Chiptuning Dealer Portal: What Each Dealer Gets, Pays and Sees

A chiptuning dealer portal is the simplest way to grow a file service past the customers you can reach yourself. Instead of one website taking every job, each of your dealers runs a portal of their own, under their own name, and the work flows back to you. The idea is easy. The detail that decides whether it works is less so: what each dealer is allowed to use, how they pay you, how fast they are served, and whether either side can see what they were charged for.

This article goes through those questions in the order a network owner meets them, using how the TunerSuite dealer network answers each one.

One install, four roles

The first decision is what each installation is. A portal can be standalone, a master that receives work, a dealer portal that sends it, or both at once — a shop that supplies its own dealers while also sending some jobs further up. In TunerSuite this is a setting on the same install, not a different product, so a workshop that starts alone can become a master later without moving its customers or its files.

When a dealer’s customer uploads a file, the request is forwarded to the master’s tuning queue with the vehicle, the work ordered and the file itself. When the master finishes, the tuned file flows back and the customer downloads it on the dealer’s portal. The customer deals with the dealer’s brand from upload to download: their logo, their colours, their domain, their emails and their invoices.

A dealer you trust to tune can keep its files in-house instead of forwarding them. And a portal that is its own business — not one you manage — can connect as an independent peer: it sends you jobs by hand or automatically, keeps its own features, and is never governed by your settings.

What each dealer is allowed to use

Not every dealer needs everything. A dealer who only takes files in and passes them on does not need the AI tools or the dyno editor; a dealer who tunes does. In TunerSuite every module is granted per dealer, from that dealer’s page in your network: file tools, AI tools, Dyno Studio, Knowledge Search, Vehicle Hub, Marketing & Knowledge, vendor connectors, the workshop diary, and the support assistant on Telegram or as a chat button on the dealer’s own portal. A dealer sees nothing you have not granted, and a change reaches them within minutes.

For managed dealers you can also choose which sections of the dashboard they see and whether new sign-ups on their portal need approval. That matters more than it sounds: a dealer’s dashboard showing figures they do not understand generates questions you then have to answer.

One catalogue for the whole network

A dealer working from a different list of services is a dealer quoting different prices. TunerSuite lets a master publish its service list to every connected dealer, with a preview of what changes for each before anything moves, and lets a dealer sync from its master in one click — services to add, prices below the master’s list to correct, and anything that looks like a duplicate under a different name. The vehicle database, with its tuning figures and ECU assignments, moves to dealers the same way.

How dealers pay you

This is where networks usually go wrong, because the money is often settled privately and nobody can reconstruct later what a dealer owed for which job. TunerSuite gives each dealer a billing mode, chosen per dealer, with defaults for new ones:

• Settled privately — no automation, for dealers you invoice another way.
• A flat amount per request.
• A price per modification — the sum of your wholesale rates for the work ordered.
• A rate on the dealer’s credits — a share of what the dealer charges their customer.

A dealer can run on a pre-paid wallet, with an optional credit line so their files keep flowing when the wallet dips below zero; they are warned the moment it does. Put a dealer on a credit price list and their top-up screen offers exactly those packs at those prices. Payments recorded by hand work in both directions, with every move in the dealer’s payment history.

The part dealers notice most is the statement. Every movement appears on the dealer’s own account page — what they paid in and what each job was charged — so the question “what was I charged for?” is answered on their own screen instead of in a message to you. On your side, the request history shows what each dealer was billed for each job, kept apart from what your own customers paid.

Turnaround you can promise

Dealers sell speed to their customers, so the speed you give them is part of the product. Each dealer’s page takes a turnaround target of its own for the jobs they send; left blank, they get the same target as everyone else. You can let a connected workshop pay for a faster turnaround and decide how much, grant or withhold that permission per dealer, and switch paid turnaround off across every connected portal at once.

What it costs

A TunerSuite master licence starts from £699, with every dealer under it. Dealer portals start from £699 each for up to three; above three dealer portals the price is a quote rather than a list price. The monthly is £49.99, and only in a month a portal delivers ten files or more. The detail is on the pricing page.

If you are weighing up a network, the quickest way to see how a dealer portal and a master fit together is the live demo. The full list of network features is on the dealer network page.