A Cost-Per-Rep Worksheet for Budgeting PostToMarket

The controller asks what Marketplace posting "really costs per salesperson," and the used-car manager answers with a shrug plus the monthly plan price. That is not a worksheet. That is a line item. A store with one poster and a store with nine posters can pay the same Dealership fee and have completely different cost-per-rep stories. Budget conversations go sideways when nobody writes the denominator down.

A cost-per-rep worksheet for budgeting PostToMarket is a one-page model: who actually posts, which plan those people require, what the monthly fee is, and how you spread that fee across seats you intend to use. It does not forecast leads, turn rate, or "ROI from Facebook." Those numbers are not in this article because they would be invented. The worksheet only prices access.

This is written for general managers, controllers, and internet directors who need a clean number for the next package review. You will count posters, map them to Starter or Dealership, run the division, and stress-test unused seats.

What a Cost-Per-Rep Worksheet for Budgeting PostToMarket Should Include

Keep the sheet boring. Boring sheets survive package meetings.

The only inputs you are allowed to use

Write these in a notebook or a simple table. Do not add "expected extra deals" or "hours saved" unless you already measure those internally from your own CRM. This worksheet stays on product facts:

• Monthly plan price: Starter $59 or Dealership $299.
• Login cap: 1 on Starter; up to 13 on Dealership, with 2 managers.
• Number of people who will sign in with their own email this month (admin, managers, sales reps, associates).
• Number of those people who will actually post, versus people who only need dashboard access (for example a manager who assigns queues but never runs the extension).

Unlimited vehicles in inventory are on every plan, so inventory size is not a pricing input. Do not budget as if more units require a higher tier.

A simple layout

The example lot is hypothetical. Your numbers replace the right-hand column. Run both E and F. Cost per provisioned login tells you whether you bought seats you are not filling. Cost per active poster tells you what the people who actually post are carrying.

Count Real Posters Before You Touch the Plan Price

The most common budgeting error is dividing $299 by the entire sales board, including people who never open the extension.

Build the poster list from roles, not from hope

List every person who needs a login, then mark the role you would actually give them:

• Admin: the primary dealership login. Counts as one seat. Usually posts only as backup.
• Manager: up to two on Dealership. Often assigns associate queues, watches the team queue view, and may or may not post.
• Sales rep: self-queues from shared inventory and posts from a personal queue.
• Sales associate: posts only what a manager assigns.

A closer who never posts does not belong in the denominator. A weekend associate who posts every Saturday does. If you are unsure, look at last month's posting analytics by rep and source rather than asking the room who "uses Marketplace." For the role definitions themselves, see admin, manager, sales rep, and associate roles explained.

Starter is a one-person math problem

If the honest poster count is one — owner-operator, independent lot, no team — the worksheet is one line: $59 per month, $59 per rep. Sharing that login to fake a lower cost-per-person is not savings. It is a shared account, which breaks offboarding and makes analytics meaningless.

If a second person needs to post, you are no longer in Starter math. You are in Dealership math, even if the second person only works three days a week.

Dealership math is a utilization problem

Consider a lot with 10 people on the sales board and 5 who post. Dealership at $299 is $59.80 per provisioned login if you buy 5 seats, or $29.90 if you provision all 10 and two of them never sign in. The second number looks cheaper and is a worse budget. You are paying for idle access.

A cleaner rule: provision a login for everyone who will post this month plus the managers who assign work, and leave the rest off the sheet until they are trained. The cap is 13. You do not have to fill 13 to justify Dealership. You have to fill more than 1.

For the plan choice itself, pair this worksheet with PostToMarket Starter vs Dealership and the plan selection worksheet for more than one login.

Five Questions That Change the Monthly Number

Once the table is filled, walk these questions before you send the sheet to accounting.

1. Are we counting associates correctly?

Associates are cheap in labor terms and expensive in process terms. Each associate still needs a login on Dealership. If you plan to have managers assign aged units to two junior posters, those two seats belong in C. Leaving them off the worksheet and then sharing a rep login on Saturday is how the "cost per rep" number gets fictional.

2. Are managers posters or supervisors?

If both managers only assign and review, they still need logins, but you may want a second ratio: cost per floor poster, excluding managers. Label it. Do not hide managers in the sales-rep count to make the number prettier.

3. What happens when a rep leaves mid-month?

The monthly fee does not pro-rate by person in this worksheet because the product is priced per plan, not per extra seat inside Dealership. When someone leaves, release their queue claims and reuse the seat. Cost per active poster should drop if you backfill, and should rise if you do not. Update line D at month-end. Do not rebuild the whole budget every time a name changes.

4. Are we treating the trial as a free month of production?

The 10-day free trial is for evaluation, billed through Stripe when you continue. Put the trial on a separate line if you need a calendar-month view, but do not annualize a trial or invent a discount. There is no annual price in this product.

5. What will we compare this number against?

Compare cost per active poster against the cost of the current manual process you already know: hours of copy-paste, duplicate listings, and sold units that stay live. Keep that comparison qualitative unless you already time-study your own floor. Do not attach a made-up lead value to the worksheet.

How to Use a Cost-Per-Rep Worksheet for Budgeting PostToMarket in a Package Meeting

The sheet is a decision tool, not a scorecard for reps.

Bring three versions, not one

• Current state: who posts today, which plan you are on, E and F as they stand.
• Tight state: only people who posted in the last 30 days, plus one manager.
• Surge state: auction week or sales-event week, with associates added.

If tight and surge need different login counts but the same Dealership fee, the fee is stable and utilization is the variable. That is the point of Dealership. If even the tight state is one person, Starter is the honest plan.

Do not turn cost-per-rep into a quota

Posting analytics by rep and source are for coaching and source quality, not for billing people back for the tool. If you need that coaching conversation, use reading posting analytics by rep and source. The worksheet stays in the GM's binder.

Revisit when the floor changes, not when the calendar feels like it

Triggers to rebuild the sheet:

• You add a second poster.
• You go from one manager to two.
• Associates start posting and were not in the last count.
• You are carrying unused seats for a full month.
• You are sharing a Starter login.

Those are plan-fit signals. They belong next to when to upgrade from Starter to Dealership.

How PostToMarket Automates This

Budgeting fails when the store cannot see who actually posts. The cost-per-rep worksheet for budgeting PostToMarket is only as good as the login and activity list underneath it.

• Explicit roles and individual email sign-in (no API keys) so each poster is a real seat, not a shared password.
• Team analytics by rep and source so line D — active posters — comes from the dashboard instead of a show-of-hands.
• Per-rep queues and manager assignment so you can see whether an associate seat is doing work or sitting idle.
• Unlimited vehicles on every plan, which keeps inventory volume out of the price model.
• Starter at $59 per month (1 login) and Dealership at $299 per month (up to 13 logins) with Stripe checkout, so the worksheet has two — and only two — monthly fees to enter.

The product does not generate the spreadsheet for you. It gives you a clean headcount and a clean activity trail so the division is honest.

Price the Seats You Will Use, Then Trial the Workflow

A cost-per-rep worksheet for budgeting PostToMarket is useful only if the denominator is people who sign in and post. Count those people, pick Starter or Dealership, and stop treating the monthly fee as a mystery.

If one person runs the lot, Starter at $59 per month is the whole model. If the floor needs managers, reps, and associates on separate logins, Dealership at $299 per month is the fee you spread across those seats — up to 13 of them.

Start your 10-day free trial with secure Stripe checkout. Fill this worksheet on day one with planned seats, refill it on day ten with who actually posted, and keep or cancel from those two numbers. Cancel anytime.