Days in Inventory Cost Calculator
Find out exactly how much floor plan interest every extra day on the lot is costing you — and when carrying costs start eating into your profit.
Total acquisition cost including purchase price
Typical Canadian floor plan rates range from 4% to 8%
Industry target is under 60 days
Your Carrying Cost
Daily Carrying Cost
$4.79
per day on the lot
Total Carrying Cost
$215.75
over 45 days
Profit Erosion
0.62%
of vehicle cost eaten by floor plan interest
How This Works
Every vehicle sitting on your lot is financed through a floor plan — a revolving line of credit that lets you stock inventory without tying up cash. The trade-off is interest. The longer a vehicle sits, the more interest you pay, and the less profit you keep when it finally sells.
The Formula
Daily Carrying Cost = (Vehicle Cost × Annual Rate) ÷ 365
Total Carrying Cost = Daily Carrying Cost × Days in Inventory
Profit Erosion = Total Carrying Cost ÷ Vehicle Cost × 100
A Real-World Example
Suppose you acquire a vehicle for $35,000 CAD with a floor plan rate of 5% per year. Your daily carrying cost is:
At 45 days, you've spent $215.75 in floor plan interest alone. Push that to 90 days and the total jumps to $431.51 — a meaningful chunk of your front-end gross.
Across an inventory of 80 vehicles, even a modest improvement in average turn time — say from 55 days to 40 days — can save thousands of dollars per month in floor plan charges.
Why Aging Matters More Than You Think
Floor plan interest is only one piece of the carrying cost puzzle. Vehicles also depreciate while they sit, and stale inventory ties up capital that could fund faster-turning stock. The industry rule of thumb: if a vehicle hasn't sold within 60 days, it's time for an aggressive price adjustment.
Many successful Canadian dealers use aging buckets to automate this process — categorising vehicles into 30-day brackets and applying predefined pricing rules at each threshold.
Why This Matters
Carrying cost is the silent margin killer in used vehicle operations. Unlike reconditioning or transport, it doesn't show up as a line item on your deal jacket — but it erodes profit every single day.
Dealers who track days in inventory obsessively tend to outperform those who manage by gut feel. They price sooner, adjust faster, and wholesale earlier when the numbers stop working. The result is higher turns, healthier margins, and less capital trapped in ageing iron.
Tools like Vinly's inventory intelligence track aging automatically, flag vehicles that cross critical thresholds, and surface the handful of units that need your attention each morning — so you can focus on selling instead of spreadsheet-wrangling.
Stop watching profits disappear
Vinly tracks aging automatically and alerts you before carrying costs pile up. See which vehicles need attention — every morning, without a spreadsheet.
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