Free rental property spreadsheet for landlords
A real Excel workbook — not a screenshot of one. Rent tracker, expense log with IRS Schedule E categories, and an annual summary that calculates itself. Built for residential landlords with a handful of doors. No email, no signup.
Pre-fill your properties (optional)
Names you add here become dropdown options on the rent and expense tabs, so every row stays consistent.
.xlsx · opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers or LibreOffice · no signup
What's inside the workbook
Five tabs, every formula already written and every input cell colored blue so you always know what is safe to type over.
Properties
One row per rental with purchase price and the fixed monthly costs that never show up on a rent roll — mortgage P&I, property tax, insurance, HOA. Totals roll up automatically and feed every other tab.
Rent Tracker
One row per tenant, twelve month columns. Enter the rent due once; log what actually arrives as it arrives. Collected, expected and variance columns compute themselves, so a short payment in March is visible in March instead of at tax time.
Expenses
Date, property, category, vendor, amount, notes — 250 rows, with property and category as dropdowns so nothing gets miscategorized. Categories are the IRS Schedule E lines, not made-up buckets.
Annual Summary
Rent collected, rent expected, expenses logged, twelve months of fixed costs and net cash flow — per property, plus a portfolio total and a full expenses-by-category breakdown. Entirely SUMIF-driven; you never type in it.
Start here
A one-screen explanation of the color key and the order to fill things in, so the workbook still makes sense in November when you have not opened it since March.
Where a rental property spreadsheet stops working
This is a good spreadsheet and it is genuinely free — but it is worth being honest about what a grid of cells can and cannot do for a residential landlord.
| The job | This spreadsheet | PLINTH |
|---|---|---|
| Record rent collected and expenses | Yes | Yes |
| Categorize for Schedule E | Yes | Yes |
| Net cash flow per property | Yes | Yes |
| Warn you a lease expires in 60 days | No | Yes |
| Track renewal + termination notice windows | No | Yes |
| Flag a tenant falling behind | Only if you look | Yes |
| Store the signed lease and documents | No | Yes |
| Give the tenant a portal to message you | No | Yes |
| Survive being emailed between three devices | Rarely | Yes |
The pattern we see over and over: the spreadsheet works fine until a lease auto-renews at last year's rent, or a notice deadline slips past. One missed renewal usually costs more than several years of software. PLINTH is $7/month with no cut of your rent.
How to set it up in ten minutes
- 1Fill in the Properties tab firstEverything else references it. Address, purchase price, and the four fixed monthly costs. If you do not know your exact tax and insurance split, use the escrow figure divided out — you can refine it later.
- 2Add one Rent Tracker row per tenantPick the property from the dropdown, type the tenant name and the monthly rent due. Leave the month columns empty; you will fill them as payments land.
- 3Log expenses the day they happenThe single habit that makes or breaks the whole thing. Two minutes on your phone beats four hours in April reconstructing the year from bank statements.
- 4Read the Annual Summary at month endFive minutes, once a month. If net cash flow on any property is negative and you did not expect it, you now know in month three instead of month twelve.
Rental property spreadsheet FAQ
- What should a rental property spreadsheet track?
- Four things, and most free templates only do two. First, the property itself and its fixed monthly costs — mortgage principal and interest, property tax, insurance, HOA. Second, rent due versus rent actually collected, month by month, per tenant. Third, every expense with a category that maps to IRS Schedule E, so your accountant is not reconstructing the year from a shoebox. Fourth, a summary that nets it all out per property, because a portfolio total hides the one unit that is quietly losing money.
- Is this rental property spreadsheet really free?
- Yes. No email required, no signup, no watermark. Click download and you get an .xlsx file that opens in Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers or LibreOffice. You own it, you can edit every formula, and nothing phones home.
- Does it work in Google Sheets?
- Yes. Download the file, then in Google Drive choose File → Import → Upload. All the formulas (SUM, SUMIF, IF) are standard and carry over. The dropdown lists for property and expense category carry over too.
- How do I track rent payments in Excel?
- Put one row per tenant and twelve columns for the months. Enter the rent due once in its own column, then type what actually arrived in each month's cell as it lands. A variance formula — collected minus expected — tells you instantly who is short and by how much. That is exactly how the Rent Tracker tab in this workbook is built, and the variance column is already written for you.
- What expense categories should I use for rental property?
- Use the IRS Schedule E lines so tax time is a copy job rather than a translation job: advertising, auto and travel, cleaning and maintenance, commissions, insurance, legal and professional fees, management fees, mortgage interest, other interest, repairs, supplies, taxes, utilities, depreciation, and other. The Expenses tab has these as a dropdown so you cannot fat-finger a category and lose the deduction.
- When should a landlord stop using a spreadsheet?
- A spreadsheet is a record of what already happened. It cannot tell you that a lease expires in 60 days, that a renewal notice window closes next week, or that a tenant is now two months behind — it only knows what you remembered to type. Most landlords hit that wall somewhere between three and eight doors, or the first time a lease auto-renews at last year's rent.
- How many properties does the template handle?
- Ten properties and twenty-four tenants out of the box, with 250 expense rows. Every formula uses ranges rather than hardcoded values, so you can insert rows and extend the ranges if you outgrow it.
More free tools for landlords
When the spreadsheet stops keeping up
PLINTH does everything above, plus it watches the calendar for you — lease expirations, renewal windows, late rent. Flat $7/month, first month free, no percentage of your rent.