How Employee/Invoice Pricing Deals Will Help You Save Money

Sometimes car manufacturers offer special discounts known as employee or invoice pricing deals, which reduce the MSRP to the dealer invoice price – the amount a dealer would pay for a vehicle. So far, the only brands to offer such deals are Ford, General Motors and Hyundai. In the case of GM, the brands covered are Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC.

What Separates These Deals from Regular Incentives?

On the surface, an employee pricing deal looks like a regular incentive, but it’s not an incentive in the traditional sense. The major difference is that these discounts allow you to buy a car at the actual invoice price, meaning that the dealer is unlikely to profit from such a deal – although there are exceptions, and we will outline them further down in the article.

Since there is essentially no dealer margin, this means that employee pricing deals provide the lowest price a customer can possibly attain. As a result, dealers will reject any attempts at lowering the price even more.

By contrast, normal incentives tend to be more profitable for dealers because they do not offer rock-bottom prices. No matter how big the incentive is, there is always room to negotiate a lower price.

Employee Pricing or Invoice Pricing? Which One is It?

While Ford and GM call them “employee pricing deals,” Hyundai refers to them as “invoice pricing deals.” The purpose of both is seemingly identical – to bring the MSRP down to the (perceived) dealer cost – but there are several notable differences.

An employee pricing deal is the actual dealer invoice price, which means no negotiations. An invoice pricing deal, however, is more like a stackable cash incentive, with the amount being the difference between the MSRP and dealer invoice price. This means that it lowers the price to what is advertised to be the dealer cost as opposed to the actual dealer cost, leaving room for further negotiations. As a result, it is sometimes possible to combine or “stack” this incentive with another one, such as zero-per-cent financing, but such deals are not openly advertised.

How to Find Employee Pricing Deals

The best time to obtain an employee pricing deal is usually around summer. So, if you are planning to buy your car during any other season, then it would make more sense to look for a different discount.

The most obvious place to find out if your chosen manufacturer is offering an employee pricing deal is by heading over to their website. Ford and GM usually advertise them very openly, so you should be able to see all the offers right then and there. The less obvious way would be to call a nearby dealer and ask them yourself.

You can also check out the latest car pricing information right here at Unhaggle.com, where you can learn whether an employee pricing deal is in effect or not.

For more information on car pricing and incentives, be sure to consult our free dealer cost report or contact our customer service team, if there are any additional questions.