SoR Agreements in the Spotlight with the FCA

How to Create a Sale or Return Agreement in MYDEALERSHIPVIEW

What a Sale or Return Agreement Actually Is

A Sale or Return, or SoR, agreement is used when a dealer sells a vehicle on behalf of its owner rather than buying it into stock outright. The dealer acts as an agent, marketing and selling the car in exchange for an agreed listing fee and an agreed sale price, with the proceeds ultimately going back to the owner once the dealer's fee has been deducted.

It's a genuinely useful model for both sides. The owner gets access to the dealer's reach, presentation, and sales process without giving the vehicle up outright. The dealer earns a fee without tying up capital buying the car first. But because the vehicle and the sale proceeds both belong, at least in part, to someone else while the deal is in progress, the paperwork matters more here than it does on a standard stock sale. This is also an area the FCA has recently started paying close attention to, which we cover in full in our guide to FCA scrutiny of Sale or Return practices. Getting the agreement right from the outset isn't just good administration anymore. It's a genuine compliance safeguard.

This guide walks through creating an SoR agreement properly in MYDEALERSHIPVIEW, step by step.

Before You Start

Have the following ready before you begin:

The vehicle's details, including registration, mileage, and condition at the point the owner hands it to you.

The owner's contact and identification details.

The agreed listing fee, and how it will be calculated (a fixed amount, a percentage of the sale price, or a combination of both).

The agreed sale price, or the price range the owner is willing to accept, along with who has final authority to agree a sale if an offer comes in below that figure.

A clear understanding, agreed with the owner in advance, of what happens to the vehicle and any deposit if the sale doesn't go ahead, and how quickly proceeds will be paid out once a sale completes.

Having these agreed and written down before you start building the record in the system is what actually protects both parties later, not the software itself. The system is there to make sure that agreement is captured consistently and can't get lost or misremembered.

Step 1: Add the Vehicle as an SoR Record

From your stock dashboard, select the option to add a new vehicle and choose Sale or Return as the listing type, rather than the standard stock purchase route. This keeps the vehicle correctly flagged throughout the system as an agency sale rather than dealer owned stock, which matters for your own reporting as much as for the customer facing side.

Enter the vehicle's specification, mileage, and condition exactly as it was when it arrived with you. Photograph the vehicle at this stage and attach the images to the record. This isn't just for the advert. A dated photographic record of condition on arrival is one of the simplest ways to avoid a dispute with the owner later about damage or wear that happened before or after the vehicle came to you.

Step 2: Record the Owner's Details

Add the vehicle owner as a contact record, in the same way you would a customer, including full contact details and identification. This record will be linked to the vehicle for the duration of the SoR arrangement and will populate automatically into the agreement and any later invoice, so it only needs to be entered once.

Step 3: Set the Agreement Terms

This is the core of the SoR record. Enter the agreed listing fee structure, the agreed sale price or acceptable range, and the date the agreement begins. Where you and the owner have agreed a minimum acceptable price, record that figure explicitly rather than relying on a verbal understanding. If the owner has given you authority to accept offers within a set range without checking back with them first, record that authority in the agreement too, since this is exactly the kind of detail that prevents a dispute if a sale later falls below the figure the owner remembers agreeing.

The system generates a written SoR agreement from these details automatically, incorporating MYDEALERSHIPVIEW's bespoke terms and conditions for agency sales. Review the generated agreement with the owner before they sign, and talk them through the terms rather than simply asking for a signature. This matters more than it might seem. Being able to show that a customer was talked through the terms, not just handed a document, is part of what the FCA is now asking dealers to evidence when it comes to consumer understanding.

Step 4: Capture the Signed Agreement

Once the owner has reviewed and agreed the terms, capture their signature digitally within the system. The signed agreement is stored against the vehicle record permanently, alongside the photographs taken in Step 1 and the owner's contact details from Step 2. From this point, anyone in your business looking at that vehicle's record can see the complete picture of the arrangement without needing to track down a paper file.

Step 5: Advertise the Vehicle

Publish the vehicle to your website and connected marketplaces directly from the record. Because the vehicle is flagged as an SoR listing from Step 1, its advertising and reporting stay correctly separated from your owned stock throughout, which matters both for your own margin reporting and for being able to show, if ever asked, exactly which vehicles on your books are held on an agency basis rather than owned outright.

Step 6: Record the Sale

When the vehicle sells, record the sale against the SoR record rather than as a standard stock sale. The system calculates the dealer's listing fee automatically based on the terms set in Step 3, and generates a clear breakdown showing the final sale price, the fee retained by the dealership, and the balance due to the owner.

Step 7: Settle With the Owner

Use the generated breakdown to settle with the vehicle's owner promptly. Record the date and method of payment against the SoR record. This closes the loop on the agreement with a complete, dated record from the vehicle's arrival through to the owner being paid, which is precisely the kind of evidence trail that protects a dealership if a Sale or Return arrangement is ever questioned, whether by the owner, a solicitor, or a regulator.

Why This Matters Beyond the Paperwork

None of these steps exist purely for administrative tidiness. Taken together, they produce exactly what the FCA has recently been asking dealers operating Sale or Return to demonstrate: a documented process, clear consumer communication, and a consistent record of how each arrangement was handled from start to finish. A dealership that can pull up a complete SoR record in seconds is in a fundamentally different position to one relying on a verbal understanding and a filed invoice, both in a routine dispute and in the event of closer regulatory attention.

