The 9 pm shopper never calls twice
Two thirds of storage searches happen outside office hours, and most renters call one facility, not four. Voicemail is where a signed lease goes to die.
$228lost rent per 10x10 sitting empty an extra 60 days
Live at 168 US facilities
Rent a 10x10 at 11 pm, get the gate code at 11:01, and lose it the day rent runs late.
GateCodeDesk runs the whole move-in from your own website: signed lease, prorated first month, insurance selection and a keypad code written straight to the gate controller. When an account slides past the grace period you set, the same system pulls the code back and pushes the unit onto the delinquency board where your manager can act on it.
- 168 facilities
- independent US sites renting units through GateCodeDesk today
- 43,900 units
- mapped and priced, from 5x5 lockers to 10x30 drive-up bays
- 9 days
- median time from unit list import to the first online rental
Building B, availability
84 units, 7 open- Rented and current
- Open to rent
- Past due
- Access held
What the yard costs after hours
The office closes at 5:30. The people looking for a unit do not.
Storage demand shows up on a Saturday night after a divorce, a job transfer or a flooded basement. If the only way into your property is a voicemail box and a paper lease on a clipboard, that renter is two miles down the road signing with the REIT that takes cards at midnight.
Codes typed twice, wrong once
Your manager keys the tenant into the rental software, then keys the same four digits into the gate terminal. One transposed number turns into a phone call from the keypad at 8:40 pm.
3.5 hoursa week at the gate terminal on a 300 unit site
Access that outlives the rent
An account goes 40 days past due and the code still opens the gate at 6 am. The unit quietly empties out over a weekend, and the balance you were about to file on walks off in a pickup truck.
$740average unrecovered balance when access stays live 45 days
A vacancy list three days stale
The whiteboard says C-208 is open, the clipboard says it rented Thursday, and the caller on hold is asking about the last 10x20. Guessing costs you the quote and sometimes the tenant.
11 quotesa month given on units that were already rented
From import to first code
Four moves, and the gate starts doing the paperwork
Nothing here asks you to change how your property is laid out or how you price it. The unit list, the rate sheet and the delinquency rules stay yours. GateCodeDesk simply carries them from the website to the keypad without a human retyping anything.
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Load the unit list and the rate table
Send a spreadsheet or an export from your current management software. We match every unit number, size, type and street rate, then flag the ones that disagree with your last walk-through so you can settle them before the map goes live.
Typical import: 340 units in under an hour -
Connect the gate controller
Your keypad controller gets a network path to GateCodeDesk, and code slots are mapped to unit numbers with your manager watching the screen. From then on, a code created in a lease appears at the keypad in seconds and a held code stops working the same way.
PTI, DoorKing, Sentinel Systems and Digitech supported -
Put the rental page on your own site
The move-in page carries your name, your photographs and your lease, not a marketplace listing. A renter picks a size, sees the real availability map, signs on a phone, pays the prorated first month and reads the gate code on the confirmation screen before they set the phone down.
Move-in finishes in about 4 minutes on a phone -
Set the ladder and let it run the month
You decide the grace period, the late fee, the notice text and the day access is held. GateCodeDesk sends the reminders, stamps every step for the file, and turns the unit orange on the board so your manager sees exactly who needs a phone call this morning.
Ladders can differ by site and by state
What is in the box
Built around the two things that actually move: the door and the code
Every screen in GateCodeDesk exists because a facility owner asked for it while standing in a drive aisle with a phone in one hand and a lock in the other.
An availability map that matches the yard
Every unit on the property sits on one grid with its size, rate, tenant and status, and the map changes the second a lease is signed or a payment posts. Your manager can quote the last 10x20 without walking the row to check.
Gate codes issued inside the lease
The keypad code is created at the moment the tenant signs and pays, then written to the controller and shown on the confirmation screen and in the receipt email. Nobody at your office types four digits into a second system again.
A delinquency ladder that holds access on schedule
Set the grace days, the late fee steps, the notice wording and the exact day the code stops working, per site and per state. The ladder runs itself overnight and stamps each action so the lien file is complete if the account ever gets that far.
