded action.
- Deferred posting, dated to the bill date on arrival
- In-transit units hidden from stock, reports and the dashboard
- Selling a car still on the water is blocked at the server
- Toyota Aygo X2021£11,879
- Honda Civic EX2022£16,240
- Mazda CX-302021£14,905
- Suzuki Swift Sport2020£9,410
One register, three questions
What is on the forecourt, what sold and for how much, and what is still coming. The same vehicle record answers all three as it moves through the statuses, so there is never a second list to keep in step.
- Filterable, exportable stock, sold and in-transit views
- Chassis, engine, registration and photographs per unit
- Cost, ask price and status side by side
- Aygo XToyota · 2021LS24 KHZ£11,879£16,995IN-STOCK
- Civic EXHonda · 2022MT22 VNL£16,240£23,750IN-STOCK
- CX-30Mazda · 2021BD21 FGX£14,905£19,450SOLD
- Swift SportSuzuki · 2020YB20 RKD£9,410£13,200IN-STOCK
HISPEED Car Sales source used vehicles directly from Japanese auctions and sell them across the East Midlands. Carventory was built alongside that operation, which is why the cost chain follows a car from the auction hammer through freight, duty, import VAT and clearing to an MOT, a speedometer conversion and a DVLA registration — rather than treating it as a line of stock.
Visit HISPEED Car Sales- TradeJapanese auction imports
- BasedLeicester, UK
- UsesCarventory showroom accounting
It is a product, not an island
Carventory shares the chart of accounts, tax rules, users and permissions with the rest of the platform, so a group running showrooms alongside retail closes its books once.
How the platform fits togetherPut the whole business on one platform
Start with one branch and one module. Add the rest when it earns its place — nothing has to be migrated twice.
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