How to Track Rental Income and Expenses in Google Sheets

I did my own bookkeeping in Google Sheets for 3 years before handing it to an accountant. And you know what she said? "This is actually really clean. I can work with this."

That's the goal. Not perfect accounting software. Just a clean, organized record of money in and money out. Something that makes tax time painless instead of a panic.

Here's exactly how I set it up.

The Two-Tab Approach

One tab for income. One tab for expenses. Don't combine them. I tried that. It turns into a mess by March.

Two separate tabs keep things clean. You can see all your income in one view and all your expenses in another. When tax time comes, you're pulling numbers from two clear sources instead of filtering one giant mess.

Tab 1: Rental Income

Set up these columns in your Income tab:

A: Date When you received the payment. Not when it was due. When you actually got it.

B: Property Which property or unit. "123 Main St" or "Unit 4B." Be consistent with naming.

C: Tenant Who paid.

D: Type Rent, Late Fee, Application Fee, Security Deposit, Other. Use a dropdown (Data > Data Validation > List of items) to keep these consistent.

E: Amount Dollar amount received. Format as currency.

Every time money comes in from a rental property, it gets a row here. $1,400 rent from Unit 3A? New row. $75 late fee from Unit 7B? New row. Keep it simple.

Tab 2: Rental Expenses

Set up these columns in your Expenses tab:

A: Date When you paid or were billed.

B: Property Same naming as your Income tab. This matters for formulas later.

C: Category This is the important one. Use categories that map to IRS Schedule E. I'll list them below.

D: Vendor Who you paid. "Home Depot," "ABC Plumbing," "State Farm."

E: Amount What you paid. Currency format.

F: Tax Deductible Yes or No. Most rental expenses are deductible, but not all. A dropdown works great here.

Expense Categories (Schedule E Aligned)

Use these categories in your Expenses tab. They map directly to the lines on IRS Schedule E, which saves you a massive headache in April.

Advertising. Auto and travel. Cleaning and maintenance. Commissions. Insurance. Legal and professional fees. Management fees. Mortgage interest. Other interest. Repairs. Supplies. Taxes. Utilities. Depreciation. Other.

Put these in a dropdown so you're always using the exact same wording. If you type "Repairs" sometimes and "Repair" other times, your SUMIF formulas will break.

Summary Formulas

Create a third tab called "Summary." This is your dashboard.

Total income by property:

=SUMIF(Income!B:B,"123 Main St",Income!E:E)

This adds up all income from a specific property. Create one row per property.

Total expenses by property:

=SUMIF(Expenses!B:B,"123 Main St",Expenses!E:E)

Net income by property: Just subtract. Total income minus total expenses. This tells you which properties are actually making money and which are bleeding.

Total expenses by category:

=SUMIF(Expenses!C:C,"Repairs",Expenses!E:E)

Create one row per category. When your accountant asks "how much did you spend on repairs this year?" you have the answer in one cell.

Monthly income totals:

=SUMPRODUCT((MONTH(Income!A:A)=1)*(YEAR(Income!A:A)=2025)*(Income!E:E))

Change the month number (1 for January, 2 for February, etc.) for each row. Now you can see income trends month over month.

The 5-Minute Monthly Routine

Here's what I do on the last day of every month. Takes maybe 5 minutes.

Open the Income tab. Make sure every payment is logged. Cross-reference with your bank statement. If something's missing, add it.

Open the Expenses tab. Go through your credit card and bank statements. Add any rental expenses you forgot to log during the month.

Check the Summary tab. Make sure the numbers make sense. If repairs jumped from $200/month to $2,000, you want to know why.

That's it. 5 minutes a month, and you're always caught up.

What This Gets You at Tax Time

When April rolls around, open your Summary tab. You have total rental income by property. You have total expenses by category. Those two things are 90% of Schedule E.

Hand the sheet to your accountant or plug the numbers in yourself. No scrambling through receipts. No guessing what that $340 charge was in August.

If you want a pre-built version of this whole setup, grab our free rental property expense tracker template. It's got both tabs, the dropdown categories, and the summary formulas already wired up.

For more on managing rental properties with spreadsheets, check out our guide on managing rental properties with spreadsheets.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Don't mix personal and rental expenses in the same sheet. If you bought lumber for your deck and lumber for a tenant repair on the same Home Depot trip, split them. Only the rental portion goes in your expense tab.

Don't skip months. The whole system works because you're consistent. Miss two months and suddenly you're staring at 60 bank transactions trying to remember which ones were rental-related. That's the shoebox method with extra steps.

Don't get creative with category names. "Repairs" and "Maintenance" might feel like different things to you. But if your SUMIF formula is looking for "Repairs" and you typed "Maintenance," that expense disappears from your totals. Pick the Schedule E category name and stick with it.

The landlords who stay profitable aren't the ones with the fanciest software. They're the ones who actually track their numbers. A simple Google Sheet, updated consistently, beats a $200/month platform you never log into.