Categories and data quality

Categories group your units for shoppers (for example Sport Bikes, Pontoon Boats or Utility Side-by-Sides) and drive the category filters on your website. The Data quality page is where you find units that may have been entered twice and VINs that look mistyped.

Categories #

When your dealership is created, MotoDealerHQ adds starter categories based on your dealership type (powersports, motorcycle, marine, RV, automotive or general). You can rename, reorder, nest or delete them at any time.

Add or edit a category #

1. Open Inventory › Categories.
2. Under Add a category, enter a Name. Leave URL slug blank to build it from the name.
3. Choose the Vehicle type the category is for.
4. Optionally choose a Parent to make it a subcategory, set a Sort order (lower numbers come first) and add a Description.
5. Keep Show on website ticked if shoppers should see it.
6. Select Add category.

To change one, select Edit in its row, make your changes and select Save.

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1. Name is what shoppers see.
2. Parent nests a category under another one.
3. Show on website hides or shows the category publicly.
4. Vehicles counts the units in each category. Select the number to see them in the inventory list.

Assign a category to a unit #

Choose the Category on the vehicle form (and optionally a free-text Subcategory / style). Imports can also set it. See Feed imports.

Delete a category #

Select Delete in its row and confirm. Its vehicles are kept but become uncategorized, and any subcategories move to the top level.

Data quality #

Inventory › Data quality lists suspected duplicate units across every rooftop and every source (manual entry, imports and DMS syncs). Nothing is merged automatically.

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1. Same VIN / HIN / serial: units with the same identifier after normalization.
2. Same stock number: compared without case, spaces or dashes.
3. Near-identical year, make, model and mileage: same year, make and model, mileage within 1% (or 50 miles), and no conflicting VINs.
4. Duplicates refused by imports and DMS syncs: records that an import or sync skipped because another unit already holds the identifier.
5. VINs that fail the check digit: saved anyway, but often a typo on North American VINs.

Work through the list #

1. Open Inventory › Data quality.
2. For each group, open the units and decide whether they are the same unit.
3. If they are, use Merge #A into #B…. You see a preview first. Merging moves photos, leads, deals and other links to the unit you keep.
4. If they are different units, select Not a duplicate. The pair disappears from the report.
5. For records refused by an import, fix the source or select Dismiss.
6. For check-digit failures, open the unit and correct the VIN if it was mistyped.

The full guide to merging is in Duplicates and merging.

Tips #

• Keep the category list short. Shoppers filter by category, so a dozen clear names beat fifty narrow ones.
• Use subcategories (with a parent) or the free-text Subcategory / style for finer detail.
• Check Data quality after every new import source you add.

Permissions #

Limitations #