TowingBossPro Blog — Impound & Storage

Setting a Daily Storage Rate per Vehicle

The start date tells you how many days a vehicle has been in your lot. The daily storage rate tells you what each of those days is worth. In Why the Storage Start Date Is the Most Important Field on a Stored Vehicle we covered the first number. This article is about the second.

TowingBossPro stores a daily storage rate on each stored vehicle, not just one rate for the whole lot. That design choice matters more than it looks, because in real towing work, not every car behind the fence costs the same to keep.

Why the Rate Lives on the Vehicle

A compact sedan in the gravel row and a box truck taking up three spaces are not the same storage job. A vehicle held for a police account may be under a different arrangement than one towed from a private parking lot. A body shop account may have a negotiated rate. A motorcycle may take less room than anything else on the lot.

Putting the rate on each stored vehicle lets you charge what applies to that vehicle without inventing a workaround. The software counts the storage days from the start date and adds them to the invoice at that vehicle's rate.

Check What You Are Allowed to Charge

Before you set any rate, find out what applies where you operate. Storage fees for towed vehicles are regulated in many places. Some cities and states cap the daily rate, some set different rules for police-ordered tows and private property impounds, and some require rates to be posted or filed. The rules differ widely, so do not copy another company's numbers or assume what worked in one county works in the next.

Call your city or county, read the ordinances that apply to you, and ask your accounts what their contracts say. Then set your rates inside those limits.

Build a Short Rate Sheet

Once you know your limits, keep your rate list short. Most lots can live with a handful of daily rates: standard passenger vehicles, larger vehicles and trucks, motorcycles, and any account rates you have agreed to. Write the sheet down so the office picks from it instead of making up a number on the spot.

A short sheet keeps billing consistent. When two customers with the same kind of car get two different storage totals because two different people set the rate, you have a dispute waiting to happen.

Print the sheet and post it where the office enters vehicles, and keep the version you post for the public at the release window in agreement with it. If a customer can point at a posted rate that does not match the invoice, you will lose that argument every time, and you should.

Account Rates Without Confusion

Commercial accounts in TowingBossPro keep their calls and invoices under the account. That makes it straightforward to apply an agreed storage rate to the vehicles an account sends you, and to see later what that account has been billed. If a dealer or body shop has a special storage arrangement, note it on the account with a tag or custom field so whoever enters the next vehicle sees it.

Set It at Drop-Off With the Start Date

The rate belongs on the record at the same moment as the start date: when the vehicle is dropped at the lot. A vehicle with a start date and no rate is going to produce a storage line that says nothing, or somebody will guess at release. Neither is good.

Make it one step in the office routine. When a stored vehicle is confirmed, the start date and daily rate are filled in together and checked against the rate sheet.

Revisit Rates Once a Year

Costs change. Insurance, land, fencing, lighting and labor all go up. Once a year, look at your rates against your costs and against what the rules allow, and adjust going forward. Do not change the rate on a vehicle already in storage without a good reason and a note on why.

A sensible daily rate, applied the same way every time and counted automatically, is how a storage lot pays for itself. See how it fits with the rest of the workflow on the Impound & Storage Software page. The next article follows those days onto the invoice.

When you do change rates, pick a date and apply the new rates to vehicles that enter storage from that date forward. Tell your accounts ahead of time. Nothing sours a body shop relationship faster than a storage invoice at a rate nobody mentioned.