Automotive

Test drives and reservations · holding the car and turning it into a sale

How to schedule a test drive and record its outcome, and how to reserve a vehicle for a customer, release the reservation or convert it into a sale. It explains the lock that guarantees the same car is never reserved twice at the same time.

Two different things in the same journey

A test drive is a commitment to a person: day, time, salesperson and the car they will drive. A reservation is a commitment to the car: it leaves everyone else's floor and belongs to one customer. The two usually happen on the same day, but they are separate records and they live on different tabs.

Scheduling a test drive

Open Automotive and go to the Test drives tab.
In the Schedule a test drive block, pick the Store.
Pick the Vehicle, which is optional. If the customer has not settled on a unit yet, leave it blank and the appointment stands for the model.
Enter the date and time.
Write any notes that will help whoever takes the appointment.
Click Schedule. The record joins the list with the status Scheduled.

Store and date and time are required. The vehicle is optional precisely because early in the conversation the customer picks the model, not the unit. Scheduling a test drive does not reserve the car and does not change its inventory status: the vehicle stays Available to the other salespeople.

Closing out the test drive

A scheduled test drive has to end with an outcome, or the calendar turns into a list of promises. On the appointment's row you get three buttons: Done, when the customer drove; No-show, when they did not turn up; and Cancel, when the appointment was called off.

Marking the outcome is what separates a working calendar from a useful history. Show rates by store and by salesperson come out of those three buttons, and the customer who did not show up is precisely the one who needs another call.

Reserving a vehicle

Open the Inventory tab.
Find the vehicle. The Reserve button only appears on cars with the status Available.
Click Reserve. The vehicle's status turns Reserved immediately, for everyone who can see that store.
The Sell and Release buttons appear on the same row.

The same car is never reserved twice

This is the tab's most important guarantee. When two people click Reserve on the same car at the same instant, the system handles the two requests in line: the first one reserves and the second gets a notice that the vehicle is no longer available. There is no tie, no double reservation and no situation where two customers show up at the store to take the same car.

The same lock applies to the sale. A vehicle is only sold out of an active reservation, and each vehicle has only one active reservation at a time.

Releasing it or converting it into a sale

Release: cancels the reservation and puts the car back to Available. Use it when the customer walked away or the agreed hold ran out.
Sell: converts the reservation into a sale. The vehicle moves to Sold, which is a final status: it does not return to the reservation cycle.
Cancelling a reservation that was already cancelled or already turned into a sale causes no error, it simply does nothing.

💡 Sell here means marking the vehicle as sold in the CRM. The vertical does not issue an invoice, does not generate a contract and does not move anything in your back office system.

Example: Friday, 4 p.m. Marina test drives the Corolla XEi at the Downtown store; the salesperson marks it Done. She asks to hold the car until Monday. The salesperson goes back to the Inventory tab and clicks Reserve: the Corolla turns Reserved and disappears from his colleagues' floor. On Monday Marina closes, and the salesperson clicks Sell. Had she walked away, the click would have been Release and the car would be Available again immediately.

Frequently asked questions

I reserved the wrong car, now what? Click Release. The vehicle goes back to Available right away and can be reserved by someone else.
I sold one by mistake, can it be undone? Sold is a final status in the reservation cycle. Talk to whoever administers the workspace before writing any car off.
Why is the Reserve button missing? Because the vehicle is not Available. Check the status tag on the row.
Does a reservation expire on its own? A reservation accepts an expiry when it is created through an integration. From the screen, it stays active until someone releases or sells.
Does the test drive disappear from the list? No. It keeps the status Completed, No-show or Cancelled, and it can be deleted if it was entered by mistake.

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