Know Where Every Vehicle Is — and What Happens Next
VIN-level inventory management with real status, real location and real age. Not a model-and-quantity list that was accurate last Tuesday.
| VIN | Model | Location | Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| …7HK41982 | Model X GLX | Yard B / R4 / S12 | 34d | Available |
| …7HK42017 | Model X GLS | Showroom — Deira | 12d | Reserved |
| …7HK41776 | Model X GLX | Yard B / R2 / S03 | 112d | Aging |
| …7HK41903 | Model S GL | Branch — Abu Dhabi | 58d | Allocated |
| …7HK42104 | Model S GL | Vessel VY-2261 | — | In transit |
| …7HK41654 | Model E EV | Yard A / R1 / S08 | 21d | Hold — rework |
How dealerships should track vehicle inventory
Effective dealerships track inventory by VIN rather than by model and quantity. Each vehicle carries a status, a physical location, a receiving date and its full movement history. Status distinguishes available stock from reserved, allocated, held and sold units, so a sales team can tell what it can genuinely commit rather than what merely exists.
The distinction sounds academic until a sales manager promises a vehicle that a colleague reserved that morning. Quantity-based inventory cannot express the difference between "we have four of those" and "we have four, one is reserved, one is allocated, one is on hold for rework and one is in another emirate".
The full status set
Statuses are configurable. A group can add or rename states to match how it already describes stock, without losing the underlying availability logic.
Yard management
Yard management assigns each vehicle a physical position — typically yard, zone, row and slot — and records every movement between positions and locations. That makes a vehicle findable without a physical search, makes yard capacity measurable, and makes it possible to reconcile the recorded stock position against a physical audit.
What yard management covers
- Yard, zone, row and slot assignment per vehicle
- Vehicle receiving with a yard receiving inspection at arrival
- Stock movement recorded as an event, not an edit
- Yard-to-showroom and branch-to-branch transfer with receiving confirmation
- Vehicle hold and release with a recorded reason
- Vehicle reservation against a customer or booking
- Physical stock audit against the recorded position
- Inventory reconciliation with variance investigation
- Location-wise and branch-wise stock reporting
Why slot-level detail earns its keep. A yard holding four hundred vehicles without position data is a search problem every time a unit is needed for a test drive, a PDI or a delivery. With position data it becomes a pick list. The saving is not dramatic per vehicle; it is dramatic per week.
Occupancy by zone
Zone B / Row 4
| Slot | VIN | Age | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| S10 | …41955 | 28d | Available |
| S11 | …41968 | 31d | Reserved |
| S12 | …41982 | 34d | Available |
| S13 | — | — | Empty |
Stock aging and inventory intelligence
Stock aging measures how long each vehicle has been in inventory, counted in days from receiving. Vehicles are grouped into aging buckets — commonly 0–30, 31–60, 61–90, 91–120 and over 120 days. Older stock carries more holding cost and usually needs a pricing, transfer or campaign decision.
Aging buckets
Aging 90+ by branch
| Branch | 90–120 | 120+ | Oldest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dubai — Deira | 31 | 8 | 164d |
| Abu Dhabi | 22 | 6 | 141d |
| Sharjah | 15 | 3 | 128d |
| Al Ain | 10 | 2 | 122d |
Why aging is only as good as the receiving date
Many dealer groups report stock aging from an invoice date, a shipment date or the day someone first added the vehicle to a spreadsheet. Each produces a different number, and none of them is the day the vehicle actually became the dealer's problem to sell.
Because AutoFixia records receiving as a system event with an inspection attached, days-in-stock has a defensible start point. That is what makes the aging report worth acting on rather than arguing about.
What aging analysis produces
- Days in stock per VIN and average days in stock by branch
- Aging buckets with unit counts and trend
- Slow-moving stock identification by model, trim and colour
- Stock turnover by branch and by specification
- Demand versus stock comparison across the group
- Candidate inter-branch transfers where demand exists elsewhere
Make aging visible early, identify which specific units are aging rather than which models, check whether demand for that specification exists at another branch, and take a deliberate decision on transfer, pricing or campaign inclusion before the vehicle passes ninety days.
Stock movement and transfers
A transfer is not an adjustment to two numbers. It is a physical event with a sender, a receiver, a condition at each end and a period in between where the vehicle belongs to neither location.
| Step | What is recorded | Control applied |
|---|---|---|
| Transfer request | Requesting branch, receiving branch, VIN, reason | Vehicle must be available, not reserved or allocated |
| Approval | Approving user and timestamp | Configurable approval by role and value |
| Despatch | Transport order, transporter, despatch condition | Condition captured before the vehicle leaves |
| In transit | Vehicle status shows as moving, not available at either end | Cannot be sold from either location while in transit |
| Receiving | Arrival, branch receiving inspection, any new damage | Damage recorded against the transfer, not the vehicle's history generally |
| Completion | New branch, new location, updated movement history | Aging clock continues; it does not reset on transfer |
Aging deliberately does not reset when a vehicle moves between branches. A unit that has been in the group for 140 days has been in the group for 140 days.
Inventory management FAQs
By VIN, with a status and a physical location, rather than by model and quantity.
Each vehicle carries a receiving date and its full movement history. Status distinguishes available from reserved, allocated, held and sold, so the sales team can tell what it can genuinely commit rather than what merely exists somewhere in the group.
Reserved means held for a customer, usually against a booking with a deposit and an expiry. Allocated means one identified VIN is committed to a specific sales order.
A reservation can lapse and release the vehicle back to available stock. An allocation is a firmer commitment that downstream documents — finance, insurance, registration and delivery — all refer to. Conflict prevention stops one VIN being allocated twice.
Each vehicle is assigned a physical position — yard, zone, row and slot — and every movement between positions is recorded.
That makes a vehicle findable without a physical search, makes yard capacity measurable by zone, and makes it possible to reconcile the recorded stock position against a physical audit rather than trusting that the two match.
Between branches, yes, as a controlled movement with approval and receiving inspection.
Between companies within a group, transfer rules depend on how the group is structured legally and commercially, which is configured during implementation. Aging does not reset on transfer, and a vehicle in transit cannot be sold from either the sending or receiving location.
Yes. Physical stock audit and inventory reconciliation are supported against the recorded position.
The audit compares what the system says should be in each location against what is physically there, and variances are recorded for investigation rather than silently corrected. Because movement is captured as events, most variances trace back to an unrecorded movement.
See VIN inventory in AutoFixia
Search your own stock the way your sales team would, including the reserved and allocated units that never appear on a spreadsheet.