Reliable reports are a cornerstone of a healthy storage business. Reports should be done end of month and end of year and keep track of previous periods’ information for trend analysis. The reports are written for two distinct readers – upper manager/owner and financial institution. 

The owner is interested in things like cash flow, occupancy, late payments, move ins/outs, etc. The owner will also review the report looking for red flags suggesting theft or poor practices.

The financial institution is interested in things such as the balance sheet, income statement, rent roll, account balances and payment history. If you want to ever refinance or sell the property, this part of the report must be done in a manner banks like. Transaction data piles up quickly, so it is paramount you keep proper books on day one.

Information from your Point of Sale program, such as income, is reconciled against real-world information, such as actual deposits, in a financial program like QuickBooks. You assemble reports from the two programs, insert account statements then make a PDF and a bound hard copy.

To pull this off you need to understand your POS system, your financial program and know how to integrate information (and which information) to make your reports. It helps to know how you will read the report and organize it in a manner you can digest the information efficiently and act appropriately.

A savvy entrepreneur can hire an accountant to help, but you need to understand which information to send him/her. If you are smart and work diligently, in a year the two of you can dial in the report and it will cost you about $5,000 for the accountant and 100 hours of your time.

Frankly, the most reliable, fastest and economical solution is to contact me to set this up and train you to assemble the report, read the report, and use the report. You would pay me roughly what you would pay the accountant, get it quicker and with the bonus of being trained on how to use it.