Getting organised
Property management spreadsheet alternatives
Published · Updated · Hovora
A spreadsheet is a genuinely good way to manage one or two properties. It is free, it is flexible, and you already know how to use it. It is worth being clear about what actually breaks before replacing it with something more complicated.
What spreadsheets do well
- Arithmetic, obviously — totals and per-property columns
- A layout that matches how you personally think
- No cost, no account, no learning curve
- Exporting to whatever your accountant wants
If a spreadsheet is working for you, it is working. The reason to move is a specific failure, not a general feeling that software would be more professional.
What breaks, and when
- Nothing reminds you
- A date in a cell is inert. The renewal you missed was written down — that was never the problem.
- Documents live elsewhere
- The spreadsheet has a row for the insurance policy; the policy itself is in an email. Two systems, and only one of them is up to date.
- Currencies get added together
- A total column across properties in different countries produces a number that is not money in any currency.
- History gets overwritten
- Editing a cell replaces what was there. There is no record that the rent used to be different, or that the boiler was serviced twice.
- Phones
- Recording an expense while standing in the property is where the context is. A spreadsheet on a phone is a technically possible experience.
What to look for instead
- Reminders that arrive before a date, not a list you have to open
- Documents stored against the property, with expiry dates
- Amounts kept in each property’s own currency, never summed across
- History that is added to rather than overwritten
- Something usable on a phone, one-handed, in a hallway
- An export, so leaving is possible
What you probably do not need
Full property management platforms are built for letting agents managing hundreds of units: tenant portals, rent collection, listing syndication, accounting ledgers. If you own a few places yourself, most of that is cost and configuration you will never use.
The cost of that mismatch is not only the subscription. It is the onboarding you have to sit through, the fields you have to fill to make a screen stop complaining, and the permanent low-level sense that you are using the software wrong. Software built for a bigger job than yours does not scale down gracefully.
How to tell it is actually time
Rather than a general feeling, look for one of these. Any single one is enough of a reason; none of them is fixed by trying harder with the spreadsheet.
- You have missed a dated thing in the last year — a renewal, a certificate, an inspection
- You keep the spreadsheet on a laptop but the work happens on your phone
- Somebody asked for a document and you looked in your email rather than the file
- You own property in more than one currency and the totals row has stopped meaning anything
- You cannot answer what was done to a property two years ago without guessing
- You have more than one version of the file and are not certain which is current
Moving without losing the history
The migration is usually smaller than people expect, because most of a property spreadsheet is arithmetic you will not need to carry over. What matters is the dates and the documents.
- Create one record per property first, with its country, currency and timezone.
- Move the dates: renewals, expiries, lease milestones, recurring jobs. These are the whole reason for moving.
- Upload the documents you already have, filing each against its property, with expiry dates where they apply.
- Bring across expenses only from the current year unless you have a reason to go further back. Older years can stay in the spreadsheet, archived.
- Keep the spreadsheet, read-only, for one cycle. Delete it when a full year has passed without opening it.
Do not try to migrate everything on the first evening. Properties and dates on day one is enough to stop the bleeding; documents and history can follow over a couple of weeks.
What to ask before committing
- Can I get my data back out, in a format something else can read?
- What does it do when a date passes — does anything actually reach me, or is it a list I have to remember to open?
- What happens if I stop paying? Is the data deleted, or does it stay and the limits return?
- Does it handle a property in another country properly — its own currency, its own timezone?
- How much of this am I paying for and will never use?
The last one is the question a spreadsheet user is really asking. A spreadsheet has no unused surface area, and that is genuinely part of why it felt fine. The replacement worth having is the one that is small enough that you will still understand all of it in a year.