Store operations

Showroom Audit Checklist for Automobile Dealerships: Facade, Display Cars, Counter and Team

By Borentis Research · Store operations · Updated 29 September 2026 · 8 min read

A showroom audit checklist for automobile dealerships is a fixed list of items an area manager or dealer principal checks on every visit, each with a photo to take and a yes-or-no question to answer, weighted so the total is a score out of 100. The zones are the same at every dealership in India: the facade and forecourt, the display cars, the customer lounge and the finance desk, the accessories wall, the team and its grooming, the test drive fleet, the walk-in process and the washrooms. This guide gives the complete checklist as a table, the weights, the fatal items and the pass mark, and who fixes what when an item fails. It works as a monthly area manager audit or as a fifteen-minute daily self-audit by the showroom manager.

How the checklist is built

Every item has three parts: a photo the auditor takes on the spot, a question that can only be answered yes or no, and an owner who fixes it if the answer is no. The photo is the proof, the question is the standard, the owner is the action. Items without a photo become opinion, items with a scaled answer (1 to 5) become negotiation, and items without an owner become a report nobody reads.

Weights make the total mean something. A dusty display car and a missing brochure are both a no, but one costs a sale and the other costs a glance. The table weights nine zones so that customer-facing failures pull the score down harder than back-office ones, and marks four items as fatal: a no on a fatal item caps the audit at 69 whatever the rest scores, because a customer who sees an unpriced car, an uninsured test drive or a dirty washroom does not see the rest.

The complete audit: 24 items, 100 points

Take the photos in the order listed, walking from the road inward, so the audit takes the customer's route. Weights are out of 100; the fatal items are marked.

Zone	Item	Photo to take	Audit question	Weight	Who fixes
Facade and forecourt	Brand signage and pylon	Wide shot from the road	Is every letter lit and unbroken, with no competitor or local banner on the frontage?	5	Dealer principal, brand team
Facade and forecourt	Glass front and entrance	Entrance from five metres	Is the glass clean with no stickers except the approved ones, and the entrance mat in place?	3	Admin, housekeeping
Facade and forecourt	Customer parking	Parking bays	Are customer bays marked and free of staff vehicles, stock and workshop cars?	3	Showroom manager
Display cars	Line-up per docket	Each car, front three-quarter	Are the models and colours on the floor the ones this month's docket asks for?	6	Showroom manager, brand team
Display cars	Cleanliness inside and out	Bonnet, one seat, one footwell	Is every display car free of dust, fingerprints, packing plastic and footprints?	5	Showroom manager
Display cars	Price board and spec card	Board beside each car	Does every car carry the current ex-showroom price, variant and key features, dated this month?	5, fatal	Sales manager
Display cars	Accessorised hero car	Hero car with accessories fitted	Is the hero car fitted with the accessory pack the docket specifies, with the pack priced?	4	Accessories in-charge
Display cars	Battery, lights, unlocked	Dashboard lit, doors open	Does every display car start, light up and open for a customer to sit in?	3	Workshop
Customer lounge and finance desk	Lounge cleanliness and refreshments	Lounge, wide shot	Are seats clean, water and tea available, the screen on brand content, and no staff seated?	5	Admin
Customer lounge and finance desk	Finance and insurance desk	Desk with rate card	Is the desk staffed, with the current scheme rate card and EMI chart visible to the customer?	5	Finance manager
Customer lounge and finance desk	Brochures and price lists	Brochure rack	Are current brochures for every model in stock, with old price lists removed?	3	Sales manager
Accessories wall	Wall stocked to standard	Full wall	Is every hook on the wall filled, priced and clean, laid out as the accessories docket shows?	5	Accessories in-charge
Accessories wall	Merchandise range	Merchandise display	Is branded merchandise displayed, priced and clean, with nothing faded or out of season?	2	Accessories in-charge
Team and grooming	Uniform, badge, grooming	Team at the morning huddle	Is every advisor in uniform with a name badge, groomed to the standard?	4	Showroom manager, HR
Team and grooming	Greeting within 30 seconds	Reception with the walk-in register	Was the auditor, or a walk-in observed, greeted within 30 seconds and offered a seat?	5	Showroom manager
Team and grooming	Manpower against the roster	Roster on the notice board	Are the rostered advisors, hostess and driver present, with no unfilled front-desk slot?	4	Showroom manager, HR
Team and grooming	Product knowledge spot check	No photo; note the questions asked	Could a randomly chosen advisor answer the three questions of the month on the new model?	4	Trainer
Test drive	Test drive cars ready	Car with fuel gauge visible	Is each test drive car fuelled above a quarter, clean, insured, with the log updated today?	5, fatal on insurance	Sales manager
Test drive	Route and offer	Test drive register	Is a test drive offered to every walk-in and logged, with the route map at the desk?	4	Sales manager
Process	Walk-in register and enquiry entry	Register or DMS screen	Is every walk-in from the last two hours entered with a name, model and phone number?	5	Sales manager
Process	Delivery bay	Bay with today's delivery	Is the delivery bay dressed to the docket, with the ceremony kit ready for today's deliveries?	4	Showroom manager
Washrooms and safety	Customer washroom	Washroom interior	Is the customer washroom clean, stocked and dry at the time of the audit?	4, fatal	Housekeeping
Washrooms and safety	Fire and electrical	Extinguisher tag, distribution board	Are extinguishers in date, exits clear and the electrical panel closed and labelled?	4, fatal	Admin
Washrooms and safety	Licences and statutory displays	Licence board	Are the trade certificate, GST registration and other statutory displays current and visible?	3	Dealer principal, accounts

