Our accountants are all extraordinarily busy lately with the preparation of reports. Nasabay rin kasi, Ford (the manufacturer) is doing an audit. I actually do not agree with the purpose of their audit. We are not their subsidiary. Dealers are investors and technically their business partners.
I was informed that they are looking for discrepancy. Meaning, they want to make sure that the discounts given to customers were really given to customers. I understand why but I do not agree that they should audit us. They should accord us the trust and respect. When we have to move a push vehicle, even if they have no subsidy, we take a loss. We give freebies, free LTO, tint. We lose some, we earn some. If there were situations when we earned some, they should be happy for us because earnings are crucial to the continuity of business.
They are also checking if dealers declared the correct number of vehicles sold every end of the month. I think this shouldn’t be an issue either. Assuming a dealer declared 50 to satisfy Ford’s quota, but they actually was only able to sell 48. Ford must be happy because that means the dealer is making a commitment to sell the two units next month. As long as the dealer doesn’t count those two vehicles again next month, then there’s no problem with that. If for example a dealer declared 50 units sold to be able to qualify for the incentive., again, I see no problem. That’s the dealer’s problem. The units with the dealer are considered sold anyway. So there is no effect on the manufacturer. The objective is to motivate dealers, not to discourage them.
When we give an incentive to retail customers, say we gave them 10,000 peso discount. Do we audit them a few months later to ask what they did with the 10,000 promo we gave to them? or check if they are using the mini Ipad we gifted them? Or baka naman they sold it? We want to satisfy our customers that’s why we give incentives.
Dealer principals are Ford’s number one customers. We are wholesale customers. We buy cars too so we should also be given the highest customer satisfaction.
