Most landlords who let a house room by room start with a spreadsheet, and many never need anything else. A spreadsheet is free, flexible and already on your computer. Rentap is built for one job: keeping track of rooms, tenancies, rent, costs and repairs in a house that's let by the room. If you have one house, a handful of rooms and tenants who pay on time, a well-kept spreadsheet can be enough. Once you have more rooms, more turnover or more than one person handling the money, the gaps in a sheet start to cost you time.
This post sets out what each one is good at, where a spreadsheet tends to break, and what Rentap actually does today, so you can decide for yourself.
The short version
| Spreadsheet | Rentap | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | £2 a room a month, for the number of rooms you choose |
| Set-up | Build your own columns and formulas | Add a house, its rooms and each tenancy |
| Rent due and overdue | Formulas you write and maintain | Worked out for every tenancy, every rent period |
| Part payments and credits | Manual | Recorded against the tenant's account, with a running balance |
| Expenses | A tab you keep up to date | Each cost with its receipt, for a house or for the business |
| Repairs | Notes, emails and photos in different places | Issues with photos and a dated timeline, tenants can report them |
| Certificates and checks | Dates you have to remember to look at | Compliance calendar with reminders before each due date |
| Inventories | Separate documents and photo folders | Start and end of tenancy inventories with photos, kept with the room |
| History | Old rows, if nobody deleted them | Every past tenancy kept in the room's history |
| Sharing | Send the file, hope it's the latest | Tenants can be invited to see their own rent and balance |
What a spreadsheet does well
It's worth being fair to the spreadsheet, because it does several things very well.
- It costs nothing. If you already have spreadsheet software, there's no new bill.
- It's completely flexible. You can add any column you like, colour-code rooms, and lay it out exactly how you think.
- You own the file. It sits on your computer or your own cloud storage, and you can open it without an account anywhere.
- Your accountant knows it. Most accountants are happy to receive a spreadsheet of income and costs at the end of the year.
- It's quick to start. One row per room, one column per month, and you're tracking rent the same evening.
For a single house with four or five long-term tenants on the same rent who pay by standing order on the same day, that may be all you need.
Where a spreadsheet starts to struggle
The problems usually aren't obvious on day one. They appear as the house fills up, tenants change and money stops arriving in neat monthly amounts.
Rent that doesn't fit the grid
A grid of rooms against months works until something irregular happens: a tenant pays half now and half next week, pays a week early, moves in on the 17th, pays weekly while everyone else pays monthly, or moves from room 2 to room 4. Each of these needs a manual adjustment, a note in a cell, or a new formula, and it's easy for the totals to drift.
In Rentap, every tenancy has its own rent, rent period and start date, weekly or monthly. Each payment is recorded as its own entry against the tenant's account, so part payments and early payments are simply recorded as they come in. Credits and one-off charges sit in the same account, and the balance and statement show how it adds up. When a tenant moves to another room, their account goes with them.
Knowing what's overdue today
A spreadsheet tells you what you typed. To know what's overdue right now, someone has to compare the sheet against the bank statement and against today's date. Rentap works out what's due for every rent period and shows what's overdue, tenant by tenant, on one list. You can switch on automatic reminders to tenants when a payment is overdue, house by house, if you want them.
Costs and receipts
Most landlords keep costs on a separate tab, with receipts in a drawer, an email folder or a phone's camera roll. When it's time to sort out the year's figures, matching the two takes an afternoon.
In Rentap, you add an expense with the amount, the date, what it was for, who you paid and a photo of the receipt. It can belong to a house or a room, or to the business itself for costs that aren't tied to a property, such as office costs. If a tenant is going to repay a cost, you can add that to their account at the same time. You can download expenses as a CSV file for your accountant.
Repairs that live in your messages
A repair often starts as a text message, carries on in a phone call, gets a photo in another chat, and ends with an invoice in your email. A spreadsheet can't hold that story.
In Rentap, each repair is an issue with a dated timeline. Tenants can report a problem with photos, you add updates, and you can record what you spent on it as an expense linked to the issue. Resolved issues are kept, so next winter you can see whether the boiler has failed before.
Dates you have to remember
Gas safety records, electrical reports, energy certificates, alarm checks and licence renewals all have due dates. In a spreadsheet, a due date only helps if someone looks at it at the right time.
