Using auto dealership accounting services gives dealers the tools to manage business operations more effectively. These tools include customer relationship management systems, inventory management solutions, sales tracking software, and data analysis capabilities.
Find an automotive CRM that fits your needs and budget. Compare features, prices, and user reviews.
Getting Started
Accurate and reliable financial statements and information are essential for the success of dealerships. Dealership owners and management teams should expect nothing less from their accounting departments.
Dealership accounting professionals should strive to maintain accurate and up-to-date financial records by performing regular reconciliations. These processes are crucial for catching mistakes, errors, and even instances of fraud before they can cause substantial damage to a dealership’s financial stability.
Reconciliation also helps dealerships gain a more accurate understanding of their spending patterns. It can help them identify areas where they may be able to cut costs and improve their bottom line.
Another way to ensure a more accurate understanding of dealership expenditures is to use software that reads bank records daily, matches outstanding checks that have cleared automatically, and updates the payables check files. It can eliminate manual data entry and reduce error rates. It can also help dealerships avoid costly delays and speed up monthly closings.
Pricing
Whether considering a dealership accounting software system or implementing an in-house solution, it’s important to consider the cost. Investing in dealership accounting services from professionals who understand your business can help minimize unnecessary expenditures and improve overall efficiency.
Regular reconciliation of sales and cost of sales general ledger accounts helps identify and correct misreporting or items that don’t align with expectations, minimizing potential financial pitfalls. Moreover, performing these reviews allows dealerships to monitor inventory performance and make necessary adjustments.
Withum’s dedicated industry professionals provide tax, audit, and accounting services to automobile dealerships and their businesses. Using their deep industry experience, they advise on auto dealership revenue recognition, LIFO accounting, buy-sell agreements, remodel vs. rebuild scenarios, succession planning, and more.
Training
Auto dealership accounting software saves time and reduces human error by automating tasks such as invoicing, payment tracking, tax calculations, and more. It also offers valuable insights into the business, enabling informed decision-making and strategic planning.
A top-tier automotive accounting service offers various training options to ensure your dealership’s accounting department is up to speed on industry-specific issues and major accounting concerns. The course will cover various topics, including daily accounting procedures, how to read balance sheets and profit and loss statements, and internal control and theft prevention steps.
Another topic to be covered is reconciliation, which involves meticulously comparing and verifying various financial documents. It is an essential internal control mechanism that ensures all dealership transactions are accurately recorded and accounted for. Reconciliation can also identify potential fraud or discrepancies and help to keep dealerships operating at peak efficiency.
Support
Dealership accounting software can include various features to help manage different aspects of the business. For example, a top-tier system may include a dedicated accounts payable module to keep track of bills and suppliers with tools like bill tracking, vendor set-up, automatic payment reminders, and check printing capabilities. It can also monitor inventory levels in multiple locations or track product sales trends to optimize pricing strategies.
Other modules often included in dealership accounting services include detailed data analytics tools that provide insights into vehicle dealership profit margins, sales trends over time, inventory turnover rates, and other important financial metrics. These tools can inform decisions regarding employee reward programs, marketing initiatives, and cost-reduction strategies.
DIS offers specialized dealership accounting guidance to support the needs of automotive dealers and their management teams. Our comprehensive, easy-to-use Guide to Dealership Accounting provides tailored practice aids and illustrative financial statements that are not likely found in more generalized sources of accounting information.