Owner Guide

This guide is for players who own or manage a dealership business. Everything here happens through the Manage panel — the boss menu built into ars_cardealer. Administrators grant ownership of an ownable shop; from then on the owner runs staffing, funds, stock, and promotions without any admin involvement.

Note: If your server runs managementMode = 'job', ownership and payouts come from the framework’s job/society system instead of a player-owned balance. The tabs below still work, but funds, salaries, and ownership sections don’t apply. See Configuration.

Opening the Manage Panel
Dashboard
Roles and Permissions
Hiring and Managing Employees
Salaries
Commissions
Coupons
Stock and Restock Orders
Display Vehicles
Test Drives
Sales History
Funds and Shop Settings

1. Opening the Manage Panel

Target the Manage point at your dealership (the same target system used to browse vehicles). The server checks your employee role before opening the panel — customers and non-staff get nothing.

The panel has ten tabs. Which ones you see depends on your role:

Tab	Required Permission
Dashboard	Any staff role
Vehicles	`stock_view`
Orders	`stock_view`
Sales	`sell`
Employees	`hire`
Commissions	`sell`
Coupons	`coupons`
Test Drives	`sell`
Display Vehicles	`manage_display`
Settings	`withdraw`

2. Dashboard

The Dashboard is the landing view: current balance, open/closed state, recent revenue, and quick stats about stock and employees. Quick-action buttons jump you into the other tabs.

3. Roles and Permissions

Roles are ranked low to high in roleOrder. A lower rank can never hire or promote someone above its own level. The matrix below shows the factory defaults from Config.Business.roles — server owners can tune them in config.lua.

Permission	What it unlocks	Intern	Sales	Senior Sales	Supervisor	Manager	Owner
`sell`	Close assisted sales with customers	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
`stock_view`	See the Stock and Orders tabs	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
`display`	View display vehicle info	✘	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
`stock_order`	Place restock orders	✘	✘	✔	✔	✔	✔
`hire`	Hire employees / change roles	✘	✘	✘	✔	✔	✔
`coupons`	Create, toggle, and delete coupon codes	✘	✘	✘	✔	✔	✔
`open`	Open/close the dealership lot	✘	✘	✘	✔	✔	✔
`stock_manage`	Edit retail prices and listing status	✘	✘	✘	✔	✔	✔
`manage_display`	Add/remove/reprice display vehicles	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔	✔
`fire`	Fire employees	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔	✔
`deposit`	Deposit money into the shop balance	✘	✘	✘	✔	✔	✔
`withdraw`	Withdraw from the shop balance + Settings tab	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔
`stock_delete`	Delete stock listings outright	✘	✘	✘	✘	✘	✔

Notes:

Financing and test drives are not role-gated — they’re governed globally by config (Config.Purchase.Financing.enabled, Config.Dealership.TestDrive.enabled) and per-shop overrides.
In job mode, roles map from framework job grades via Config.Business.jobMode.gradeToRole, so promoting someone means promoting their framework job grade.

4. Hiring and Managing Employees

The Employees tab lists every employee, their role, and their salary. Available if you hold hire or fire.

To hire someone:

Stand near the person you want to hire.
Open the Employees tab and click Hire.
The candidate receives a consent prompt — they must accept within hireConsent.timeout seconds (default 60).
On acceptance they join at the selected role.

You can never hire, promote, or demote someone above your own rank. Changing an employee’s role uses the same nearby-player flow as hiring.

Firing requires the fire permission (manager and above by default) and takes effect immediately.

5. Salaries

Business mode only. Recurring salaries are paid from the shop balance, not from thin air:

Set each employee’s salary in the Employees tab (capped at salaries.maxSalary).
Every salaries.intervalHours (default 24), an automatic sweep pays each eligible employee from the balance.
If the balance would drop below minBalanceBuffer, that payment is skipped and retried on the next sweep.

Salaries pay one interval per sweep — server downtime does not accrue back-pay.

6. Commissions

Every sale pays commission instantly to on-duty reps — assisted sales, financed sales, and self-serve sales alike. Commission comes from new money, not the shop balance (the shop separately earns its own cut of every sale).

Assisted sale — the closing rep earns their full role rate (e.g. sales 5%, senior_sales 7%, supervisor 8%, manager 10%).
Self-serve sale — the pool is split across reps who are on-site, scaled by selfServeMultiplier (default ×0.5).
On-site rule — with requireOnSite enabled, only reps physically near the dealership (within onSiteRadius, default 60 m) earn anything.
No staff on-site — the pool credits to the shop balance instead of vanishing.

The Commissions tab shows the payout ledger: who earned what, on which sale, and when.

7. Coupons

The Coupons tab (requires coupons) manages discount codes for your dealership:

Create — generate a code (length set by codeLength config) limited by percentage or fixed discount, with optional expiry and total/per-player use caps. Server-side caps (maxDiscountPct, maxFixedDiscount) always apply.
Toggle — pause a code without deleting it.
Delete — permanently remove a code. Redemption history stays in the database.

Customers redeem codes in the purchase modal during checkout.

8. Stock and Restock Orders

Stock Tab (requires `stock_view`)

Shows every model stocked at your dealership with retail price, stock count, and listing status. With stock_manage (supervisor+) you can edit prices and toggle whether a vehicle is listed for sale.

Orders Tab

Place restock orders for models you carry. The wholesale cost (a fraction of retail, wholesalePct by default) is charged from the shop balance when the order is placed.

Delivery depends on the shop’s delivery mode:

Mode	How it arrives
Instant	Immediately charged and added to stock.
Auto	Arrives after a short delay (`autoDelay`) plus a surcharge (`autoFeePct`).
Trucking	A truck spawns at the supplier depot. An employee drives it, hitches the trailer, and delivers to the dealership. See the Employee Guide.

Orders that stall auto-cancel after abandonMinutes; cancelled orders refund the wholesale charge.

9. Display Vehicles

The Displays tab (requires manage_display — manager+) manages showroom floor vehicles:

Add a display slot and pick which stocked model it showcases.
Remove slots or reprice them.
Toggle the turntable auto-rotation per slot.

Display vehicles show the floating stats panel to nearby customers and let them buy directly from the driver’s seat when allowed. If a showcased model runs out of stock, the display fades to reduced opacity.

10. Test Drives

The Test Drive tab shows active test drives at your dealership. From here a rep can start an assisted test drive for a nearby customer and end it remotely. See the Employee Guide for the full walkthrough.

11. Sales History

The Sales tab lists this shop’s transactions: buyer, model, payment type (cash/bank/financed/coupon), price, and which rep closed the deal. Use it to verify commissions and spot trends.

12. Funds and Shop Settings

The Settings tab (requires withdraw — owner only by default) controls the money and identity of the business:

Open/close the dealership lot (also available to supervisors via the open permission through the dashboard toggle).
Withdraw cash from the shop balance.
Deposit personal money into the balance (managers can deposit too).
Review per-shop behaviour mirrors (test drives, financing, delivery mode, accepted currencies) that the server admin configured for your shop.

Keep the balance healthy: restock orders, salaries, and customer buyback payouts all draw from it.

Note: This guide is written by a third party. If you find any incorrect or outdated information, please contact us on Discord so we can update it for you.