Weights, fatal items and the pass mark

The score is the sum of the weights of items answered yes, out of 100. There is no partial credit; an item is fixed or it is not. A scaled answer invites the line every area manager has heard, "Sir, almost done hai", and almost done is a no.
Four items are fatal: the price board, test drive insurance, the customer washroom, and fire and electrical. A no on any of them caps the audit at 69 regardless of the rest.
85 and above is green, 70 to 84 amber, under 70 red. Dealer standards manuals the author has worked with set the green line between 80 and 90; treat these bands as a working starting point, not an industry statistic, and set your own after the first three months of scores.
A red audit triggers a re-audit within seven days. Two consecutive reds go to the dealer principal and the brand's regional manager together, with the photos, not the score.

Who fixes what, and by when

Showroom manager: display car cleanliness and line-up, lounge, grooming, greeting, roster, delivery bay. Same day, most within the hour.
Sales manager: price boards, brochures, test drive cars and log, walk-in register. Price boards within the hour; a car without a price is a car not for sale.
Finance manager: the scheme rate card and a staffed desk. Same day; the card is reprinted the morning a scheme changes.
Accessories in-charge: the wall, the hero car pack, merchandise. Within 48 hours, since most gaps are stock.
Admin and housekeeping: glass, parking, washrooms, fire and electrical, licence board. Washrooms within the hour; extinguisher refills and licences within the week, with a date.
Trainer: product knowledge gaps found in the spot check. A fifteen-minute huddle the next morning on the three questions, then a re-check on the next visit.
Dealer principal with the brand's area manager: signage, facade, statutory displays and any item red on two consecutive audits. Capital items carry a 30-day date and a photo when done.

Monthly audit and daily self-audit

The same 24 items work at two cadences. The brand's area manager or the dealer's general manager runs the full audit once a month, unannounced, taking every photo personally. The showroom manager runs a short version daily at opening: the twelve customer-facing items (display cars, price boards, lounge, finance desk, grooming, washroom, test drive fuel, walk-in register) in about fifteen minutes, one photo per item, before the doors open at ten.

