Set up a bookkeeping spreadsheet from your bank exports

For a few rentals or a very small business, a well-built workbook is enough to see income, expenses and what to hand your accountant. This is a structure that works and how to build it.

Start from the exports, not from memory

Download CSV or Excel exports of every account that touches the business for the whole year: bank, credit card and any payment processor. Each bank uses different column names and sign conventions, so you will need to line them up.

One Transactions sheet

Use one row per transaction with the same columns for every source: date, description, amount, category, property and source file. Pick one sign convention, for example income positive and expenses negative, and convert every export to it. Add a filter and freeze the header row.

Categories you can live with

Keep the list short, around ten to fifteen, for example rent received, repairs and maintenance, utilities, mortgage interest, fees and other. Use a dropdown on the category column so the spelling stays consistent. Which categories are deductible depends on your tax rules, so ask your accountant; this guide does not give tax advice.

Monthly totals with formulas

Build a summary sheet with categories down the side and months across, using SUMIFS on the Transactions sheet. When you change a category, the totals update. A property view with income, expenses and net for each property uses the same formula with a property filter.

Watch for duplicates and transfers

If you export overlapping date ranges, the same transaction appears twice. Transfers between your own accounts are not income or expenses and should be marked as such.

Or send us the exports

Send up to 3 export files (CSV or XLSX, up to 5,000 transactions). You get one workbook with a Transactions sheet, a category list agreed with you by email, a monthly summary and, for rentals, a property view, all live formulas, plus a change report and a sheet of rows we could not read. It is an AI-assisted process with automated checks, not a human review, and it is not accounting or tax advice.

See the service and what is not covered

Written by Hexloom Labs with AI assistance. Not legal, tax or accounting advice. Check the steps against your own software version.