Rental management software: why it is time to ditch Excel

If you still manage your rent with Excel, you're not alone. Many real estate - especially small ones - use spreadsheets to carry control of tenants, contracts, charges and liquidations. It works... until it stops working. And when it fails, it fails at the worst.

Why Excel is not enough to manage rent

Excel is a fantastic tool for many things, but it is not designed to manage the full cycle of a rental. Here are the problems that appear when you use Excel for your rental portfolio:

• There are no automatic reminders: you forget about income reviews, insurance maturities and renewal dates.
• A formula error ruins everything: a poorly written cell and the owner's liquidation goes badly.
• You can't easily share: If you work with partners, the Excel ends in 5 different versions.
• No record: When was that clause changed? Who authorized that sale? Excel has no trace.
• The owners see nothing: You have to make manual reports every month and email them.

What a rental management program should have

Real estate rental management software is not just an improved agenda. It has to cover the whole cycle:

• Digital contract discharge
• Automatic housing charges
• Detection of default and alerts
• Consequences management during lease
• Automatic income review according to IPC
• Monthly settlement to the owner with breakdown
• Private area where the owner sees everything without asking you for reports

When is the time to change

These signs indicate that Excel is no longer giving you:

• More than 10 rental contracts
• You've had a non-payment you discovered late.
• A owner has complained about the liquidation
• You lose more than 2 hours a week by making manual reports
• Your team has grown and Excel has become unmanageable.

The advantage of an online program against Excel

With an online rental management program, the charges are run automatically, the non-payments jump on the control panel, the liquidations are generated alone and the owner access his private area without you having to do anything. That's hours recovered every month.

Besides, everything is audited. If there's a discrepancy, you know who did what and when. In Excel, it's your word against the owner's.

How to make the transition without trauma

Switching from Excel to a CRM doesn't have to be a drama. The key is to migrate data gradually: it starts with active contracts, then adds the historical one. Most programs allow you to import data into CSV from Excel, so you don't have to rewrite everything.

If you manage rents and you're tired of relying on Excel, InmoProCRM test. It includes complete rental management with automatic charges, liquidations, incidents and private area for owners. You start free and migrate your data whenever you want.