Running your lettings on a spreadsheet
I manage my properties in a spreadsheet. Is that actually a problem?
Most landlords who self-manage in England run on a spreadsheet and a folder of PDFs, and it is not a silly way to do it. It is free, it is already open, and for a single settled tenancy it is genuinely enough.
It is worth being precise about where it stops working, because the honest answer is not "it gets messy". A spreadsheet can be immaculate and still fail you, and the ways it fails are structural rather than a matter of keeping it tidier.
Checked on 15 September 2026. England only — Scotland and Wales are different regimes.
What a spreadsheet is genuinely good at
None of this is a setup for a counter-argument. If these are the things that matter most to you, the rest of this page will not change your mind, and it should not.
It costs nothing, and there is nothing to migrate
No subscription, no account, no evening spent typing your portfolio into somebody else's system. Against £180 a year for Starter, that is a real difference and not one to wave away.
It is shaped exactly like your head
Any column you want, in any order, with your own shorthand in it. No product will ever fit the way you think as closely as something you built yourself.
Nobody can change the terms or switch it off
It is a file. It works with the wifi off, it opens in ten years, and no company can reprice it, redesign it or go under and take it with them.
It does not disqualify you from Making Tax Digital
This one gets misrepresented, so plainly: a CSV is a valid digital link. MTD for Income Tax applies from 6 April 2026 above £50,000 of gross rent, £30,000 from 2027 and £20,000 from 2028 — and a spreadsheet plus bridging software is a legitimate way to meet it. Anyone telling you that you need software for MTD is selling you something.
Five things a spreadsheet structurally cannot do
Not untidiness, and not something a better-built spreadsheet fixes. Each of these is a consequence of what a spreadsheet is.
A date in a cell does not do anything
This is the whole of it. Compliance in England is a set of deadlines, and the way landlords fall foul of them is forgetting, not miscalculating. A cell holding 3 November 2026 is a fact your spreadsheet knows and will never act on. It will not tell you in September, it will not tell you the morning it lapses, and it will not tell you the day a tenant's solicitor asks for the certificate.
Tenarize sends reminders before every certificate and licence expires, in one feed — and from 60 days out you can book the renewal straight from the reminder, which picks the right trade from your own suppliers and drafts the email.
The statutory arithmetic is not the arithmetic you would write
A deposit received on 1 September is not due by the 31st. The Housing Act gives 30 days "beginning with" the date of receipt, which makes that day day one and the deadline the 30th — so =A2+30 is wrong by a day, on a duty where a day late is a complete breach. Section 8 is the same shape: the notice has to satisfy the longest period of every ground you cite, not the one you had in mind. Both are easy to get wrong and impossible to notice.
Tenarize computes both, and tracks the deposit against both statutory duties — protecting the money and giving the tenant the prescribed information — rather than treating "protected" as the whole job. You can check either without an account on the free calculators.
It has no history you did not type
A spreadsheet is editable after the fact and remembers nothing. When a deposit deduction goes to an adjudicator, or a possession claim goes to a tribunal, what is wanted is dated evidence of what was done and when — and a file you could have changed last night is not that. Neither is a memory of having sent something.
Tenarize keeps an audit trail per tenancy and exports it for a dispute or tribunal, alongside inventories signed by both sides and documents with their own dates.
Your tenant cannot see any of it
Every question routes through you. Where is my copy of the gas certificate, what did I pay in March, did you get my message about the boiler — each one is an email you have to find the answer to, and the answer is in a file only you can open.
Tenants get their own login: documents, payment history, e-signing and maintenance reporting. Since September 2026 a tenant also sees the same rent position the landlord sees — due, overdue and by how many days, paid, or still clearing.
It does not know the law changed
On 1 May 2026 the Renters' Rights Act made every assured tenancy periodic and abolished section 21. Every spreadsheet in England with a "fixed term ends" column became wrong that morning, and not one of them mentioned it.
The compliance checklist tracks the current England regime, including the Renters' Rights Act information sheet and the post-Act periodic structure, and it changes when the law does.
When the spreadsheet is still the right answer
There is a version of this page that leaves this section out. It would be a worse page, and you would find all of it out later anyway.
One property, a settled tenant, and you are on top of the dates
Then the spreadsheet is doing the job, and £180 a year against £0 is a real cost for reminders you do not currently miss. The case for switching gets strong at the point you have more than one set of certificates to hold in your head, or a tenancy that is about to change.
Scotland or Wales
Not supported, and not hedged. Those are different legal regimes — the Private Residential Tenancy and Rent Smart Wales — and Tenarize does not implement either. A spreadsheet does not care where the property is.
Short lets, holiday lets or commercial property
Also not supported. The product is built around an assured tenancy in England, and nothing about the checklists or the agreements fits a holiday let.
You want columns nobody else has
The structure here is ours. If the thing that makes your spreadsheet work is a layout only you would have thought of, you will feel the loss of it, and no amount of features compensates for that.
Answers, in plain terms
Do I have to stop using a spreadsheet for Making Tax Digital?
No. A CSV is a valid digital link, so a spreadsheet plus bridging software meets the requirement. MTD for Income Tax is live from 6 April 2026 for gross rent above £50,000, £30,000 from 2027 and £20,000 from 2028. If you do move across, Tenarize produces rent and expense reports as PDF or CSV with UK tax-year presets, and pushes figures into FreeAgent nightly if you use it.
Can I bring tenancies that are already running across?
Yes. "Import existing tenancy" sits next to "Start new tenancy" and skips the parts that only make sense for a new let — the vetting checklist has a "mark all as already done" button, so you are not re-recording reference checks for a tenant who moved in years ago. The compliance checklist is deliberately not skippable, because those certificates are the paperwork an import exists to capture.
What happens to my data if I leave?
It comes out. There is a self-service export under UK GDPR, and a full account deletion, both without asking anyone. Being able to leave is the honest answer to the one real advantage a file on your own machine has over an account.
Is it worth it for a single property?
The legal duties are identical whether you have one property or twenty, so the compliance case does not scale down. The cost case does: £180 a year against a spreadsheet costing nothing is a decision only you can make. Starter exists for exactly this, there is a month free, and a full refund inside the first three months if no tenancy is active.
Will it chase my tenant for rent?
Not in the way that phrase usually means. Rent is collected by Bacs Direct Debit on a mandate the tenant sets up, there is one email the day after a payment is due, and that is the end of what is automated. Arrears are shown to you and to the tenant; pursuing someone who has not paid remains yours to do.
A month free, and your existing tenancies come with you
"Import existing tenancy" skips the vetting you already did years ago and keeps the certificates, which are the part worth carrying across. £15 a month for one to five properties, no commission on rent, and a full refund inside three months if no tenancy is active.