Best Rent Tracking Spreadsheet Template for Landlords

I've tried about a dozen rent tracking spreadsheet templates over the years. Most of them are either way too complicated or missing basic stuff you actually need.

Here's what I've landed on after managing 12 units with nothing but Google Sheets for 3 years.

What Your Rent Tracking Spreadsheet Actually Needs

Forget the fancy ones with 15 tabs and color-coded macros. You need five columns to start.

Unit number. Tenant name. Rent amount. Due date. Date paid.

That's it. Everything else is nice to have. Those five columns are the foundation.

The Template I Use

I set mine up with one tab per month. Each row is a unit. Columns are: Unit, Tenant, Rent Amount, Due Date, Date Paid, Days Late, Notes.

The "Days Late" column is just a formula. If Date Paid is blank and today is past the due date, it shows how many days overdue. (For the full formula collection, see our Google Sheets formulas for landlords.). Something like =IF(AND(F2="", TODAY()>D2), TODAY()-D2, 0).

I also add conditional formatting. If Days Late is greater than 0, the row turns red. Simple visual cue.

At the bottom I have a SUM for total rent expected, total collected, and total outstanding. Three numbers that tell you everything.

Why Monthly Tabs Work Better Than One Big Sheet

I tried the "one giant sheet with every month" approach. By month 6, it was 200+ rows and scrolling was painful.

Monthly tabs keep things clean. You can look at June. You can look at July. You don't have to filter anything.

Plus you get a natural archive. January's tab is done. You don't touch it again.

The Part Most Templates Get Wrong

Most templates I've downloaded from the internet try to do too much. They include lease tracking, maintenance logs, expense reports, and property valuations all in one file.

That sounds great until your file takes 10 seconds to load and you can't find anything.

Keep rent tracking separate. If you need a maintenance tracker, make a separate sheet (I share mine in my free maintenance tracker spreadsheet post - or grab the ready-made maintenance template). If you need expense tracking, that's another sheet.

One sheet, one job. That's the rule.

When the Spreadsheet Stops Working

For about 2 years, my spreadsheet was perfect. Then I hit 10 units and things started slipping.

The problem wasn't the spreadsheet itself. It was me. I'd forget to check it. Or I'd check it on the 5th but not again until the 12th. And by then a tenant was 7 days late and I had no idea.

The spreadsheet only works if you open it every single day. And honestly, some weeks I just didn't.

I lost about $1,400 one month because I caught a missed payment 11 days late. The tenant had already spent the money on something else and needed a payment plan. That $1,400 took 3 months to fully collect. (I broke down the real cost of missing a late payment in another post.)

What I Do Now

I still use the same spreadsheet template. I didn't switch to some big property management platform. I just added monitoring on top.

That's actually why I built RentGuard. It reads your Google Sheet every day and sends you an alert when rent is overdue. You don't have to remember to check. It checks for you.

Your spreadsheet stays the same. You don't migrate anything. You just get a text or email when something needs attention.

If you want to keep using your spreadsheet but stop missing late payments, that's exactly what RentGuard does. Check it out at descoshop.com.