I may be giving you way more information than you want. With that said, I’m going to walk you through my entire thought process and needs as they arose throughout the process. I’d, also, like to clarify that I’m sure I took a bunch of unnecessary steps and there are a lot better ways of doing things.
I was helping my gf lease her 1st car. She had absolutely no idea what she wanted other than something that was “cute”. She didn’t even have a budget to start. Once she established a budget of $250 /mo, I started researching what cars she could potentially get in that price range. I was already familiar with the leasing process and jargon but was way out of practice. I found your site and started reading through the archives. Pretty soon, I had a good idea of the sedans that might meet her requirements. I, also, realized that the end of the year would likely offer the best deals she would see in a while. Although the end of the year offered a chance for deals, it, also, offered a hurdle because 2015 model inventory was sparse and changing daily. I was, also, trying to compare 2015 to 2016.
My solution was to create a spreadsheet. While the Lease Compare on LeaseHackr was incredibly useful. I needed a way to compare the actual numbers for the vehicles that I was comparing based on my state’s incentives and discounts. The first thing I did was create the tab named “Brand Comparison”. It was basically LH’s Lease Comparison but using my area’s incentives. I was just running generic comparisons to compare Optima, Sonata, Fusion, Camry, etc.
Next, I wanted to be able to compare specific vehicles to one another. This tab called “All-Deals” was a combination of LH’s Lease Calculator and Lease Compare. I wanted the ability to compare a Camry SE at different price levels to a Camry XE and an Optima. This was turning into a master list of the exact vehicles I was evaluating.
Pretty quickly after starting to input information into the 'All-Deals" tab, I realized I needed a better way to stay organized with what dealers I’d looked at already. Then I created the “Dealers” tab. Basically, just the contact information for every dealer in the area. This ended up being really helpful. At the same time, I created “Inventory - Optima”. This was a list of all of the Optima’s in Phoenix that met my criteria. It wasn’t as detailed as the “All-Deals” tab. I was only using the “Inventory” as a place to copy and paste the information from the dealer’s websites.
Eventually, I ended up creating “Camry-Deals” which is the same information as “All-Deals” but (you guessed it) just for Camrys. This is probably an unnecessary tab but I’m no Excel wizard and I just wanted a clean look at Camry’s when it got down to the end.
Lastly, I created the “Offer Form”. The objective of this form was to create a template so I could easily send my lease offer for specific cars to specific dealers. It contains almost all of the information from the Lease Calculator plus specific info about the vehicle (color, stock number, etc) and buyer credit score. I wanted to be able to copy and paste this form in an email or print it to a pdf to fax or attach to an email.
Once I had identified the model, equipment, color, etc that I was ready to lease, I put my list of all the inventory in town in order of preference. If they were the exact same, I gave next preference to proximity to my house. I then created Offer Forms for each of those vehicles. Then I wanted to identify the Internet Sales Manager and their contact info. I found the best way was using the ‘about’ section of their website but if I couldn’t find it there, I typically found it through chatting with the dealership online.
While it was a TON of work to think all of this through and create the spreadsheet, I really think it saved me time and money in the end. The form produced great results on both an Optima and Camry. The Optima was offered at a loss due to year end. My gf thought she wanted the Optima and then got cold feet when we went to sign papers on the night of the 3rd. With incentives potentially changing by EOB the next day, the spreadsheet was priceless when she wanted to go with a Camry instead. At that point, I hadn’t looked at Camry inventory because she had ruled it out earlier. Went home the night of the 3rd, researched inventory with her help and completed the spreadsheet with Camry data. Sent out offers the morning of the 4th. By 1PM, a dealer accepted my offer. We went in last night and signed with no hassle and exactly the numbers we had agreed to.
Here is a link to download the spreadsheet.
Feel free to use however you want. It’s the least I could do after all of the information provided by LH and the community on the forums. Like I said, I was only making this for my personal use. I’m sure someone could make something significantly better with a little effort and I hope that happens so I can use it next time I lease.
Thanks again. Let me know if you have any more questions.
