Vehicle status and publishing to your website
Move vehicles through statuses (recon, available, sold) and control whether each shows on your storefront, including a Coming Soon advertising badge.
A vehicle's status says where it is in your process (in recon, available, sold). Publishing controls whether shoppers see it on your storefront. They're separate switches. This page covers both, plus how to advertise a car that isn't ready to sell yet.
The statuses
Every vehicle has one status. The first four are everyday "operational" statuses you move between freely. The last three mean the car has left your lot for good.
- Acquired - you own it, recon not started.
- In recon - being reconditioned.
- Available - ready to sell and eligible to show on your website.
- On hold - temporarily off the market.
- Sold - sold retail through a deal.
- Wholesaled - sold to another dealer / wholesale.
- Disposed - scrapped, returned, or otherwise removed.
New vehicles start as Acquired. On the vehicle page, the status shows as a colored badge in the Status card at the top.
Change the everyday status
- Open the vehicle from Inventory.
- In the Status card, find Change status.
- Pick Acquired, In recon, Available, or On hold from the dropdown.
- The change saves immediately. Setting a car to Available also makes it eligible to publish.
If the vehicle has an open deal (draft or pending), the dropdown is replaced by a line that reads "This vehicle has an open deal. Manage its status from the deal →" with a link to that deal. While a deal is open it owns the car's status - change it there, not here.
Mark a car sold or removed
You can't pick Sold from the dropdown. A retail sale always runs through a deal, which keeps the deal and the vehicle in sync.
- In the Status card, find the Mark as sold / removed box.
- Click one of the three buttons:
- Retail sale (deal) - pick an existing pending deal and click Mark sold, or click Create new deal. Marking the deal sold sets the vehicle to Sold.
- Wholesale - add an optional reason, then click Mark wholesaled.
- Dispose - add an optional reason, then click Mark disposed.
Sold is reversible: if a deal falls through, unwind the deal from the deal page and the car returns to the lot. A wholesaled or disposed car can be brought back with Return to inventory - it goes back to Available.
Keep a sold car on your website, or take it down
When you mark a deal sold you choose what happens to that car's page on your website: Take the page down now (the default) unpublishes it with the sale, or Keep it up, marked Sold leaves the page live with a Sold badge and no price, which keeps the search ranking that page has earned. A kept page stays for the number of days set under Website settings → Sold cars on your website (7 to start), then the car leaves your website everywhere at once, and anyone opening its old link lands on your inventory page with a note that the listing is no longer available. You can take a kept page down sooner from the vehicle page with Unpublish. A wholesale or disposal always takes the page down. See Keep sold cars on your website.
Publish a vehicle to your website
Publishing is a separate toggle from status. A published vehicle appears on your storefront and is included in your marketplace feeds.
- Open the vehicle. Make sure its status is Available (or that it has an advertising badge - see below).
- In the Status card, find Public website (shows Published or Hidden).
- Click Publish to website.
- The label flips to Published. A View on public site button appears at the top of the page - use it to open the live listing in a new tab.
To take it back down, click Unpublish. The label returns to Hidden and the public page stops resolving.
Only Available vehicles can be published - unless you add an advertising badge first (see below). If the car isn't Available and has no badge, the Publish to website button is disabled, with a note explaining that you need to set an advertising badge on the Edit form first.
Advertise a car that isn't available yet (advertising badges)
An advertising badge is a bold label on your public listing (like Coming Soon). It does two things: it labels the car for shoppers, and it lets you publish a car that isn't Available. That second part is the useful one. You can tease a car still in recon, or leave a just-sold car up with a Sold sticker.
The badges are: Coming Soon, Sale Pending, Sold, Price Reduced, and Special.
- Open the vehicle and click Edit.
- Scroll to the Website listing section.
- Open the Advertising badge dropdown and pick a badge. (Choose - None (normal listing) - to remove it.)
- Save the form.
- Go back to the vehicle page and click Publish to website.
Available cars don't need a badge to be published - a badge is only required to publish a car that's in another status (Acquired, In recon, On hold, Sold, etc.). You can still add a badge to an available car purely as a marketing label (for example, Price Reduced).
On your public storefront the badge appears as a bold corner ribbon on the photo, both on the inventory grid and on the vehicle's public page. Inside the app, it shows as a badge next to the status in the Status card on the vehicle page, so your team can see it at a glance.
Automatic badges: Price Drop and Just Arrived
When a car has no advertising badge, your website can label it for you, in the same corner ribbon:
- Just Arrived for its first seven days on your website.
- Price Drop for two weeks after you lower its price. It shows only when your website had shown the higher price for at least a week of the month before, and the price came down by $100 or more. Your website keeps a record of every price it advertised (see The record of your advertised prices), and Price Drop appears only when that record proves the car was advertised higher. Raising a price and lowering it again a few days later is not a drop.
A badge you set yourself always shows instead, and a sold car always shows Sold. On a Spanish site they read Recién llegado and Bajó de precio. Automatic badges are on to start; to turn them off, go to Website and switch off Automatic badges, beside Payments on your listings.
Add a walkaround video
On the vehicle's Edit form, under Website listing, paste a link to a video of the car into Walkaround video:
- A YouTube or Vimeo link plays right on the car's page. Shoppers see a Watch the walkaround video button under the photos, and the player loads only when they press it, so the page stays fast and the video site sees nothing of your visitors until then.
- Any other link that starts with https (a video on your own website, for example) opens in a new tab.
Clear the box to remove the video. A sold car's page does not show it. On a Spanish site the button reads Ver el video del recorrido.
What happens behind the scenes
- Every status change and publish/unpublish is recorded in your audit log.
- Publishing or changing status refreshes your storefront automatically.
- If you've connected Facebook for marketplace syndication (with auto-sync on), these changes also update or de-list the car in your Facebook catalog.
FAQ
Why can't I pick "Sold" from the status dropdown?
By design. A retail sale must go through a deal so the deal and vehicle stay in sync. Use Retail sale (deal) in the Mark as sold / removed box, or mark the deal sold from the deal itself.
Why is the "Publish to website" button disabled?
The vehicle isn't Available and has no advertising badge. Either set its status to Available, or add an Advertising badge (Coming Soon, Sale Pending, etc.) on the Edit form - then publish.
I went to change the status but the dropdown is gone - what happened?
The car has an open deal (draft or pending). While a deal is open, change the vehicle's status from that deal, not the inventory page.
Does adding a badge automatically publish the car?
No. The badge only makes the car eligible to publish. You still click Publish to website on the vehicle page.
How do I take a sold car back off the website?
Open the vehicle and click Unpublish. If it's still showing a Sold badge and you want it fully gone, also set the Advertising badge back to - None (normal listing) - on the Edit form.
Will a sold or on-hold car still show on my storefront?
Only if it's published and has an advertising badge. Without a badge, only Available + published vehicles appear publicly; a Sold or On hold car with no badge won't resolve on the public site.