Vehicle Intake Checklist: From Purchase to Lot Arrival

The transport drops three auction buys at 4:15 p.m. Keys are in a cupholder, a transport invoice is in the driver's door, and the used-car manager is in a deal. By close, the units are "here." By Monday, one VIN is still not in the DMS, one car has no gas and a dead battery, and the third is already being shown because a rep liked the color. None of them has a listing. Days-to-turn started when you bought them, not when someone felt like doing paperwork.

A vehicle intake checklist from purchase to lot arrival is the cheapest control you can put on used inventory. Intake is not recon and it is not marketing. It is the set of physical and data facts that must be true before anyone promises the car, photographs it for retail, or posts it anywhere public.

This guide is for used-car managers, office staff, and GMs at independent and franchise stores. It is operational. Title, tax, and advertising rules vary; this is not legal advice. Confirm packet and disclosure requirements with counsel or your state regulator.

Why a Vehicle Intake Checklist Beats "We'll Book It Tomorrow"

Purchase and arrival are two events. A lot of stores treat the buy as the end of the story and the arrival as a parking problem. The gap between them is where units vanish: unpaid transports, missing keys, VIN mismatches, and cars that sit behind the building with no stock number.

What intake is for

• Prove the unit that arrived is the unit you paid for.
• Create a stock identity the whole store can use (keys, DMS, listings, recon).
• Flag condition honestly enough that sales does not overpromise.
• Decide the next queue: retail recon, wholesale, mechanical hold, or photo-ready.

What intake is not

• Not a full mechanical inspection (that is recon or a separate PPI).
• Not a Marketplace listing.
• Not a place to invent a trim because the auction lane sheet looked close enough.

Illustrative cost of a sloppy arrival

Consider a lot that buys eight units a week. If each unit sits two extra days waiting for a VIN to be typed, keys to be cut, or a battery to be charged, that is sixteen unit-days of holding cost with zero online exposure. You do not need a study to see the shape of the problem. The days-to-turn and online exposure math is the same whether the delay is recon or intake.

Purchase-Side Checks Before the Truck Moves

Intake starts at the buy, not at the gate. Arrival goes badly when the buy packet is incomplete.

Before you bid or sign

• VIN recorded from the sale document, not from memory.
• Announced conditions and announcements captured in writing (not "I think they said flood").
• Target retail vs wholesale path decided in principle, so arrival does not default to "we'll see."
• Transport booked with a delivery window the desk actually knows.

After you win, before it rolls

1. Match VIN on bill of sale / invoice to the VIN you bid.
2. Confirm keys count as announced (one key, two keys, no fob).
3. Note remaining work the lane already disclosed so recon is not surprised.
4. Create a stock number or purchase record so the unit exists before it physically arrives.
5. Tell the desk a delivery window. Surprise trucks create skipped checklists.

Auction and wholesale sites are faster when you capture vehicles into inventory at purchase instead of retyping on arrival. The intake checklist still runs on the ground; capture just means the VIN is not a blank row when the truck shows up.

Title and packet expectations

Write what must ride with the car or follow within your store's rule: title or title status, mileage statement, bill of sale, any warranty cancel documents, extra keys, floor mats, SD cards, charging cables. Missing packet items should be a named exception, not a shrug. Do not advertise a clean story you have not verified. Confirm with your office and counsel what you may say publicly.

Gate-to-Stall Arrival on the Vehicle Intake Checklist

When the unit hits the lot, one person owns the walkaround. "Whoever is free" is how two people each assume the other scanned the VIN.

Physical identity

• Read the VIN off the plate and windshield, not only off the transport invoice.
• Photograph the VIN plate and odometer as they sit on arrival (before anyone "fixes" anything).
• Match stock number tag or windshield sticker to the purchase record.
• Count keys and fobs against the buy notes. Tag them immediately. Loose keys in a drawer are not intake.
• Fuel and battery: enough to move the car without a pack. A dead unit in the arrival lane will still be there Friday.

Condition snapshot (not a full recon write-up)

Walk it once with a consistent order so you do not "forget" the rear bumper:

• Glass, lights, obvious collision, hail, flood indicators you are trained to spot.
• Interior: strong odors, missing seats, soaked carpet, pet damage.
• Tires: spare or inflator present or not; obvious wrecker damage.
• Warning lights on with ignition, if you can safely key on.

