More useful tools…

Floor Plan Cost Helpful reminder to sales manager when they are working a deal.

Service Data Mining Excellent tool for F&I and sales department. Data mine prospects for extended warranty and sales opportunity. Create letters with ACS letter writer, or export to Excel and Word. Create contact lists, post cards, labels etc.

Prospect / Customer Data Mining Tool allows follow up forever. Send birthday and anniversary cards, create newsletters, post cards, new model release letters, etc. Data can also be exported to Excel and Word for incredible custom contacts.

Salutation Field Great personalization tool. Ever had a customer who goes by a nick name? We provide a field so that your correspondence is addressed to ‘Buck’ Johnson instead of ‘Theodore William’ Johnson.

Pending Deal Report Follow up tool used by: Managers to follow up sales people, Accounting to follow up F&I for deals printed but not closed, Management to follow up closed but unposted deals in accounting.

Vehicle Service History Sanitized view (no customer names or amounts) in Sales Screen showing service history done by your dealership on vehicles in your inventory, from PDI to present. Includes transferred data.

Accounting Detail Allows sales management to quickly check to see if all costs are posted to vehicle prior to accepting customer offer. Helps eliminate missed wheels, boards, bed liners, etc.

Open RO Warning Notifies sales management of open RO when desking deal. Includes estimated amount of repair if service posts estimate.

Instant Integration Parts and Service immediately recognize customers immediately after deal is closed in F&I.

Accessories Due Excellent time saving tool for service. When a bed liner or running boards are sold in a new or used car deal, the service department is flagged when the customer arrives for service. (Includes a complete description of work required.) No more wasted time locating the sales person trying to clarify which bed liner or what type of running boards!

Special Order Parts Flag Great tool for recognizing special order parts. When customer comes in for service, "Special Order Parts" flag pops up on RO. One keystroke shows part details.

Automatic Phase In and Out of Stock Parts Excellent tool to manage part inventory

Days Supply and Min-to-Max Stocking Orders Automatically adjusts to your parts department’s usage.

Shared Screens Ever had a situation where the F&I manager is trying to figure out how the Sales Manager calculated the payment or purchase price? Our Shared Screen tool allows the sales manager to view the deal on his PC while the F&I manager is also in it.

Auto-Exit Service advisors that go to lunch without exiting out of an RO will no longer frustrate the parts department. Auto-Exit tool automatically takes them out of the RO after a user selected period of inactivity. Note: If an RO is being viewed by someone, ACS will also advise the person trying to open the RO with "Record in Use" flag naming the User that has the RO open while giving the seond user an opportunity to view the RO.

Customer Value Helpful tool for service managers trying to make policy adjustment. See exactly how many non-warranty dollars customer has spent in parts and service.

Credit Standing Parts and Service can see at a glance if a customer is over their credit limit, or if the have a credit line set up. Single keystroke shows them available credit.

See Management Alert Easy to attach, easy to see. Notice for Parts and Service to contact manager when screen opens. Great for past due accounts, bad checks, etc.

Service Appointment from Special Order Notification Screen Tool saves service advisors time when advising customers their parts have arrived. Allows advisors to set appointment without leaving Special Order Screen.

Electronic Technician Screen Similar to ADP’s ERO. Technician completes information on PC instead of printed RO. Nearly every dealership will be using this within 5 years.

RO Comments Multiple comment areas, for customer, advisor, and technician notes, all with unlimited comment space.

VIN History Service history stays with the vehicle. Regardless of how many times a vehicle is sold, enter the VIN and all of the history is available, including who the owner was at the time.

VIN Look-up Quickly allows service advisors to open an RO just by entering the last six digits of the VIN, the customer name, etc.

VINA® VIN Decoder You'll find Polk's powerful software system VINA® an indispensable tool for providing accurate VIN information.

License Plate Look-up This tool will quickly allow service advisors to open an RO just by entering the vehicle license plate number.

Multi-tasking Your service advisors, parts counter people, sales managers, and accounting staff can open as many of our applications as they can handle. GREAT time saver

Zip Decoder This time saver automatically completes city, county, and state for prospects and new parts and service customers. No more guessing or spelling errors.

On-line Display of All Closed Invoices Helpful tool saves time by quickly providing needed information. Drill down capability for service invoices, shows who, what and when in all the deatil that was originally available.

Vacation Monitor Helpful tool included in payroll eliminates manual record keeping.

Custom Payroll Report Generator Tool allows you to create the reports you want.

Third Party Billing Bill the appropriate party for service on any vehicle.

Title Tracking and Follow up Application allows title clerk to monitor location of vehicle title.

Full Two-Period Posting Gives accounting the ability to post ahead into new month or back into the previous month. Both accounting periods are available for display, reports, etc.

General Ledger Forecasting Excellent tool for planners. Daily Doc’s also reflect forecast.

Menu/ Help Screens/ Keyboard /Mouse Functions Critical part of our system. Makes a new dealer management system easy to use and easy to learn. Those that are comfortable with a mouse can use the mouse; those that want to use numbers, directional arrows or tab keys to move though the system will also feel at home.

4. Plain Paper Laser Printing

Again, printing is another cost saving benefit ACS offers dealers.

Printers We recommend two different laser printers. Both print twenty pages per minute. One is for personal use, while the other has a much higher duty cycle and supports multiple trays.

No Port Charges Printers can either be slaved to one PC or shared on the entire network. Either way, there are no port charges for attaching a printer to the ACS network. Note: As all printers can be shared on the network, work can be directed around the dealership based on printing needs. Dealers can also use the new networked photocopiers as printers.

No Click or Laser Printer Fees Our dealers do not pay us to use their printers.

Annual Printer Savings
Here are two actual examples supplied by dealers:

Reynolds and Reynolds dealer - 700 RO’s per month
 

ADP Dealer - Laser - Also averages 700 RO's per month

Another reason dealers have selected ACS is that we don’t use independent brokers. We think this is important. It eliminates third party confusion and responsibility problems.

We provide a specific amount of hardware and accept responsibility for it. If there is a communication problem between you and the manufacturer, we help you sort it out. Is it our system? Is it the Internet router? Is it our server? Is it the connection? Is it a PC problem? This goes beyond giving you a list of hardware to buy. That said, you are free to purchase PC’s from any source you want, including ACS.

It also means sharing ideas. At our last ACS users group meeting we discussed new tools, system enhancements and shared ideas of how the dealers use the system. We also created an enhancement request list.

We listen and improve. As you reviewed the list of tools we have, I am sure a few of them really seemed like a good idea. So did we. Nearly every tool we have was requested by dealerships just like yours. And the best part is, once we create any enhancement it is available to everyone… for free. Remember all enhancements are included at no extra charge. We do not have an 8400, 8800, 9200, 9400, or 9600 generation. Dealers that signed with us in 1997 have the same up-graded system that you will be receiving in 2004.