Adding & Adjusting Financing Terms
- Kayla Ingersoll
This article will explain how to add and adjust financing terms. This includes how to read what is currently there, and what types of financing terms we can and cannot accommodate.
Where to Setup
The financing terms area is located under the domain node’s Pricing tab. Scroll down, and you’ll reach an area called “Finance Options”.
Most new sites come with “default” terms in place, so you will likely see a few boxes already in the Finance Options area with conditions and other information. If the dealer is providing you with all new terms, you’ll want to clear these out by clicking “Delete” on each box, and then add a new one with the “Add Item” button.
If you want to edit the default terms, or the dealer already has terms in place but is asking for a small change, you’ll want to edit the appropriate term by clicking “Edit”.
Financing Terms Field Overview
This section will review each field in one of the boxes for the finance options to help you better understand how the terms work. The only fields that are absolutely required when setting up a new term are the Interest Rate and Term in Months fields.
New/Used: This refers to the condition of the unit.
“Any” will apply the term to both New and Used units.
“New” will only apply to New units.
“Used” will only apply to Used units.
Year (Min): This refers to the minimum year that the term applies to. So, for example, if you wanted this particular set of terms to apply to all units from 2020-the present, you would enter “2020” in this field, as that is the minimum year for the terms to apply.
Amount (Max): This refers to the maximum price that these terms should apply to. So, for example, if you wanted this particular set of terms to apply to all units from $0 - $20,000, then the Amount (Max) would be $20,000. (Alternately, if you had a term for 0-20k and then another term for 20k-40k, you’d want to set that to 19,999 instead, so that the bottom of the next tier up would start at 20k.) For terms that are listed as “$[amount] and up”, the “max” can simply be set to something ludicrously high, like $99,999,999.
Lot: This refers to the location of the unit. Different lots may have different terms for the same items.
Product Group: This refers to the general “group” an item may fall under. For example, some dealers may have different terms for Motorized RVs vs Towable RVs. The options here are as follows:
Autos
Boat Engines
Boats
Generic Items
Homes
Machinery and Tractors
Motorized RVs
Outdoor Sporting Equipment
Powersports
Towable RVs
Trailers
Percent Down: This refers to the percentage of the total price that the buyer would be putting down. Some dealers use this field and others do not. This must be expressed as a decimal between 0 and 1 (ex: 20% down would be 0.2).
Interest Rate: This refers to the average interest rate that the dealer wants to advertise. Some dealers may wish to include an additional disclaimer to note that this interest rate only applies to those with good credit, etc. This must be expressed as a decimal between 0 and 1 (ex: 7.99% APR would be 0.0799.) This is a required field.
Term in Months: This refers to how many months the buyer would have to pay off this particular type of unit. For example, if the terms in question are applicable for a 120 month term, then you would put 120 in the field. This is a required field.
Taxes: This refers to the amount of taxes that would normally be applied to the purchase. This must be expressed as a decimal between 0 and 1 (ex: 8% tax would be 0.08).
Fees: This refers to any additional fees the dealer may apply to the purchase (i.e. registration fee, delivery fee, etc – whatever is applicable for the dealer). This must be added as a whole number, not a percentage (ex. if the additional fees total up to $2000, then you would add 2000 in the field).
Feature Limitations
This section will delve into some common requests that we get from dealers that we cannot accommodate.
Terms by Stock Number - We can not apply terms to specific stock numbers only. If there are specific stock numbers to which normal terms do not apply, we should instead hide any disclaimer displaying terms + payment calculator with CSS on those items only.
Terms by Brand or Manufacturer - We can not apply terms to specific brands or manufacturers. The closest we can do to this is Product Group, which is a much more broad category. If there are specific brands or manufacturers to which normal terms do not apply, we should instead hide any disclaimer displaying terms + payment calculator with CSS on those items only.
Terms with Lower Amount Limit that isn’t 0 - If the dealer provides terms and the lowest amount in the terms is not 0, then we should double check with them what their intention is for units below that minimum price. For example, if the lowest term available is $20k - $40k, because of the way our terms are set up (entering the maximum amount only), this term would now apply to all units $40k and under, instead of their intended $20-$40k. We would need to confirm with the dealer that they don’t have separate terms for $20k and under.
Terms that do not include length in months - “Term in Months” is a required field in the financing terms. We can not leave this field blank. If the dealer wishes to express that the term can vary depending on credit or other factors, we can add a disclaimer noting this and use the “average” term in months for the official setup.
Terms with a percentage fee - We can not express additional fees as a percentage, only as a whole number. We also can not bake a percentage in to the payment calculator if the dealer requests it. At maximum, currently all we can do is add a disclaimer to let the buyer know that they should add on X% in fees.
Terms Examples
Here, I will show a few examples of existing financing terms dealers are using, and “translate” what can be seen in the Pricing tab to what the dealer sent over to be added.
Example 1
The terms the dealer would have sent us for this example would have likely looked like this:
$0 - $10,000 - 10% down, 11.74% APR, 84 months
$10,000 - $25,000 - 20% down, 8.99% APR, 180 months
$25,000 - $50,000 - 20% down, 8.99% APR, 240 months
$50,000 - $150,000 - 20% down, 8.49% APR, 240 months
$150,000 and up - 20% down, 7.99% APR, 240 months
Example 2
Coming soon!
Saving Terms
Once you’ve filled out the fields in each box (you may need to set up several separate boxes to cover all of the terms provided to you) according to the terms provided (or updated the specific numbers that needed to be changed for existing terms), simply hit “Save and Publish” at the bottom of the page.