Bank-fed income and expense tracking, per-property P&L, a security-deposit liability tracker, and a Schedule E-ready export. Built around how the IRS taxes rentals — no chart of accounts to wrangle. $9/mo, unlimited properties.
Small landlords don't need a general-ledger application. They need to answer four questions cleanly: who paid me, what did I spend per property, how much net income do I owe tax on, and where are the security deposits. Rentlane is built to answer those four — not to be a clone of QuickBooks with a property skin glued on.
Zelle, ACH, check deposits, and other rent payments auto-match to the right lease.
Repairs, supplies, utilities, insurance — pulled from your bank and tagged to a property.
One click for any property, any month, any year. Hand it to a co-owner or CPA.
Held as a liability per lease, not income. Itemize deductions when returning.
Trips to and from the property at the current IRS mileage rate.
Line-item summary mapped to Schedule E (Form 1040) categories. CSV + PDF.
QuickBooks is excellent general-ledger software. It just costs you a weekend of setup, asks you to think in classes and accounts, and often costs materially more once configured for rentals. Rentlane skips the setup because every transaction already belongs somewhere obvious in a rental context: a property, a lease, an IRS category, a deposit liability.
If you already have a complex set of LLCs and want a full GL, keep QuickBooks. For 1–20 units of personal or single-LLC rentals, Rentlane handles the bookkeeping without the friction. See QuickBooks vs purpose-built rental bookkeeping for the long version.
Rentlane's expense categories were built backward from Schedule E (Form 1040), the form that reports rental income for individuals. Mortgage interest, insurance, repairs, supplies, utilities, professional fees, depreciation — they all land on the right line. At the end of the year, the export reads like the form, only filled in.
Landlord accounting software is bookkeeping software designed specifically for rental property owners. It tracks rent income, security deposits, and operating expenses on a per-property basis and produces tax reports — most importantly a Schedule E (Form 1040) summary — that small landlords can hand to a CPA or upload to TurboTax. Unlike general accounting tools like QuickBooks, you don't have to design a chart of accounts; the categories are already set up around the way the IRS taxes rental income.
QuickBooks is built for any small business — chart of accounts, classes, vendors, customers, the works. To use it for rentals you set up classes per property, map deposits, and learn the QuickBooks vocabulary. Rentlane starts from the rental side: every transaction belongs to a property and a Schedule E line. Most small landlords with 1–20 units find Rentlane covers their bookkeeping without the QuickBooks learning curve.
No — and intentionally. Most small landlords don't need a full double-entry general ledger; they need a clean per-property income and expense record that produces a usable Schedule E. Rentlane keeps a single-entry ledger per property plus a security-deposit liability tracker so deposits don't get counted as income. If you need a full GL (rare for 1–20 units), keep using QuickBooks and export Rentlane's per-property reports as CSV.
Yes. Every rent payment matches to a specific property and unit through the bank feed, and every expense is tagged to a property. Per-property P&L is one click and you can hand a clean monthly or annual statement to a co-investor or your accountant.
Yes. Security deposits are tracked as a liability — not income — and held against the lease. When you return a deposit (full or partial), the deduction breakdown is logged and an itemized statement can be sent to the tenant.
Yes. Exports come out as CSV and PDF, with line items mapped to Schedule E categories, plus a P&L per property. CPAs can drop them straight into their workflow. Rentlane is not a tax preparer and does not give tax advice — always review with a qualified tax professional.
Yes. Track multiple properties under one LLC or across multiple LLCs, then use per-property reports to feed each entity's books at tax time.
$9/mo month-to-month or $7/mo billed annually ($84/year). 14-day free trial. Unlimited properties, units, transactions, and reports — no per-door fees, no per-payment processing fees on Rentlane's side.
Everything below is part of the same $9/mo plan — built for small landlords who want one tool that just works.
Connect your bank. Tag your first month. Stop dreading tax season. 14-day free trial. $9/mo for unlimited properties.
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