Dealer terms, in plain English

ACV is what a vehicle is genuinely worth to you today at wholesale, and it is the number a trade should be booked at, whatever the customer was shown.

As is means the vehicle is sold with no dealer warranty, and the buyer pays for anything that breaks after the sale.

Back gross is the profit from the finance and insurance office: lender reserve plus what you make on service contracts, GAP and other products.

Buy here pay here means the dealer finances the sale itself and collects the payments, instead of selling the loan to a bank or finance company.

The Buyers Guide is the FTC-required window form on used vehicles offered for sale, showing whether the car comes with a warranty or is sold as is.

A chargeback is F&I income clawed back when a customer cancels a product or pays the loan off early, after you already booked the profit.

Curbstoning is selling vehicles as an unlicensed dealer while posing as a private party, usually to dodge licensing, disclosure and tax obligations.

A curtailment is a scheduled principal payment your floorplan lender requires on a vehicle that has not sold by a set age.

Days on lot counts how long a vehicle has been in your inventory, and it is the single best predictor of what it will finally sell for.

The deal jacket is the complete file for one sale: buyer, vehicle, money, and every signed disclosure, kept together so the deal can be reconstructed years later.

A dealer plate is a plate issued to a licensed dealer for use on inventory and dealership business, rather than being registered to one vehicle.

A dealer-only auction is a wholesale marketplace open to licensed dealers, where most independent lots buy inventory.

A deficiency is the balance still owed after a repossessed vehicle is sold and the proceeds are applied to the account.

A dealer management system is the software of record for a dealership: inventory, deals, customers, accounting and reporting in one place.

A floor plan is a revolving credit line used to buy inventory, secured by the vehicles themselves, repaid as each car sells.

Form 8300 reports cash received over $10,000 in one transaction or in related transactions, and dealers must file it within 15 days.

Front gross is the profit on the vehicle itself: sale price minus total vehicle cost minus pack, before any financing or product income.

A vehicle is frontline ready when recon is finished, photos are taken, and it is priced and listed for retail sale.

A GDN is the dealer license number a state issues to authorize buying and selling vehicles as a business. Texas uses the term; other states have their own.

Modular pricing advertises a low base price for the core system and charges separately for the pieces most dealers actually need.

A federal statement of a vehicle's mileage at transfer, signed by the seller and the buyer, required on most transfers and kept for five years.

Out of trust means you sold a floorplanned vehicle and did not remit the payoff to the lender, spending money that was never yours.

Pack is a fixed internal amount added to each vehicle's cost before commissionable gross is calculated, covering overhead the individual deal did not directly cause.

Per-VIN costing attaches every expense to the specific vehicle that caused it, so profit is known per car rather than estimated at month end.

Recon is everything you spend to make a bought car frontline ready: mechanical repair, tires, body and paint, and detail.

Reserve is the dealer's share of the finance charge when a retail installment contract is assigned to a lender, the difference between the buy rate and the contract rate.

The FTC Safeguards Rule requires dealers who arrange financing to run a written information security program protecting customer data.

Static pool analysis groups notes by the month they were originated and tracks each group's performance separately, instead of blending everything into one portfolio average.

A temp tag is the temporary registration that lets a buyer drive legally while title and plates are processed.

Title work is the paperwork that moves legal ownership: securing the title from the seller or lienholder, then transferring and registering it for the buyer.

Wholesale is dealer-to-dealer trade, usually through an auction, as opposed to retail selling to a consumer.