The end of the year always feels sneaky. Before you know it, the leaves are already falling from the trees, you're buying gifts for the holidays, and hopefully, your favorite football team is still in contention for a championship. However, when you own a dealership, there are so many things to do before the clock strikes midnight on January 1st.
With that in mind, here is a simple checklist of the nine tasks you need to do before the new year begins at your dealership. Fortunately, you can do most of these tasks using your dealership management software like EverLogic. In fact, an effective DMS can make these end-of-year projects much easier, leaving you more time to continue searching for the perfect gift for your spouse.
1. Inventory Management
With the year coming to a close, the first step you need to take is to do a full cycle count of your entire inventory heading into the new year. This includes your units on the lot, parts in the store and warehouse, and any other supplies your dealership uses.
Of course, the cycle count is not merely putting numbers on a sheet of paper. For your parts, you need to not only have an accurate count of all your items but also keep track of where those items are, ensuring each part is in the appropriate bin or place. Giving your parts barcodes and using a scanner for your cycle count will be helpful during this step.
RELATED: Parts Inventory Management: Implementing a Cycle Count System
A dealership management software can help with much of your cycle counts, particularly with your parts. An effective DMS will not only help keep track of your count but also help you find discrepancies between your physical count and your records.
After your cycle count, assess the value of each of your units and parts going into the new year. Finally, plan for the next year by determining how many parts and units you need in January.
RELATED: Vehicle inventory management: EverLogic does it right with QuickBooks
2. Financial Review
If you have not started to look through your books for the end of the year, now is the time to do it. This is where your accounting software really comes in handy. We always recommend Intuit QuickBooks as your dealership's accounting, and the many steps you need to go through toward the end of the year is a perfect example of why.
READ MORE: QuickBooks Year-End Guide
When you do a full financial review, the first step is to reconcile any accounts you have. It's always good practice to reconcile your accounts monthly. If you do, reconciling accounts at the end of the year becomes much easier as you know you will have a better chance at accuracy. Now once you start to go through your bank statements, make sure you start with the oldest first. If you don't you will add a lot more work on yourself if there is a discrepancy with an earlier statement. And don't make changes to your reconciliation unless you absolutely need to, as it will affect other reconciliations.
READ MORE: Tips for year-end reconciliation in QuickBooks Online
You will also need to categorize and record your expenses. As you did with your accounts above, you will need to gather all your expense records, review them, and reconcile them. Additionally, you will want to make sure you identify which expenses have accrued but not been paid. This includes your store's utilities, taxes, or loan interest.
This is also the step where you will need to prepare for taxes, prepare statements for profits and losses, and update your end-of-year balance sheet.
RELATED: Managing sales tax with EverLogic dealership software and Quickbooks
The right dealership management software can help with all these steps, but this is certainly when having the right DMS is paramount. If your software does have on-platform accounting, the end-of-year processes will be the ultimate test of whether that software works for you. If not, using QuickBooks is your best bet as we truly support them as the gold standard accounting software for any business.
3. Sales and Promotions
This is pretty standard for dealerships: You have new units to bring in for 2024, and you need to get the old ones off the lot. You are also a few sales short of hitting that annual goal. The solution is, of course, to a hard sales push before the calendar turns to a new year.
With EverLogic's software, when you put a unit into the system, you are able to set several different prices including MSRP, red tag, clearance, and online prices when you acquire a new unit. You can also enter prices in additional spaces that might include a price for the end of the year. This will make it much easier to prepare ahead of time for those end-of-year sales rather than having to come up with the prices for all your remaining units in November.
RELATED: Boosting sales success with EverLogic dealership management software
By the way, you can set up to five different prices for parts as well for those end-of-year sales. Our big piece of advice is to make sure when you do make a sale with an end-of-year price, double check to ensure the correct price goes into QuickBooks or whatever accounting software you use.
4. Planning and Strategy
Whether 2023 was a good or bad year, it's important to learn from the lessons of the year when planning for 2024. What you take away from 2023 is a combination of trends at your dealership, in your area, and nationwide.
It's no secret that 2023 was a down year for the RV industry, at least when compared to 2020-2022. Simply put, sales have gone down significantly nationwide, caused mainly by inflation. Additionally, expenses have also increased as wages increase and floor plan loans compile. But, this may not be the case for your dealership. Maybe you had a strong year that goes against the national trend.
Whatever the case, taking all these facts and figures, presenting them to your leadership team, then setting goals for the following year is something you want to have done before everyone returns from the holiday break.
RELATED: How to choose the right KPIs for your dealership
Make sure you set goals that are both realistic and quantifiable. Your goals should be simple for every employee to understand and allow for strategies to change from quarter to quarter to achieve them.
5. Housekeeping and Team Morale
With everything on the business side taken care of, now it's time to put a bow on 2023 and get your team to both reflect on the year past and look ahead to 2024.
First, you want to do a couple of surveys. One, you send to your customers to see how you can better serve them in the year to come. The next will be for your employees to help make your dealership the best place to work in your city. You will not be able to come through with all that your customers and employees ask, but the feedback is indispensable to you.
RELATED: How to improve employee communication at your dealership
Next, go through your year-end performance reviews. Make sure you include as much feedback as possible during those reviews and ensure they know you are available to help them accomplish their goals in the year to come.
This is also a good time to schedule a holiday or end-of-year party for your employees. Come up with a budget and have a manager work with your employees to plan it out. Wind down, let everyone take a moment to laugh, enjoy each other's company, and build camaraderie. Take that momentum at the beginning of 2024 and work towards a successful year.
Conclusion
With 2024 less than two months away, it is extremely important for you to get to work on all these steps so you can use the last couple of weeks to refresh for what we hope is a banner year to come. Each one of these steps is not simply bringing your year to a close. They are what can save you a lot of headaches when you start your 2024, especially for tax season. As you go through these steps, make sure to take full advantage of your dealership management software and all its integrations to make the processes easier and stress-free.
If you like to see more of how EverLogic's dealership management system can help your dealership on a day-to-day basis, check out our free demo by clicking the button below.
