Autofid Financial Reports: Every Report Your Garage and Dealership Needs to Stay Profitable and Compliant
Financial reporting separates businesses that grow from businesses that guess. The difference between a dealership owner who knows their profit margin per vehicle and one who estimates it from memory is the difference between confident buying decisions and expensive mistakes. The difference between a workshop that accurately tracks VAT and one that scrambles at filing time is the difference between a clean compliance record and a Revenue investigation.
Autofid's Reporting Suite gives every type of automotive business — independent garage, multi-franchise dealership, or combined workshop and forecourt — the specific financial intelligence they need, generated automatically from the data already living in their account. No exports to Excel. No manual reconciliation. No waiting for month-end.
This guide covers every major report in Autofid, what it shows, who should use it, what data it draws from, and what business decisions it enables.
Report Access and Role-Based Permissions
Autofid's reports are permission-gated. Before diving into individual reports, it is worth understanding how access is controlled. The primary permission gate for all financial reporting is canAccessReports — a permission you assign to specific user roles in your account. Users without this permission cannot see any reports.
Additionally, certain reports require specific module permissions:
| Report | Required Permission | Business Type |
|---|---|---|
| Profit Per Car | canManageVehicles + canAccessReports | Dealership and Both |
| Workshop P&L | canManageJobs + canAccessReports | Garage and Both |
| VAT Returns / VAT Summary | canAccessReports | All |
| Business Expenses Report | canManageFinancials | All |
| Stock Movement Report | canManageVehicles + canAccessReports | Dealership and Both |
| Overhead Analysis | canManageFinancials | All |
| Customer Revenue Report | canManageCustomers + canAccessReports | All |
This granular control ensures your accountant sees everything they need, your service advisor sees job-level data only, and financially sensitive reports like overhead and expense analysis remain visible only to authorised management users.
The Profit Per Car Report
The crown jewel of dealership reporting. The Profit Per Car report shows every sold vehicle in the selected period with complete cost transparency — not just purchase price and sale price, but every layer of cost that affected the real margin.
What Each Column Shows
| Column | Source | What It Tells You |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle | Vehicle record | Registration, Make, Model, Year for identification |
| Stock Type | Vehicle acquisition type | Whether the vehicle was a straight purchase, trade-in, or consignment |
| Days In Stock | Date In Stock → Date Sold | How long the vehicle held capital before generating a return |
| Purchase Price | Vehicle record | What you paid to acquire the vehicle |
| Direct Costs (VOP) | Sum of all cost entries | All preparation, repair, and reconditioning costs |
| Realised Overhead | Daily accrual locked at sale | Running costs consumed during stock-holding period |
| Total Cost | Computed | Purchase + Direct Costs + Realised Overhead |
| Sale Price | Sales invoice | Final agreed price on the customer invoice |
| Profit / Loss | Computed | Sale Price minus Total Cost — positive or negative |
| Profit Margin % | Computed | (Profit ÷ Sale Price) × 100 |
What to Look For
Sort by Days in Stock descending to immediately identify your worst capital allocation decisions — vehicles that held your money the longest before selling. A car that took 180 days to sell at a 12% margin is significantly less valuable than a car that moved in 30 days at the same margin. Days in stock is a hidden cost that this report makes visible.
Sort by Profit Margin ascending to identify pattern. If your lowest-margin vehicles consistently belong to a specific make, model, or acquisition source, that is actionable intelligence for your next buying decision.
Filter by Date Sold to isolate quarterly performance for VAT return or accountant handoff purposes.
The Workshop Profit and Loss Report
For service-focused businesses, the Workshop P&L report provides a detailed income statement for your labour and parts operations independently of vehicle sales. It answers the fundamental question: Is our workshop making money?
Revenue Side
- Total invoiced labour revenue (hours billed × rates charged)
- Total parts revenue at customer charge prices
- Total number of jobs invoiced in the period
- Average revenue per job
Cost Side
- Total parts cost at supplier cost price
- Parts gross margin and markup percentage
- Labour cost (technician wages ÷ actual hours worked on jobs)
- Overhead allocated to service operations
- Linked business expenses directly attributed to jobs
Profitability
- Gross margin on parts (revenue − cost)
- Net workshop profit after all costs
- Overall P&L margin percentage
- Comparison to previous period (where available)
The Workshop P&L is filterable by job type — meaning you can produce a separate P&L for Repairs only, for Maintenance only, or for any other category. This reveals whether your high-volume routine maintenance work is actually profitable or whether your workshop's margin is being carried by complex repair jobs.
