One of a self storage facility’s main goals is to keep tenants’ contents safe for them until they can return to retrieve them. Although all facilities have their own standards for security, storage insurance gives your tenants an additional level of protection to their belongings. Unforeseen events such as fire, inclement weather, and even theft or vandalism can occur and be unavoidable. Assisting your tenants in protecting their belongings from these events is a great way to deliver superior customer service. That’s why storage insurance is so important - it helps protect your tenants and helps put them at ease.
Insurance providers
Storable Edge integrates with several insurance providers:
StorSmart Insurance
Bader Insurance
MiniCo Insurance
SafeStor
SBOA Insurance
These insurance providers are integrated via API (Application Programming Interface). The integration allows the insurance providers to access a summary of insurance information and a detailed list of insurance activity for your facility. That means you will not need to manually send reports like the Insurance Activity report or the Insured Tenants Roll to the providers - they’ll already have access to this information through the API.
You can give your tenants the option to use a separate insurance provider that is not integrated with Edge if you wish. If you are using an insurance provider that does not integrate with Edge, you will need to manually send the provider insurance reports because they will not have access to the Edge API.
📖 You can read more about APIs integrated with Edge on our help site.
Software permissions associated with insurance
Edge has several different user permissions that control which of your users can perform functions associated with insurance. To edit your permissions, access your Corporate Settings and click Roles in the User Management section.
Find the user role you’d like to have permissions to edit insurance, then click Edit. When the permissions open, you’ll find two permissions associated with insurance that you can add to a role:
Edit Insurance: This permission, in the Corporate permissions section, allows a user to add, delete, and edit insurance plans in Edge within the Corporate software settings.
View insurance at the facility level: This permission, in the Per-facility permissions section, allows a user to view insurance details from the facility-level insurance settings.
Adding insurance policy and plan details to your software
Adding insurance plan details to Edge is easy through your Corporate Insurance Settings. You can set up plan information for one facility at a time or for multiple facilities.
📖 You can read all about setting up insurance and adding, removing, and editing insurance details on the Edge help site.
Once you have insurance set up in your Corporate Insurance Settings, you can view insurance details from your facility-level Insurance Settings.
Excluding unit types from store insurance
Some storage operators choose not to offer insurance for certain unit types. Parking spaces and rentals that aren't fully enclosed, for example, are types of units that many facilities choose not to insure. Excluding a unit type from store insurance prevents you from adding an insurance policy to a unit that isn't covered by the policy. Additionally, it improves the accuracy of your insurance reporting.
If there are units at your facility that are uninsurable or that you don't want to insure, you can set your software to exclude those particular unit types from store insurance. When you've excluded a unit type from store insurance, it will not be offered for purchase at move-in for those unit types. If you allow your tenants to use private insurance to cover their unit's contents and have your software configured to gather that information from them, your software will still allow you to select private insurance for those units. Your employees simply will not have the option to sell store insurance for those unit types once the setting is in place.
📖 Read more about excluding unit types from store insurance on our help site.
Adding and canceling a tenant's insurance
You can easily add or remove insurance policy information from a tenant’s account. The move-in process in Edge makes it easy to enroll a tenant in insurance at move-in. Alternatively, if a tenant has their own private insurance, you can easily add the tenant’s private insurance details to their tenant account.
Removing insurance from a tenant’s account is equally simple. You can even automatically cancel a tenant’s insurance by adding that step to a delinquency stage so that insurance is canceled after nonpayment.
You can control which insurance information is collected at move-in by editing your Required Fields settings. Setting up your move-in process to gather insurance information helps you keep track of insurance data for all your tenants and ensures the appropriate information is populated into documents (see the required fields below for more information).
Requiring insurance at move-in
Many facilities require tenants to insure the contents of their storage units. When your tenants have their items insured, everyone involved is safer from liabilities. Your software provides easy ways to require insurance information for each tenant at move-in.
Onsite move-ins (required fields)
You can set up your Required Fields settings to collect insurance information at move-in. Once insurance fields are required, you will have to enter insurance details to finish the move-in process.
Online move-ins (Rental Center settings)
If your facility is unmanned, it’s hard to keep track of who has insurance and who doesn’t. In Edge, your Rental Center settings allow you to require insurance at move-in.
📖 Learn more about Rental Center settings and required fields on our help site.
Adding insurance details to documents
The Documents and Emails settings in Edge allow you to customize your leases and other documents with personalized information for your tenants regarding their accounts. We’ve equipped the document editor with several bracket replacements that enable you to include specific insurance information in your documents for communication with your tenants.
Some of the most commonly used bracket replacements that populate details into documents include:
Ledger events: Brackets that begin with ledger.insurance and that begin with ledger and contain insurance ensure that ledger details are populated. These will populate a broad range of insurance information, including private insurance, goods stored, etc., if that information is gathered at move-in. See the enrolling tenants in insurance section of this document to ensure this information is gathered at move-in.
Insurance effective date: Brackets that begin with new_ledger.insurance will populate details about the date insurance becomes effective for new rentals. Brackets that begin with previous_ledger.insurance populate insurance details for transfers.
Projected insurance cancellation date: Brackets that contain the cancellation_date field contain details about when insurance will be canceled due to nonpayment.
Search the bracket replacements for insurance, and all insurance brackets will be filtered for you.
Automate conditional documents related to insurance
You can set up documents to generate automatically when they have insurance. Conditional documents allow you to set Insurance Type as a condition or add it to a group of conditions that will ensure necessary documents are generated. If you’d like insurance documents to be generated and included at move-in, for example, you can set a condition for move-in to ensure this happens automatically.
📖 Read more about conditional documents on our help site.
Interpret insurance details in Edge reports
There are two reports in Edge that provide a detailed overview of insurance at your facilities. If you’re using an insurance provider that is integrated with Edge, details contained in these reports will be automatically sent to the provider, which will save you the time of generating them yourself. However, generating them at any time will help keep you informed.
Facility-level reports
Insurance Activity: This report provides a breakdown of insurance payments, reversals, credits, and fees for a selected date range and displays the corresponding activity by tenant, including coverage, premium, paid-through date, and whether the policy was new or canceled.
Insurance Statement: A statement that summarizes total premiums received, credits applied, refunds, and retained fees. It’s intended to be printed and mailed to your insurance provider with your payment. If you are using an integrated provider such as StorSmart or Bader, you do not need to run this report.
Insured Tenants Roll: a list of all units enrolled in store insurance or units occupied by tenants who have provided proof of private insurance. It lists details for each tenant individually.
Corporate reports
Insurance Activity: This report provides a breakdown of new policies, canceled policies, new payments, reversals, credits, payments, fees, and refunds by facility. It is definable by date range and allows you to view this information for all of your facilities or for a group of facilities.
Insured Tenants Roll: This report provides a facility-by-facility breakdown of occupied units, including the number insured, the percentage insured and paid, total coverage, and total premiums. It also shows you the percentage of your occupied units covered by private insurance.
Managing expired private insurance
If you permit your tenants to use private insurance, Edge makes it easy to track policies and plans that have expired or are about to expire. As long as an expiration date is gathered and entered from the tenant at move-in, you’ll receive a notification on your Task List reminding you that a tenant’s insurance has expired. To help you stay ahead of expiration, tenants whose plans expire in the next month will also appear on your Task List 31 days before expiration.
To save you time, you can set up email and SMS templates to send notifications to the tenant when their insurance has expired or is about to expire.
📖 Read about managing your tenants' expired insurance on our help site.