Most parts departments run on three things: gut feel, a hot-list whiteboard, and a year-end obsolescence shock. Louie tracks every special order to the customer, alerts you on obsolescence before it ages out, scorecards your vendors against their promises, and captures every lost sale so the AI can chase it back. The counter stops being a guessing game.
These are the conversations every parts manager has had with the GM at year-end. The platform should have caught them in January, not December.
December audit shows $74K in parts that haven't moved in 18 months. By the time you see it, the OEM return window is closed and the only liquidation path is pennies on the dollar.
Customer ordered a part 3 weeks ago. Vendor says shipped. Receiving says not received. The customer is calling. Nobody can find the trail.
A PO or check request needs three signatures. Nobody knows whose desk it's sitting on today, so it just... sits. Vendors call asking where their payment is.
You "feel" that NAPA has been slow lately, but you can't prove it. Renegotiation is impossible without data. The slow vendor keeps the slot.
Customer walks in, asks for a part you don't stock. You quote 4 days, they leave. No record. No follow-up. Three months later they're a routine customer of the dealer down the road.
Your body-shop wholesale accounts get whatever discount the counter person remembers off the top of their head. Nobody's tracking real YTD volume by account.
Every module below is built, in the demo, and runs against your DMS parts inventory the moment you connect. No per-counter seats. No "parts module" upgrade SKU. Your rooftop license covers the entire department.
Live counter board: today's invoices, gross margin, fill rate, top movers, walk-in vs. wholesale split. Comparison to last month and last year at-a-glance.
Every special order timestamped at each step: ordered, acknowledged, shipped, received, allocated, customer notified. Customer auto-texted when ready.
Flags real on-hand parts by months since last real sale. A disclosed threshold rule recommends liquidate at 24mo+, return-to-OEM at 12-24mo, keep under 12mo — not a per-part judgment call.
Ranks every vendor by real inventory value carried, units on hand, and orders placed vs. received — pulled straight from your own purchasing activity, not a self-reported survey.
10-second walkaway capture at the counter. Every lost sale logged with reason and est. retail value, rolled into a pattern report with reorder recommendations for what keeps walking out the door.
Configurable multi-signature approval chain for every PO and check request — routed by role, tracked step-by-step from requested to paid. No more chasing down a signature.
Body-shop and independent wholesale accounts with tier-based discount pricing, a quote-to-order-to-invoice flow, and real YTD sales tracking per account.
Below is what a single Tuesday looks like through the manager view of a four-counter department. Same workflow scales from a single counter to a multi-store wholesale operation.
Modeled on a 4-counter department, ~$8K daily sales mix retail/wholesale/internal.
18 ROs needing parts today loaded into the queue. Pre-pulls staged on the bench, special orders received overnight matched to ROs.
1 alert fires: brake rotor SKU at 13 months since last real sale, 12 units on hand — flagged return-to-OEM before it crosses into liquidate territory.
NAPA's rank slips this month — fewer orders received against what's been placed. Real numbers to bring to the next vendor call, not a gut feeling.
Walk-in customer asks for an oil filter you're out of. Counter rep logs it in 10 sec — reason and est. value captured for this week's pattern report.
Counter brief auto-updates: $4.2K gross so far, 36% margin, 3 lost sales captured for follow-up.
Customer's catalytic converter received from vendor. Customer auto-texted "your part is in," appointment slot offered for tomorrow morning.
A restock PO gets submitted for sign-off. The approval chain routes it to the right role automatically — tracked step-by-step instead of a paper trail on someone's desk.
Daily brief: $8.4K gross, 38% blended margin, 96% fill rate, 3 lost-sale follow-ups queued, 1 obsolescence action ready for tomorrow.
Same vendors, same SKUs, same counter staff. The difference is whether you see the leak in real time or at year-end.
| Task | Old way (DMS parts module) | Louie way |
|---|---|---|
| Obsolescence detection | December audit shock | 12-month rolling alerts, disclosed threshold rule |
| Special order tracking | Phone calls and a paper log | Step-by-step timestamps, auto SMS |
| Vendor performance | "NAPA seems slow lately" | Real activity-based vendor ranking |
| Lost sales | Customer walks, no record | 10-sec capture, rolled into a pattern report |
| PO approval | Paper trail, no one knows whose desk it's on | Configurable signature-chain routing |
| Wholesale accounts | Discount from memory at the counter | Tier pricing + quote-to-invoice trail |
We claim: the simulation engine models an 8.4-point gross margin lift, a 42% obsolescence reduction, and ~$28K/quarter in lost-sale recovery against a DMS-only baseline. Full methodology at /money.
We don't claim: every counter will hit identical numbers. Brand mix, wholesale/retail split, current obsolescence carry, vendor concentration, and counter staffing all change the math. The mechanism is mechanical: catch the leak earlier, price correctly the first time, log what walks. Your gain scales with how leaky the current process is.
$24,995 one-time license per rooftop. Every counter, every vendor, every customer class included. Up to 100 users included ($500 each after). No "parts module" upgrade SKU. You own the platform.