Most small landlords start with a spreadsheet, and for one property it works. The trouble starts with the mid-month first year, a clock for every improvement and a loss limit that carries over. This page compares the two on those jobs.
A spreadsheet is flexible and yours. For one property and one year it is often enough, and a preparer can open it anywhere. The cost is that every rule lives in a formula you wrote, and it only stays right as long as every row is copied correctly.
Rental Ledger keeps the same rows and applies the rules for you: depreciation, the loss allowance, the rent collection grid and the 1099 list. It shows the arithmetic and exports back to CSV.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| Mid-month first-year depreciation | Built in here; a formula you write and check in a sheet. |
| Separate clock per improvement | Built in here; one block of cells per improvement in a sheet. |
| Passive loss allowance and carryforward | Built in here; a manual worksheet in a sheet. |
| Contractors owed a 1099-NEC | Listed here at the $2,000 threshold; a pivot table in a sheet. |
| Short-term rentals, commercial property, state rules | A spreadsheet. Rental Ledger is federal and residential only. |
| Where the data lives | Your browser storage here; a file you keep in a sheet. Neither is uploaded by us. |
Yes. A careful spreadsheet can. The hard parts are the mid-month first year, a separate clock for every improvement, and keeping the totals tied to the rows when you add a property or a year.
It does not tell you that a large expense logged as a repair looks like an improvement, list the contractors who crossed the 1099-NEC threshold, carry a suspended passive loss forward, or estimate the tax on a sale. You have to build and maintain each of those yourself.
It is federal and residential only. A spreadsheet can be bent to cover short-term rentals, commercial 39-year property, state rules or anything else your preparer needs, because you control every cell.
Yes. Rental Ledger imports a CSV of rows and exports Schedule E and all entries as CSV, so a preparer can open the result in any spreadsheet.
No. Rental Ledger runs entirely in your browser; nothing you enter is uploaded.