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Why a Vehicle Isn't Showing on Your Website: The Four Sub-Status Checkboxes and the WebManager Export

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This article covers the four per-sub-status checkboxes that control website visibility — Show on the website, Do not show the price on the website, Set the status to "Live" in WebManager, and In WebManager, set the vehicle status to "Holding" — plus the one-way WebManager export queue that carries Sold and Deleted vehicles to your site, and the lot-key match that decides which location a vehicle lands on.

Scope: this article is only about vehicle listings moving from DeskManager Online to your WebManager website. It is not about a vehicle missing from the DeskManager Online Inventory List itself, not about vehicle photos (they sync on a separate path), and not about leads or credit applications coming back the other way — see WebManager Contacts & DeskManager Online.

Questions this answers

  • "We marked a car Sold three days ago and it's still showing as available on our WebManager website."
  • "I deleted a duplicate vehicle from Inventory yesterday and it's still live on the website today."
  • "Vehicles at our main lot appear on the website but nothing from our second lot ever does, even though both lots are in the same DeskManager Online account."
  • "Is there a log or report showing which vehicles failed to export to WebManager, instead of checking each vehicle by hand?"
  • "We corrected a VIN in DeskManager Online and the vehicle's color and specs got overwritten by a VIN re-decode. How do we keep our corrections?"
  • "A vehicle is in an In Inventory status but never reaches the website — which sub-status checkbox is it missing?"

Check these first

  1. Confirm the vehicle's sub-status, not just its status. Open the vehicle and check its Status and Sub-status on the vehicle detail tabs. Whether a vehicle can appear on the website, has its price hidden, is eligible to export at all, or gets pushed into a Holding state on the site is controlled by four checkboxes set per sub-status under Settings > Inventory > Sub-status — not by the top-level status alone:
    • Show on the website
    • Do not show the price on the website
    • Set the status to "Live" in WebManager
    • In WebManager, set the vehicle status to "Holding"

See Inventory Sub-Statuses for how to edit these. A vehicle can be in an "In Inventory" status and still never make it to the website if its sub-status doesn't have Show on the website and Set the status to "Live" in WebManager checked.

  1. Give it time. Every save, add, cost change, or deal finalization queues the vehicle for a background export that WebManager picks up and republishes — one-way and asynchronous, not instant. If the change is minutes old, wait and refresh first.
  2. If the vehicle originally came from your website, check whether its sub-status also has Exclude this vehicle from the list of available vehicles checked and is a Holding-type sub-status — that combination skips the export entirely for WebManager-imported vehicles.
  3. Check whether photos are the only thing missing. Photos don't travel with the vehicle data export, so listing data and photos can be out of sync in time even when both paths are working.
  4. If a whole lot is missing rather than one vehicle, that's a lot-matching problem, not an export problem — see Why one lot's vehicles don't appear below.

Why this happens

A sold or deleted vehicle doesn't come down

Finalizing a sale (outside of a Quick Deal) and deleting a vehicle both trigger a fresh export marking the vehicle Sold or Deleted so the website can remove or archive the listing. That export is fire-and-forget — DMO queues the file and moves on without confirming the website received it. If the queue or upload fails, nothing on screen tells you. The vehicle looks correctly Sold or gone in DMO while still showing live on the website.

Only non-Quick-Deal sales trigger this automatic re-export on finalization, so a Quick Deal sale relies on the vehicle's next regular save to pick up the Sold status.

One lot's vehicles never appear

For dealers running multiple lots, DMO matches a vehicle to a specific lot on the website by a lot key derived from the DMO lot number. If your second lot's number or setup doesn't match what's configured on the WebManager side, vehicles from that lot are treated as not present on the website — even though the export for those vehicles succeeded on DMO's end. This is a separate failure point from the export itself: a vehicle can leave DMO successfully and still never resolve to a real spot on the site because its lot doesn't line up.

A VIN correction overwrites your color/spec fix

If you correct a VIN and its style code differs from what's on file, that mismatch can trigger a re-decode, pulling fresh color and spec data from the VIN decoder — which can overwrite fields you'd manually corrected. The same applies in reverse: an inbound update from WebManager carrying a different VIN style code re-decodes the vehicle on the DMO side. Re-check any manually corrected spec field any time a VIN is touched on that vehicle.

There's no on-screen error when a sync fails

None of the jobs above surface a pass/fail status in DMO. Export outcomes go only to an internal log; failed inbound imports (leads, credit applications, vehicle updates from WebManager) are copied to an internal error folder — neither is a screen a dealer can open. A silently failed sync and one that hasn't run yet look identical.

What to do if that doesn't fix it

  1. Re-save the vehicle to force a fresh export attempt (open it, and Save even with no changes).
  2. Re-check the sub-status checkboxes after any status or sub-status change — changing a vehicle's status can silently swap in a different sub-status with different website settings.
  3. For a suspected lot mismatch, confirm the DMO lot number/setup matches what's configured for that location on the WebManager side before assuming the export failed.
  4. If a sold or deleted vehicle is still live after more than a day, or a re-decode overwrote spec data again, contact support with the vehicle's stock number and VIN.

Related settings

  • Sync Watchlist (Setup > Inventory Settings): vehicles in a Watchlist status are excluded from export entirely unless this is turned on for your account.
  • Export Dealer Cost with Pack to WM / Export Dealer Cost with Accrued Fees to WM (Setup > Inventory Settings): these affect the Dealer Cost value sent to WebManager, not the customer-facing asking price. If a cost figure on a WebManager-sourced report looks off, check these before assuming the price itself is wrong.
  • Sub-status checkboxes described above live under Settings > Inventory > Sub-status — see Inventory Sub-Statuses.

When to contact support

There is currently no dealer-facing screen, log, or report showing which vehicles or records failed to sync to the website — the checklist above is the extent of self-service diagnosis available today. Contact support when:

  • A sold or deleted vehicle is still live on the website after you've re-saved it and waited a full business day.
  • A lot's vehicles never appear even though the sub-status settings and export are confirmed correct.
  • A VIN re-decode has overwritten spec fields and you need the correction re-applied or the re-decode behavior reviewed for that vehicle.
  • A lead or credit application submitted on the website never appeared in Contacts.

Have the vehicle's stock number, VIN, and lot name ready — support can check the internal export/import logs that aren't visible from within DMO.

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