What Is a Rent Ledger? How to Record Rent Payments With Ease

By Alondra Segoviano

Out of all the responsibilities that come with being a landlord, collecting rent payments is the most important for a few reasons. Not only do these payments help cover operating expenses like your mortgage and maintenance, but the way you handle late payments can also influence the eviction process.

For that reason, you’ll want to have the right reporting in place to help you keep track of all your tenants and their payment history — thus comes in a rent ledger. A rent ledger is a report landlords can use to get an overview of all rent payments they’ve collected with information on the tenant. Keep reading to learn more about rent ledgers and how they can be helpful for you. 

Key Takeaways

• A rent ledger shows all the rent payments you’ve collected from your tenants with information on the payer, the unit, when the payment was debited to your account, the payment amount, the status (scheduled or paid), and charge type. 
• If you use Avail for rent collection, click on the “Reports” tab to download your “Received Payments” report for free. 
• Rent ledgers can be helpful during tax season, in the case of an eviction, or monthly financial review. 

What Is a Rent Ledger?

A rent ledger is a spreadsheet or report that includes all the rent payments you’ve collected from your tenants with information on the payer, the unit, when the payment was debited to your account, the payment amount, the status (scheduled or paid), and charge type. 

If you use a rent collection platform for your rental property, you can generally download a free rent ledger directly from your dashboard with all payments you’ve collected so far. However, if you use a platform like Zelle or PayPal which are mainly intended for personal use, you will need to create a rent ledger manually. 

What Information Is on a Rent Ledger?

As mentioned above, a rent ledger includes the following information: 

• Your renter’s name
• The address of the rental property it’s for
• When the amount was debited to your account
• The amount the renter paid
• The status of the payment
• The transaction number
• The charge type

The Benefits of Using Rent Ledgers

There are a handful of benefits of using a rent ledger. For one, periodically reviewing them can help you audit how all of your renters are doing when it comes to meeting their obligation to pay rent on time. There may be times when a late payment goes unnoticed, especially if you don’t have a system in place to automatically spot late payments. In that case, you can review your most recent rent ledger to confirm that all your renters paid rent, on what day, and the amount. 

Rent ledgers can also be helpful during tax season, considering rental income is taxed and needs to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). You can easily provide your certified public accountant (CPA) or tax professional with a rent ledger so they can see how much you’ve collected in rent and other rental fees per unit. 

While this use isn’t as common, rent ledgers can serve as an important piece of evidence in an eviction case caused by failure to pay rent, since they say if a payment is paid or unpaid. 

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How To Get a Rent Ledger for Free

The platform you use to collect rent payments usually produces a free report for you to download through your dashboard. If you collect rent with Avail, log in to your account and click the “Reports” tab. Then click on the “Received Payments” report. 

Our system will then email a copy of your free report to your email in the form of a spreadsheet to further customize or export as a PDF to share with others. 

If you’re a renter looking for proof of payments, you can ask your landlord to provide you with a rent ledger or something similar.

Collect Rent Online With Avail

Having the right tools and resources on hand can be a great way to streamline rent collection and take the stress out of the process. The next time you need an overview of payments you’ve collected, use a rent ledger provided by your current platform or create one manually if that’s your preference.

When you collect rent payments with Avail, you can access helpful reports for free that you can export to customize or share with other people. In addition to that, you can automate late fees, send automated rent reminders, and schedule upcoming payments for all your rentals. 

Create an account to get started or log in to your account to download your free report. 

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