Lease, prorate and insurance in one pass
Your rental agreement is signed on the phone with a timestamp and an IP record, the first month prorates to your rule, and the tenant protection plan is offered as a choice rather than a checkbox nobody reads. Signed documents file themselves against the unit.
Vacancy walks recorded on a phone
The manager walks the row, taps each door as clean, occupied, overlocked or needing repair, and the map updates before the golf cart is back at the office. Units that show empty on the walk but rented in the ledger get flagged for you by morning.
Rate steps for tenants already in place
Pick the tenants who have held a below market rate the longest, set the increase and the notice date, and let the letters and texts go out on the schedule your state requires. You see the projected monthly gain before you approve a single increase.
Numbers from operating sites
What changes in the first two rent cycles
These are medians across the 168 facilities running GateCodeDesk, measured from the ninety days before the switch against the ninety days after it.
38%
of move-ins finish after 6 pm
The rental page never closes, so the Saturday night searcher signs, pays and drives in with a code the same evening. That share climbs to 46 percent at sites with drive-up units near a highway exit.
9.4 days
average vacancy on a 10x10
A move-out clears the map the moment the walk is recorded, and the unit is rentable online before the manager finishes sweeping it. Sites that used to average sixteen days now refill most standard units inside two weeks.
41%
fewer accounts past thirty days
The reminder texts land before the late fee, and the held code turns a soft conversation into a real one on day eleven instead of day forty. Owners tell us the delinquency board is the first screen they open with coffee.
6 hours
a week handed back to the manager
Double entry at the gate terminal, code lookups on the phone and paper lease filing all come off the schedule. That time goes back into curb appeal, auction prep and the walk-throughs that catch a cut lock early.
Operators on the record
Three owners, three yards, one thing in common
None of these facilities added staff. They changed who does the typing at 9 pm.
I ran this property off a legal pad and a gate terminal for eleven years, and I told everybody that was fine. Then I watched a lease get signed at 10:40 on a Saturday night while I was sitting on my couch, and the code went out to the keypad before I finished reading the notification.
We took nineteen move-ins that first month without anybody driving out to the office. My manager still walks the rows every morning, but now she is looking at doors instead of chasing paperwork.
The ladder is the part that paid for the whole thing. We used to reach day forty five with a certified letter and a lot of hope, and half those tenants had already pulled their property out at 6 in the morning.
Now access is held on day eleven, the tenant calls us that afternoon, and most of them settle on the phone with the card already on file. Our over thirty bucket dropped by half in a single quarter, and I have not written a lien notice since October.
We have 412 units across two buildings and a gravel row that nobody could ever keep straight on paper. The map straightened out that gravel row in about a week, mostly because the walk-through screen made my part time guy honest about what he actually saw.
Last Tuesday I quoted a 10x20 knowing for certain it was open. That sounds like nothing until you have double rented a unit standing right in front of the customer.
94.1%
average physical occupancy across sites in their second year on the platform
31,400
gate codes issued and held automatically in the last ninety days
17 minutes
median time from an online rental to the first gate entry on that code
Plans by unit count
Priced against your door count, not your revenue
You keep your merchant account and your bank deposits. We charge one flat monthly fee for the software, and it does not climb when you have a good month.
Single Facility
One site, up to 300 units, one gate controller$79per month
- Online move-ins with an e-signed lease and prorated first month
- Gate code issuance and hold on one controller
- Live availability map and phone based vacancy walks
- Delinquency ladder with text and email notices
- Card and ACH through your own merchant account
- Tenant portal with autopay, receipts and gate code lookup
- Email support answered the same weekday
Facility Plus
One site, up to 600 units, two gate controllers$169per month
- Everything in Single Facility
- Second controller plus mixed keypad and card reader setups
- Rate step planner with state timed notice letters
- Lien timeline tracking with a date stamped notice history
- Overlock queue and auction prep worksheets for the manager
- QuickBooks Online journal export and monthly close pack
- Phone support plus a quarterly occupancy review with us
Multi Facility
Up to five sites and 2,500 units on one login$349per month
- Everything in Facility Plus
- Consolidated map and delinquency board across every site
- Per site staff roles, so a manager sees only their property
- Tenant transfers between sites with the ledger carried across
- Webhook feed and API keys for your own reporting stack
- Onboarding session for each new site you bring on
- Named support contact with a four hour weekday response target
Every plan is billed monthly in US dollars and can be cancelled at any time from the billing screen before the renewal date. There is no setup fee, no charge per move-in and no twelve month contract holding you in place.
