BAYROSTER · A PRODUCT OF DIRT RIVER DESIGN
See Who's Paid and Who's Overdue on a Live Map of Your Lot
Your whole storage property on one screen, with every space color-coded by payment status. I built it to run my own storage business, and it still does. The product is called BayRoster, and its own site is at bayroster.com.
Your Whole Operation on One Screen
Every rectangle on the map is one client, drawn to scale from a simple layout file that describes your property.
One glance tells you who owes you money
The map colors itself from each client's paid-until date. Green means paid up. Amber means due within three weeks. Red means overdue. Blue means no date set yet. That's the whole system, and it's enough.
Click any rectangle and the client's record opens: name, phone, email, rate, paid-until date, and notes. Click empty ground and you add a new client right where their rig sits. Every verified payment lives in the Payments log below the maps.
Built-in owner tools
- Call list of everyone overdue or due soon, with tap-to-call numbers
- Payments export to CSV for taxes: pick "this year," open it in Excel
- Client list export with contact info and paid-until dates
- Print button for a clean clipboard copy of the maps
- "+1 month" and "+5 months" buttons that handle month-end dates correctly
- Filter the map down to who's overdue or due for renewal
- A dated activity log on every account, so you can see what changed and when
- A waiting list for the people who call when you're full, and clearing someone off it keeps the record instead of deleting it
Lots, Unit Buildings, and Slips on One Map
Most storage properties are not one tidy thing. Your layout describes the drive-in lanes, the numbered buildings, and the water, and they all land on the same drawing.
RV & Boat Storage
Drive-in buildings and gravel lots. Rigs are free rectangles you place on lanes, sized to scale, with winter zones and door markings.
Self-Storage Units
Numbered unit grids. One client per unit, double-booking rejected by the software, plus an outdoor lot if you have one.
Boat slips too
Slips are a built-in space type, so a marina, a boat club, or a lot that happens to have water on one side is one property with one roster, not two systems. The public demo is a hybrid on purpose: a gravel drive-in lot, an 18-unit building, and eight slips on the same map.
See the BayRoster DemoRun a seasonal campground instead?
PineRoster is the dedicated product for seasonal and monthly campgrounds. It adds campground-specific agreements and renewals, inquiry and vacancy matching, reminders, and optional electric metering.
Try the PineRoster DemoPayments That Update the Map by Themselves
Hook up Stripe and online card payments keep your map current without you touching it.
How a payment becomes a green rectangle
When a client pays online, the payment is verified directly with Stripe on the server. A faked or tampered request can't mark anything paid.
If the payment matches exactly one client by email or phone, and the amount divides cleanly into whole months at their rate, their paid-until date extends automatically and the map updates. You get an email spelling out exactly what happened.
Anything ambiguous lands in a review queue instead. You look at it, pick the right client, and hit Apply. The software never guesses with your money.
Don't want online payments?
Skip Stripe entirely. Online card payment ships switched off and stays off until you turn it on in settings, so nothing happens behind your back. Plenty of storage businesses run on cash and checks. You still get the map, the call list, and the exports. When someone pays, you hit "+1 month" on their record and move on.
The date math is month-end safe: extending from January 31st lands on the last day of February, not a phantom date. And when an online payment gets applied, the months count from today or the client's current paid-through date, whichever is later, so nobody pays for time that already passed.
When a Rig Moves, Its History Moves With It
Clients change spots, leave for the season, and come back. The map keeps the whole story instead of writing over it.
Move a client without losing the paper trail
Drag a rig to an open spot on the map, or use the transfer button, and the software closes the old spot with a date, opens the new one under the same client, and refuses to drop two rigs on one spot. Moving someone out is a dated move-out that keeps their history, not a delete that erases it. If a move gets interrupted halfway, the next load rolls it back cleanly instead of leaving a mess.
A running balance, if you want one
Keep it simple with one paid-until date per spot, or switch a spot to a running ledger: every charge and payment is a line nobody can quietly edit, and the account shows what's been charged, what's been paid, the balance, what's past due, and any credit sitting on the account. Payments apply to the oldest bill first. Anything the software can't tie to exactly one account waits for you instead of guessing.
What You Get, and What Never Grows
One flat bill for the website, the hosting, and the software, and no company standing between you and your records.
The bill doesn't scale with the lot
$60 a month covers all three pieces, and it stays $60 whether you rent eight spaces or eighty. No per-unit toll, no charge per person in the office, and no percentage of what your customers pay you.
No database to babysit
Your clients and payments live in plain files you can open and read. Every save keeps a timestamped backup automatically, and a failed save can't half-write a file and wreck your records. When you want the whole thing, one export writes your entire list of clients, spots, and past history to a CSV that loads straight back in without dropping a detail, so your data can move with you.
