I set up a parking lot CRM tracker in a $49/month tool six months ago and I am about to cancel it for a $12 Notion template

The Akron lot taught me the same thing. I bought into the idea that owning a commercial asset meant I needed commercial-grade tooling, and I spent three weeks in November 2022 setting up a system that sent automated SMS reminders to monthly tenants who had been parking there since before I owned the thing and had never once been late.

What you said about moving accurately versus moving fast is the distinction that nobody selling $49 software wants you to make. My actual problem with that lot is whether the revenue number I report to my accountant in January matches what hit the account, and whether the one guy who keeps parking in the handicap-accessible spot got a warning documented in writing before I escalate. That is a two-column spreadsheet problem. I am curious whether your template handles the courthouse neighbor complaint log in a way that creates any kind of timestamped record, because that part I would not trust to something I update manually once a month. Complaints have a way of becoming legal correspondence and you want the gap between the incident and your note to look like hours, not whenever you got around to it on the first.

Cheaper is not always more accurate, but in your case it probably is.

The phrase "move accurately, which is a different problem and a cheaper one" is doing real work and most people skip right past that distinction.

What's the lot zoned and is there any chance it gets a variance or a sale in the next three years, because that changes whether four minutes a month is the right ceiling on your systems thinking.

The framing I'd push back on is the idea that the $49 tool was the wrong call and Notion is the right one. The actual problem is that you scoped it on a Saturday without knowing what the operation would look like in month three. I did the exact same thing with my South Valley house hack, built out this whole tenant communication flow before I had a single tenant and realized six weeks in that I was texting people from my personal number anyway because that's just how it goes at three units. The tool matched the fantasy version of the operation, not the actual one.

What I'd actually do before you cancel is write down those three functions on paper, literally the three, and ask whether any of them failing silently would cost you real money. The meter revenue check against prior month is the one I'd keep an eye on. Four minutes on the first of the month sounds fine until the month you're traveling or closing something else and it becomes four minutes on the fifteenth and you've already missed a discrepancy that compounds. That's not a reason to keep the $49 tool, I'm not saying that, but it might be a reason to set a calendar block that lives somewhere more durable than your own intention to open a Notion table. What's your actual fallback if you skip January 1st and don't open it until the 20th?

Two inquiries a year means you do not have a CRM problem at all.

What I want to know is whether those courthouse neighbors have ever actually filed anything, because that complaint log sounds like the one feature with real stakes.