Up to three flats, a spreadsheet and a good memory will do. Past ten, things start to slip: a forgotten rent payment, an expired contract, a lost meter photo. None of these is a disaster on its own, but together they cost a lot of time and money.
Where do things slip most often?
- Payments: who paid, who is late, who needs a reminder (if your tenant doesn't pay).
- Deadlines: contract end dates, rent increases, insurance, annual tax return.
- Maintenance requests: by phone, by email, by message, and nobody knows where things stand (how to keep them in order).
- Documents: contracts, reports and invoices scattered all over the place.
Why a spreadsheet can't keep up
A spreadsheet stores facts, but it doesn't keep watch for you. It won't tell you when a payment hasn't arrived, it won't remind you that a contract is ending, and it doesn't know whether anyone replied to a maintenance request. And if several of you use it, in two weeks there will be three versions.
The second problem is that everything gets scattered. The contract is in a folder, the photos on a phone, the messages across three channels, the invoices in email. When you need them in a dispute, it takes half a day to pull them together.
What to put into a system first
- Rent, because that's the money.
- Contracts and end dates, because that's where the most expensive mistakes happen.
- Maintenance requests, because they decide whether the tenant stays. After that come team permissions.
1. Rent
For every flat, record how much the rent is, when it's due and who pays it. Each month, see at a glance who has paid and who hasn't. One late payment is easy to sort out. Three are hard.
2. Contracts and end dates
For each flat, keep the contract, its attachments and the key dates in one place: end date, rent increase, notice period. Get an alert two to three months before the end date, so you have time to talk to the tenant. We wrote about this in our article on empty months.
3. Maintenance requests
One channel where the tenant reports problems and where everyone can see the status. If the tenant can see their request moving forward, they won't call you every day.
The rest of the system
Once the basics are running, add the rest:
- Utilities and meters: monthly readings with photos, itemised billing. See our article on utility billing.
- Handover: the same process with photos at every tenant changeover.
- Financial overview: income and costs per flat, for your tax return and owner reports.
- Team: if several of you work together, roles and permissions.
If you also let your flats on booking platforms, here's how to avoid double bookings.
How much time does it save?
That depends on where you're starting from. But if you spend just half an hour per flat each month matching payments, calculating utilities and hunting for documents, with ten flats that's five hours a month. A good system takes most of that away, and what's left goes faster too.
The bigger win isn't the time, though, it's avoiding mistakes. An expired contract, a forgotten increase or a lost handover report costs far more in a dispute.
FAQ
How many flats before software is worth it?
It helps even with one flat, but you really feel the difference above three to five. Past ten, it's almost unavoidable.
What should I do with my old spreadsheets?
Move over the active tenancies and archive the closed ones. You don't have to move everything at once.
What should I ask tenants when I switch?
Send them a short note on how to report problems from now on and where they can see their payments.
All in one place
In Rentkey, your flats, tenants, payments and maintenance requests are all in one place. You get notified about deadlines, and owners can log in to see their own flats.
