One VIN, one cost record
Used vehicles are the textbook case for specific identification: no two units are interchangeable, so inventory accounting follows the VIN, not an average. Each stock number carries its own cost, and that cost is more than the hammer price. It includes the auction buy fee, transport to the lot, and the reconditioning spent before delivery.
Run inventory as one pooled number and two things break. Per-unit gross becomes a guess, so you cannot tell which auction lane, price band or appraiser actually makes money. And year-end inventory becomes an estimate the CRA is entitled to question instead of a list you already have.
Street purchases raise the documentation stakes. A unit bought privately comes with no HST and no credit to claim, so the paper trail is the bill of sale, the lien search and the payment record. CRA reviews of dealers lean hard on purchase documentation; a VIN file that holds all three answers those letters quickly.
Our End-to-End Accounting service keeps that unit ledger tied to the deal jacket: bookkeeping, payroll, financial reporting and tax filing under one roof, with the VIN as the organizing unit.
Reconditioning belongs on the unit, not in overhead
Safety certification, brakes, tires, a windshield, sublet paint and the final detail all attach to the stock number and sit in inventory until the unit sells. Expense them as shop repairs and two numbers go wrong at once: year-end inventory is understated, and the front-end gross on the sold unit looks better than it was.
The damage is not only in the books. Appraisers who never see all-in cost keep paying too much for the same kind of unit, because the reconditioning that ate the margin was buried in an expense line.
| Cost | Where it belongs |
|---|---|
| Auction price and buy fee | VIN cost, in inventory until sold |
| Transport to the lot | VIN cost |
| Safety certification and reconditioning | VIN cost |
| Trade-in acquired on a deal | VIN cost at actual cash value |
| Floor-plan interest | Period expense as it accrues |
| Lot advertising and bulk supplies | Period expense |
Internal shop work is costed at parts plus labour, not retail. Marking your own recon up to door rates just moves profit between departments and flatters the shop at the lot's expense.
Trade-ins enter at actual cash value
A trade goes into inventory at its actual cash value, what the unit is genuinely worth, not the allowance printed on the bill of sale. Any over-allowance is a discount on the retail deal that produced it, and it belongs against that deal's gross.
Book trades at inflated allowances and the lot slowly fills with units that can never gross. The deal that created the problem shows a strong front end; the trade shows the loss months later. Recording ACV keeps both deals honest, and it gives the HST trade-in paperwork a clean starting point at filing time.
The floor-plan ledger has to match the lender's
Each floored unit carries its own payable, its own interest accrual and its own payoff deadline once it sells. We reconcile the floor-plan statement to the unit ledger monthly, so a lender floor check counts cars and finds no surprises: every floored VIN either on the lot or paid off, and curtailment payments posted against the right units.
Interest itself is a period expense, deducted as it accrues rather than added to unit cost. What the line should cost you, and when to curtail versus wholesale an aging unit, is strategy, and it lives with our Fractional CFO work.
A monthly close built for a lot
Most independent dealers run a DMS like PBS or Dealertrack, or a disciplined spreadsheet at smaller volumes. We map deal jackets and DMS exports into QuickBooks Online, pull vendor bills through Dext and pay them through Plooto, so the books mirror the lot without re-keying. Weekly, deals and floor-plan activity get posted; monthly, we close.
The close produces the numbers a dealer principal actually uses: units delivered and per-unit gross, an inventory list with cost and days for every VIN, commission payroll settled and T4-ready, and HST figures taken from the bills of sale rather than reconstructed. At year-end, aged units are written down to what they will actually bring, which is both honest and deductible.
When a floor-plan lender wants CPA-prepared statements for a renewal or a line increase, the same ledger feeds a compilation or review engagement without a cleanup project first. We work with dealers across Mississauga and the GTA, and everything is quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
