Guides

Year-end checklist for landlords: get your rental records ready

This is a records checklist, not tax advice. What counts as income or a deduction depends on your situation and where you live, so your accountant or the tax authority is the place to ask. What you can control is having clean records ready when they ask.

1. Close out rent for each tenant

• Open each tenant’s ledger and check that every payment you received this year is in it, with the date you received it.
• Look for months that are still open. Decide whether they are real balances or a missed entry.
• Check that a rent increase, if you had one, starts on the right month.
• Print or save a statement for each tenant. It is your proof if anyone asks later.

2. Gather the money going out

• Log every expense you have a bill or receipt for, with the date, amount, who you paid and which property it belongs to.
• Put each one in a category: repairs, insurance, property taxes, utilities, supplies and so on. Our expense list uses the category names from the IRS rental schedule, which many accountants like to see.
• Pull your mortgage interest statement, insurance bills and property tax bills from the year and check they are all logged.
• Keep the paper or a photo of each receipt in one folder.

3. Deposits and other money

• List the security deposits you are holding, by tenant. They are not rent, so keep them separate from your rent totals.
• Note any deposit you returned or kept this year, and the itemized list that goes with it.

4. Make the year-end sheet

In LedgerLatch, the Year-end page adds up rent received and expenses by category for each property, for the year you pick. Download it as a CSV and send it to your accountant, or keep it with your own return. It is a worksheet to work from, not a tax form.

5. Keep it all

• Save the year-end sheet, each tenant statement, your bills and your bank statements together.
• Ask your accountant how long to keep them. It varies.

Starting a new year? Our guide to keeping rent records covers the habits that make next December easy.