Expense tracker

Where a landlord year actually goes

The rent comes in, the plumber gets paid, the insurance renews — and by the time someone asks what the year did, it lives in a bank app, a shoebox and your memory. Not because the numbers are hard, but because nobody wrote them down as they happened.

Here is a full year written down, broken into the twelve categories, with what each one took.

The year, in three numbers

Income — $114,975. Everything that came in across three properties: rent, late fees, deposits kept and other income.
Expenses — $88,770. Everything that went out, including the mortgage interest.
What you kept — $26,205. The subtraction, and the only figure most landlords can actually name at the end of a year.

The twelve categories, and what each one took

Twelve, always the same, so that one year can be compared against another. What is not one of them goes to Other.

Mortgage interest — $53,112, or 59.83% of everything spent. This is the finding that surprises people, and it is not unusual: on leveraged property the bank is the largest single line by a distance, and it is also the one you cannot negotiate down next year.
Property taxes — $10,920 (12.30%).
Management fees — $9,168 (10.33%). The third largest, and the only one of the top three you can decide not to pay.
Insurance — $5,340 (6.02%).
Repairs — $4,580 (5.16%) and maintenance — $1,440 (1.62%). Kept apart on purpose: one is what broke, the other is what you did so it would not.
Utilities — $3,060 (3.45%).
Advertising — $400, and legal and professional — $750.
Supplies, travel and other — nothing this year. They stay on the list anyway, because a category that only appears when it is used cannot be compared across years.

Read the shares rather than the totals. Mortgage interest, taxes and management together are 82.46% of the year's spending, and the three of them have almost nothing to do with how well you look after the buildings.

Cap rate calculator — see what a property earns before the mortgage payment. Free.

Why the categories are fixed, and why property is a number

Two decisions that look like restrictions and are the reason the totals hold.

The twelve categories do not change. If you could add one halfway through the year, this year and last year would stop being comparable, and the share column would quietly stop meaning anything.

And you type the property as a number, not a name. A name typed two ways — "Maple St" and "Maple Street" — splits one property into two in every total, and nothing warns you. The number resolves to the name by itself, in the column beside it.

What it is not

It is a record of your year, not a tax return. It calculates no tax, fills no form and replaces nobody — what it does is hand whoever prepares your return a clean year instead of a shoebox. Keep one file per year, so that last year stays exactly as you left it.

The other worked examples

Each file on this site carries a worked example already loaded, and each one has its arithmetic written out in full:

How to run a duplex through a spreadsheet — one property, worked from the six numbers you type down to the four that decide.
Break-even rent calculator — run your own numbers — break-even rent, and the free first-pass filter.
Where a landlord year actually goes — twelve categories, and what each one took.
A short-term rental year, measured in nights — occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, and what was kept.
Five properties on one page — the portfolio view, and the vacancy column.

The file this comes from

Every figure above is the worked example loaded in the Landlord Income & Expense Tracker, recalculated from the file: up to ten properties, one row per entry, twelve months and those twelve categories.

See the Landlord Income & Expense Tracker
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This template is a record-keeping tool, not financial, tax, or legal advice. Totals are only as good as the numbers you enter. Verify with a qualified professional before filing anything.