Cash is king for any business, and dealerships are no exception. Even with solid reserves and good fluidity, better cash flow always helps with your dealership’s expenses and overhead.
So, how does faster title and lien release help with cash flow? Let’s take a look.
Immovable objects
Once you’ve invested in a trade-in, there’s going to be a period of time when the vehicle is basically an oversized paperweight until you can finalize the lien release and get your hands on the title.
In a few states, it’s illegal to re-sell a vehicle before you have the title in hand. Everywhere else, even if you do take a vehicle to auction without the title, Manheim data shows that your chances of selling it on first pass are about half what they would be if you had the title in hand.
Dealertrack data shows that the industry average payoff and lien and title release for a used vehicle is 12-18 days. That’s weeks where the cash you paid for a vehicle – and the cash you’ll ultimately get for reselling it – are tied up while your dealership spends hours chasing down titles and cutting checks.
All this time you’re also accumulating holding costs, including the overhead involved in storing the vehicle plus any interest if there’s floor planning involved. Meanwhile, you still need cash flow to keep taking in trades and covering payroll.
Turning metal into money
What if you could pay off trade-ins and get the title and lien release into your hands in days instead of weeks? Think about the cash flow boost you’d get from cutting two or more weeks off the time you need to wait before you can auction or re-sell a trade-in.
Dealertrack Accelerated Title takes the lengthy manual payoff and title release process and handles it with the press of a button. Instead of 12-18 days of cash stagnation while you wait for processing, you get your title and lien release back as quickly as 4-6 days.
That gives you the opportunity to consistently speed up your ROI for each used vehicle taken in on trade.
Want to learn more about this no-charge enhancement to your existing Dealertrack account? Request a demo today.
