AI actions and approvals
Every AI change starts as a card you can review. Manual cards wait for you; routine ones the owner allowed may apply alone after final safety checks.
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The dealer AI can do real work for you: add a vehicle, move a lead, start a deal, even record a loan payment. Every write starts as a reviewable proposal card. In Ask first mode, nothing changes until you choose Approve. In web chat, you can also reply a plain "yes" when the AI's latest reply contains exactly one proposal in total. If the owner has enabled Autopilot for an eligible routine action, the application may try it automatically after the AI finishes its reply and all final safety checks pass.
This page is about the dealer AI inside your dashboard. The AI on your public storefront is a separate, read-only salesperson: it can answer shopper questions but can never see costs, customer PII, or deals, and it can't change anything.
How it works
- Ask the AI to do something in plain English. For example, "add a 2019 Civic, stock 4471, $16,995" or "move the Garcia lead to Working."
- The AI prepares an action card showing exactly what it proposes, with one line on why it thinks the change is worth making.
- If the card is marked Needs approval, review the details and tweak any editable field if you want (see below).
- Choose Approve to run a manual proposal, or Reject to dismiss it. An Autopilot-eligible card is attempted only after the final policy, role, entitlement, and safety checks pass; its status then updates with the outcome.
For a manual-only proposal reply, the AI explicitly says “Nothing has changed yet.” If one reply contains both manual and Autopilot-eligible cards, that sentence applies only to the manual cards it identifies; the automatic cards are still only conditional attempts until their final checks finish.
When you Approve, the card runs the real action: the same one the manual screens use, with the same rules and audit trail behind it. Autopilot uses that same execution path and rechecks its permission at the last moment. On confirmed success the card flips to an Applied badge, and for a new vehicle, lead, or customer you get a View link to jump straight to the record. (Other actions, like a status change or a loan payment, simply show Applied, with no View link.)
If the application cannot confirm the result after execution may have started, the card becomes Needs review and cannot be approved again. Choose Reload status for a fresh check. If it remains Needs review, inspect the affected record and activity trail before taking another action. AutoDealer also pauses every new AI-proposed change for the dealership until that receipt is reconciled. Other pending cards may remain visible, but they cannot run. Contact support after you inspect the affected record so AI changes can be resumed safely. This prevents an uncertain email, payment, or record change from being repeated.
If you Reject instead, the card collapses to a Dismissed badge. Rejecting only stops a card that's still waiting. It never reverses something you already approved.
Approve in web chat by just saying "yes"
You don't have to hunt for the button. If the AI's last message proposed a single change, you can simply reply yes (or "ok", "do it", "go ahead", "approve") and it runs. Reply no (or "cancel", "skip", "nevermind") to dismiss it.
The "yes" shortcut is deliberately strict. It only works in web chat, where the browser binds the reply to the exact card the dealer reviewed. It fires only on a bare confirmation of the AI's most recent reply, and only when that reply has exactly one proposal in total. A sibling card that was already approved or rejected still counts, so the shortcut remains off for that multi-proposal reply. A detailed reply such as "yes, but make it $17k" is treated as a new instruction. A bare yes/no on a multi-card, stale, or already-decided proposal turn is refused instead; use the exact card. Telegram typed text never authorizes a proposal. Nothing old or buried earlier in the chat can be triggered by an offhand "sure."
The shortcut is English only. If your dashboard language is Spanish, a typed "sí", "si", "ok" or "yes" never approves or rejects a card; use the card's Aprobar or Rechazar button. See Use the dashboard in Spanish.
If the shortcut is refused before an action starts, the card stays Needs approval so you can review and click it directly. Needs review is reserved for the different case where execution may have started but its result could not be confirmed.
Autopilot: skip the approval for routine changes
The owner can let the assistant apply routine changes on its own, within limits, under Settings → AI assistant. Money and anything that cannot be undone always wait for a person. How it works: Autopilot and how much the assistant does alone.
Background jobs, schedules and triggers
The assistant can take bulk work as a background job, do standing work on a schedule, or start when something happens. See Schedules, triggers and background work.
Editing a card that needs approval
A card waiting for approval is editable. You can change the values the AI suggested before approving: a price, a status, a description, options checkboxes, and so on. Money fields accept "18000", "18,000", or "$18,000.50"; they're cleaned up for you. An Autopilot card may already have a final outcome by the time it appears, so it is not presented as a pending edit form once settled.
What you can't change is which record the action points at. The vehicle, lead, or customer being acted on shows as a read-only line on the card. That's on purpose. It means an approval can never be retargeted to a different (or another dealer's) record.
Leave a field untouched and the AI keeps the value it proposed. Only the fields you actually change are sent, so editing the card here won't clobber an edit someone else made on the same record at the same time.
What the AI can do
The full list of changes it can prepare, area by area, is on What the AI can do.
Who can approve what (role gating)
Each action is gated to your role, and the AI only ever offers you actions your role is allowed to perform:
- Owner: everything.
- Admin manager: everything except recording a bank transfer, which is for the owner and accounting.
- Sales: inventory, leads, customers, appointments, tasks, deals and their paperwork, title work, compliance screening, communications, documents, background jobs, personal memory, and support escalation. A salesperson can have the AI email a buyer a payment link for a deal. Not loan payments, promises to pay, invoices, payouts, schedules, or website copy. The assistant refuses a salesperson an unwind of a sold deal, and a move of a car to wholesaled or disposed, both when the card is made and when it is approved.
