The deal is not done when the car leaves

The car leaves in an hour. The paperwork lives for years — in the deal jacket, in an audit, in a lender's funding packet. This page is the path a deal's paperwork takes in freeDMS, including the part everyone asks about: the title. The short version is that freeDMS files the title document. It does not work the title. The long version follows.

The jacket:

When a deal closes, its paperwork gathers in one place: the deal jacket. Documents file by type — driver's license, insurance, title, registration, signed forms, and a bucket for everything else. Each one shows who put it there and when. The buyer's order and its signature record sit in the same jacket, so the deal's numbers and the deal's paper never live in different systems.

Signatures are captured in the product and kept as an audit record of who signed and what was signed. It is a record, not a certified e-signature service, and we do not claim otherwise on a page about paperwork.

The checks that travel with the deal:

• The credit application the buyer filled out stays attached to the deal it belongs to.
• A payoff quote on the trade is recorded in the deal, so the number the desk used is the number in the file.
• The Red Flags and OFAC checks are checklists your people complete and attest to inside the deal record. Your people attest; the system keeps the attestation, the date, and the name. It does not run an outside screening, and the record does not pretend it did.

Finding it in three years:

Deal documents are searchable across the store, and retention rules decide how long each kind is kept. When a document is disposed of, that is recorded too — what, when, by whom. When a lender, an auditor, or a buyer's lawyer asks for the file, the answer is one jacket, not a cabinet, a scanner, and a prayer.

Limits, on the title especially:

• There is no title workflow. No title status, no title clerk queue, no "title received" tracking. The title is a document type in the jacket — where you file the paper — and that is all.
• Nothing submits title or registration work to your state electronically.
• Lien releases and payoff follow-through on the car you sold are not tracked. The payoff quote on a trade coming in is recorded; the paperwork chase after the sale is yours.

Stores that move a lot of metal and live by their title clerk's system will find this thin. For a store whose paperwork problem is "it is scattered and we cannot find it," the jacket is the fix that exists today, and the pilot is free.