A real website included
The public site for your property is part of the package, not an add-on: service pages built for search, availability, a contact form that files straight into your inquiry queue, and online payment if you want it. It's the same kind of site my own storage business runs.
Nothing here phones home. There's no license server that can switch your property off, your records are plain files on ordinary web hosting, and the full CSV export means you can pick the whole operation up and take it somewhere else. Paying me monthly buys you the hosting, the upkeep, the upgrades, and somebody to call — not permission to keep using your own data.
There's a pile of work under the hood you'll never look at: payments get checked directly with Stripe before anything is marked paid, the same payment can't get applied twice, the CSVs open clean in Excel, and if a data file ever goes bad the software stops and refuses to guess instead of quietly wrecking your records. It runs my own business today. I wouldn't sell it if it didn't.
Kick the Tires Yourself
The demo is a fictional business loaded with fake customers. Log in, click around, change things. It resets itself every few hours.
The public demo lives on the BayRoster site and runs a made-up property called Anytown Storage & Marina: a gravel drive-in lot, a building of numbered units, and eight boat slips. The password is anytown-demo. Nothing in it is real, and online payment is switched off, so there's nothing to break and nobody to charge.
Open the DemoWorth trying in there
- Click an amber rig, hit "+1 month," save it, and watch it turn green
- Open the call list of overdue clients
- Find the payment sitting in the review queue
- Export the payments CSV and open it in Excel
- Open the waiting list, clear someone off it, and see the record is still there
What It Costs
$60 a month for the website, the hosting, and the software, plus a one-time setup quoted to your property.
What setup includes
- I draw your storage property into the map: buildings, lanes, units, or slips, to scale
- I load your current customers and their paid-until dates
- I build your public website and point your domain at it
- Stripe online payments wired up, if you want them
- A walkthrough so you're comfortable running it
Space count, indoor or outdoor, and how much there is to import all move that number, so I quote it after a short conversation about your property rather than publishing a tier that won't fit.
The monthly, honestly
$60 a month, one bill, three things: the public website for your property, the hosting it runs on, and BayRoster behind it. There's no second hosting bill and no separate account for you to open, and the number doesn't move when the lot fills up or another person needs to get into the office.
Card processing is the one cost that isn't mine: if you turn on online payments, Stripe charges its published rate under its own agreement with you, and I never take a cut of it.
Get a QuoteBuilt on a Working Farm
This software wasn't built by a startup guessing what storage owners need. I'm Ben Huffman. I run Dirt River Design and I store RVs, boats, and campers for real clients on my own place south of Grand Forks (bens-farm.com is the public site my own lot runs). Every feature exists because I needed it: the call list because I was chasing payments in a notebook, the winter zones because big rigs get buried in the back for the season, the review queue because people pay from unexpected emails and I never wanted the software guessing about money.
It runs my lot right now, real clients and real paid-until dates. I built it to replace my own spreadsheet mess, then cleaned it up and made it something I could set up for you. More about me here.
Questions Storage Owners Actually Ask
Do I need to be technical to run this?
No. If you can use a web browser, you can run the map. You click a rig, type a name, pick a date. I handle the technical setup: hosting, domain, layout file, payment wiring. That's what you're paying me for.
What do I need to host it?
Nothing. Hosting is part of the $60 a month, so there's no second bill and no account for you to open. Under the hood it's ordinary PHP with no database to install, which is why it can sit on normal web hosting instead of needing a platform of its own.
What am I actually paying $60 a month for?
Three things on one bill: the public website for your property, the hosting underneath it, and BayRoster itself. That covers the server upkeep, the email your site and software send, and the upgrades — when I build something for one storage property, it turns up at yours without an upgrade fee or a conversation about which version you're on. The one-time setup is separate and quoted per property.
Can you load my existing clients?
Yes. Part of setup is entering your current clients, their spots, rates, and paid-until dates, so the map is accurate from day one. Hand me a spreadsheet, a notebook, or photos of your whiteboard. I've worked from worse.
Do I have to use Stripe?
No. Without Stripe you still get the full map, call list, exports, and the +1 month buttons. Stripe adds online card payment and the automatic map updates. You can start without it and add it later.
Is my data locked into your system?
No. Your clients and payments are plain files, not rows in a database I control, and the software exports clean CSVs any time, including a full-fidelity export of your entire list of clients, spots, and history that loads straight back in. There's no license server, so nothing switches itself off. If you ever walk away, you keep everything and it's all readable.
What if a file gets corrupted or I break the layout?
Every save keeps a timestamped backup automatically. Writes are atomic, meaning a failed save can't half-write a file. And if a layout file is ever broken, the software switches to a safe read-only view instead of guessing. Fixing it is usually copying the newest backup over the bad file.
Can I see it working before I spend anything?
That's what the live demo is for. It uses fake customers and a public password, so you can poke at it as long as you want. Then get ahold of me and we'll talk about your property.