Dealers recommend each other things constantly. Who to use for warranties. Which transporter actually turns up. Where to send a car for paint. It happens in the queue at the auction, in the trade groups, in a WhatsApp thread at half nine at night, and none of it is ever written down or paid for.
"What do you use for your website?" is one of those questions. We know it is, because a decent share of the dealers who sign up to Vehiso tell us another dealer told them to. That has been going on quietly for years, and up to now the person doing the telling got nothing out of it except the satisfaction of being right.
That changes from now. Every dealer on Vehiso has a referral link, and if another dealer signs up through it and goes on to pay, you earn a share of what they pay us. It is live in your account today, on the Referral Programme page.
Here is exactly how it works, what you actually get, and the parts most people do not expect.
What you get
10% of what the dealer you introduced pays for their plan, on every payment they make for their first six months.
Not 10% of the first bill. Not a voucher. Ten per cent of each plan payment, excluding tax, repeated for six months.
On our £49 Starter plan that is about £4.90 a month, so roughly £29 across the six months. On the £199 Ultra plan it is £19.90 a month, closer to £120. Whatever plan they are on, you get a tenth of it, and it lands every time they pay.
There is nothing to apply for, no cost to take part, and no approval step. If you have a Vehiso account, you already have a link.
How it actually works
1. You share your link. There is a page in your account with your referral link and a short code on it. Send it to whoever you like: a mate at another forecourt, a trade group, someone who asked you at a sale on Tuesday.
The link is deliberately short, so it survives being read out on the phone or printed on the back of a card. It looks like this:
go.vehiso.com/referral?ref=YOURCODE
2. Someone signs up through it. Your code follows them from the click all the way to the sign-up form, and it holds for thirty days. So if they click it, get pulled away by a customer, and come back a fortnight later to sign up properly, it still counts as yours.
First link wins. Once a dealer is attributed to you, that does not change afterwards.
3. They start paying. Nothing is earned on a sign-up on its own. Your earning starts when that dealer pays their first bill on a paid plan, which is the point at which they have actually become a customer rather than someone having a look around. From there it repeats on every plan payment they make for the next six months.
4. You choose how to take it. Each amount sits on hold for thirty days, then becomes available, and you pick how you want it. This is the part people do not expect, so it gets its own section.
Three ways to take the money
Most referral schemes give you a credit note and hope you forget about it. You get a genuine choice here, and you can mix and match across different referrals.
Off your next invoice
Credited straight against your Vehiso bill. Nothing to set up, no minimum, and it happens automatically on your next invoice without you doing anything at all. If your bill is £79 and you have £29 available, you pay £50.
This is the simplest one and it is the right answer for most dealers.
Into your Vehiso wallet
Your wallet is what pays for the pay-as-you-go tools: AI vehicle descriptions and image tools, Photo Studio, valuations, SMS sends. Referral money can go straight in there.
Worth saying plainly: wallet balance is spendable inside Vehiso but cannot later be turned back into cash. Pick this one because you want the tools, not as a holding pen.
Cash to your bank
Paid out through Stripe, who collect your bank details directly so we never hold them. The minimum withdrawal is £25, a small sending fee comes out of the amount, and every withdrawal gets looked at by a person before it goes. Expect it to land in a day or two rather than instantly.
What it costs you
Nothing. There is no fee to take part, no minimum number of referrals you have to hit, and no penalty for a month where you refer nobody.
The dealer you refer does not pay more, either. Your share comes out of what we receive, not out of their pocket.
The bits worth knowing
A few rules exist. None of them are traps, and each one is there for a reason.
Money sits for thirty days before you can spend it. A referred dealer can pay and then get a refund. Holding the reward for a month means nobody is ever asked to hand back money they have already spent.
Cash withdrawals start at £25. That is about fees, not about us. A run of small separate bank transfers costs more to send than they are worth. There is no minimum on invoice credit or the wallet, because that money never leaves Vehiso.
Up to twenty referred dealers a month. It counts dealers, not payments, so a referral that lands inside a month keeps earning for its full six months regardless. If you ever do fill a month, you get an email telling you so.
There is no lifetime limit. Past two hundred paying referrals we will get in touch about a proper partner arrangement, because at that point you are genuinely acting as a reseller and there is a better deal to be had. Your referrals keep earning while we have that conversation.
Dealers only. Agency accounts do not take part, because agencies already have a commercial relationship with us.
The full detail is in the Referral Programme Terms, and if anything here and the terms ever disagree, the terms are the ones that count.
Where to find your link
Sign in to Vehiso, open Billing in the left-hand menu, then Referral Programme. Your link and your code are at the top of the page, along with everything you have earned, what is still on hold, and what is available to take.
If you are not on Vehiso yet, you can start a free trial and get your link the moment you are in. The free plan includes a website and the dealer management system, so there is a version of this that costs you nothing to be part of.
One honest note
We built this because the recommendations were happening anyway and it seemed daft that the person making them got nothing.
It pays for referrals that stick, which is the whole shape of it. A dealer who signs up, pays once and disappears earns you nothing much. A dealer who stays earns you six months of a real share. That is deliberate, and it is why the reward is a percentage rather than a one-off bounty. There is more on that reasoning in why we pay a share and not a bounty.
If you want to see what the numbers look like against your own monthly bill, we have done the arithmetic in the referral that pays your Vehiso bill.