FCA Scrutiny of Sale or Return: What UK Used Car Dealers Need to Know

A Second Front Has Opened Up

While most regulatory attention on UK motor retail has been fixed on the motor finance redress scheme, a separate and more immediate issue has started landing on dealers' desks. The FCA has begun writing directly to dealerships that operate a Sale or Return model, demanding evidence of risk controls, governance, and clear consumer communication.

This isn't a future consultation or a distant policy statement. It's live correspondence, arriving now, and it follows a run of high profile collapses in the motor trade where businesses operating Sale or Return left customers without their vehicle, without their money, or both. GVE London and Targa Florio have both been named in reporting on this, with GVE London reportedly still holding customer vehicles months after its collapse while ownership of those cars remained unresolved.

If you offer, or advertise, a Sale or Return service, this is worth reading properly rather than skimming.

What Sale or Return Actually Involves, and Why It Carries Specific Risk

A Sale or Return arrangement typically sees a dealer act as an agent for a vehicle's owner, selling the car on their behalf in exchange for an agreed listing fee and an agreed sale price, rather than buying the vehicle outright and reselling it as stock.

That structure is genuinely useful for both sides when it works well. The owner gets access to a dealer's reach and expertise without giving up the vehicle outright, and the dealer earns a fee without tying up capital in the purchase. But it also creates a specific kind of exposure that a normal stock sale doesn't. The vehicle technically still belongs to someone else while it sits on your premises. Any sale proceeds are, at least in part, someone else's money passing through your hands before it reaches them. And if the dealership runs into financial difficulty, questions about who actually owns the car and who is entitled to the money become urgent and public very quickly, exactly as happened at GVE London.

That's precisely the pattern that's caught the FCA's attention. Not the concept of Sale or Return itself, but what happens to the customer when a dealer running that model fails without proper controls in place.

What the FCA Is Actually Asking For

According to reporting from automotive legal specialists Lawgistics, the FCA's letters are focused on three areas. Risk management processes, meaning how a dealership actually manages the operational and financial exposure that comes with holding someone else's vehicle and someone else's money. Consumer understanding and communication, meaning whether customers are given a genuinely clear picture of what they're agreeing to, what happens to their vehicle and their money, and what protection they have if something goes wrong. And policies, procedures, and board level oversight, meaning whether there's an actual governance structure behind the Sale or Return offering, rather than an informal arrangement run on goodwill and a handshake.

Dealers who advertise Sale or Return on their website are considered particularly likely to be contacted, regardless of how much of that activity they actually do. Firms that receive a letter are expected to respond within a specified timeframe, and advisers are clear that failing to engage is not an option for an FCA regulated business.

Why This Connects to the Wider Regulatory Picture

This isn't happening in isolation. It sits alongside the FCA's motor finance redress scheme, which we covered in detail in our guide to the FCA motor finance redress scheme, and it reflects the same underlying theme running through UK motor trade regulation right now. The FCA is looking closely at whether consumers genuinely understand the arrangements they're entering into with a dealer, whether that's a finance agreement or a Sale or Return listing, and whether dealers can evidence that they've handled that relationship properly if something later goes wrong.

The dealers who come through this kind of scrutiny well are consistently the ones who already have clear, consistent documentation and communication built into their process, rather than the ones scrambling to produce it after a letter arrives.

What Dealers Should Do Now

If you currently offer Sale or Return, a few things are worth doing before any letter arrives, not after.

Review how clearly your customer facing agreement actually explains the arrangement. A customer entering into a Sale or Return deal should understand, in plain terms, who owns the vehicle while it's with you, how and when sale proceeds are paid out, and what happens to their vehicle or their money if your business runs into difficulty. Vague or informal wording is exactly what the FCA is now looking for evidence against.

Put a documented process behind the offering, not just a verbal understanding between you and the vehicle's owner. That means a written agreement for every Sale or Return arrangement, consistent handling of proceeds, and a clear record of what was agreed and when. Our guide to creating an SoR agreement in MYDEALERSHIPVIEW walks through exactly how to build that record properly.

Make sure there's real oversight behind the process, not just a member of staff handling it informally alongside other duties. The FCA's language around board level oversight is a signal that this needs to be treated as a genuine business risk area, not an operational afterthought.

If a letter does arrive, respond within the timeframe given and take it seriously. A slow or defensive response is likely to draw more scrutiny, not less.

How MYDEALERSHIPVIEW Supports This

This is exactly the gap our Sale or Return functionality and bespoke terms and conditions are built to close.

Rather than a Sale or Return deal being handled informally between a member of staff and a vehicle's owner, MYDEALERSHIPVIEW structures the agreement properly from the outset. Listing fee, agreed sale price, and the terms of the arrangement are captured clearly and consistently, and that record sits against the vehicle for as long as it's in your system, not in a separate document that may or may not get filed properly.

Alongside the platform, our bespoke terms and conditions work is built to make sure the customer facing side of a Sale or Return arrangement is genuinely clear, not just legally defensible in the abstract. A dealership that can show a customer clear terms, a consistent process, and a proper record of what was agreed is in a fundamentally stronger position, whether that's in front of a disappointed customer, a solicitor, or now, an FCA supervisor.

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