You are not grading for retail copy yet. You are catching "this is not the car we bought" and "this cannot be shown."

Parking and status

• Park in a named zone: intake, recon, retail, wholesale, hold.
• Keys on a labeled hook, not in the ignition "so the porter can find it."
• Status in the system: arrived, not "available," until data and a manager say so.

Arrival checklist you can print

• VIN on car matches purchase VIN
• VIN and odometer photos saved to the stock folder
• Stock number assigned and tagged on the vehicle
• Keys counted, tagged, hung
• Packet items logged (present / missing / follow-up owner)
• Arrival condition notes in one place
• Next destination: recon / photo / wholesale / hold
• Not marked available for sale until the used-car manager says so

Data, DMS, and the Moment It May Be Listed

Physical intake without data intake is how you get listings with the wrong trim and a stock number that belongs to last month's SUV.

System of record the same day

• VIN into DMS / inventory with year, make, model from decode, then human confirmation of trim.
• Mileage from the odometer photo, not from the lane sheet if they disagree — investigate disagreement before you post.
• Cost and pack per your office rules (sales does not need every number, but the record must exist).
• Missing packet flagged with a person and a date, not a blank.

If you import from CSV or Excel after a buyer's-guide dump, run the file through a cleanup pass. Cleaning a DMS inventory export is the sister job: intake creates clean rows; export cleanup keeps dirty rows from going public.

Ready for recon vs ready to list

Do not skip to listable because Marketplace is quiet on a Wednesday. A unit with no odometer photo, one untested key, and a trim guess is not listable. Wholesale and flip lots feel this pressure hardest; even then, a posting playbook for wholesale lots still assumes the VIN and price are real.

Common intake pitfalls

• Using the auction description as the trim. Decode, then confirm badges and options.
• Letting sales "just show it" before keys are duplicated. The only key walks off the lot in a test drive.
• Creating two stock numbers because office and sales each started a record.
• Posting from a phone photo of the window while the official record is still empty.
• Forgetting miles on the arrival odometer shot, then arguing later about what it read.

How PostToMarket Automates This

Intake fails when the car is on the lot and the inventory record is still a sticky note. PostToMarket is where the unit should exist as soon as you have a VIN, so arrival, recon flags, and listing are the same record instead of three versions.

Create the vehicle when you buy it, not when you remember

• Capture from auction and wholesale sites into inventory so purchase-side VIN and specs are already there when the truck arrives.
• Bulk CSV and Excel import with import history and a row-level error log, so a bad VIN or blank mileage is caught at upload rather than after a listing is live.
• Unlimited vehicles in inventory on every plan, so intake is not rationed by a listing cap.

Status that matches the gate

• Draft for arrived-but-not-listable units.
• Posting / posted only after the manager's listable gate.
• Sold and failed as honest states, with mark as sold and archive so a flipped intake mistake does not stay public.

After intake, posting without retyping

• AI-generated titles and descriptions from the vehicle's specs, editable before posting — copy starts from intake data, not from a blank Messenger draft.
• Facebook photo picker once arrival or photo-day images are attached.
• Managers assign listable units to associate queues; reps self-queue. Associates should not decide that an intake stall is "close enough" to post.
• Chrome extension posts one at a time with human-like delays and server-enforced daily limits.
• Mobile dashboard so a manager on the lot can reorder the queue after a transport without returning to the tower.

PostToMarket does not replace your VIN walkaround or title packet. It keeps those facts from living only on the transport invoice.

Make Arrival a Gate, Then List What Actually Arrived

A vehicle intake checklist from purchase to lot arrival sounds like office work until you count the cars behind the building that nobody can advertise. Identity, keys, packet, data, then a named next destination. Everything else is recon and sales.

PostToMarket holds the inventory record from capture through posted and sold. Starter is $59 per month for one login on a small independent lot. Dealership is $299 per month for up to 13 logins when office, managers, and floor staff all touch intake.

Start your 10-day free trial via secure Stripe checkout. Capture or import this week's buys, keep them in draft until they are listable, then queue them. Cancel anytime.