Dealership
Dealership is the premier management web application for Concrete5 based Auto dealership websites.
Manage your inventory, set up exports to Autotrader.com, and manage sales leads through your website.
Manage both new and used car inventory via the slick dashboard management interface.
Installing Dalership
Dealership app will prompt you for input on weather or not to install the provided example theme and content.
We highly recommend doing so.
For best understanding of the app as well as instalation results, please install on a blank C5 site with no sample content previously added.
Getting Started
Before we get into managing vehicles, we will want to establish a few household items first.
Sales
The first thing you will want to do is set up your sales team for tracking, reporting, management, and sales leads forwarding.
To do this, go to your Concrete5 members area and search or add a user to be designated as a sales person or manager.
Click on the users name, and then click “edit”
Make sure that users First and Last name attributes are properly filled out.
Next, you will want to click on the “Sales Rep” attribute, check ‘Yes’, and then save. (click on the paper/pencil icon to the far right for that attribute).
Lastly, if this person is a manager, and should be automatically notified of new sales leads, click on the “Notify Sales Leads” attribute, and check it as ‘Yes’ & save as well.
Global Description Stacks
Some dealerships like to have general information that is provided on every description for their inventory.
To this, you must create at least one new car listing, and one used car listing, and view each listing at least once.
This makes sure that the global areas for each respective page_type for new and used cars is registered.
After doing so, you can then head to your C5 Stacks area in your C5 Dashboard and add this global description or details information.
Suggested use includes - phone info, direct sales lines, disclaimers of pricing, and or warranty information.
Managing Inventory
There are several ways to manage your car inventory. Both new and used car entry is the same with the difference of where the listing is physically located in your website. i.e. - /inventory/new_cars/ or /inventory/used_cars/
The tabbed information for vehicles is fairly self explanatory, however bellow is a brief overview of the data and their roles:
General Tab
The general tab is information is general related to the car’s specifications.
Features Tab
The Features Tab contains available “options” for vehicles.
Media Tab
The Media Tab is used for related vehicle images and report verifications
Additional Options Tab
The Additional Options Tab allows auto inclusion of custom attributes you would like to amend to your vehicle listings. Simply add any attribute to your pages -> attributes ‘Dealership Additional Attributes’ attribute set to be be auto included in this form.
For example, I want to include weather or not X car comes with a spare tire. I go to pages and themes, attributes, and add a new ‘checkbox’ attribute type with a handle of ‘dealership_spare_tire’ labled ‘Has Spare Tire’ and assign it to the “Dealership Additional Attributes” attribute set.
Now, when adding or editing a vehicle, I will see ‘Has Spare Tire’ available for association under the ‘Additional Options’ tab.
Adding, Modifying, Removing Attributes and Options
Any and all of the options can be modified as to order, content, and options. Simply go to your pages and themes -> attributes area of your dashboard, and edit the attribute you wish to modify.
Options can be re-ordered, removed, or amended as desired.
Car Printout Sheets
Dealership for Concrete5 includes printable spec sheets to be attached to your vehicles.
Go to either your used or new vehicle dashboard interface to view and filter your listings, and click on the ‘Print’ icon to the far right of each listing to print it’s spec sheet.
AutoTrader export
The provided AutoTrader exporter is intended to be hit via cronjob, grab a formatted XML feed, and then FTP that feed to an assigned AutoTrader provider FTP location/directory. It’s important that you contact and coordinate with AutoTrader your FTP location, login and pw, and frequency of update.
*** it’s important to note that ONLY VEHICLES WITH THE ‘INCLUDE IN EXPORT’ ATTRIBUTE CHECKED WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE EXPORTER FEED
After receiving your AutoTrader FTP information, you can proceed to your /packages/dealership/tools/autotrader_exporter.php file, and edit the FTP vars near the top of the file.
You will also find in the same file, commented out at the very top, an example cron job address.
To use this, you will need to log into your websites control pannel, and set up a ‘task’ or ‘cron’ job. Set up the frequency to daily :
1 4 * * 1-5 curl -o --url http://yoursite.com/index.php/tools/packages/dealership/autotrader_exporter.php > /dev/null 2>&1
This example will execute via curl the exporter file every first minute, at the fourth hour, of no specific day, every month, every monday thru friday morning, with errors and reports suppressed.
Inventory Importing
Dealership comes with the capability to import daily cron feeds provided by your inventory service provider.
Some dealerships with larger stock hire 3rd party providers to manage their vehicle inventory.
Because every service is different and often use different softwares to communicate and interface with inventory, our importer needs to be set up specific to each providers XML or CSV feed.
Please contact us for a free quote to help coordinate this importer. Simply provide us with an XML, or CSV example feed from your provider.
The process works as such:
Roadmap
Future options to be included in your Concrete5 Dealership app