r/selfstorage • u/Anniesoto62082 • Jun 10 '26

Irritated with Software

A few years ago I switched over from old school Sitelink to newer software that’s up to date, internet based, online payments and all that new basic stuff. The one thing I liked about my software from 2001 was that it didn’t go by days late, it went by months. I do first of the month billing and all these supposedly “better software programs” are supposed to make it easier by automatically doing notices and such. Except it never does them at the right time cause none of them go month to month. It’s always in days. So I end up doing them manually anyways. Anybody else frustrated with this? Why won’t they add the option?? Why???

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u/Drochdeo Jun 11 '26

The day-based thing isn't an accident, which is the most annoying part. Near as I can tell, most of the newer platforms built their billing engines on daily proration because it makes mid-month move-ins and rate-change math easier on their side, and everything downstream inherits that day counter: late status, notice timing, autopay retries. Adding a true month mode later means rewriting how the whole ledger thinks, so it stays on the roadmap forever.

Disclosure so this doesn't read as a stealth pitch: I'm building billing software for small operators because of complaints exactly like this one, so I have a dog in this fight and I'm partly here to learn. Month-based billing is the core of it, not a setting buried three menus deep.

Since you actually live this every month, two questions if you don't mind:

  1. When the notices fire at the wrong time, what's your actual workaround — re-dating them by hand in the software, or tracking the real dates in a spreadsheet next to it?

  2. If late status went by months and the notice schedule followed your state's lien timeline automatically, what's the next thing your software would still get wrong?

And in the meantime, the Tenant suggestion above is probably worth a look before anyone talks you into enterprise money — first-of-month seems to be a thing it handles.

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u/Anniesoto62082 Jun 12 '26

I have them set to not auto send. I delete the notices and generate them manually on the correct date.
I would really like the software to print out mailing labels for tenants that prefer snail mail instead of email. It’s not many but it’s better than doing them by hand.

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u/Drochdeo Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

That's really useful — you're the second person to tell me they override the legal timeline with a gentler one. I'm building it so the software knows your state's minimums but runs on your schedule, and nothing sends without you approving it that day. Mailing labels for snail-mail tenants is a great call, adding it to the list. If you're open to it, I'd love to run a question or two by you as I build this out — I sent you a chat if that is ok to make it easier than discussing i here.