Rental Books is bookkeeping software made for one kind of business only — the rental business. Buy it once and it's yours. No monthly fee. No SaaS subscription. No per-unit charges. And you don't need to be an accountant to run it.
Here's what a typical operator with about 100 units pays today for the separate tools it takes just to keep books and run rentals — every month, forever, with prices that go up every year.
| What you're renting now | Per month |
|---|---|
| Property management software (Buildium Growth) | $192 |
| Accounting (QuickBooks Online Plus) | $140 |
| Contact / follow-up software (Act!) | $78 |
| Maintenance coordination (Property Meld) | $160 |
| Self-showing service (ShowMojo) | $143 |
| E-signature (DocuSign) | $60 |
| Work orders, loan calculators, extras | $45 |
| Total | $818/mo — $49,080 over 5 years |
Rental Books replaces the bookkeeping heart of that stack for one payment of $595 — founding owners pay $395. That's less than one month of the old stack.
Watch a real operator's books — a real rent roll, real owner statement, real year-end — running in Rental Books. No actors, no accounting degree required to follow along.
QuickBooks doesn't know what a security deposit is. It has never heard of an owner statement. Rental Books was built from the ground up around how rental money actually moves.
Every unit, every tenant: paid, late, partial, balance due. Open the program and you know exactly where the month stands.
Every charge, payment, late fee, and credit on one clean ledger per tenant — the answer to every "I already paid that" conversation.
Your deposits, your method. Track them as a liability — held separate and provable — or record them as income when you receive them. Set it up the way you and your CPA run it.
Each property's true numbers on their own — no hacking generic accounting "classes" together and hoping it's right.
Rent in, expenses out, mortgage and management accounted for, net to owner. The statement your owners actually want to read.
Schedule E by property, 1099 totals for owners and vendors — hand your accountant a pack they'll thank you for.
Import statements (CSV / OFX / QFX) from your bank and reconcile in minutes. Bring your history over from QuickBooks, too.
Full general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, and invoicing underneath it all — a complete set of books, not a rent tracker.
Scheduled encrypted backup built in, and you can export everything, any time, in standard formats. No hostage situations, ever.
Most rental software only understands houses and apartments. Rental Books was built by an operator who has run all of it:
Rental Books speaks rental, not accounting. The rental chart of accounts is already built in — you never design one, and you never translate your business into debit-and-credit riddles.
Rent in. Bills out. What's left. Screens are labeled the way you already talk about your properties — because an operator wrote them, not an accounting department.
Properties, units, tenants, deposits, and owner accounts exist the moment you start. In generic software, you spend your first weekend building all of that yourself.
Underneath the plain language sits a real general ledger and reports your accountant will respect. Easy for you day-to-day, correct at tax time.
Software used to be something you bought. Rental Books works the way it should — here's the whole deal, in plain terms.
One payment for one license — unlimited entities, properties, and units, with 5 seats included. Need more computers? Add seats anytime, one-time. No per-unit fees, ever. The software is yours, permanently.
Every update and improvement for a full year comes with your purchase. After that, your software keeps working — nothing shuts off, nothing is held back.
New major versions and year-end forms packs are offered down the road. Buy them if you want them. Skip them if you don't. Renting never comes back.
Fair question — and the honest answer teaches you something every software company knows, but almost none will explain: an online version can never be a one-time purchase, because it never stops costing the company money.
When software is online, your books don't live on your computer. They live on the company's servers — and every single month, for as long as your account exists, the company pays real bills to keep them there:
Servers and electricity, around the clock · Storage for your data and its backups · Security, monitoring, and constant patching · The database and systems your account runs on · The staff who keep all of it alive
Those bills arrive every month whether you log in or not — and they never end. Your account costs them money forever.
Do the math the way the company has to: if keeping your account online costs even $5 a month, and you paid $395 once, then partway through year seven the company has spent everything you ever paid them — and starts losing money on you every month after that, for as long as you keep using it.
No company can run that way. So every online product ends up at the same place: a monthly fee, forever, or the servers eventually get shut off — and when they do, your books go with them. That's not a threat in the fine print. It's just how the bills work.
Rental Books runs on your computer. Your electricity, your hard drive, your backups — which means it costs us nothing per month to keep your copy alive. That's the only reason an honest one-time price is even possible. We sell it, you own it, and neither of us is on a meter.
We will offer an online version eventually — some operators genuinely want their books on every device. When it comes, it will have a monthly subscription, and we'll tell you that plainly, because now you know why it has to. Two things will never change: the owned version stays yours either way, and going online will always be a choice — never a forced move, never a hostage situation.
