Lienholders
A lienholder is whoever is being paid off over time on a financed vehicle — a bank, a credit union, a finance company, or your own dealership if you carry the note. Lienholders is the list of the ones you work with, saved once so their details go onto the title paperwork correctly every time. A cash deal has no lienholder at all.
What it costs
Section titled “What it costs”Adding and reusing lienholders is free, including the Florida lienholder search described below.
What a lienholder record is for
Section titled “What a lienholder record is for”The lien is recorded on the title, and the state prints it from what you enter here. Getting it wrong is not a cosmetic problem: a lien recorded against the wrong name or address is a title that has to be corrected.
Answer Who holds the lien? first, because it decides what the state needs:
| Answer | What it means |
|---|---|
| Company | A bank, credit union or finance company. The usual case. |
| Dealer | A dealership financing the vehicle itself — Buy Here Pay Here. |
| Person | A private party who carried the note on this vehicle. |
The record then asks for the Company Name — the name the lien is recorded under, not a branch or a trading name — the address the state has on file, a mailing address if the title goes somewhere else, and contact details, which are what you use to request a payoff and to send lien-satisfaction paperwork later.
The ELT number
Section titled “The ELT number”Florida records most liens electronically, and the ELT Number is how the state identifies that lienholder. The lienholder knows their own number and should give it to you.
Not every lienholder has one. The field is marked optional and should be left blank when they do not — a made-up number is worse than an empty one.
Look up a Florida lienholder
Section titled “Look up a Florida lienholder”If your dealership is in Florida, the record offers Look up a Florida lienholder: search the state’s list by company name or ELT number, review what comes back, and apply it. It fills the details in for you and it does not use credits.
Search Florida Lienholders
Search for a lienholder from the Florida database by company name or ELT number
Found 3 results
How it attaches to a deal
Section titled “How it attaches to a deal”The deal jacket has a Lienholder section, and it opens with a straight question: Is there a lienholder on this deal?
- No — the section closes and stops asking. That is the right answer on a cash deal.
- Yes — you are asked whether the lienholder is already in your system. Yes, find it searches your saved lienholders; No, add it now creates one.
Answering the question is not optional in the sense of ignorable: leaving it blank leaves the deal jacket unable to tell you whether the section is finished, so the checklist keeps flagging it.
Like customers and vehicles, a lienholder is one shared record: the same bank appears on every deal you have financed through them, and a chip on the record shows how many other deal jackets it is on. Correcting their address once corrects it everywhere. Removing a lienholder from a deal does not delete it — it stays in your list and can be added back.
If it will not let you continue
Section titled “If it will not let you continue”- “Your account does not have permission to add lienholders.” Someone at your dealership can change this — see Adding or Removing Users.
- The Lienholder section keeps showing as incomplete on a cash deal. The applicability question has not been answered. Open the section and answer No.
- The Florida search finds nothing. Try the ELT number instead of the name, or the other way around — a lienholder’s legal name and the name you know them by are often different. If neither works, enter the details by hand.
After you finish
Section titled “After you finish”- Finish the deal. Creating a Deal Jacket — the lienholder feeds the title paperwork and, on a financed deal, the payment schedule.
- Related records. Customers and Vehicles and Your Inventory work the same way: saved once, reused everywhere.
- Deleted the wrong one? Use Show Deleted Lienholders on the list and restore it.