Yardi Store Developer eXchange

This is a bit of a primer for those of you not familiar with the storage industry.

Organization – This is the head honcho, the top of the pile, the guy that controls it all, also known as the company. Within our Store application, rules can be set that apply to all sites within the organization. Set up of promotions, taxes, sites, insurance and customization occurs at this level. All of this will affect the sites and how accounts and rentals are handled.

Sites – These are the little guys and the foundation of the organization. The units are created here and site hours, website, contact information and even directions can be set. You will also be able to indicate what fees, deposits, insurance and retail, created at the organization level, that will be available at the site.

Account – This is the base for the customer information. The account level can contain multiple rentals, multiple contacts, any reservations and all the data applicable to said items. If a business has a group of rentals they may have a different primary contact for each storage space. The account name would be the business name, but it would have several primary contacts. Each contact would have access only to the units to which they are assigned.

Rentals – This can sometimes be confused with a unit, but they are different. A rental is the contract to use a specified unit for the duration of the rental contract. The rental information will only be maintained for the duration of one tenant in that unit. The rental information will contain the letters, ledger, unit information and rental information. Rates can be changed and delinquency applies to each rental individually.

Unit – The storage, the bedrock of the storage industry. A unit will be assigned a number when it is created by an admin, at that time there is also a UnitID created. Unit number and UnitID are two different things.  A unit ID is the primary key for any unit. While there could be multiple unit 1’s there will only be one UnitID 100000001. At the unit level rates can be set, dimensions of the unit, the attributes of the unit, unit settings can be customized and the walk thru order number assigned. This level will not maintain any rental information, that is all housed at the rental level.