Preserves No. 2 Collections
Delinquency: 12.8% to 5.6%, while the sites nearly doubled
- Ingredients
- four months by hand, five rungs, one API each, no one touching it
- Packed
- Fall 2025 to Summer 2026
- Best before
- the next acquisition
The job description I was hired against set one revenue goal: cut delinquency by a quarter in twelve months. Then the acquisitions kept arriving with their own past-due rolls. On one December morning, 635 of the 1,575 invoices we had sent were unpaid.
I built collections by hand first, because the tools did not exist: lien notices on the 15th, a letter to everyone fifteen days late, team calling blocks, forty flyers delivered to tenants’ doors. Each thing that worked became an automation: a ladder of SMS, email, ringless voicemail and certified and monthly letters, all by API, that runs with no one touching it. Portfolio delinquency went from 12.8% of occupied units in September 2025 to 5.6% in June 2026 while the portfolio grew from 12 sites to 22. On the four sites I started with, the cut was 39% against the 25% target.
The mess
Self storage is a simple business on its face: rent a unit, bill it monthly. Dig in and the hard part is the tenant who stops paying, in a small rural town, often with no email on file, on a unit that costs more to auction than it owes. The job description I was hired against set one revenue goal: cut delinquency 25% in twelve months. Then the acquisitions kept landing with their own past-due rolls. One site arrived with a third of its money coming in as cash, check and money order, and a ledger kept by hand. On one December morning, 635 of the 1,575 invoices we had sent that cycle were unpaid.
What I built
By hand first, September to December 2025: lien notices on the fifteenth, a letter to every tenant fifteen days late, team calling sessions, a daily call block in December, and forty flyers I delivered to delinquent tenants’ homes one Sunday in November. None of it was clever. All of it was measured.
Then, through 2026, each thing that worked became an automation: monthly delinquency mail from February; ringless voicemail by API from May, reworked into ten weekly buckets by days late; the first fully automated run, SMS and email and then voicemail, on July 2; automated letters from July 10, 212 pieces on the first run and zero failures; command-line tools and a connector so a teammate can run or check any rung without me. The ladder now has rungs for SMS, email, voicemail, certified lien notices and monthly letters, and it runs with no one touching it. The tools did not exist for any of this. I built every one.
The result
12.8% of occupied units delinquent in September 2025 to 5.6% in June 2026, while the portfolio went from 12 sites to 22. On the same nine sites throughout, autopay went from 31% to 81%. On the four sites I started with, delinquency fell 39% against a 25% target. The feeling, honestly, was relief: our backs were covered, and we could go improve the business instead of cleaning up after it.
The call
Build it by hand before you automate it. Not as a principle, as a constraint: we had no tools, so hand work was all we had, and the hand work showed exactly what each automation should do and in what order. Automating the wrong rung first is how you end up with a very efficient way of annoying people who were going to pay on the 3rd anyway. The second call: the ladder is unattended by design. A team call push some months adds a little; the ladder does not depend on it, or on me.
Seconds from this batch
Not every delinquent dollar was collected. Some units were resolved by lien and auction, and the honest verb for the whole result is “resolved”, not “collected”; this jar counts units, not dollars, for that reason. The flyers worked and don’t scale. And the number is a snapshot: a portfolio that keeps buying keeps importing other people’s past-due rolls, which is why this jar states its period and will get a new batch note when there is one.
Still mine
The monthly read of the numbers, and the occasional call to add a push. The rungs run themselves.
What transfers
Do the first months by hand and write down what each step did to the number. Automate the rungs in the order the hand work ranked them, one at a time, and keep a person on the rungs where a mistake costs trust. Give the automation a log and a way for someone who is not its builder to run or check it. And state the measure (what counts as late, what the denominator is) and the period beside every number, so nobody can move the goalposts later, including you.
Bring me one like this
Have a receivable nobody is chasing, or a process that only works when one person remembers to run it?
pullover@peachyadventure.com