AutoPro
The objection to software is almost never the software. It is the imagined week of typing before it becomes useful, and the reasonable suspicion that everyone will drift back to the register by Friday.
Both are avoidable. This is the version that works on a lot that is still selling cars while you do it.
Do not migrate history on day one
Start with what is on the lot right now. Nothing else. Twenty-five cars at ninety seconds each is under an hour, and it is enough to make the app genuinely useful the same afternoon.
Old sold records can come later, or never. They matter only when you need to look one up, and you can add a historic vehicle in the moment you need it in less time than it takes to find the register.
Registration number first, details later
Add every car with its registration number and a photograph while you walk the lot. Fill in variant, kilometres and condition when you are back at the desk. A partial record that exists beats a complete one you never got round to entering.
Photograph the documents as you go
This is the step that pays for the whole exercise. Walk the files once with the phone camera: RC both sides, insurance, PUC, whatever else the car has. From then on, the answer to "do we have the NOC on the Creta" is on your phone rather than in a drawer at the office.
Pick one person and one rule
The rule: a car is not bought until it is in the app. Not after the paperwork, not at the end of the week. If the entry does not happen at purchase, it does not happen at all, and a half-populated system is worse than no system because nobody trusts it.
Nominate whoever handles intake, and give them the ninety seconds it takes.
Run both for two weeks, then stop
Keep the register alive for a fortnight so nothing is lost while the habit forms. Then close it. Running two systems permanently is how you end up with two versions of the truth and confidence in neither.
What changes by the second month
You stop looking for papers. You know which cars are ageing without walking the yard. You can answer a buyer's question standing in front of the car instead of promising to check. And when the quarter closes, the numbers are already there, because you entered them one car at a time as the work happened.