VAT Summary Report: Input vs Output Tax
The VAT Summary report is the central tax reporting tool in Autofid. It aggregates all VAT transactions across the selected period from three separate sources:
Output VAT (Tax Collected on Sales)
- VAT charged on all completed vehicle sales invoices
- VAT charged on all service job invoices
- VAT on any miscellaneous income recorded in the system
Input VAT (Tax Reclaimable on Purchases)
- VAT paid on all business expense entries
- VAT on parts purchased from suppliers (recorded on job cards)
- VAT on vehicle acquisition costs from VAT-registered suppliers
Net Position
Output VAT (collected from customers) €12,840.00
Input VAT (paid to suppliers) − €3,290.00
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Net VAT Payable to Revenue €9,550.00The VAT Summary report is the foundation for creating a VAT Return in Autofid. Once you are satisfied with the figures, you create a formal Return from the summary data — locking it as a submitted filing record.
VAT Returns: From Summary to Formal Filing Record
Autofid allows you to create formal VAT Return records for any period — monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, or a custom date range. Each return follows the standard Revenue/HMRC return format:
| Box | Description | Data Source in Autofid |
|---|---|---|
| Box 1 | Output VAT on sales and other outputs | Completed vehicle + job invoices (output VAT sum) |
| Box 2 | VAT on EU acquisitions (if applicable) | EU cross-border vehicle imports flagged in metadata |
| Box 3 | Total output tax due (Box 1 + Box 2) | Computed |
| Box 4 | Input VAT reclaimable on purchases | Business expenses + parts costs with VAT recorded |
| Box 5 | Net VAT payable or reclaimable (Box 3 − Box 4) | Computed |
| Box 6 | Total value of sales excluding VAT | Sum of net invoice values |
| Box 7 | Total value of purchases excluding VAT | Sum of net expense values |
Returns are saved with a status workflow: Draft → Submitted → Paid. Once a return is submitted, it is locked for audit integrity — the figures cannot be changed. When payment is confirmed, the return is marked as Paid. This gives you a permanent, auditable history of every VAT period your business has filed.
VAT on Purchases Report: Never Miss a Reclaimable Penny
The VAT on Purchases report is dedicated entirely to your input tax position — every expense where VAT was paid and can be reclaimed. It breaks purchases down by VAT rate, giving your accountant a clear categorised view of input tax across all rate bands:
- Standard Rate (23% / 20%) — most parts, consumables, equipment, services
- Reduced Rate (13.5% / 5%) — certain construction, utilities (varies by jurisdiction)
- Zero Rate (0%) — exported goods, certain food/pharmaceutical items
- Exempt — financial services, certain insurance, postage
The report totals reclaimable VAT across all categories and presents the figure directly usable in your VAT return Box 4. For workshops spending heavily on parts and consumables, this report alone can identify thousands in unclaimed input tax per quarter.
Stock Movement Report: Understanding Inventory Velocity
The Stock Movement report tracks how vehicles flow through your inventory over time. It answers questions like:
- How many vehicles entered stock this month versus how many left?
- What is the average age of our current stock?
- Which vehicles have been in stock for more than 60, 90, or 120 days?
- What is the total value tied up in aged stock?
Understanding stock velocity is critical for capital management. Aged stock is a capital drain — it is tying up money that could be invested in faster-turning vehicles. The Stock Movement report gives you the data to make pricing adjustments before slow-moving vehicles become a financial problem.
Overhead Analysis Report: True Cost Transparency
The Overhead Analysis report shows how your configured running costs are being allocated across your vehicle inventory and service operations. It includes:
- Total overhead by category for the period
- Daily overhead rate per vehicle (current and historical)
- Total overhead allocated to sold vehicles (realised)
- Total overhead still accruing on current stock (unrealised)
- Overhead as a percentage of total vehicle cost (VOP + overhead)
If your overhead allocation percentage is rising — meaning overhead is consuming a larger share of your VOP — it typically signals either that vehicles are sitting in stock longer than they should, or that your running costs have increased without a corresponding adjustment to your pricing strategy.
Exporting Reports: Clean Data for Your Accountant
Every report in Autofid exports to Excel with a single click. The export format is structured with properly labelled columns, date-formatted fields, and currency-formatted values — ready to be imported directly into accounting software or handed to your accountant without any reformatting.
All exports respect active filters. If you have filtered a report for Q1 transactions from a specific customer category, your Excel download contains precisely those records — not the full unfiltered dataset. This makes report handoffs clean, targeted, and professional.