Who We Help · Car Dealerships · Bookkeeping
Car dealership bookkeeping: the jacket, the floorplan, and the schedules
Dealership books are schedule-driven: inventory ties to the floorplan statement, receivables tie to contracts in transit, and every deal posts line by line from the jacket — never from the funding deposit. Run it that way and per-unit gross, holding cost, and chargeback exposure are all visible while you can still act on them. That is how we keep books for new and used dealers in Ontario.
By the AnalytIQ Accounting team · Last reviewed: August 12, 2026
Every deal posts from the jacket
A car deal is a bundle of eight or more transactions wearing one signature, and the jacket — bill of sale, trade appraisal, lien payout, finance contract, product enrolments — is the source document for all of them. Booking the lender's funding deposit as revenue collapses that bundle into a single number and erases the per-deal gross the whole store manages by.
| Deal-jacket line | Where it lands in the books |
|---|---|
| Vehicle selling price | Front-end sales, with the unit's full cost — purchase plus reconditioning — relieved from inventory so front gross shows per deal |
| Trade-in | Into inventory at actual cash value; any over-allowance is a discount on this deal, not cost carried into the next one |
| Lien payout on the trade | A liability from the moment you take the unit, scheduled until the payout clears |
| Finance reserve | F&I income by deal, matched with a chargeback reserve |
| Warranty, GAP, protection products | Commission income, with the provider's share held as a remittance payable |
| HST | Calculated on the price net of the trade-in allowance — a liability, never revenue |
| Licensing and registration fees | Pass-through disbursements, kept out of revenue |
| Customer deposit | A liability until delivery |
Between delivery and lender funding, the money sits in contracts in transit — a receivable schedule we reconcile weekly, because a contract that goes stale there usually means a funding problem nobody has chased yet.
Floorplan interest accrues by the unit, by the day
Whether the line is with a bank or a specialist like NextGear or AFC, every floored unit starts costing interest the day it lands. We post that interest per unit rather than as one monthly lump, so each car's holding cost becomes part of its story — a unit that sat ninety days did not really earn its listed gross, and the books should say so.
Two floorplan events need same-day treatment: curtailments, the principal paydowns the lender requires as units age, and payoffs when a floored unit sells. Selling a car and letting the advance ride past the contract window is selling out of trust — the fastest route from a routine lot audit to a frozen line. A monthly three-way tie between inventory, the general ledger, and the floorplan statement is the early-warning system.
F&I income arrives with strings attached
Reserve and product income is real gross, but slices of it are refundable: an early loan payout claws back reserve, a cancelled warranty claws back commission. We book back-end income deal by deal and carry a chargeback reserve sized from your own history, so a strong F&I quarter is not quietly handed back the next one.
Splitting front and back gross per deal also gives the desk honest answers — which salespeople hold gross, which products stick past the cancellation window, and which lender's reserve actually survives to year end.
Inventory lives at the VIN
Dealer inventory is specific identification: each VIN carries its purchase price, transport, and every reconditioning invoice coded to the stock number, whether the work ran through your own shop or a vendor. From there the aging report — 30, 60, 90 days and beyond — is generated from the books, not from memory, and aged used units get written down while the number is still small.
The month-end inventory schedule has to agree with both the general ledger and the floorplan statement, flowing from your DMS — PBS, CDK, or similar — into QuickBooks. Demos and service loaners are flagged separately so the saleable lot value is real.
US auctions and the wider close
Used inventory increasingly comes from American auctions, and a US-bought unit's cost is a stack: the USD hammer price converted at the right rate, buyer fees, transport, duty where it applies, GST collected at the border, and RIV fees. All of it lands on the VIN, or your per-unit gross on import cars is fiction. The tax side — the RIV process, USD floorplan borrowing, and wholesale flips back into the States — is covered in our cross-border tax guide for car dealerships.
Behind the schedules sits an ordinary disciplined close — bank and clearing accounts reconciled, HST filed from clean data — described on our bookkeeping services page.
Common questions.
What does selling out of trust mean?
Selling a floorplanned vehicle and not paying off the lender's advance within the contract window. Lenders test for it at every lot audit, and books that tie inventory to the floorplan statement monthly catch a looming payoff problem before the auditor does.
How is HST handled when a customer trades in a vehicle?
The trade-in allowance reduces the taxable amount, so HST is charged on the net difference between the selling price and the trade. The trade unit then enters your inventory at its actual cash value, not the allowance shown on the deal.
Why is my F&I income shrinking months after the deals closed?
Chargebacks. Early payouts and cancelled products claw back reserve and commission, so we record back-end gross by deal and hold a chargeback reserve based on your history — the income you see is income you keep.
Related reading
Schedules that tie, month after month.
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