Managing Rental Properties in Spreadsheets

I managed 12 rental units in Google Sheets for 3 years. Rent tracking, maintenance logs, expense records, tenant info. All in spreadsheets.

For 2 of those years, it was great. Year 3 is when things started breaking.

Here's an honest breakdown of where spreadsheets work and where they don't. (Need a starting point? Grab our free landlord spreadsheet templates - rent tracker, maintenance log, and lease tracker.)

Where Spreadsheets Work Great

Data entry is fast. Nothing beats a spreadsheet for speed. Open it, type a number, done. No clicking through menus, no navigating dashboards. Just type.

Customization is unlimited. Want a column for "tenant's dog name"? Add it. Want conditional formatting that turns a row purple when rent is 5 days late on a Tuesday? Weird, but you can do it.

You already know how to use it. There's no learning curve. No onboarding. No setup wizard. You make a sheet and start typing.

It's free. Google Sheets costs nothing. For a landlord with tight margins, that matters.

Your data is portable. Download it as CSV anytime. Import it into anything. You're never locked into a vendor.

Where Spreadsheets Break Down

No alerts. Your spreadsheet knows rent is overdue. But it can't tell you. (You can set up late rent notifications, but they're fragile.) It just sits there with a red cell, silently waiting for you to open it. If you don't open it for 5 days, that red cell doesn't matter. (This is exactly when landlords start thinking about switching to software.)

No automation. When tenant pays rent, you manually update the sheet. (You can add some with our spreadsheet automation guide or read about spreadsheet automation for small business.) When a maintenance request comes in, you manually add a row. When a vendor finishes a job, you manually mark it complete. Every action is manual.

Version control is messy. Did you accidentally delete a row? Did the formula break? When did that number change? Spreadsheets have version history, but it's not granular enough to catch small mistakes.

Multiple users is risky. If you have a partner or assistant and you're both editing the sheet, things get messy fast. Google Sheets handles real-time collaboration well, but it doesn't stop two people from updating the same row differently.

Scaling hurts. At 5 units, a spreadsheet is clean. At 15 units, it's getting big. At 30 units, you're scrolling constantly and the file takes 3 seconds to recalculate.

The Specific Moment Mine Broke

It was February 2024. I had 12 units. I was tracking rent in one sheet, maintenance in another, expenses in a third.

I missed a late payment for 11 days. I missed a maintenance request for 23 days. Both in the same month.

The data was in the sheets. The formulas were working. The conditional formatting was lit up like a Christmas tree. But I didn't open the sheets.

That's the failure mode of spreadsheets. They're passive. They wait for you. And when you're busy, you don't come.

The Three Options When Spreadsheets Break

Option 1: Discipline yourself harder. Set calendar reminders. Build habits. Check every day. This works if you're disciplined. Most of us aren't. I tried this for 6 months before giving up.

Option 2: Switch to PM software. Buildium, TenantCloud, AppFolio. These solve the automation problem but create a migration problem. You have to enter all your data into a new system and learn a new interface. For 12 units, that's a lot of work for marginal benefit. I wrote a full spreadsheet vs PM software comparison if you're weighing this option.

Option 3: Add monitoring to your spreadsheet. Keep the sheet. Just make it active instead of passive.

I went with option 3. That's what RentGuard does. It connects to your Google Sheets and monitors them daily. When rent is overdue or maintenance is aging, you get an alert. You don't have to change anything about how you work.

Your spreadsheet stays your source of truth. RentGuard just makes sure you don't miss what's in it.

If your spreadsheet is starting to crack, descoshop.com might be the duct tape you need. Free forever. 60-second setup.