Getting Started with Audits in SiteLink

Audits help identify areas of opportunity for your property, increase your bottom line, and reduce your liability. That all sounds great, but with so much information available in SiteLink, where do you start? Read on for a quick intro to audit basics and learn which auditing tasks should be completed and when in order to keep your business running smoothly.

The Basics

Who – Owners, regional managers and store managers should perform audits. You can also hire an industry expert to audit your facility.

What – Auditing is a review what’s happening in your facility. There are always things that can be done to improve your operation, and audits help reveal them.

Why – No manager or owner can focus on every single thing at every property every day. Audits give you the chance to step back and take a look at your operation, and ultimately make more money.

When – Depending on the nature of the audit, audits can be performed on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or on an annual basis.

How – It’s easier than you think. All the reports and tools you need for audits are at your fingertips in your SiteLink management software.

 

Top Recommended Audits

Weekly

Calls and Notes report

• Look at notes made that are longer than typical, and then review and ask the manager what’s going with this customer. Long note entries signals there’s something going on with that tenant.
• Calls and Notes is also useful if you have multiple people working at your property.

Exception reports

• Review information about credits and discount given
• Ensure active military members are exempt from lien foreclosures and unit auctions
• Look at deleted payments and charges and find out why these were made

Call Past Due Tenants task

• A quick and easy way to find out how often calls are being made, and if it’s according to your business rules

 

Monthly

Make sure all tasks have been completed for auction tenants

• Look closely at every step of the lien process: Did we send the letters we needed to send? Did we post the ad in a timely manner? Did we take any partial payments?

Look at any manual receipts

• Check that all manual receipts have a serial number
• Make sure all receipts are tied to a transaction in SiteLink

Review your rate variance

• Rate variance is listed in the Rent Roll report
• Identifies tenants who are paying a different rate than your standard or push rate
• Have a plan to close the gap

 

Quarterly

Lock audit – Physically take a walk around the property to make sure:

• All units are secured properly and all past-due units are overlocked
• Review units listed as unrentable and make a plan to get them up and running
• Check that vacant units are ready to rent

Lease audit – Make sure all forms are in place, insurance addendums, etc.

• Take a random sample of 5 new leases and 5 old leases to get a good idea if everything is being properly done
• With SiteLink eSign, you can perform a lease audit from anywhere. Otherwise, you’ll need to pull hardcopies from the file.
• Make sure all the required signatures are in place, autopay form is correct, if a change of address form is needed, etc.

Merchandise Summary Report

• Do a manual count of merchandise for sale and see if the counts listed are accurate
• Review merchandise prices to see if they are appropriate
• Any discrepancies you find may help identify training or other issues

Understanding the value of a regular, operational audit is an important responsibility for all self-storage operators. In our upcoming webinar Best Practices for Operational Audits Using SiteLink, hosts Sue Haviland of Haviland Storage Services and SiteLink Corporate Trainer James Renouf take a closer look at the auditing process.

Even if you may miss the webinar, register anyway and you will receive a link to watch the recorded webinar on-demand. Sign up now.

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