Deals closed off-platform
Recording a sale that happened somewhere else — the commission, the paperwork, and attesting to what actually occurred.
TL;DRAI summary
This chapter explains how to record a sale that happened outside Cypress, such as at a physical auction. Recording these deals helps keep your vehicle inventory accurate and ensures that all sales, even off-platform ones, are properly accounted for and auditable.
For: Cypress Managers only
Not every sale runs on the rail. A vehicle goes at a physical auction, or two parties who already knew each other agree terms and sign on paper. The sale is real, the commission is owed, and the vehicle needs to end up SOLD — but walking it through six steps that already happened is a fiction that helps nobody and leaves a timeline nobody can trust.
So Cypress records those deals instead of running them.
Where it lives
Post-Sale → open the deal → Deal Setup → Closed off-platform…
Deal Setup is the right home for it because it is the fork in the road: a deal that runs here follows the seller and buyer confirmations, and a deal that already happened takes this route instead. The control is CM-only.
The three things it asks
They are in this order because each one depends on the last.
1. The commission — never waived
"Closed elsewhere" is not a way around Cypress's fee, and the flow will not record a deal until the fee is settled.
Most off-platform deals have no invoice at all, because the commission is raised when both sides confirm Deal Setup and nobody ever did. In that case the flow raises it and settles it in the same action. Raising it is also what locks the commission scheme — so if the scheme is wrong, correct it on the Deal Setup card first; afterwards it takes a credit note.
You record the payment as it actually arrived — wire, bank deposit, cheque or other — with its reference and date. That is the same record you would make in Billing, and it can still be made there instead.
A partial payment is refused: the fee is owed in full before a deal is recorded as closed. A commission already deferred to an ACH batch is left alone — it is collected there, not here.
2. Paperwork — optional
Bill of Sale, proof of payment, gate pass, title, or anything else. PDF or photo, up to 20 MB each. Every file can be viewed, replaced, or removed while the closing is still open, and each one is filed against the step it belongs to so it is findable later.
Nothing here is required. A deal with no paperwork can still be recorded — but the deal is only as auditable as what you attach.
3. What actually happened — attested step by step
The list of remaining steps arrives fully ticked, because the ordinary case is a deal that ran to completion elsewhere. Your job is to untick anything that did not happen.
- Tick everything → the sale closes, and the vehicle is marked SOLD with its sale price and completion date, exactly as a deal that ran on the rail.
- Leave something unticked → those steps stay open and the closing stays live, pointing at the first one outstanding. A title still sitting with the lienholder is a real, ordinary state.
Each tick is written to its own step, carrying your explanation and your name. That is the point: afterwards the timeline reads as a record of what someone attested to, not as a deal that teleported to done.
An explanation is required — a sentence on what was agreed and where. It goes on the audit trail, because the terms of an off-platform deal are otherwise folklore.
Afterwards
The deal carries an off-platform marker in the Post-Sale hub and in Billing, and the closing shows what was recorded, when, and why.
It counts in GMV like any other sale, because it is one. The marker is what lets a report separate the two when someone asks.
Deal Setup stops asking for confirmations: the parties never used the platform, so there is nothing for either side to confirm, and stamping a sign-off on their behalf would put something on the record that never happened.
Business rules
- CM-only. Sellers and buyers cannot record a deal as closed off-platform.
- The commission is never waived — settled, deferred to an ACH batch, or explicitly credit-noted. Never skipped.
- Partial payments do not settle a fee or release a closing.
- Every attested step keeps its own record of who attested and why.
- The vehicle ends SOLD only when every step is attested; a partial attestation leaves the closing in progress.
- A closing already recorded off-platform cannot be confirmed through Deal Setup.