7:41 am, July 10, 2025
Car Dealer Recommends is a new, independent test of motor trade products in real life car dealer conditions.
Tests take place over an extended period of time and scores are handed out in eight categories. These are used to score a product out of a 100.
A score of more than 90% gets a coveted Car Dealer Recommends award, only handed out to the very best products or services offered to the motor trade. DealerKit is the first product to face our testers – here’s what they had to say.
DealerKit is a dealer management system designed and built by car dealers. The founders run their own used car business and built the software to use in their showroom. They soon realised it was worth sharing with the motor trade and spun it out into its own business around three years ago – and we’re glad they did.
We’ve tested the software for more than a year at Car Dealer Magazine’s dealership, the Clever Car Collection, and have found it invaluable for a number of reasons. It is intuitive and easy to use and features a number of highly innovative features, including an AI tool that scans receipts and invoices so they can be stored for exporting to accountancy software later.
There are loads of tools in the system we love using – especially the way it handles customer leads. These come in from all portals to a central hub where you can deal with them all in one place. When a lead arrives from, say Auto Trader, you get a text message to say it’s arrived. This means you can jump on to the system straight away to deal with it.
All leads are kept in one place and you can easily track the conversions you, or others, have had with customers. It lets you email them or text them via the software and when customers reply you get another text notification. It’s a brilliant way of staying on top of leads and helps us react quickly.
We started from scratch with DealerKit, but before that we were using spreadsheets to keep track of costs and reconditioning fees – and everything else we did at the dealership.
DealerKit helps across your dealership and that starts with advertising your cars. The system feeds all of the major advertising portals and your website and becomes the hub for your advertising. You simply upload the pictures, words and details about your car in one place and it feeds it out to all the portals. We currently use it to feed Auto Trader, CarGurus, Motors/Cazoo and our own 67 Degrees website.
Uploading cars is easy and simple to follow. So far we’ve trained two new starters on the system and they find it a doddle to use too. Changes to cars are quick to make and we love the fact it seamlessly integrates with Auto Trader for pricing, so it can help you pick Great, Good or Fair prices with ease at the click of a button.
It tracks leads on cars, how long you’ve had them in stock and all expenses are stored in one simple place so you can see your margin on each car’s display page.
The only thing it really lacks is a mobile version or app. Some of the manipulation needed to message customers on your phone is hard work. We get around it by having templates stored on our phone for replies to cut and paste, but we’re promised a solution is coming soon.
The amount of time DealerKit has saved us is huge. While we’ve mentioned the way it deals with leads and advertising cars, one of the behind-the-scenes but incredibly useful functions is its ability to export all expenses to a variety of different accountancy software.
We use Xero and it integrates with that platform seamlessly to send it details of deals and importantly help work out our VAT return. Our bookkeeper and accountants love it as it makes their life much easier and now it has the AI invoice reading trick up its sleeve, it’s even more efficient.
The other real bonus is the way it creates deal paperwork. When you sell a car you stack the deal via the system – it already has the customer information stored thanks to the fact it has ingested the lead and it creates all the invoices and handover documents you need, complete with your company logo and details on them.
You can then email a copy via DealerKit or request a remote signature, which the customer can do on their phone. It’s really very clever.
We have honestly found very few downsides to using DealerKit. Our day starts and ends on the platform as it helps track deals, advertise cars and chat to customers.
We love the clever workflow tracking function that lets you keep an eye on a car’s progress through your business. Different departments can log in and update the car when it has been through valeting or the workshop and at a glance you can see what has, and crucially, hasn’t been done.
It’s also useful when buying a car. You can upload the purchase simply, including costs, and it comes with an appraisal tool that allows you to mark up defects on a car and tot up the cost of putting them right. Again, this would be even better if it was available on a mobile app.
The biggest pro, though, has to be the fact it is so easy and intuitive to use. None of those working at the Clever Car Collection have any history in car sales and even then it’s been no problem getting them set up and confident on the system.
Steps to change things are always logical and easy to find. Even simple things like unwinding a deal or buying back a car are all there and easy to find – a great example of the fact this has been built by dealers who’ve had to do all this themselves many times before.
We came across DealerKit thanks to its sales director Ian Cooper. He’s been instrumental in getting us set up on the platform and has helped at every step of the way to ensure we make a success of it.
The team have slick videos on social media and work hard to promote their new partnerships with dealers. Check them out on social media as they’re very good at it.
Take a look at their website too and you’ll see how smart the software is – even that has been produced to their high standards.
As they’re early in their journey, you won’t see a huge amount of marketing for the software, but, as the user base grows, expect to see and hear a lot more about this firm.
Set-up is incredibly hands on for new DealerKit customers. Cooper visits his customers personally and spends time with your team to get the software integrated. His arrival is normally accompanied by a box of donuts too which never go amiss!
It’s this hands on set up that makes a big difference. The team takes their time to show you how it all works and when they introduce new features are not afraid to get on a video call with you to explain what it does and how you can make the best of it. They genuinely care that you’re making the most of their system.
There are many features in the software we don’t use. It has very powerful reporting tools that we simply scratch the surface with, but it’s good to know a lot of that functionality is there if we need it. It can generate stock lists, key number reports, profit and reconditioning numbers in seconds, plus lots more.
I especially like the heat map that tracks where in the country your cars have been sold to which helps you spot trends and areas where you really penetrate particularly well.
For a dealership of our size, the monthly cost is around £149, which I think is quite frankly staggering value for money. For the lead handling, advertising simplicity and deal building documentation it’s worth the money alone.
It’s perfect for a new dealer just starting up, but equally for larger enterprises where all the reporting functionality and workflow tracking will be more important, we feel it will be equally great value for money.
DeakerKit has become a lynchpin of the Clever Car Collection. We use it daily and love the way it helps keep us informed. Our favourite part has to be the lead notifications – getting a text message as soon as one arrives, wherever it may have been generated, is vital so we can react quickly.
We’ve also been impressed at the constant innovation from the team. They are often rolling out new technology and tweaks that genuinely make dealers’ lives better.
We’ve also chatted to several other car dealers who have moved across to the platform and they’ve all said they wished they made the move sooner.
We heartily recommend the product and it wins our first Car Dealer Recommends title with a score of 97/100.
