Overview

The Test Drive Wizard walks you through everything needed to get a customer into a vehicle, from capturing their driver licence through to signed terms and conditions.

This article follows the longest possible path, starting the wizard with nothing in the system at all. In day to day use most test drives are started from within an existing lead, which means the customer details, contact details and lead are already in place and several of these steps arrive pre-populated. Reading it this way means you see every field the wizard can ask for. Your own experience will usually be shorter.

How the wizard works

The wizard has seven steps. The step indicator across the top shows where you are, and each completed step gets a green tick. A Progress so far panel builds up as you go, summarising what has been captured, so you can check your work without going backwards.

Navigation is by Previous and Next. Steps that are not compulsory also offer Skip. You can move back at any point to change something before the test drive is completed.

Step 1: Customer Info

Driver Licence

At the top of the step are two capture areas, one for the front of the licence and one for the back. Take or upload an image into each.

When a driver licence image is captured, an OCR scan runs over it and pulls the licence details out automatically, populating the fields below. This saves typing and reduces transcription errors. Always check the scanned values against the physical licence before moving on, and correct anything the scan has read incorrectly.

Customer Details

First Name (required)
Middle Name
Last Name
Driver Licence Number (required)
Driver Licence Version
Driver Licence Expiry
Date Of Birth

Confirm Contact Details

This section prompts you to check the contact details held and fill in anything missing.

Mobile
Phone
Email (required)

Matching against existing customers

When you click Next, the wizard searches your database for anyone matching the details entered. If it finds possible matches, an Existing Customers window opens listing them, with any records that have open leads shown first.

You have three choices. Select against a row attaches the test drive to that existing customer and updates their record with what you have entered. Create adds a new customer record. Cancel takes you back to the form to adjust the details.

Choosing Create when matches exist raises a confirmation asking whether you really want to create a new customer. Take a moment here, because creating a duplicate is much harder to unpick later than selecting the right record now.

Creating the lead

Because this path started with no lead, the wizard now asks you to create one.

Type (required), which is Email, Phone, Walk In or Other
Interest, which is Not Set, Cold, Warm or Hot
Source (required), from your dealership's configured source list
Campaign, from your active campaigns
Yard (required), the yard the lead belongs to

Click Create Lead and the lead is created and linked to the test drive. This is the part of the process you skip entirely when you start from a lead.

Step 2: Second Driver

Add a second driver here if someone else will also be driving the vehicle. Every field is optional.

First Name, Last Name, Company, Phone, Mobile, Email, Driver Licence Number, Licence Version, Licence Expires, Date Of Birth.

Tick Use 2nd Driver on Form to have the second driver's details printed on the test drive form and included in the signing.

If there is no second driver, click Skip.

Step 3: Confirm Vehicle

This step ties the test drive to a vehicle and a salesperson.

Listing. Click Select to open the Search Listings window. You can filter by yard and by label, search by make, model or stock number, and set how many results show per page. Results list an image, details, stock number, yard, conflicts and price. Thumbnails carry badges such as On Test Drive or Pending, and vehicles without a photo show an Image Coming Soon placeholder.

The Conflicts column is worth watching. It flags where the vehicle is already committed, so you can avoid double booking a car that is out with another customer.

Once a listing is attached, a summary of the vehicle pins to the top of the wizard and stays visible for the rest of the process. A bin icon lets you detach the listing if you picked the wrong one.

Dealer Plate, the dealer plate going on the vehicle, from your configured list.
Vehicle Details (required), a free text description used when the vehicle is not a listing in your system. This field disappears once a listing is attached, because the listing supplies the detail.
Sales Person (required), which defaults to you.
Test Drive Form (required), which of your dealership's test drive forms to use.