"I got into this business to rent real estate to others. I despise renting my bookkeeping software from anyone."
— Branden, founder of Rental Books
Branden has spent 30+ years buying, building, and managing nearly every kind of rental there is — houses, apartment complexes, storage units, mobile home parks, industrial, office, commercial, farmland, rent-to-own, and owner-financed properties. He managed them himself, did the maintenance and upgrades himself, and billed the work himself.
Rental Books is the software he built to run that operation — the books he wished he could buy, after decades of renting bookkeeping software that was never designed for rentals in the first place. It isn't a startup's guess about your business. It's an operator's tool, offered to other operators.
No tiers to decode, no per-unit or per-entity math, no renewal invoice next year. The first 25 owners get the founding price.
Prefer to spread it out? 3 payments of $135, and then it's yours — payments that end, not a subscription.
Running a bigger operation or want your data moved for you? Ask about white-glove setup and migration — one-time services, quoted up front.
Rental Books starts with the books, done right. These are in the works — they're not for sale yet, and founding owners hear about each one first, with locked early-owner pricing.
The follow-up system — renewals, expiries, and nothing falling through the cracks — for tenants, owners, and vendors.
Work orders, estimates, owner approvals, time & materials billing — the maintenance side of the business, billed properly.
Let prospects show themselves your vacant units — safely, with codes and cameras — and get your evenings back.
Want first word when each module opens — and the free Rental Software Cost Worksheet (what your current stack really costs you per year)?
The questions every operator asks before switching.
Really. You pay once and own the software. There is no subscription and no per-entity, per-property, or per-unit fee. Your license includes 5 seats. The only things that ever cost extra are additional seats and upgrades you choose to buy later — both one-time, never a subscription — and skipping them changes nothing about the software you already own.
Nothing dramatic — that's the point. Your software keeps working exactly as it does today. Later, new major versions or year-end forms packs may be offered. Buy them if they're worth it to you; don't, if they're not.
Yes — it was designed for operators, not accountants. The rental chart of accounts is built in, screens use rental words, and the flow follows the rent cycle you already know. Your CPA gets proper reports at year-end; you get software you can run on a Tuesday.
As many as you have — across as many entities as you have. One license covers unlimited entities, properties, and units. A duplex under one LLC, or three hundred doors spread across ten LLCs — same price.
No — Rental Books doesn't force one method on you. If you hold deposits the traditional way, they're tracked as a liability: separate, refundable, and provable, and an amount only becomes income when you keep and apply it. If you and your CPA record deposits as income when you receive them, set it up that way instead — refunds reverse back out, and amounts you later apply aren't counted as income a second time. Trust-account rules vary by state, so the method is your call (with your CPA's); the software supports the way you actually operate.
Your license includes 5 seats — you can install and activate Rental Books on up to 5 computers. Replacing a computer? Deactivate the old one yourself and move the seat over. Need a sixth? Additional seats are available for a one-time purchase — not a subscription — and they're yours permanently, just like the software.
Each separate set of books you keep — an LLC, a partnership, a sole proprietorship, a trust, or you personally. If you run three LLCs and hold a few properties in your own name, that's four entities, and one license covers all of them, with no per-entity fee.
Yes. Import tools bring your QuickBooks data in by CSV, so you're not retyping years of history. If you'd rather it be done for you, white-glove migration is available as a one-time service.
Houses, apartments, storage units, mobile home parks, office and commercial, industrial, farmland, rent-to-own, and owner-financed properties. It was built by an operator who has run all of them, and the books handle mixed portfolios in one place.
Because an online version lives on our servers, and servers bill us every month for as long as your account exists — a one-time price for that would eventually bankrupt the product and take your books down with it. The full, plain-English explanation is in "Why isn't there an online version?" above. Short version: online will come eventually, it will carry a monthly subscription (honestly, because it has to), and the owned version you buy today stays yours regardless.
No — this is the deepest reason to own software. Rental Books is yours, it doesn't check in with a server to keep working, and you can export all of your data at any time in standard formats. Your books outlive any company, including ours.
Rental Books runs on your own computer, where your data stays under your control. Setup is a normal install — and founding owners can book a setup session if they'd like a hand.
Join the first 25 founding owners at $395 — before the price goes to $595 for good.
Get Rental Books — $395 one-time90-day guarantee · 12 months of updates included · No subscription, ever