Section 7 • Utilizing Technology: Analytics To hit these individual occupancy goals, it may be necessary,


on certain sizes, to discount even during the middle of the leas- ing season. While this sounds heretical and even counterintuitive, there is a method in the madness. By practicing these techniques, at the end of the year you will have deposited more income into the bank. You deposit “dollars” into the bank, not “occupancy.” During the beginning of the leasing season, one might choose


to lower occupancy by freeing up units through auctions or by raising rents in order to lease them at higher rates. To do this properly, it is imperative that you must know your demand and anticipated leasing for each month.


Tracking Managers How can you track your managers to ensure maximum perfor- mance? The benefit of computer analysis is the continual auditing of the store operations to discover where managers are making the same mistake, or worse, where they are stealing from you.


Automatic email alerts warning of improper activities are


now are being sent to key employees or owners through some software. And once employees know they are being monitored continually, the problem almost always self corrects immediately. You can be notified when a manager opens the store late or steals cash by having “ghost tenants” who are in units paying rent but are not in your computer system. In the past, these types of ghosts could only be found through


a physical audit of the entire location by looking for lock on units that had no lease. Today’s software can sometimes find those ghost tenants without a physical audit of your location by using a unique probability analysis of the payment data to locate possible ghosts. The ghost tenant may not even know that he or she is not in the system. Another type of theft is when a manager takes advantage of


Chart 7.3 – Total Receipts Without Taxes (October 2014)


$70K $60K $50K $40K $30K $20K $10K $0K


concession plans by moving a tenant out and back in again with- out the tenant even knowing or with the knowledge of the tenant who shares in the benefits. We call these ten- ants “jumpers,” constantly “jumping” out and back into the same units. Again, it often takes a computer to spot this kind of activity. In Chart 7.3, you can see how the computer


Current


Average Budget Projection


18 15 Source: © 2014 District Manager


22 29 31


can keep track of your daily receipts against your average daily receipts during each day of the month. The average actually reflects the daily average for the trailing three months in order that you may automatically update for properties in lease-up, and also automatically adjust for seasonality. By projecting the end of the month receipts,


Chart 7.4 – Delinquency by Dollars (October 2014)


$30K $25K $20K $15K $10K $5K $0K


18 15 Source: © 2014 District Manager


84 Self-Storage Almanac 2015 22


Average Current


those facilities using first of the month bill- ing can see on the day after their first late fee where they are relative to their budget three or more weeks in advance within 90 percent. This allows them to make adjustments early to get back on budget. Also, automatic email alerts can be sent when the current projection falls far below the average. For those facilities on anniversary billing, the projection is accurate around the middle of the month. In Chart 7.4, you can see the how well the


managers are doing on a collection basis of their 0 to 31 day delinquents. As with the re- ceipts chart, it, too, may have the capability to send an email alert if the managers are getting behind on their collections. The sooner collec- tions are started, the better the probability of getting all of your money. Auditing of a facility by a computer con-


29 31


stantly watching for mistakes and potential theft can now be done on a 24/7 basis with some programs. Computer software can also check behind every cash transaction for poten- tial theft—a near impossibility with a manual technique.


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