If you approve a price reduction and your inventory record shows it, you have confirmed the internal change. You still need to check what buyers see on each advertising site before you close the job. An old higher price can leave the vehicle above your intended offer; an old lower price can generate an enquiry your desk cannot quote on the current terms.
Vehicle data may pass through a distribution supplier before an advertising site publishes it. Each handoff creates a separate question: did the correct amount arrive, and did the destination use it? An upload receipt shows that a file arrived. It does not show whether a particular vehicle's revised price reached its public listing.
Build the Check Around the Approved Price
Start with the vehicles in your latest repricing run rather than sampling the whole inventory. These are the units you know should have changed. Record the approved amount from the manager's repricing decision, then compare it with the inventory record before checking elsewhere.
That distinction matters. If someone entered the wrong amount at the source, every destination could agree with the inventory system and still advertise the wrong offer. The approved decision is your reference; the inventory record is the first place you check.
Use a sheet with a separate row for each vehicle and destination. Keep these fields together:
- Vehicle: stock number and VIN, so a similar model or a reused stock number does not confuse the check.
- Approved offer: amount, approval time and applicable terms, including any finance condition.
- Destination: advertising site and the address of the actual vehicle listing.
- Observation: displayed amount, time checked and a screenshot or other saved evidence.
- Follow-up: status, correction owner and next check time.
A row per destination matters more than a single tick beside the vehicle. One site may have updated while another still shows the previous amount. A vehicle-level tick hides that difference.
Check the Offer a Buyer Can Actually See
Open the public vehicle detail page rather than relying on the advertising account's editing screen. The editing screen may show a saved change that has not reached the public page. Check the site's search results as well, because the price shown there may differ from the amount on the detail page.
Prioritise any listing a shopper or salesperson has flagged. After that, check the destinations that produce the most enquiries for your store, then complete the remaining rows. A supplier's successful-upload indicator is supporting evidence, not a substitute for these checks.
Before recording a mismatch, establish what each amount represents. A cash purchase price cannot be compared directly with a finance-only offer. A monthly payment is a different measure again. Conditional rebates, trade allowances and down payments can make two amounts look inconsistent even when the underlying vehicle price has transferred correctly.
Apply the fee and tax treatment required in the relevant market and on that destination. Do not remove required charges simply to make the displayed number equal your internal base price. Where the presentation legitimately differs, record the expected public amount and its basis on the sheet.
The test is whether the listing presents the current approved offer correctly. Check the conditions beside the price, including any statement that an incentive requires particular eligibility. If you cannot reconcile the amount from the visible terms, leave the row unresolved and ask whoever controls the offer to explain it.
Find Where the Correct Price Stopped
Once you have confirmed a genuine mismatch, trace the amount from your inventory record towards the destination. Check the current source value first, then the outgoing vehicle data where you can access it. If a supplier handles distribution, ask which amount it received for that VIN and when it passed that amount onward.
This sequence distinguishes an entry error from a delivery or publishing problem. If the source value differs from the approved decision, assign the correction to the person authorised to maintain inventory prices. Sending that issue to the advertising site would leave the incorrect source ready to overwrite any downstream repair.
If the source is correct but the outgoing data is wrong, the person responsible for the export needs to investigate. The export may be using a different price field or an older version of the record. If the outgoing amount is correct, ask the distribution supplier or destination to identify the last value it received and whether it accepted that value for publication.
Also check for a price entered directly in the destination's account. Such a manual override may take precedence over incoming updates. Confirm that behaviour with the supplier before changing it; a deliberate destination-specific offer should not disappear because someone assumes every difference is a transmission fault.
Say you approve a lower cash price, the inventory record contains it, and the distributor confirms that it received the same amount. The public page still carries the previous price. That evidence moves the investigation downstream. Re-entering the price at the source does not explain why the destination has failed to display it.
Assign the Repair Without Losing Responsibility for It
Give the external supplier or internal colleague enough evidence to investigate a specific record. Send the vehicle identifier, destination address, expected offer and observed amount, with the approval and observation times. Include the relevant screenshot. A general message that prices are wrong leaves the recipient to reconstruct the problem.
Keep a named owner inside the dealership even when a supplier must make the repair. The supplier owns its part of the investigation; your employee owns the next check and the decision to close the row. Otherwise, a support ticket can become the last recorded action while the advertisement remains unchanged.
If you use a comparison report, check what it actually compares. A report that matches the inventory record against an outgoing file can identify export errors, but it cannot verify the public advertisement. A report using live listing data should retain the page address and observation time. Conditional offers still need review when the report cannot distinguish their terms.
Close the Row Only After a Public Recheck
Ask the destination or distribution supplier about its expected publishing interval, then set the next check accordingly. A listing observed before that interval has elapsed may be awaiting publication rather than suffering an error. Mark it as awaiting verification, not as complete.
After a reported repair, reopen the public page and check the amount and conditions again. Recheck any search result that was also wrong. Close the row when the visible offer agrees with the approved offer on the appropriate pricing basis, and record when you verified it.
Carry every unresolved row into a daily exception list. Keep its original discovery time, current owner, latest supplier response and next action visible. Do not replace yesterday's list with a fresh sample that makes older discrepancies disappear.
Put shopper-reported mismatches and offers that cannot be honoured on the advertised terms ahead of routine pending updates. Repeated failures at the same destination also deserve attention: they call for an investigation of the update process, not another isolated correction.
For your next repricing run, assign someone to verify the public listings before the changes go out. Give that person the approved offers and a complete destination list. The closing evidence should be a checked advertisement, not a message saying the price was sent.