The two cadences check each other. A self-audit that scores 100 every day beside a monthly audit that scores 72 says the self-audit is being ticked from the desk, which is the subject of /learn/how-to-stop-backdated-store-photos-and-fake-checklists/. A monthly audit that finds what the self-audit already flagged, unfixed, says the problem is ownership, not detection. The line the area manager hears at a dusty display car is "Abhi cleaner aaya nahi, sir"; the answer is the timestamp on the opening photo, which shows the car was dusty at ten as well.

Franchised dealerships add one wrinkle: the brand owns the standard and the dealer principal owns the staff. The audit works when the dealer principal sees the same photos the brand sees, on the same day, and the fixes are tickets to named people rather than a letter to the dealership. The format for writing up the visit is at /learn/store-visit-report-app-for-area-managers/.

Running it as a measured routine

On paper or in a WhatsApp group this checklist works for one dealership and fails at twenty: photos arrive without items, items without photos, and the scores live in a spreadsheet nobody trusts. BorentisOps, the store operations platform at /solutions/products/borentisops/, runs the checklist as built above: each item with its photo and question, weights and fatal items scored automatically, live capture with GPS and time lock so a photo is from this showroom at this hour, a ticket to the named owner when an item fails with SLA escalation to the dealer principal if it stays open, and the audit exported as a store visit report the same afternoon. Drishti, its visual merchandising AI, checks the display car line-up and the accessories wall photo against the month's docket in seconds, so the area manager's eye goes to the team rather than the cars.

The audit score sits on the store scorecard beside the sales conversation score from Borentis Floor, so a dealership scoring 92 on the showroom and 58 on the conversation is read as a coaching problem, not a facility problem; the selling side for dealerships is described at /learn/conversation-intelligence-for-car-dealerships-india/. BorentisOps is priced per store, works offline in a basement showroom, and runs in Hindi, English and Hinglish. A dealer network keeps its DMS; the integrations page at /solutions/products/borentisops/integrations/ describes how the walk-in register and the audit connect.

Frequently asked questions

How often should an automobile showroom be audited?

A full 24-item audit by the brand's area manager or the dealer's general manager once a month, unannounced, and a twelve-item customer-facing self-audit by the showroom manager every morning before opening. Launch months add a third: a docket compliance check within three days of the new model or festive display going live. The monthly and daily scores should be read together, since a large gap between them is itself a finding.

What is a good showroom audit score?

With the weights in this guide, 85 and above is green, 70 to 84 amber and under 70 red, and any fatal item failed caps the score at 69. These are working bands drawn from dealer standards manuals, not an industry benchmark. A network should set its own green line after three months of scores, and read the spread across dealerships rather than the average, since one dealership at 55 matters more than the network at 84.

Can the dealership audit itself, or must the brand do it?

Both, at different cadences. The showroom manager's daily self-audit keeps the floor ready; the brand's monthly audit keeps the self-audit honest. Self-audits work when every item needs a live photo taken inside the app with the location and time locked, so a tick from the back office is impossible, and when a sample of dealerships is re-audited unannounced within 48 hours of their self-audit.

How is a car showroom audit different from a retail store audit?

The zones differ. A showroom audit covers display cars, price boards, the finance and insurance desk, the test drive fleet and its insurance, the delivery bay and the walk-in register. A brand outlet audit covers windows, mannequins, trial rooms and the billing counter. Facade, grooming, greeting, washrooms and fire safety are common to both. The method is identical: a photo and a yes-or-no question per item, weights, fatal items, and a named owner for every no.

Where Borentis applies this

Execution Scorecards: See the floor before the P&L does.
Playbook Adherence: Your playbook, finally observed.
Coaching from Best Conversations: Your best advisor, teaching everyone.

Borentis is the Agentic Operating System for Customer Interactions, built for Indian retail floors: consented one-tap capture on the advisor's phone, every conversation scored against your playbook with the evidence behind every number, leads created when a number is heard, and coaching from your own best conversations.

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