Mistakes to Avoid While Purchasing Self-storage Management Software

Mistakes to Avoid While Purchasing Self-storage Management Software

You have invested time, resources and energy investing in a self-storage facility that your neighbourhood residents can use during the year to store their items. You have discovered that you will need to use a self-storage property management programme or service to assist you run your company after wasting too much time and energy in this self-storage facility. You don’t want to rush into this decision because you’ll need to make sure that all of your needs are genuinely fulfilled by the programme you potentially chose. Because every model of self-storage is different, you will need applications for self-storage property management that will fulfil your company’s unique needs. For any storage facility owner, selecting a Self-Storage Management Program is a major decision. To ensure that the programme you select will suit the unique needs of your facility, you will need to do thorough research. Choosing a Self-Storage Management Program is a major decision for a facility owner, aiming to make your decision easier. To ensure that the programme you select will suit the unique needs of your facility, you will need to do thorough research.

What is self-storage management software?

Simply put, software for self-storage management is a device that allows storage owners to remotely control their units and have all the key pieces of data at hand at all times. The data on available units, customer balance, accounting, payment processing, customer notes, etc can be readily obtained. This makes you concentrate more intensively on your business, saves your time and gives you much better workflow control.

Mistakes While Purchasing Self-Storage Management Software

  1. Buying Software too Late: At least six months before you open a new self-storage house, you can purchase management software. You should also be prepared to receive rental requests, take customer contact details and reserve units while creating your business phone number, Yellow Pages listing and advertising, company website and business bank/merchant account. Research and decide your business rules, including the terms of your lease agreement, whether you are expected to charge rent or merchandise tax or when you expect rent to be due.
  2. Confusion over Terms of Software : You’ll have a hard time making an educated decision about which management software programme is best for your organisation if you don’t understand the words PC-based, Web-enabled and Web-based. PC-based software (also known as desktop or Web-enabled software) is installed directly on a device and does not need to be linked to other computers unless information is shared with you. With this programme, all company data belongs to the software licence owner and remains at the location of his company. To access the app, a user doesn’t have to log in to the Internet. With this software, except for periodic upgrades or service programmes, there are no transactions other than a software licence.
  3. Purchasing Software From a Hardware Company: Access-control hardware is the main product of hardware companies. They do not devote time and money to applications for management as they do to their hardware goods. As a consequence, they appear to have more minimal and static software products. Although these companies usually market themselves as a “one-stop solution,” in fact, with their hardware they bundle their management software to feed the hardware business
  4. Allowing Software to Dictate Business Operations: You should always buy a versatile management package that allows you, according to your needs, to define and support your business rules and procedures. Many individuals just buy management software to find out they can not run the organisation the way they want. As a result, they end up adapting the organisation to the software’s limitations.
  5. Skimping on Functions: Many owners of self-storage skimp on substantial integrated add-on software, such as automated processing of credit-card payments and processing of electronic check/ACH payments. As a result, certain parts of the company must always be manually managed by the owner or manager, investing time, resources and labour on activities that the programme is supposed to do.
  6. Software that does not interface with the other systems : Without understanding it many people choose software that will not interface with their other business systems, including access control and gates, online payment options, kiosks, remote access and backup networking options, electronic payment processing, photo recognition and a host of other features that enable the owner to expand the company’s software.
  7. Limited Options for Payment: You need to have flexible payment solutions that will lead to timely payments and good relationships with customers. The programme should allow tenants to make payments on the website of your facility 24/7, or by automated processing of credit cards and ACH/electronic checks. The more options you give, the less reasons your tenants would have for a payment being skipped.
  8. Giving too much access to Managers: Why not give the keys and the chequebook to your managers? It acts as a deterrent to employee fraud if the employees know that you check the books on a regular basis. Knowing how to execute everyday tasks should be part of your degree of familiarity with management software. There may be no need for your managers to access all the reports that your software can generate. Set up suitable user accounts and passwords so that workers can only access the features suitable for their tasks and monitor all transactions with their user identification.
  9. Limiting Knowledge to Software Fundamentals: Through means of driver’s licence scanner hardware, property managers may enter consumer information into the software; monitor tenant types such as military, student, commercial/condo/apartment, commercial contractor, commercial law or medical, etc and interact directly via tailored services and correspondence to those individual customer types. Language-specific communications, where a client receives emails and letters in the desired language, invoices and letters based on e-mail and rate control systems improve the efficiency of a self-storage company’s marketing and help optimise its revenue. Today, the self-storage market is much more mature and advanced, and management software has added many features to meet the industry’s diverse demands.
  10. Partnering With the Wrong Software Provider: The overall investment you make in your company’s infrastructure, software, people and training is far greater than your management software investment, but the quality of the partnership you create with your software provider is key to your company’s effective activity. Your long-term success will be assured by a successful software tool alongside a sensitive, competent, truthful and supportive provider.

What are the benefits of using self-storage management software?

  • Self-storage management software allows owners to implement recurring billing for prorated payments, unlike the traditional accounting forms of software that were in use until recently. Recurring billing is made possible. Customers will get a detailed report on payment information at any stage when using your services, a feature that they highly appreciate.
  • The programme stores the essential information about your storage facilities in the database, their type, scale, location, availability, etc.-all unit details available at hand. Storage owners can access these pieces of information within a matter of seconds, whenever appropriate.
  • Self-storage management software can help you keep track of a wide range of packing, leasing, and time-based deals and keep these data secure, up-to-date, and usable at all times. You can keep track of all deals and special offers for customers.
  • Security-Now, by using the gate app, it is possible to lock your non-payers out and keep all your facilities far more secure.
  • Revenue management-Proper software for self-storage management can provide a wide variety of operations, from easy billing of the storers to tailoring the prices according to a set of complex rules for some customers.

Conclusion

Software for self-storage management in the storage business is essential because:

  • This offers you better control of your company.
  • At all times and from everywhere, you have easy access to all critical pieces of information.
  • Revenues can be managed much more easily.
  • For your customers, your business strategies are transparent, which boosts credibility, trust, and builds a positive relationship.
  • It provides your customers with numerous payment options, so delayed payments are brought to a minimum.
  • As you can easily lock out non-payers, the security of your facilities is enhanced.

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