If you haven’t been selected yet for a Manufacturer’s Audit, you absolutely know someone who has.  You probably have heard the horror stories.  Business Rule #1—Inspect what you Expect. (Most dealers are assured that all of their paperwork is in order and that all needed documentation is in house.  We provide courtesy checks for dealers EVERY WEEK, and less than 4% of the dealers are Perfect—which means that 96% of the dealers have great, financial exposure in the event of an audit.)

Dewitt & Lane’s fee-based consulting service related to ensuring a dealership’s compliance with the manufacturer’s guidelines on employee deals, commercial deals, and other incentives requiring documentation.

• We provide this service on-site, which assures you of the most thorough of consulting.
• We custom design the actual service to your specific dealership’s needs—some require a look at only a few programs, some require a review of most every program.  Our free, initial consultation will help design what you need.
• By being proactive, we help you mitigate your exposure.  We will identify your problematic areas, actually highlight your exposure, identify exactly how to correct your deficiencies, and get you “bullet-proof” for a potential audit.

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If you have already received your audit letter, or, if the manufacturer has already come in and found items that they have charged back, or, are trying to charge back, it’s still not too late.

1. Are the Manufacturer’s Auditors’ findings always perfect?  NO.  Absolutely not.
2. Are the Manufacturer’s Auditors’ findings always final? NO. Absolutely not.
3. We review all of the auditor’s findings documentation.
4. We provide a consulting spreadsheet that confirms or denies whether the file supports a legitimate claim by the dealership and that the incentive should not be charged back
5. We create draft response documents, including exhibits and attachments, to help you respond appropriately and efficiently to the chargeback documentation.

• • We have even worked with a dealer’s attorney to jointly prepare a presentation for appeal of erroneous chargebacks, providing the incentive knowledge and argument, while the attorney framed our argument in “legal speak”.
  • We make ourselves available for any additional follow up necessary to walk you through the review process with the Audit Supervisors and, if needed, the Dealer Policy Board.

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Dewitt & Lane’s contingency fee-based C&I auditing service finds missed incentives.  There are several different options when it comes to identifying missed incentives.  Some dealers only want to recover Dealer Cash/ any incentives that should remain inside the dealership.  Other dealers find it beneficial to identify all missed incentives–even if it means that they will be returning monies to the End User (if the rebate wasn’t used in the deal).  The benefit that they gain from this is two-fold:  1)  It assists the front end in being more competitive by looking for and utilizing all incentives up front–if your sales desk is not working their deals with all possible incentives that are available, then they are missing deals and missing gross on the deals they do close.  2)  You can’t put a definitive value / price tag on customer good will, but overwhelmingly, the dealer feedback that we have received has proven that returning monies — an unexpected financial windfall–after the sale has created “customers for life”.  It is almost paramount to winning the lottery–and these customers love sharing that story with their friends, family, and coworkers.  AND, remember,  if we find nothing for you and your customers, you owe us nothing.     We offer several options:

1. Standard Agreement (flat rate)
2. Tiered Agreement (smaller rate on retail incentives)
3. Dealer Cash only review

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Just as harmful as using incentives incorrectly (claiming them when you shouldn’t, or when you don’t have the proper documentation, is not using all of the incentives that are available, or, UNDERUTILIZATION.

If your team is missing available incentives, they are also missing:

• GROSS—on what they do manage to sell, and
• SALES—where it is estimated that for every 1 sale that you do get without passing along an available incentive, there are probably 4-5 buyers who went “down the street” and got all of the available incentives from another dealer, resulting in the customer getting a better deal from the other dealer.

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Good News / Bad News.  The Good News is that the manufacturer’s latest trend is to lower the number of on-site audits at dealerships. The Bad News is….

The bad news is that their current trend has significantly increased the number of audits that they are conducting via their new tool–the Dealer Self Audit, which is done by your own dealership personnel.  This takes time away from selling cars and it takes a level of expertise to do it correctly.  Which of the “required” steps are not really required?  What part of the documentation that you are told that you need do you really not need?  What part of the self audit is not part of the Standard Rules of Eligibility and / or Plan Rules?

Instead of the General Auditor’s Office sending their auditors out to try to get money back from the dealers, they are now giving you a selection of deals that they identified, and they are asking you to voluntarily turn yourself in if you are not perfect.  While there are some perks to conducting your mandated self audit (like if you find a Plan deal where you erroneously over-charged a doc fee, you will simply refund the overage and be exempt from their $200 penalty), there can still be issues stemming from your self audit.

If you are selected for a Self Audit, contact us BEFORE you fill it out.  We can assist you with some do’s and don’ts from the experiences of other dealers who have gone before you.  What types of information that you might voluntarily provide to the manufacturer would probably prompt a full audit?  If you find a dealership issue on a group of deals that aren’t included in the Self-Audit, is it better to go ahead and volunteer the information and try to take advantage of the lesser, punitive fines?  What is the down-side to not doing the “voluntary” Self Audit?

We have the answers to these questions as well as most others that you might have about Self Audits.  We can probably save you both some immediate dollars as well as help mitigate future charge back exposure.  Call us today for a free consultation before you initiate any audit, but especially before you begin a Self Audit.

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