Guide
How to track contracts in transit without a DMS heat sheet
A contract in transit is a deal you’ve signed and delivered while the finance company hasn’t paid you yet. The car is gone; the money isn’t in. Most stores keep track of these with a heat sheet: a list printed or exported from the DMS and marked up by hand. Here’s a simpler way to keep that list right every day. The numbers on this page are made up.
Updated November 2026
What’s waiting is real money
Say six deals went out this month and haven’t funded:
| Deal | Finance company | Days out | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24-1162 | Lender A | 11 | $14,700 |
| 24-1168 | Lender B | 9 | $18,450 |
| 24-1171 | Lender D | 8 | $21,900 |
| 24-1179 | Lender C | 5 | $16,300 |
| 24-1183 | Lender B | 2 | $9,850 |
| 24-1187 | Lender D | 1 | $13,000 |
That’s $94,200 you’ve earned and can’t use yet. The question every morning is simple: how much is out, and which of these should already be in?
Why the heat sheet falls behind
- It’s a snapshot. Printed at 8 a.m., it’s wrong by lunch: a deal funds, another goes out, and nobody reprints it.
- One “late” rule for every lender. Ten days might be slow for one finance company and normal for another, so the sheet either flags too much or misses the deal that’s really stuck.
- Callbacks live in the margins. Who called whom, and when, ends up in pen on one copy or in one person’s head.
- Only the office sees it. The people who sold the deals rarely know what’s still waiting.
Record five things per deal, and nothing about the customer
To know who owes you, you need:
- the deal number,
- the amount,
- the finance company,
- the date it went out,
- the date it funded.
The salesperson’s first name helps if you want to see each person’s deals. You don’t need customer names, phone numbers, VINs or documents to track funding, and leaving them out means there’s nothing sensitive on the list.
Judge “late” by each finance company’s own pace
Look at the deals each company has actually funded for you and note how many days it usually takes. Then call a deal late when it runs more than two days past that company’s usual pace, not at one fixed number for everyone.
Four deals, all sent 7 days ago:
| Finance company | Usually funds in (days) | Late after day | At day 7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lender A | 4 | 6 | LATE |
| Lender B | 6 | 8 | On pace |
| Lender C | 9 | 11 | On pace |
| Lender D | 12 | 14 | On pace |
Same seven days: late for one company, on pace for three. That’s the deal worth a phone call today.
A five-minute routine
- Every morning: check the total that’s waiting, then the deals flagged late.
- Call on the late ones, and write down each callback where everyone can see it, so the next person doesn’t call twice.
- On funding days: mark everything that came in as funded at once. The list gets shorter and the total drops.
- Once a month: rank your finance companies from fastest to slowest at funding your deals. That’s useful when you decide where to send the next one.
Doing it in Docket Auto
Docket Auto keeps every unpaid deal on one screen. Add a deal in ten seconds, and the days count from the day it went out. Each finance company’s usual pace is learned from the deals you mark funded, so LATE flags come from that company’s own pace and you never set rules. A callback is one tap, and funding day is one bulk “mark funded”. It works the same on the phone and the office computer, there’s nothing to install, and it never stores customer data.