Welcome to ImportOps

New to ImportOps? This is a short tour of what the app does and how to get around, so the rest of the help centre makes sense.

What is ImportOps?

ImportOps is an operations platform for vehicle import businesses. It tracks every vehicle you handle from acquisition through to customer delivery, along with the work that happens in between: shipping, compliance, workshop prep, sales, and the paperwork that holds it all together.

The core idea is one pipeline per vehicle. A vehicle doesn't sit in one place between purchase and delivery; it moves through a sequence of stages, and at each stage there's data to capture, tasks to complete, and documents to file. Before ImportOps, that information tends to live in spreadsheets, email threads, WhatsApp chats, invoices, PDFs, and people's heads. ImportOps puts it on one record per vehicle, and surfaces the right data at the right moment.

Who it's built for

ImportOps is built for businesses that import vehicles and resell them. That usually means:

• Dealers and traders who source vehicles overseas (from auctions, suppliers, or direct sellers) and ship them to their home market
• Workshops that prep imported vehicles for local compliance and sale
• Teams of several people (admins, sales staff, workshop technicians, ops managers) who each need a different view of the same pipeline

A one-person operation works, but the tool earns its keep when multiple roles need to coordinate. The permission model lets each person see what they need without getting in each other's way.

The journey every vehicle takes

The exact steps depend on your business, but most imported vehicles move through a version of this:

1. Acquired: you've bought or committed to buy a vehicle at its origin
2. On its way: it's at sea or in transit to your destination
3. Arrived: it's landed and going through customs and compliance
4. In the workshop: your team is inspecting, repairing, detailing, and getting it ready to sell
5. Sale ready: it's available to reserve or sell
6. Reserved or sold: a customer has committed, or paid in full
7. Delivered: it's left your possession

Each step has its own data: a shipment record, a customs document, workshop tasks, a customer contact, payment history. ImportOps captures the data once, in the part of the app that's natural for the work (Shipments, Workshop, Customers, and so on), then reflects the vehicle's current stage everywhere else.

You don't have to use every stage. If your business doesn't handle workshop prep in-house, for example, that part of the pipeline stays empty and doesn't get in your way.

We unpack the stage model in more detail in Understanding the pipeline.

Getting around

The left sidebar is the map of the app. What you see depends on your role, but the major sections are:

• Dashboard: headline metrics and a pipeline snapshot
• Vehicles: the full list of vehicles with filters, search, and adding or importing
• Pipeline: a board view showing where everything is right now
• Workshop: task tracking for prep work, with a calendar and downloadable sheets
• Shipments: container planning and arrival tracking
• Customers and Suppliers: your contact records
• Documents: document storage
• Reports: sales and inventory reports (availability depends on your plan)
• Support: ways to get help, including this help centre
• Settings: your organisation, team, billing, and preferences

At the top of every page there's a search bar. It's labelled generically, but it only searches vehicles, by VIN, stock number, make, or model. To find a customer or a shipment, open that section and use the filters there.

The bell next to the search shows your notifications and flashes briefly when a new one arrives. The avatar on the far right opens your account menu.

Where to go next

• If you're an admin setting up the organisation, Your first week is a sequenced walk-through of what to do and in what order.
• If a colleague invited you, You've been invited: what to do next explains what you'll see and why some things might look locked.
• If you want the pipeline concept explained more deeply before touching any settings, Understanding the pipeline is a short conceptual read.

Most of the initial setup is done in an afternoon. After that, ImportOps stays in the background. You spend your time on the work itself, and the pipeline keeps track of where every vehicle is.