Rentap has a compliance calendar for each house. It suggests the usual checks for a house let room by room, you can add your own, and you record each check with the date it was done and the certificate. The next due date is filled in for you, reminders go out before each due date, and anything overdue is flagged. You can download a one-page summary as a PDF. The free compliance calendar tool works out due dates if you'd like to try it first.
Inventories and photos
An inventory in a spreadsheet is a list of items with a link to a folder of photos somewhere else. When a tenant leaves, finding the right version takes time.
In Rentap, inventories belong to the room. You record what's in the room, then a start of tenancy and an end of tenancy inventory with photos. Each new inventory starts from the latest one, so you only change what's different. Every past tenancy stays in the room's history, along with the tenancy agreement you kept with it.
Shared bills
If you pay the bills and recharge tenants, or split a bill between rooms, a spreadsheet needs a formula for each split. Rentap lets you split a shared bill between the rooms equally, by room size or by the number of people, and, if you like, add each share to the tenants' accounts.
One file, several people
When two people look after the same house, a spreadsheet tends to end up as two copies. Tenants also ask what they owe. With Rentap, tenants you invite can sign in on the web to see their rent and balance and report a problem, so you don't have to send them a screenshot of a spreadsheet.
When a spreadsheet is enough
Stick with a spreadsheet if most of these are true:
- you let one house, or a small number of rooms;
- tenants stay for a long time and rarely change;
- everyone pays the same way, on time, in full;
- you're the only person handling the money;
- repairs are rare and you're happy to keep notes elsewhere; and
- you already have a reliable routine for certificates and renewals.
If that's you, keep your sheet tidy: one row per payment rather than one cell per month, a column for the date received, a separate tab for costs with a receipt reference, and a dated list of every check and certificate. Back it up.
When Rentap is worth it
Rentap starts to pay for itself in time saved when:
- you let several houses, or one house with frequent turnover;
- tenants pay weekly, monthly, in part or early;
- you need to know at a glance who's overdue today;
- repairs, receipts and photos are scattered across apps;
- you've ever missed a certificate renewal date; or
- you'd like tenants to see their own balance instead of asking you.
It also gives you analytics without building a single formula: income, expenses and net by month, how much of the rent due was collected, and how many rooms are let. Costs you add for the business, rather than for a house, show on their own Business line.
What Rentap doesn't do
To be clear about the limits:
- Rentap isn't accounting software, and it doesn't submit anything to HMRC. You can download your expenses as a CSV file for your accountant or your own software.
- It doesn't hold or move money. Tenants pay you as they do today, and you record the payment.
- It keeps a record of each deposit and its return, but protecting a deposit with a scheme is something you do with the scheme directly.
- When you change a rent, you choose when the new rent starts and can note when you gave notice. Rentap shows a warning that most increases need written notice, but it doesn't check the rules for you. Our free rent increase date calculator helps with the dates.
Moving from a spreadsheet
You don't need to type in your history. When you add a tenancy that's already running, you choose the date you start tracking from and what the tenant owed (or had in credit) on that day, and Rentap carries on from there. Most landlords add a house, its rooms and current tenancies in an evening. The help centre explains how to add your first property.
What it costs
£2 a room a month, for the number of rooms you choose. 1 month free, no card needed. Add a card during your trial and get 1 more month free. If you don't add a card, nothing is charged. Tenants use Rentap free. See the pricing page for how the number of rooms and the payment day work, or read one plan, every feature.
Questions
Can I import my spreadsheet?
You don't need to import past payments. Add each house, its rooms and the current tenancies, with the balance on the day you start tracking. From then on, record payments in Rentap.
Will my accountant be able to use it?
You can download your expenses as a CSV file, which opens in any spreadsheet program. Rentap isn't accounting software, so your accountant or bookkeeping software still does the tax return.
Do my tenants have to use Rentap?
No. You can run everything yourself. If you invite tenants, they can see their rent and balance and report problems on the web, free.
What if I only have one house?
Rentap is priced per room, so a five-room house is £10 a month after the free months. If a spreadsheet is working well for you, it may be all you need; the section above on when a spreadsheet is enough is a fair test.
Can I go back to a spreadsheet later?
Yes. You can cancel online at any time, and download your expenses as CSV. Your data is kept for 12 months after your account ends, so you can come back or export it.
Read more about rent tracking room by room, the compliance calendar and repairs and issue tracking, or see everything on the room rent management page.