A rent roll is the one-page truth of your portfolio: every unit, who's in it, what they pay, when the lease ends, and what they owe. Lenders ask for it, buyers price from it, and you should be able to produce it in under a minute. Here's how to build one — by hand, and the smart way.
What belongs on it (copy this template)
Columns: Property | Unit | Tenant(s) | Lease start | Lease end | Monthly rent | Deposit required | Deposit held | Current balance | Status (current/expiring/month-to-month/vacant). That's it. Resist adding twenty columns — a rent roll is a summary, not a ledger.
Where spreadsheets go wrong
Three classic failures: the running-balance formula that breaks when someone sorts the sheet; the lease-end column nobody looks at until a tenant's been month-to-month for a year; and partial payments — $700 now, $600 next week — that turn one cell into a lie. If you take partial payments, your spreadsheet needs a real ledger behind it, and now you're maintaining software.
The smart way
There's nothing virtuous about retyping documents you already have. Your leases contain every column above — so the smart move is having AI read the PDFs and build the rent roll for you: tenants, dates, rent, deposits, with a review step so nothing lands unverified. Bank deposits then keep the balance column true automatically. This isn't a shortcut; it's what the workflow is inevitably becoming — software does the monotony, you spend the hour at the gym instead of in a spreadsheet.
If you're deciding between maintaining the sheet and switching, our spreadsheet comparison is honest about when the sheet wins. Prorated move-in? Our free prorated rent calculator does the math. Plans start at $15/month — pricing here.