What a PDI actually is
A pre-delivery inspection is the final quality gate between a car arriving in your yard and a customer driving it away. Done well, it does two jobs at once: it catches transit damage, missing accessories and setup faults before the handover, and it produces a record you can stand behind if a customer questions the car's condition later. This guide treats the PDI as a repeatable operational process — not a one-off favour a busy yard does when it has time.
The 6 stages of a dealership PDI process
Arrival & stock-in check
Confirm VIN and odometer, log transit damage, and verify accessories against the invoice the moment the car enters the yard.Exterior & paint
Go panel by panel — paint, glass, tyres and under-body. Photograph anything flagged so there's an image, not just a note.Interior & electricals
Upholstery, infotainment, lights, power windows and warning lamps. This is where small setup faults hide.Mechanical & powertrain
Fluids, battery and powertrain-specific checks. Petrol, CNG, hybrid and EV differ — an EV needs a battery state-of-charge check and skips the engine-oil check entirely.Road & function test
Brakes, steering, AC and any ADAS features fitted. Confirm the car drives the way the customer will expect on day one.Manager review & sign-off
Nothing reaches the customer until a manager reviews and approves it. Most yards do this informally — and then can't prove it later.
Who signs off, and why it matters
A PDI is only as trustworthy as its accountability chain: the inspector runs the checklist, the manager reviews and approves, and only then does the customer receive the report. Skip the middle step and you have no independent check; skip the record and you have no defence. An unprovable verbal handover is exactly where "that scratch was already there" disputes begin — and where a dealership quietly absorbs the cost.
Paper checklist vs digital PDI
| Paper checklist | Digital PDI | |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence | Signature only | Timestamped photos & video per check |
| Consistency | Varies by staff member | Same checklist on every car |
| Powertrain | One generic sheet | Adapts to petrol / CNG / hybrid / EV |
| Manager approval | After the fact, if at all | Required before the customer sees the report |
| Customer report | Rarely shared | Branded, sent on WhatsApp or email |
| Retrieval | Filing cabinet | Searchable dashboard |
Get a dealership PDI format you can brand
A clean, ready-to-use pre-delivery inspection format — the stages above, laid out so your yard team can start running a consistent check today. Enter your work email and we'll send it over.
From a format to a system
A format is the right place to start — it makes the check consistent. The next step is making it provable: running a powertrain-specific checklist on every car, capturing photo evidence at each stage, requiring manager approval, and sending the customer a report branded to your dealership. That's what CarPDI does across every Maruti Suzuki Arena and NEXA model.
See what an evidence-backed PDI looks like on your cars.
Explore the 227-checkpoint coverage, or the case for running it inside your own yard.
Book a demoFrequently asked questions
How long should a proper PDI take per car?
Once the process is standardised and staff run it on a phone, a thorough evidence-backed inspection is typically 15–25 minutes per car. The bottleneck is usually manager review, not the inspection.
Do we need to buy new devices to run a digital PDI?
No. It runs on any Android phone or iPhone your team already owns, works offline in the yard, and syncs when back online.
How is a digital PDI different from our current paper checklist?
A paper checklist proves a signature. A digital PDI captures timestamped photos and video at each check, keeps the checklist identical for every car, requires manager approval before the customer sees anything, and stores every report in a searchable dashboard.
Which powertrains does the checklist need to cover?
Petrol, CNG, hybrid and EV each need a different checklist — an EV skips the engine-oil check and adds battery state-of-charge, for example. A good digital PDI adapts the checklist to the powertrain automatically.