Porchyard vs Spreadsheets
A spreadsheet holds numbers and nothing else. Porchyard keeps the transactions, the invoices and the leases against the property they belong to.
A spreadsheet is genuinely fine for one property. It is free, you already know how it works, and the whole picture fits on one screen. Nobody should migrate off one for the sake of it.
It stops working somewhere around the third property, and it stops working in a specific way: the numbers are still there, and everything around them is not. The signed lease is in an email. The renewal date is in your head. Last year's receipts are in a folder you named optimistically. Every month you retype the same transactions into the same rows, and every mistyped one is a deduction you will not claim. Porchyard is not a better spreadsheet -- it keeps the things a spreadsheet was never holding.
| Capability | Porchyard | Spreadsheets |
|---|---|---|
| Transaction Categorization | Yes | No |
| Schedule E Tax Reports | No | Manual |
| Data Entry Required | Low (CSV Import) | 100% Manual |
| Error Risk | Low (Duplicate Detection) | High (Formula Errors) |
| Cost | From $19/month | Free (Software Only) |
Free software doesn't mean free management. Here's what spreadsheets actually cost landlords.
Typing in transactions and sorting them by property takes hours every month, and CSV import with per-property categories gives most of them back.
Without a category on every transaction, deductible expenses are easy to miss at tax time.
Formula errors, duplicate entries, and misclassified expenses lead to incorrect tax filings and potential IRS issues.
Porchyard does not connect to your bank, so the import is still a step you take: export a CSV from your bank or card provider and upload it. It does not generate finished tax forms either -- you export categorized data for your accountant rather than a completed Schedule E. If your spreadsheet is already fed by a bank download and you only ever needed a total, that gap is real.
One property, one tenant, a handful of transactions a month and no intention of growing: a spreadsheet is free and sufficient, and this page is not going to argue with it. The case for moving is not the spreadsheet being bad at arithmetic. It is everything that lives outside the arithmetic -- the leases, the renewal dates and the invoices -- which a spreadsheet has never held and which starts costing real time somewhere around the third property.
Import a CSV instead of retyping every row, then categorize each transaction and assign it to the right property. Invoices generate on a schedule instead of being copied from last month.
Income, expenses and cash flow for each property, built from the transactions you imported. Finding out which unit is actually carrying the portfolio takes no formulas.
Record each lease against its unit with rent, term and renewal dates in view. A spreadsheet will hold those dates; it will not tell you which renewal is next.
Switching is simple. Import your existing data and start automating in minutes.
Start your free trial and automate your property finances today.