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Property management bookkeeping software for owner ledgers and payouts

Letting is property management bookkeeping software for managers who hold rent for other people's properties. It keeps a ledger for every tenant from your bank export, a running balance for every owner, applies your management fee by rule and produces the owner statement with the net payout. Your accountant receives income and expense by property as CSV, ready to post in QuickBooks or Xero. From $29 a month billed yearly.

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Statements, SeptemberSend day: 3rd
Carlton Holdings
Net payout $2,713
Sent Sep 3, PDF and CSVSent
E. Adebayo
Net payout $1,742
Sent Sep 3, PDF and CSVSent
R. Whitfield
Net payout $1,566
Repairs pendingDraft

The short answer

Bookkeeping for a property manager is three ledgers that must agree: what each tenant owes and paid, what each owner is owed, and what the business earned in fees. Letting keeps the first two for you and calculates the third. It does not replace QuickBooks, Xero or your accountant. It feeds them clean, per property figures, so the month stops ending in a spreadsheet.

At 20 owners a manual close is easily a full day. The work is repetitive: match deposits to tenants, add repair invoices to the right owner, take the fee, subtract, write the statement. That is exactly the work the software does from the same bank file you already download.

The three ledgers a manager has to keep straight

Most month end errors come from one of these drifting away from the others.

Because the owner ledger is built from the tenant ledgers, a correction in one place flows through. If a payment was matched to the wrong tenant, you fix the match and the owner statement recalculates.

LedgerWhat it recordsWhere it comes from in Letting
Tenant ledger Rent charged, payments received, balance, deposit held Leases plus the matched bank export
Owner ledger Rent received for the owner's units, repairs paid, fees taken, net payable Tenant ledgers, closed work orders and fee rules
Management income Fees and letting fees you earned in the month Fee rules applied per owner

Month end for 12 owners, with real numbers

Take an owner with three duplexes, six units, rent of $1,450 a unit. Rent roll for the month is $8,700. Five units paid in full and one tenant paid $700 of $1,450, so rent received is $7,950 and past-due rent is $750 on the roll.

Letting shows each of those lines with a click through to the bank deposit or the work order behind it, then produces the statement as PDF and CSV. The part that used to take 20 minutes per owner is a review of one screen. Multiply by 12 owners and the close drops from most of a day to about an hour of checking.

The fee percentage and the figures above are an example, not a quote. You set fees per owner, as a percentage of rent received, a flat amount, or both.

  • Management fee at 8 percent of rent received: $636
  • Two repair jobs closed in the month: $210 plumbing and $145 gutter
  • Net payout to the owner: $7,950 minus $636 minus $355 = $6,959
September rent roll5 units
UnitDueReceivedStatus
Apt 2, 14 Carlton Ave$1,150$1,150Paid
Apt 4, 14 Carlton Ave$1,095$1,095Paid
Apt 5, 14 Carlton Ave$1,050$600Partial
Unit 12, 48 Mill St$980$0Late
Unit 15, 48 Mill St$990$990Unmatched

What the bookkeeping side covers

See how the statement itself is laid out on property management accounting software for owner statements and the rent side on rent roll software.

  • Tenant ledgers from bank CSV matching, with part payments and credits handled
  • Owner statements per owner across all their properties, as PDF and CSV
  • Management fees by rule, per owner, applied at month end
  • Repair costs pulled from closed work orders and charged to the right owner
  • Security deposits tracked per lease, shown separately from rent
  • Income and expense export by property and by period for your accountant
  • Past-due rent aged 1 to 30, 31 to 60 and 60+ days on the rent roll

How the month close works

1. Export transactions from your bank as CSV and drop the file in.

2. Letting matches each deposit to a tenant ledger. You confirm the few it could not match.

3. Close repair jobs with the invoice amount and the owner it belongs to.

4. Review the owner statements it built, with fees already applied.

5. Send statements by email on the day you set and export income and expense to your accountant.

What it is not

Letting is not a general ledger. It does not file taxes, run payroll or keep a chart of accounts for your own company, and it does not hold funds. Rent keeps going into your bank account, and you pay owners from it. Trust and client money account rules depend on your state, and your accountant or broker stays responsible for those accounts. Check your state real estate regulator (the ARELLO jurisdiction directory lists them) for requirements on how client money is held and reconciled.

If you need tenants to pay inside the software or want built in online payments, a platform such as Buildium or DoorLoop does that and charges per unit or per payment for it.

Bookkeeping tools for property managers side by side

Prices are from each vendor's public page at the time of writing and change. Ask for a written quote at your unit count.

More detail on the bigger platforms is on the AppFolio alternative and Buildium alternative pages.

ToolStrong atPricing modelWhere it falls short
Letting Owner ledgers, fee rules, statements from a bank export Flat by unit band, $29 to $94 a month billed yearly No online rent payments, not a general ledger
QuickBooks Online alone Full accounting for your company Monthly subscription by plan Has no owner statements or tenant ledgers built in, needs class tracking set up by hand
Buildium Accounting, owner portal and online payments in one Per plan, with per payment fees Cost rises with unit count and payments
AppFolio Full platform for larger companies Quote only, with minimums Not built for small portfolios
Spreadsheet Costs nothing None Every owner statement is typed by hand, errors reach owners

Flat price by number of units

Landlord is $59 a month, or $29 billed yearly, for up to 25 units. Monthly owner statements for several owners start on Agency at $189 a month, or $94 billed yearly, for up to 150 units. Portfolio is $449 a month for up to 500 units. No onboarding fee and no per payment fee. Compare plans on property management software pricing.

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Close a demo month in your browser

The homepage demo imports a bank export into a sample portfolio, updates the rent roll and produces an owner statement PDF. No account needed.

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FAQ

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It depends on how you work. If you need a full accounting package for your own company, use QuickBooks or Xero. If your pain is the owner side, meaning tenant ledgers, fees and statements, use property software built for it. Many managers run both, with Letting exporting income and expense to the accounting system.

It can track income and expense by property with classes or locations, but it has no tenant ledger, rent roll or owner statement. You build those yourself each month. Intuit documents class and location tracking on its support site.

Letting exports income and expense by property and period as CSV, which your accountant imports or posts in QuickBooks or Xero. There is no live two way sync.

Match every bank deposit to a tenant, subtract fees and repair payments per owner, and check that the owner balances add up to the money held. Letting builds those balances from the matched bank file, so reconciling is a review, not a rebuild.

Yes. Each lease records the deposit held, and it is shown apart from rent so it never inflates the owner payout. Your state sets where deposits must be held and when they are returned.

Close the month in an hour, not a day

Import your tenants, owners and a bank export and your ledgers and owner statements are ready today. $29 a month billed yearly, or $59 monthly, for up to 25 units.