Purchasing controls and approvals

Purchasing Controls decide who may buy what, for how much, and with whose approval. Every acquisition made through MotoDealerHQ is checked before anything binding is recorded: an auction bid, proxy bid or Buy Now, a purchase from a private seller or another dealership, and a trade-in allowance on a deal.

Purchasing Controls come with the CRM plan feature (Pro and Enterprise).

Turn purchasing controls on #

Purchasing controls are off until an owner sets them up. Until then, auction, private-seller and dealer purchases are refused, and deal trade-ins work as they always have.

1. Open Settings › Purchasing Controls (/purchasing).
2. Select Set up purchasing controls. This creates the dealership policy with critical titles blocked and a VIN/history check required before bidding.
3. Under Policies, add limits for roles, departments, rooftops or people.
4. Under Approval rules, decide who must approve what.

From then on every acquisition, including trade-in allowances on deals, is checked.

The tabs on the page: Dashboard, My authority, Requests, Approvals, Delegations, Policies, Approval rules, Exceptions, Settings and Audit trail. You see only the tabs your permissions allow.

What is checked, in order #

Each check fails closed: if it cannot be confirmed, the purchase does not go ahead.

1. A real employee. A signed-in person at your dealership acting for themselves. Never the AI, an API key, a background job, a platform administrator or a support session. These rules cannot be switched off.
2. The rooftop. The employee may work at that rooftop. Authority at one rooftop never carries over to another.
3. The permission for that kind of acquisition. Being able to view never grants purchasing.
4. Policy rules: allowed acquisition types, auction providers, vehicle categories, title conditions, seller states, a VIN/history check before bidding, inspection for some categories, a minimum profitability grade, an opportunity-score or days-to-sell trigger, and manager review of high-risk units. Critical titles (salvage, junk, flood and similar) are always blocked unless an approved exception waives it.
5. Per-purchase limits (below), including splitting checks so one purchase cannot be broken into small ones.
6. Budgets and exposure for the day, week and month, outstanding bids and exposure, concurrent auctions, committed-but-unpaid purchases and acquisition capital.
7. Approval rules, and whether an existing approval covers exactly these terms.

The result is allowed, needs approval (with the approval chain) or blocked (with the reasons).

Policies and limits #

A policy applies to the whole dealership, a rooftop, a department, a role or one person. When several apply, the most restrictive value wins: the lowest maximum, the highest minimum.

What happens when a limit is exceeded:

• Over a person's or role's limit: the purchase needs approval (or is blocked, if you choose that in Settings).
• Over a department, rooftop or dealership budget: the purchase is always blocked.

A person's and a role's budgets count across all rooftops and providers. Every policy change is kept as a new version with the before and after.

Only an owner may loosen a policy that applies to themselves. Anyone else who tries is refused, the attempt is logged and the owners are told.

Rooftop budgets #

Give each rooftop its own policy with a monthly budget, a capital limit and exposure limits. The dashboard's Rooftop acquisition budgets shows each rooftop's monthly budget, spend this month, capital limit, acquisition capital and open bid exposure. Purchases at the same rooftop at the same moment are counted one after the other, so two people cannot overspend a budget together.

Approvals #

Approval rules add approval steps based on amount, acquisition type, provider, risk grade, profitability grade, title, department, rooftop, days to sell or opportunity score. A step can be a role, a person or anyone with a permission, and steps can be one-of, all, or in sequence. Without a matching rule, an over-limit purchase needs a manager with approval authority for the amount.

An approval covers exactly the terms that were approved: VIN, provider, lot, seller, rooftop, maximum price and every expected fee. Changing any of them cancels it, and a higher bid needs a new approval. Approvals expire (your setting, at most 72 hours, never after the auction ends). A deadline only reminds approvers; nothing is ever approved automatically.

Independent approvals #

Who can approve a step:

• an employee with purchasing.approve at that rooftop, with approval authority for the amount;
• never the person who asked, and never the same person for two steps of one request;
• or someone they delegated to under Delegations. Delegation is only to people who can approve, never to the requester, and never passed on again.

Every decision needs a fresh password check (plus your authenticator code if you use two-step sign-in), made within the last few minutes. On approval screens, select Confirm it is you first. Each decision records when you re-confirmed and where from.

Exceptions #

Under Exceptions, a standing exception (up to 90 days) raises named limits or waives named rules for one employee; an emergency exception (up to 24 hours, used once) covers one VIN or request. Each needs a written reason and approval by an exception approver the owner named, who is neither the requester nor the beneficiary. The rules in step 1 can never be waived.

Bidding at a wholesale auction #

1. Open the listing under Acquisition › Wholesale auctions and prepare a bid.
2. The bid page shows What you are confirming (auction and lot, VIN, amount, buyer fees from your fee schedule, the total and the binding obligation) and Authorization: Within your limits, Needs approval or Not allowed, with reasons.
3. If it needs approval, select Request approval. The approver selects Confirm it is you, then Approve or Deny.
4. Under Confirm the bid, re-type the amount and tick both acknowledgements (the binding obligation and the auction's own terms). Select Confirm bid. Your authority is reserved at this point.
5. No auction is connected for live bidding, so complete the bid on the auction's official site (Open the auction to bid), then record the Outcome with evidence such as the auction confirmation number.
6. When it is won, select Record the confirmed purchase to bring it into inventory.

You can also start from Inventory › Purchase requests (/purchasing/requests), select New request, enter the terms and request approval.

Trade-ins on deals #

A trade-in allowance is a purchase at the deal vehicle's rooftop. Sending the deal checks the salesperson's authority. If approval is needed, the deal cannot be sent until it is approved, and the desking page says why. Changing the allowance needs a new check.

What MotoDealerHQ cannot stop #

What the AI can never do #

The AI can research, evaluate and draft. It can never:

• place binding auction bids or buy vehicles;
• approve purchases, or approve its own recommendations;
• override purchasing limits, change spending budgets or change permissions;
• accept trade-ins;
• override acquisition-risk restrictions or evade a required human approval;
• transfer dealership funds.

This is enforced by the system on every action, not just written into the AI's instructions, and no AI policy can switch it on. On the General Manager role assistant, the AI can prepare a draft purchase request with its reasoning and a suggested ceiling; a person must take it over and go through every check above. Any attempt by the AI to make a purchasing change is refused, logged and reported to the owners. API keys cannot make binding purchases either. See role assistants and AI policies.

Alerts, dashboard and audit trail #

The Dashboard shows purchases today and this month, outstanding auction exposure, committed but unpaid amounts, pending approvals, alerts, each employee's limits and remaining authority, employees approaching limits, rooftop budgets, spend by employee, high-risk proposed acquisitions, purchases requiring review, who purchased and who approved each vehicle, approved versus actual cost and policy violations.

You are alerted to approvals waiting for you, limits being approached, blocked purchases, approvals granted, denied or cancelled, binding purchases, and unusual patterns: a spike in someone's spending, an unusually large amount, after-hours purchases, and purchases that look split or structured to stay under a limit.

The Audit trail keeps every request, check, approval, confirmation, amount change and policy change in a tamper-evident chain. Select Verify chain to check it has not been altered.

Settings can only tighten the built-in rules (for example a shorter approval lifetime or re-confirmation window). An attempt to weaken a platform rule is refused and reported to the owners.

Permissions #

Limitations #