- Accounting: customers, tasks, title work, communications, documents, background jobs, personal memory, support escalation, recording BHPH loan payments and promises to pay, recording a bank transfer, recording payments on a deal, payment links for a deal or a loan, invoices (a draft, emailing it, recording a payment on it, voiding it), booking a manual Stripe payout, recording a vehicle cost, and adding a note to a car. Not the rest of inventory, schedules, website copy, or the sales pipeline, so from the Inbox accounting can link or archive an email but not add its sender as a lead.
What the assistant reads follows the role too. It does not offer a salesperson the loan book, the floor plan, the website status, or the Payments page (payments, invoices and payouts). It does not offer accounting the leads, appointments, imports or website reads.
Skills follow the same rule. For a salesperson the assistant does not load the AI accountant, AI cashflow advisor, AI BHPH collector or AI marketing manager. For accounting it does not load the AI lead handler, AI appointment concierge, AI deal closer or AI marketing manager.
Saving a personal Memory isn't restricted. Every role can do that, since it only affects your own future chats.
The gate is checked twice: once when deciding what the AI can even offer, and again on every apply attempt, whether manual or Autopilot. So a proposal for something your role can't do is refused before execution with a message like "Your role can't perform this action."
FAQ
Will the AI ever change something without me approving?
Only when the dealership owner has deliberately enabled Autopilot for that eligible routine action. Even then, the application rechecks the live policy, your role, feature access, action risk, proposal values, and injection safeguards before it tries the change. Money, irreversible actions, communications, background-job starts, schedules, and support escalation still require an explicit approval. The one exception among communications is a templated email: it may go out on its own at Run it, or when the owner picks it under Fine-tune.
Why did a job or schedule not run?
Background work follows the assistant's setting. While the assistant is set to Answers only, new jobs are refused with the reason, schedules skip their run without losing their slot, and a job already under way waits before its next step. Turning the assistant off everywhere goes further: its background jobs are cancelled and its schedules are suspended until you turn it back on. A job still waiting a week after it started expires with a note in your bell, so nothing runs weeks later under a setting you changed since.
To see what ran and why, the owner or a manager opens Settings → AI assistant and scrolls to Background work, under Schedules: every job the assistant ran for your team, newest first, with what started it (asked for in chat, a named schedule, or a trigger), where it stands (waiting to start, working, waiting for your approval, done, stopped or cancelled) and, when it stopped, why, in plain words. Open takes you to the conversation with its work and its cards.
Can I undo an approval?
Usually, yes. An applied card shows Undo for most changes, and Undo refuses if someone has changed the record since, so it never overwrites later work. What it covers, and what has no automatic undo: Undo AI changes.
I clicked Approve and it said the action can no longer be applied.
A proposal can become unavailable if AutoDealer.io disabled AI, your dealership stopped its assistant, billing is blocked, your role changed, or the assistant is set to Answers only. The message tells you which state applies. An owner or manager can turn the dealership's assistant back on under Settings → AI assistant; platform and billing blocks must be cleared in the place named by the message.
The pending card stays in the conversation. After the blocking state is lifted, review the card again before approving it. A plain "yes" still follows the latest-message and 24-hour safety rules.
A card also checks its record again when you approve it. If the record has moved on since the card was made (the appointment was cancelled or its time has passed, the signing request was completed or voided, a signer already signed, the deal was cancelled), the card tells you why in red and nothing changes. The card keeps its Approve and Reject buttons, so you can dismiss it or ask the assistant for a new one. The same happens when you reply "yes" in chat: the reason shows under the conversation and the card keeps waiting.
A website card also refuses when the words it changes were changed after it was made, in the visual builder, on the Pages screen or by another card you approved. The message names those words ("The hero headline has changed since this card was made, so nothing was changed"), nothing on the site changes, and your own words stay. Ask the assistant for a new card, which starts from the site as it is now. An older website card may say it is out of date instead: approving it could undo later changes, so ask for a new one the same way.
What does "Edited values are invalid" mean?
A value you typed on the card didn't pass validation, and the message names the field. Fix that field and Approve again; the rest of the proposal is preserved.
What does "Needs review" mean?
AutoDealer.io could not prove whether an action finished after execution may have started. The card is locked so the same effect cannot be repeated. Choose Reload status, then check the affected record and activity trail. If the card still says Needs review, do not approve or re-create the action. New AI changes are paused dealership-wide until the receipt is reconciled, so contact support after you confirm what happened.
A card refused before anything ran never shows Needs review. It says why in red and keeps Approve, as described above. You can also see Needs review when you click Approve on an old copy of a card that was already decided somewhere else, in another tab or on Telegram. Reload status then shows what happened to it. If that is Applied or Dismissed, there is nothing more to do.
Do decisions and Autopilot applications leave a record?
Yes. Approved and rejected actions are written to the audit log. An automatic application is shown as the assistant acting for the person whose standing permission allowed it, for example "Assistant (for Jane Doe)", so you can tell it apart from a manual approval, which is logged under the name of the person who approved it.
Can the AI act on another dealer's records?
No. Everything is scoped to your dealership, and the record an action targets is locked on the card and can't be retargeted.