Pricing and aging

MotoDealerHQ suggests retail prices from comparable listings and your own sales, forecasts time to sell from your own history, watches aging stock, and routes every price change through a manager. The suggestions are statistics, not AI writing, and nothing changes a price by itself.

Three parts of this page are in Limited / Beta:

Where to find it #

Suggested listing price #

The Suggested listing price section offers three strategies:

Without enough comparable listings, your own sales of the model are the evidence. Without either, the page says insufficient evidence and suggests no price. Your default strategy (set in Pricing settings) is highlighted.

For each strategy the page shows the expected sale price (asking times your usual sale-to-asking ratio for the type, once you have 10 sales; otherwise it is labelled as assumed), expected days (validated forecast only), projected gross, carrying cost and net after carrying. A higher price is never presented as more profit: without a reliable forecast, the page shows what each extra 30 days in stock costs.

Comparable listings #

Compare local market shows comparable units within a market area of 25, 50, 100, 250 or 500 miles, nationwide or a custom radius around the rooftop. Comparables are adjusted for model year and mileage or hours (capped at 25%); new and used are never mixed; material differences are flagged. Active listings are asking prices. Your own recorded sales are the only verified sold prices.

The page reads cached data. Refresh from the market makes at most one lookup and needs market data to be connected for your dealership and the ai.market_research permission. See market research.

Predicted days to sell #

The forecast is trained only on your own stocking and sales history. Units still in stock, archived or transferred are never counted as sales.

Every dealership starts experimental: no probabilities or day counts are shown until your own model passes its backtest. Realistically that needs a year or more of history with stock dates, at least 100 recorded sales to train on and 50 to test, and acceptable accuracy and calibration. Until then the section says Reliable prediction unavailable with the checks that failed. A vehicle type your model has not seen, or a unit with no stock date, also gets no number.

When it passes, the section shows the median days, the likely range, and the chance of selling within 15, 30, 60 and 90 days. The model is retrained weekly. Open Forecasting on the dashboard to see its status, the backtest and its history; pricing.manage can queue a retrain there.

Pricing strategy simulator #

The simulator answers what-if questions for one unit: a different price, a reduction (with the break-even: how many days sooner it must sell to pay for itself), a target number of days, retail against a wholesale value you enter, and a maximum bid. It shows time to sale, gross, carrying cost, net after carrying, capital tied up and expected return. Probabilities appear only with a validated forecast. The maximum-bid scenario needs cost access.

Price changes #

Default role limits (maximum percentage and dollar change): general manager 15% / $3,000; sales manager, rooftop admin and inventory manager 5% / $750; owners unlimited. A role with no limit cannot approve. Change them in Pricing settings. Salespeople see the approved price and lowest approved selling price, without costs.

All open requests are on the dashboard and under Price change requests.

Aging rules and alerts #

Aging stages (defaults: 15 days performance review, 30 market pricing review, 45 pricing recommendation, 60 manager escalation, 90 wholesale disposition analysis) can be changed in Pricing settings, up to 12 stages, optionally per vehicle type.

Besides the stages, alerts flag a unit that is past your maximum age, priced above most comparables, losing competitiveness, selling slower than usual, whose carrying cost is eating its gross, or that is a wholesale candidate. High-severity alerts notify pricing.approve members at that rooftop once. The rules run automatically during the day; Check aging rules now runs them at once. Alerts never change a price.

Inventory Aging Autopilot #

Open Inventory › Aging autopilot. It lists your used units (available or pending) that have been in stock at least your maximum inventory age (Pricing settings, default 90 days), oldest first, and for each one:

• Aging alerts that are open for the unit.
• Pricing recommendation: the fast-sale price from cached comparables, with Send for manager approval. That only creates a price request; the price changes when an approver applies it. With no cached comparables, or when the price is already at or below fast-sale, there is no recommendation.
• Predicted depreciation: the typical price erosion per 30 days from your own sold units of the type (at least 10), with values in 30 and 60 days.
• Market demand: whether interest in the model is rising or declining.
• Merchandising: tips from the listing score.
• Wholesale versus retail: reasons to consider wholesale, with Compare wholesale and retail.
• Transfer suggestion: open customer requests at another rooftop that closely match, with Request a transfer (see stock transfers).
• Promotion ideas.

Nothing on the page changes a price, moves a unit or contacts a customer.

Acquisition targets #

Acquisition targets ranks the types, makes and models you have stocked by how fast they sold, gross per day held and season. Segments with at least 5 recorded sales are demonstrated; others are listed as speculative and never ranked above them. These are recommendations, not instructions.

Permissions #

Limitations #