Step 4: Start Date and Time

Started (required), the date and time the vehicle leaves. Set the time with the hour and minute fields and the AM or PM selector, or nudge them with the spinner arrows.
Ended, pre-filled roughly half an hour after the start time. Adjust it to the expected return.
Odometer Out, the reading as the vehicle leaves.
Fuel Out, the fuel level as the vehicle leaves.
Sign Out Condition Images, where you capture or upload photos of the vehicle's condition before it goes. Alongside the drop area are buttons to select or deselect all images and to delete the ones you have selected.

Condition images taken at sign out are your evidence if damage is disputed on return, so it is worth being thorough here.

Step 5: Declarations

Declarations are configured by your dealership, so what you see here will differ from the example. They can be free text, a toggle, a date, or a dropdown, and can include a block of wording the customer needs to acknowledge.

If your dealership has no declarations set up, or none apply, click Skip.

Declarations are maintained in your settings, so if the wording needs to change, that is done once centrally rather than per test drive.

Step 6: Privacy

This step captures the customer's agreement to your privacy statement and their contact preferences.

The step shows the privacy wording, an Accepted tickbox, and two buttons. View and Sign opens the Privacy Declaration window on screen for the customer to read and sign. SMS Privacy sends the declaration to the customer's mobile so they can read and sign it on their own phone.

The Privacy Declaration window has two tabs. Terms displays the privacy document your dealership has uploaded. Signatures shows the privacy statement, a toggle for the customer to agree to be contacted, and a signature pad with a bin icon to clear and start again.

Turning on the contact agreement reveals a Communication Preferences grid. The rows are the communication types your dealership has configured, and the columns are the channels, being Call, SMS, Email and Post. Tick the combinations the customer is happy with, or use Select All. Recording this properly here means your marketing and follow up respect what the customer actually agreed to.

Click Save. The Accepted tickbox ticks itself, the Progress so far panel records that privacy has been accepted, and the SMS Privacy button greys out because it is no longer needed.

Privacy can be skipped if the customer declines, but the declaration and preferences will not be recorded against them.

Step 7: Acceptance

The final step captures the test drive terms and conditions.

Terms and Conditions, where you choose which set of terms applies. Your dealership can hold more than one.
Terms Accepted, which ticks automatically once the terms have been signed.
View and Sign, which opens the Terms and Conditions window for signing on screen.
SMS Terms, which sends the terms to the customer's mobile to read and sign on their own phone.

The Terms and Conditions window has a Terms tab showing the document your dealership has uploaded, and a Signatures tab. The Signatures tab lists any declaration tickboxes your dealership requires, then two signature pads, one for the customer and one for the salesperson. Each pad has a bin icon to clear it. Save stays unavailable until both signatures are present.

After saving, Terms Accepted is ticked, the Terms and Conditions dropdown locks so the signed terms cannot be swapped out, and the Progress so far panel records that terms have been accepted.

Complete becomes available once the required steps are done.

Completing the test drive

Click Complete and the wizard creates the test drive record and opens it for editing. From here you can add or view images against the first licence, second licence, check out and check in, and open them all in a gallery. You can review the details, being the test drive form, salesperson, listing (now badged On Test Drive) and dealer plate. You can edit or re-search the customer and review their licence, add test drive notes, and see communications and automated communications sent to the customer.

You can also manage the duration, covering started, ended, completed, auto complete, status, odometer out and in, and fuel out and in. The record shows the second driver and declarations, and a set of options covering terms and conditions, trade in, finance, update lead progress, and an insurance waiver that can be viewed and signed on screen or sent by SMS.

The test drive sits at In Progress until the vehicle comes back and you record the check in details.

Starting from a lead instead

Most test drives will not start the way this article does. From an open lead, use the add menu and choose Test Drive Wizard. It is the same seven step wizard, but the customer, their contact details and the lead already exist, so the customer matching and lead creation stages do not appear and the customer information arrives filled in. In practice you often join the process at the vehicle and timing steps.

The lead also shows a Test Drives panel listing every test drive attached to it, with its current status, so you can see at a glance whether a customer already has a vehicle out.