Car Bids Pro — Admin

Customers — everyone who signed up (platform-wide)

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Email blast — message your signed-up accounts

Sends via your SMTP account. (SMS blasts need an SMS provider — ask me to wire Twilio when you have credentials.)

Audience

Subject

Message

Dealer clients

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Dealer inquiries — prospects who asked about the software

Dealers who submitted the "Get live bids on your lot" form on the pricing page. Reach out to close them.

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Analytics

Computed from your own activity — offers, views, leads, inventory. No external data.

Buyer funnel

Offer activity — last 14 days

Most in-demand listings

Inventory aging

Leads

Everyone who signed up, submitted an offer, hit Buy-Now, or saved a car to their watchlist — newest first, with the vehicle they're interested in. Export to CSV for any CRM, or set CARBIDS_LEAD_WEBHOOK to forward each lead automatically.

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Inventory feed — pricing source

Feed URL — DealerCenter ftp://…, an XML/CSV link, or your inventory website URL

How do I connect my feed? (same source as DealerPilot)

This app reads a feed — it doesn't host an FTP server. Use the same source you gave DealerPilot; nothing extra to set up here. Pick whichever your DMS/website provides:

Website (easiest): https://yourdealership.com/inventory — pulls specs & photos, no credentials.
FTP directory: ftp://user:pass@host:21/export/ — grabs the newest file in that folder.
Secure FTP (FTPS): ftps://user:pass@host:21/export/feed.csv — an exact file over TLS.

If your web host asks for an FTP destination, that must come from your DMS/FTP provider (not this app). Keep passwords in your deploy variables, never in a shared chat.

Open bid at % of price

Reserve at % of price (0 = none)

Default: open 10% below the advertised price, reserve at the advertised price. Feed price re-prices an auction until its first bid.

Pull photos from your website — one click, then automatic

Paste your public inventory page URL. We fetch it from the server (works even when a browser can’t), read the listing photos, match them to your inventory by VIN, and drop them onto your live listings — the same method DealerPilot uses. Once saved, every future feed sync / import pulls photos automatically, so listings stay pictured without another click.

Paste inventory — quick import, no feed URL needed

Upload or paste your DealerCenter CSV (the same export you used for DealerPilot) — or an XML feed, or your inventory page's HTML. We'll pull year/make/model/miles/photos/price.

⬆︎ Import file

Inventory (from the feed / import)

Sync or paste to pull inventory.

Billing (Stripe) — turn on self-serve Subscribe

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How do I connect Stripe? (step by step)

In your Stripe Dashboard → Product catalog, create a product for each paid plan and add a recurring monthly price (Pro, Elite, Unlimited Elite — at your current intro rates).
Open each price and copy its ID (looks like price_1AbC…).
In your app host (Railway → Variables), set: STRIPE_SECRET_KEY (from Stripe → Developers → API keys), and one price per tier: STRIPE_PRICE_PRO, STRIPE_PRICE_ELITE, STRIPE_PRICE_UNLIMITED.
In Stripe → Developers → Webhooks, add an endpoint pointing at POST /api/stripe/webhook, subscribe it to checkout.session.completed and customer.subscription.*, then set the signing secret as STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET. This keeps each dealer's plan (and listing cap) in sync automatically.
Redeploy, then hit Re-check above — each plan should turn green. The Subscribe button on your pricing page goes live automatically.

Test first: use your sk_test_… key and test price IDs to try checkout with Stripe's test card 4242 4242 4242 4242; switch to the sk_live_… key when ready. Intro pricing can also be a Stripe coupon/promo code — checkout already accepts promo codes.

Seller details

Slug (embed key)

Name

City

State

Doc fee

Title fee

Tax rate %

Plan — caps how many cars this seller can list at once

Your own stores stay on Unlimited (no cap). Set a paid tier for dealers you onboard — they can't exceed their plan's active-listing limit. Stripe subscriptions set this automatically via the billing webhook.

Subscription plan

Active listings

Listing features — shown as badges on every listing

AutoCheck history report Inspection report Warranty available Financing available Trade-ins accepted Nationwide shipping

New-offer alerts — get pinged the moment an offer lands

Email and/or text alerts when a shopper submits an offer or hits Buy-Now. Texts go through your carrier's free email-to-SMS gateway (no Twilio needed) — pick your carrier so we can reach your phone. Requires SMTP to be configured.

Alert email

Alert text — mobile #

Mobile carrier (for texts)

You also get a daily activity digest (new bids, Buy-Nows, watchlist saves, cars ending soon) to the same channels.

CRM lead delivery — send every offer/signup to your CRM

Car Bids forwards each lead automatically. Give it your CRM's lead email (industry-standard ADF/XML) and/or a JSON webhook (Zapier, an AI chatbot CRM, etc.). Leave blank to skip.

CRM lead email (ADF/XML)

CRM webhook URL (JSON)

Auto-restock — keep your widget full, hands-off

Automatically posts cars from your inventory so your live listings never run dry. As auctions end, Car Bids tops you back up to your minimum — pulling from cars that aren't already listed or sold.

Keep my widget full automatically

Minimum cars live

Max to post per top-up

Which cars to post first

Auction length (days)

Embed on a website

Paste this iframe into any page (e.g. the dealer's Overfuel site):

Add a new seller

Slug

Name

City

State

Doc fee

Title fee

Tax rate %

Operator sign-in

Customers — everyone who signed up (platform-wide)

Email blast — message your signed-up accounts

Dealer clients

Dealer inquiries — prospects who asked about the software

Analytics

Buyer funnel

Offer activity — last 14 days

Most in-demand listings

Inventory aging

Leads

Overview

Live now — ending soonest first

Needs attention — ended, awaiting finalize

Buyer demand — what shoppers are waiting for (saved searches)

Create auction

Live & past auctions

Edit auction

Offers

Condition report

Title

Overview

Announcements & remarks

Condition items (one per line)

Inventory feed — pricing source

Pull photos from your website — one click, then automatic

Paste inventory — quick import, no feed URL needed

Inventory (from the feed / import)

Billing (Stripe) — turn on self-serve Subscribe

Seller details

Plan — caps how many cars this seller can list at once

Listing features — shown as badges on every listing

New-offer alerts — get pinged the moment an offer lands

CRM lead delivery — send every offer/signup to your CRM

Auto-restock — keep your widget full, hands-off

Embed on a website

Add a new seller