Renting without spreadsheets: 5 things that save hours every month

If you rent out one or two flats, this is probably familiar: a separate spreadsheet for payments, photos of meter readings buried in your gallery, and three different channels where tenants message you. It works — but it eats hours every month, and at move-out it almost guarantees a dispute.

Here are the five tasks most landlords still do by hand, even though they shouldn’t have to.

1. Collecting meter readings

The classic flow: you remind the tenant, they send a photo, you read it, type it into a spreadsheet, calculate consumption. 10–15 minutes per flat per month — and easy to mistype.

Instead: the tenant photographs the meter in one tap, the value is read automatically (OCR), and consumption is calculated for you. For the full process, see utility bill settlement for rentals, step by step.

2. Tracking payments

Who paid, who didn’t, and when? If you track this from memory or a spreadsheet, an arrear will eventually slip through and you’ll notice too late.

Instead: a portfolio view where you see payment status for every property at a glance.

3. Deposit ledger

How much is the deposit, what did you deduct before, and what’s the evidence? These questions always come up at move-out.

Instead: an itemised deposit ledger with the payment in, deductions and evidence — transparent for both sides.

4. Move-in / move-out condition

Digging through your photo gallery is not a good answer to “what condition was it in at move-in?”.

Instead: a per-room report with photos at move-in, and an automatic diff at move-out — the deduction draft is generated for you.

5. Communication in one place

Chat, email, SMS — finding anything later is painful, and useless in a legal dispute.

Instead: searchable, per-property in-app chat and issue reporting, with photos.

None of these tasks is hard on its own. The problem is that they add up, and you redo them every single month. With a system built for this, that repetitive work disappears — which is exactly why we built RentTab. To see what’s due and when across the year, check the rental admin annual calendar.

It’s always free for tenants, by the way — and better for them too, because they finally have a clear view of their own affairs.

Curious how much you’d save? Try it for 1 month, no credit card.