Getting started · 2026-09-04 · 6 min read

Moving your rent roll from a spreadsheet into software without losing a month

How to migrate an existing portfolio from Excel or Google Sheets into a property management app — what to bring, what to clean first, rebuilding rent history, and the import checklist.

The spreadsheet got you here. It also has your tenants' names in three different spellings, a rent column that says "R8 500" in one row and "8500.00" in the next, and a lease-end date typed as text. None of that is a reason to stay; all of it is a reason to import carefully.

What to bring

One row per tenancy with, at minimum: property, unit, tenant name, monthly rent, lease start. Useful but optional: cell number, email, ID number, deposit, lease end, escalation clause. Anything else — notes, meter numbers, anniversaries — can wait.

Clean three things before you import

Dates. Decide on one format. Day-first (01/03/2026) is standard in SA; an American export (03/01/2026) will silently swap March and January.
Money. Rands only — no "R", no spaces, no thousands separators if you can help it. Software will usually read "R8 500", but "8.500" is ambiguous.
Names. One tenant, one spelling. Combine "Adams, S" and "Sarah Adams" into one row.

Rebuild the history, or you start blind

A tenant who has paid for eighteen months looks brand new if you import only today's row. Ask two questions per tenant: when did the lease actually start, and are they up to date? From that, a good import rebuilds the invoice trail — paid months as paid, the last N months as owed — so arrears, reports and reminders work from day one.

The import checklist

One row per tenancy, headings in row one (a title above is fine)
Property names spelled the way you want them created
Rent as a plain number, dates in one format
Cell numbers with the leading zero (Excel eats it)
Decide: rebuild rent history, and who owes what
Preview every row before anything is written
Keep the original file until you've checked the first invoice run

Where PropKeep helps

More → Import a spreadsheet (on the phone or the website). Upload the file you already keep — any headings, English or Afrikaans. Remi reads the columns, you check every row, the app tells you exactly what it will create ("12 tenants, 2 new properties and 48 invoices"), and nothing is saved until you press Import. Rows that fail come back as a file, so nothing is lost.