Which date starts the ageing clock?
Choose the event your review is intended to measure. Receipt at the group, receipt at the current branch, and another documented ownership event can produce different ages. Keep the definition consistent and visible. A branch transfer should not silently reset a group-level ageing measure if the business question is how long the group has held the unit.
Document how sold, reserved, transferred, returned, or unavailable units are treated. The set of vehicles in the report matters as much as the date calculation.
Choose buckets that support a decision
| Illustrative bucket | Review question | Useful detail |
|---|---|---|
| 0–30 days | Is the unit correctly available and assigned? | Branch, model, receipt date |
| 31–60 days | Is interest progressing into action? | Current status and accountable owner |
| 61–90 days | Is a specific intervention needed? | Reason, proposed action, review date |
| Over 90 days | What is preventing resolution? | Escalation owner and documented plan |
These bands are examples, not industry standards or recommended targets for every dealership. Adapt them to your stock profile and operating policy.
Read quantity and value together
A branch with many lower-value aged units and another with a few higher-value units present different exposure. Show counts and a clearly defined value basis if value is available. Do not label a number “inventory value” without specifying whether it uses cost, another accounting basis, or a selling-price estimate.
Compare the same scope across branches. If one outlet’s report includes reserved units and another excludes them, an apparently clean ranking may be misleading.
Turn the dashboard into an action queue
For each priority unit, capture a reason, owner, next step, and review date. Possible explanations include incomplete readiness, uncertain availability, a transfer decision, or a commercial issue. The dashboard should help investigate; it should not assume that age alone identifies the cause.
At the next review, check whether the action occurred and whether the underlying status changed. Closing a task without resolving the unit’s condition can make a team’s activity look better without improving the inventory position.
A practical validation exercise
Select a small sample across branches and buckets. Recalculate the age from the chosen start date and verify the unit’s status. Include a transferred unit and one with a recent status correction. Reconcile the sampled records to the source system, then confirm the report’s freshness.
These checks can expose definition and mapping problems before leadership starts using the report to compare teams.
How DealerPulse fits
GrepEye DealerPulse includes dealership inventory visibility alongside sales, finance, receivables, people, and operations. Confirm the ageing fields, date definitions, drilldowns, and source connections required for your group during setup.
Use the multi-branch scorecard guide to place inventory in the wider review. The DMS comparison explains how a leadership dashboard can relate to an existing transactional system.