Release | More Taxes (yay), better Rebates, more Leases, and a Reverse Roll (huh?)

March 2020

Who doesn't want more taxes?  Feel free to think, "I hate you for starting an email this way Alex." 

And welcome to all the new people being introduced to our product release notes for the first time - we like to have a little fun ๐Ÿ˜€ 

Tax regions within zip codes

Today you're getting more ways to compute taxes in a flavor that should be able to touch every part of the United States.  If you sell into Ohio, Colorado, Illinois, and many other parts of the country where the state likes it a bit more complex, this is for you.  

Taxes for customers

In the cases where there are more than one tax option for a specific zip code (and I purposely chose an ugly one for the examples below), they will receive a drop-down to select from.  

We assumed most people would not know what these tax definitions mean (who does), so we added an "I don't know" option for the normal Americans who aren't CPAs.  When "I don't know" is selected illumiQUOTE will apply the highest tax rate with the intention of not putting you in a bad spot.  You, as the dealer, have the ability to select this for them in one to one situations.

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Taxes for you

On a vehicle details page you now have Customize Fees & Taxes in the Customer section of the Presentation view.

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This is where you have a lot of flexibility to get the taxes dialed-in and we will apply some automation when a specific zip code has a deeper level of taxes.  This is shown below for El Paso, Texas.

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๐ŸคจOne last note on this new tax functionality.  This is purely opinion.

Is this pretty?  Nope.  Is this necessary?  Yup.  Does FRIKINtech enjoy the way taxes are fed to us in this cryptic way?  HECK NO!

If you're not a fan of the way some of this looks, we're with you.  But there are these two things called Death and Taxes that we don't have a lot of control over.

Better Rebates & Incentives 

Now that we have that tax mess behind us, let's get back to fun things.  

We now roll rebates into categories like Military, College Grad, and Loyalty to make those crazy lists of rebates more palatable (I'm looking at you Ford).

Speaking of crazy rebate lists, here's an F150:

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Anyone wanting to buy this F150 will automatically receive the rebates that apply to everyone and those will be applied appropriately within their Cash, Loan, or Lease presentation.  If this person selected +Military then all the military rebates would be applied too - simple!

If they know they are part of the Ford X-Plan or that Ford gives a rebate to the Houston Rodeo Volunteers (yes, they do), those are still accessible behind the"Show all Rebates & Incentives" button.  

Leases, sliced and diced to your pleasure

To date, the money a customer clicked as the downpayment amount was truly the actual out of pocket amount they were selecting within illumiQUOTE.  But that isn't the way most OEMs advertise their lease payments and we wanted to expand your options.  

In the Settings area under Quote Settings, Banks, and Taxes click the All Vehicles button

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Scroll down to find a new section called Lease Structure Settings - there is a lot going on here.

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And we wrote some articles up to help you understand the power you now have.  What's the line?  "With great power comes great responsibility."  Something like that. 

Educate yourself:

What are these Lease Structure Settings?
๐Ÿ”ด C'mon Alex!  Easy Button this thing for me! โ€”> here you go

Reverse Roll

Because we now average 500 programs per vehicle that we pull in for your cars every night, we decided to do something cool with that.  If you're familiar with rolling payments in your DMS or CRM, how about saving a little time and starting with the roll first; a reverse roll.

In the All Programs area, on any car, you now have a search box with a bunch of bubbles underneath.

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If you put a dollar amount into the search box illumiQUOTE will pop you straight to the closest program.  In the image below, we have a customer looking for a $250 per month payment on this car, so we put $250 into the box.  $264.64 is the closest we get on this full sticker deal.   

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Try it yourself - let us know what you think.  And yes, you can use the program filter buttons to select $0 down and lease AND then put a payment into the search box and illumiQUOTE will still give you the closest program.

Operational Change at FRIKINtech

We will switch the option for "Vote on Features" to a Support and Help function later this month.  We are moving to a new support system to better help you!

I was asked to include this by marketing

If you would like to understand more about what we do and what we have been up to lately (a few of you have been with us a while now and much has changed), here is a podcast on that topic.

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