Straight answers
Questions owners ask on the first call
If your question is not here, put it in the form below and you will get a real answer from the person who built the software.
Single Facility is $79 per month for one site with up to 300 units, and every unit on the property counts whether it is rented or standing empty, because the availability map tracks both. Facility Plus is $169 per month for up to 600 units and a second gate controller. Multi Facility is $349 per month for as many as five sites under one login. There is no per move-in fee, and tenant text notices are included up to 1,500 messages a month.
Most single site operators take their first online rental nine days after the kickoff call. Day one is the unit list import from a spreadsheet or an export from your current management software, day two is the rate table and the gate controller connection, and the rest of the time goes to your review of the lease document and the delinquency ladder. We map keypad codes to unit numbers with your manager on a screen share so the codes match the numbers already painted on the doors. Sites running two controllers or a mixed keypad and card reader setup usually add three or four days.
Tenant records, lease documents and ledger history are stored in United States data centers, encrypted in transit and at rest. Each staff member gets a named login with a role, so a part time gate attendant can read the map and check a code without seeing the ledger or the lien file. You own the data and can export the full tenant list, ledger and access log to CSV at any hour, without asking us. We never sell tenant records and we never share them with anyone outside the vendors that host and deliver the service.
GateCodeDesk writes codes to networked controllers from PTI, DoorKing, Sentinel Systems and Digitech, and it can drive an older serial board through a small network bridge that we ship in the setup box. Payments run through your own merchant account for card and ACH, so the deposit still lands in your bank the way it does today. Bookkeeping exports go to QuickBooks Online as a journal entry or as a CSV your accountant can read. A webhook feed is available on Multi Facility for operators who push data into their own reporting.
Every plan is month to month, and you cancel from the billing screen before the renewal date without calling anyone. Your account stays readable for thirty days after the last paid day so you can pull the exports you need. Tenant lists, lease PDF files, ledgers and gate access logs all export to CSV and ZIP, and we will hand you the raw archive if you would rather have one file. On written request we delete the account and its backups within sixty days.
GateCodeDesk follows the delinquency ladder you build, so access is held on the day you choose and every step is date stamped in the file. The software does not overlock a door, cut a lock or sell anything, because those are decisions for you and your attorney. It stores the notice history, the mail and text delivery records and the access log that a lien file needs if the account ever goes to sale. Operators in states with strict notice periods set the ladder to match the statute, and the ladder can differ from site to site.
The Overlock
The magazine we write for storage owners, not for the storage press
Lien law, rate letters, gate hardware and the occupancy math behind a property of 100 to 600 units. Three recent pieces are below, and the rest sit in the archive.
regulation and compliance
How a Self Storage Lien Sale Works, From Default Notice to Surplus Funds
Every state grants storage operators a lien on stored goods, but the sale only stands up if the notice, the mail, the advertising, and the proceeds are handled exactly as the statute reads.
practical guide
How to Run Existing Customer Rate Increases Without Mass Move Outs
The gap between your street rate and what long term tenants actually pay is where most of the missing revenue at a small facility sits. Here is how to close it without emptying a hallway.
comparison
Climate Controlled Versus Drive Up Units: Build Cost, Rent, and Upkeep
Conversion cost, utility load, service intervals, insurance exposure, and achievable rent all move in different directions for these two unit types. Compare them before you pour the slab.
Talk to the desk
Tell us how a unit gets rented at your place today
Send the shape of your property and the make of your keypad controller. You will get a walkthrough built on your own unit list, not a canned slide deck about the storage industry.
- A thirty minute screen share, scheduled around your gate hours
- Your unit mix loaded into a working map before we meet
- A straight answer about your controller on the first call
- A written setup plan with dates, sent the same week
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