You set up three things: your lots, your unit types, and your individual units. A move-in wizard runs the rental itself. Pick a unit, capture who is renting and what they are storing, sign the agreement on a phone, and take the prorated first month, the admin fee, and the deposit in one payment. After that, rent posts every month on its own, late fees follow your rule, and move-out closes the bill and settles the deposit. A storage lot can be its own property or sit next to your campsites, and RV spots, boat spots, trailer pads, and enclosed units all run the same way.
Camping and storage look similar from the road and behave nothing alike on the books. A reservation has an arrival date, a departure date, and a total. A storage rental has a start date, a rent that posts again every month, and an ending nobody has scheduled yet. Software built only for nights struggles with the second one, which is why so many lots end up in a spreadsheet with a paper agreement in a filing cabinet.
Storage in CampGuide is a separate module for month-to-month rentals of RV, boat, and trailer spots, plus enclosed units for goods. It is off until you ask for it, and it runs on the same billing, payments, and agreement machinery as the rest of the platform.
What is a lot, a unit type, and a unit?
Three layers, and the vocabulary matters because everything downstream reads off them.
Unit statuses are available, reserved, pending move-in, occupied, overlocked, maintenance, and offline. Nothing on the board can flip a status by hand in a way that leaves no trace. When a spot goes offline for regrading, the board shows it, and the record shows who did it and when.
Building the board is bulk work, so it is bulk-friendly. Add twelve identical pads at once or upload a CSV of what you already have.
How does a storage move-in work?
The move-in wizard is five steps, and it ends with a signed agreement and money in the account.
That creates a draft agreement holding the unit. From the agreement page you send the agreement for signature and take payment. Signing is e-signature built into the platform: the renter opens a link, reads the document, consents, signs on a phone screen, and the signed version is frozen with a fingerprint that proves the text never changed afterward. Payment runs through CampGuide Pay into your connected account. When it settles, the move-in charges post to the bill and the unit flips to occupied.
The number quoted in step 5 is the number charged in the payment step. The system checks the two against each other before anything moves and refuses if they drift.
Twelve spots behind the shop
Say you have a gravel strip behind the maintenance shop, big enough for twelve 12x40 uncovered RV spots. You add one lot, one unit type, and twelve units in about the time it takes to finish a coffee.
In October a snowbird calls. He is driving to Arizona on the 12th and does not want to tow the boat down. He takes A-7. You run the move-in from the front desk while he is on the phone, he signs on his phone from a gas station outside Kearney, and he pays the prorated 19 days of October, the admin fee, and the deposit in one charge.
November through March the rent posts on its own. In April he comes back, gives notice, you walk the spot, and the deposit goes back on the folio the same day. He books a site for the summer on his way out of the office.
What happens every month after move-in?
The tenancy runs itself, with the parts you control staying yours to set.
Rent posts on a schedule
A nightly job posts each agreement's rent line for its next period and moves the next bill date forward only after that period settles. A period can only be billed once, so an overlapping run cannot double-charge February. There is a "Bill now" button for the times you need the charge to land today.
Rate changes you set ahead of time
Raise a rate effective March 1 and it sits on the agreement until March 1, then applies itself to that period. February bills at the old number because February was quoted at the old number.
Protection plans
If you sell a protection plan, its charge posts as its own line every period alongside rent, so the two never blur together on the bill or in the revenue report.
Autopay, with the leash
A renter can save a card and let rent, protection plan, and late fees run automatically. They enroll themselves from a link, or a manager enrolls them with the person standing right there, and either way the consent is recorded with the method, the time, the IP, and the card brand. A failed charge retries on a fixed schedule and then stops instead of hammering the card forever. A stopped autopay never sets an account into default or locks a unit by itself. That stays a decision you make.
Does it work for boats and trailers too?
Yes, and the difference shows up in the unit type rather than in a separate product. Boat slips and trailer pads are unit classes with their own dimensions and rates. What is stored is captured as its own record with a hull or vehicle number, a lienholder, and insurance, which is the file you want when a boat has been sitting since last September and nobody is answering.
Enclosed and covered classes hold a stricter fit rule than open pads, because a 13 foot 6 rig does not go into a 12 foot door no matter how the math looks on paper.
Can you run storage without a campground?
A property is marked as a campground, a storage facility, or both. A storage-only facility gets the storage board and the billing behind it without the reservation grid in the way. A mixed property runs both, and a person who rents a spot in November and books a site in June is the same customer record either way.
On transfers. Moving someone from A-7 to the covered row is a transfer on the same agreement, not a move-out and a new rental. The history, the deposit, and the payment record follow the person to the new unit.
How does a move-out settle?
Three steps, in order. The renter gives notice, which sets the end date. You do a move-out inspection on the spot, the same way you did one at move-in. Then the folio closes: final charges post, the deposit is refunded or withheld against what you found, and the billing stops. The unit returns to available and the next person can take it.
Withholding is a decision with a record attached. The move-in inspection, the move-out inspection, and the signed agreement all sit on the same file, so the answer to "why did I only get half my deposit" is a document rather than a memory.
What do the storage reports show?
- Revenue. Rent, protection plans, admin fees, late fees, and move-in charges, broken out by period.
- Occupancy. Units filled against units available, by lot and by unit type, which is how you find out that covered has been full since May and the open row has not.
- Attach rate. If you run exit offers to departing long-stay residents, the share of offers that turned into a move-in. That is its own article.
Where the money actually lands
Storage bills against a billing account rather than a reservation, which is the reason it can exist without arrival and departure dates. Rent, insurance, late fees, and move-in charges are line kinds on that account, so storage revenue shows up in your books as storage revenue and not as an uncategorized charge someone has to sort out at month end.
The same accounting rules apply as everywhere else in the platform: corrections post as reversing entries, so the history stays intact and last month stays where you left it.