← All guides

Your options for handling a letting-agent statement - and the catch in each

If you get statements from a letting agent and need the figures in usable shape - for your own records, your accountant, or your tax return - there are a handful of routes you can take. They’re all valid. But each carries a trade-off that isn’t obvious until you’re a few months in, and it usually comes down to one of two things: doing far more than you need, or locking your data inside someone else’s system.

1. All-in-one landlord software

These platforms aim to run your whole rental: tenants, tenancies, maintenance jobs, reminders, sometimes tax. If you want to run everything in one place, they can be a good fit.

The catch: most of it is machinery you may never touch - and your figures now live inside that platform. Getting them back out in a plain, portable form isn’t always easy, and you’re paying a monthly fee for the whole suite whether you use it all or not. If you ever leave, you’re not just switching tools, you’re extracting years of records.

2. General accounting software

Powerful, widely used, and what your accountant may already work in. If you keep full books, it earns its place.

The catch: it still won’t read your agent’s PDF for you. The figures have to get into it somehow, and that “somehow” is you, typing each line off the statement (or paying someone to). The software is the destination; the tedious part is untouched. For a scanned statement you can’t even copy-paste.

3. A spreadsheet template

Free, familiar, and yours to keep. A tidy set of columns waiting for your numbers.

The catch: the template is an empty box. It doesn’t read anything - you’re still typing every figure in by hand. We go into this in template vs. done-for-you.

4. A purpose-built tool that does one job

The narrow option: a tool that does nothing but turn the agent’s statement into clean, checked data - and then gets out of your way. That’s what RentSorter is. It reads the statement (typed or scanned), itemises every line, checks the maths reconciles, and hands you a plain Excel file.

Why the narrowness is the point: there’s no suite to learn and nothing to lock you in. The output is an ordinary spreadsheet - take it to your accountant, drop it into whatever accounting software you already use, or just keep it. Your data stays yours, in a format anything can open.

And the DIY version: you can paste a statement into ChatGPT yourself and ask it for the figures. It works the first time, which is rather the problem - using ChatGPT to read a statement is its own guide.

How to choose

• Want one system to run the whole rental? All-in-one software - just go in knowing your data lives there.
• Already keep full books, or have an accountant who does? Accounting software is the home for them - but you still need to get the statement’s figures into it.
• Only ever have a statement or two, and don’t mind typing? A free template is plenty.
• Just want the retyping to disappear, without signing up to a whole platform? A purpose-built tool does that one job and leaves you holding a file you own.

“More” isn’t automatically better, and the real long-term cost of the bigger platforms is often lock-in, not the monthly price. If all you actually need is your agent’s statement turned into clean, reliable data you can take anywhere, the narrow tool is usually the calmer choice.