Moving your rental records from Excel without losing the story

Start with what each row means

A rental workbook often grows around the person who maintains it. A coloured cell might mean “paid”, a comment might explain a move-out, and one column may contain several months of receipts. Those shortcuts make sense to you, but an import needs explicit facts. Decide which rows describe units, which describe tenancies, and which describe real money.

Keep the original workbook unchanged. Work from a copy and pick a clear starting month for billing. If an old spreadsheet has already been corrected in RentRows, that file should not overwrite the newer record.

Import the portfolio before payments

Add properties, units and tenants first. Use consistent names and one row per unit in the simple template. An occupied unit also needs the actual move-in date, monthly rent and agreed deposit if known. A vacant unit should have no tenancy details in that row.

Move-in date and billing start answer different questions. A tenant may have moved in years ago while you only want to bring verified charges across from this month. Review “Rent billed from” deliberately so you do not create years of unintended arrears.

One transaction can have several portions

Suppose one KSh 40,000 payment covered November and December at KSh 20,000 each. The payment import needs two KSh 20,000 portions with the same genuine receipt reference, date and method. Putting KSh 40,000 on both rows doubles the recorded money.

The received date is not necessarily the rent month being settled. Keep both, especially for advance rent, late payments and deposit top-ups. A deposit agreement also does not prove money was received.

Check a small batch all the way through

Try a vacant unit, a current tenant and a receipt covering several months first. Review the proposed records and confirm only when the result makes sense. Afterwards, open the unit, tenancy, bills and receipt rather than checking only the row count.

Compare actual receipts with the source statement and check individual balances. Investigate missing months, repeated references and deposits treated as rent. Keep uncertain history marked uncertain rather than inventing a balancing entry.

• Keep the source workbook.
• Choose the billing start month.
• Review before committing.
• Compare totals and individual records.

Keep an exit route

Use readable statements for everyday sharing and a fuller archive for your own records. A downloadable archive is useful, but it is not the same as a tested database recovery backup. RentRows’s ordinary reports and complete archive serve these different purposes.