Austin, Texas — IAS announced that dealers using IAS' SmartMenu software system will now be able to electronically rate Universal Warranty Corporation (UWC) service contracts within the software. This free service gives users a one-click method to acquire available rates for a given vehicle and customer. UWC joins CNA National Warranty Corporation, Protective, and GE Auto Warranty Services as available rate providers within SmartMenu.

With this release of SmartMenu, dealers can rate the service contract automatically and effortlessly. After extracting vehicle information from the DMS, including the VIN and mileage, SmartMenu transmits the data to the VSC provider. The provider responds with a listing of plans applicable to the vehicle being sold. This listing includes the plan name, dealer cost, retail price, term in months, term in miles, deductible, and program options. The user selects which plan(s) to include in various menu packages and the output menu is updated automatically with the appropriate retail price.

According to Bob Corbin, president of IAS, "We are very pleased to make such simple and easy UWC service contract rating available to our dealer customers."

SmartMenu can also sort the results by price to determine which plans fit customer needs and budget. The service contract rating functionality gives dealers flexibility in service contract markup as well. Dealers can choose, on a per-provider basis, whether or not to mark up the VSC product by percentage or dollar amount, and by how much. Feedback from existing dealers indicates that the SmartMenu rating system redefines how dealers think about presenting VSC options to their customers.