The trade register: what the law actually requires

Who it applies to

Any business buying used vehicles to resell them is covered: a used vehicle trader, a dealership that takes cars in and puts them back out, a workshop that trades alongside the servicing. The obligation does not depend on the size of the business or its legal form, but on the nature of the activity — habitually reselling second-hand goods.

That is the part that surprises people most often: a workshop whose main business is repair, but which resells ten or so vehicles a year, falls within the obligation exactly as a full-time trader does.

What the law says

Article 321-7 of the French Code pénal requires a register to be kept by anyone habitually engaged in selling or exchanging second-hand goods. Failing to do so is a criminal offence, punishable by imprisonment and a fine — so the register is not one administrative formality among others.

How it must be kept, and what each entry must contain, are set out in the regulations that follow (R321-3 onwards of the Code pénal). The register has a precise purpose: to make it possible to trace where a vehicle came from, and so to fight the handling of stolen goods.

What the register must contain

Every vehicle that enters your stock produces one entry, and every vehicle that leaves produces another. What is expected:

• A description of the vehicle: make, model, identification number (VIN), registration.
• The date it entered stock.
• The seller's identity and address, taken from identity documents in the case of a private seller.
• The purchase price.
• The date of disposal and the buyer's identity.

Entries follow one another in chronological order, with no gap left between two lines and nothing crossed out. A correction is not erased: it is made by a new entry that leaves the first one readable.

Paper or digital?

Keeping it electronically is allowed. But it carries a condition that few improvised solutions meet: the entries must be unalterable. A shared spreadsheet, however well organised, does not satisfy that requirement — anyone can change a past line without leaving a trace.

The register must also be producible immediately if it is requested. A file only reachable from one machine, or dependent on someone who is on holiday, is a practical problem on the day of an inspection.

The most common failings

• The disposal entry forgotten: the vehicle is sold and handed over, but the register still shows it in stock.
• A private seller's identity written from memory, without checking the documents.
• Catching up at the end of the month, which produces batched entries that are not in order.
• A VIN entered only partly, which does not identify the vehicle with certainty.

Keeping it without thinking about it

The register is kept properly when it is not a separate task. If the stock entry and the sale write the entries directly, there is no catching up, no forgotten disposal, and no gap between what the stock shows and what the register shows.