Most rent roll tools are cloud dashboards that keep your tenant and income data on a vendor's servers. SealedFolio builds your rent roll locally, on your own Mac or Windows machine, and the rent roll itself runs with the connection off.
Rent roll software turns your unit, tenant, lease, and payment records into one report: what each property should earn, and what it actually collected. Three kinds of tools do that job. Cloud platforms run it in a browser behind an account, a free rent roll template leaves the updating to you, and SealedFolio runs it as a desktop app on your own Mac or Windows PC with no hosted account, so the rent roll opens and exports with the connection off.
A SealedFolio rent roll lists every active tenant with property, unit, lease dates, monthly rent, amount paid, balance, and a Paid, Partial, or Unpaid status, with expected, collected, outstanding, and collection rate totals on top. Pick the current month or any of the 11 before it and export the report to CSV for a lender or accountant. SealedFolio Pro is $19 a month or $179 a year for up to 3 properties. SealedFolio Portfolio is $39 a month or $297 a year for unlimited properties. Both run on macOS and Windows and keep the tenant list in an encrypted vault on that machine. Every SealedFolio plan is paid at checkout and includes a 30-day money-back guarantee.
SealedFolio is built around one report: the rent roll, the list of every rented unit, who lives there, the lease term, the rent charged, and how much has actually been paid. It is the income snapshot of your portfolio on a single page. A lender wants it before a refinance. Your accountant wants it at tax time. A buyer asks for it during due diligence on a building, because the rent roll shows what the property really earns, not what the listing promises.
Most landlords keep this in a spreadsheet until the spreadsheet gets unwieldy. Rent roll software does the same job, but it pulls the numbers straight from your tenant and payment records, so the rent, balances, and collection rate are never out of date. SealedFolio produces the report on demand from your local data, and it is the rent roll piece of the full local property management toolset.
A rent roll is a document other people read, which is why SealedFolio treats it as a report rather than a screen. Five readers ask for one, and each checks a different column:
Because those readers are outside your household, the roll is also the moment your tenant list leaves your desk. SealedFolio generates it from local records and exports a CSV you hand over, rather than inviting a lender into a hosted account. If you buy steadily, the same numbers feed the portfolio view SealedFolio builds for investors tracking returns.
Whether you build it by hand or in software such as SealedFolio, a complete rent roll usually shows the same columns. If a lender or buyer hands yours back, it is normally because one of these is missing:
The SealedFolio rent roll report covers the unit, tenant, lease dates, rent, paid, and balance columns directly. The deposit held sits on each SealedFolio tenant file and square footage on the unit record, so they are one click away rather than on the report. Commercial rent rolls add a few more: lease type, scheduled rent escalations, and common area charges. SealedFolio keeps residential and commercial properties in the same portfolio, so a mixed-use owner does not need two systems.
SealedFolio keeps three reports that landlords often mix up, and the rent roll is only one of them. The rent roll is a snapshot across units: every unit, its tenant, scheduled rent, what was collected, and the balance for one period. The tenant ledger is the history for one tenant: every rent charge and payment in date order. The income statement is the whole property over a period: all income against all expenses, from repairs to insurance to mortgage interest.
The three should tell the same story. Say a tenant owes $1,500 for September and pays $750. The September rent roll shows $1,500 scheduled, $750 collected, and a $750 balance on that unit. The tenant ledger shows a $1,500 charge and a $750 payment. The property's income for September counts the $750 that arrived, not the $1,500 the lease promised.
In SealedFolio the rent roll and the tenant ledger read from the same tenant rent and payment records in the local vault, so a payment you record once shows up in both, and in the collection rate at the top of the report. A spreadsheet rent roll has no ledger underneath it, which is how its totals drift away from the books. The wider picture of how the rent roll sits next to tenant files, leases, and expenses is on SealedFolio's local property management software page.
Here is the shape of a SealedFolio rent roll for one month, shrunk to three tenants across two buildings with sample numbers made up for illustration. You read it the same way as any rent roll: scheduled rent on one side, what actually arrived on the other, and the gap between them.
| Property | Tenant | Unit | Lease | Rent | Paid | Balance | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Elm St | M. Rivera | 1 | Apr 2026 to Mar 2027 | $1,450 | $1,450 | $0 | Paid |
| 12 Elm St | D. Okafor | 3 | From Jan 2025, month to month | $1,500 | $750 | $750 | Partial |
| 40 Main St | Kwan Dental LLC | Suite 210 | Jan 2024 to Dec 2028 | $2,900 | $2,900 | $0 | Paid |
| Totals: expected, collected, outstanding (collection rate 87.2%) | $5,850 | $5,100 | $750 | ||||
Even this sample tells a story. D. Okafor is half paid and needs a conversation this week, and the commercial suite carries the month. The collection rate is $5,100 collected divided by $5,850 expected, or 87.2%. Unit 2 at 12 Elm St is vacant, and SealedFolio tracks it as a vacancy rather than a zero row, so the collection rate only measures tenants who owe rent while the dashboard shows occupancy as 3 of 4 units. Read the two numbers side by side and you know whether lost income is a collection problem or a vacancy problem.
Search rent roll software and nearly every result is a list of cloud platforms, which is why SealedFolio, a desktop option, rarely shows up in them. The lists are useful, but they hide the choice that actually matters, and it is not the column layout. All three approaches produce the same report. They differ on price, on how much manual updating you do, and on where the tenant list ends up. SealedFolio is the third row.
| Approach | Typical cost | Where the data sits | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud rent roll platform Stessa, Baselane, TurboTenant, TenantCloud, Buildium and similar | Free tiers and paid plans, usually priced per unit or per portfolio | On the vendor's servers, behind an account and a password reset | Landlords who also want online rent collection, screening, and automatic bank feeds in the same tool |
| Rent roll template Excel or Google Sheets | Free | Your machine, or your cloud drive if the sheet syncs | One to three doors, as long as you retype balances and lease dates every month |
| SealedFolio, offline desktop | $19 a month or $179 a year up to 3 properties, $39 a month or $297 a year unlimited | Encrypted vault on your own Mac or Windows PC, no hosted account | Owners who want the report and the totals without putting the tenant list on someone else's server |
The honest read: a template is free and fine at two doors, a cloud platform wins if you need rent collected online, and SealedFolio wins if the rent roll is the point and privacy is the reason. SealedFolio's best rental property software guide ranks the named cloud tools feature by feature, the Stessa vs Baselane vs SealedFolio comparison covers the three landlords shortlist most often, and SealedFolio vs QuickBooks is the one to read if your rent roll currently lives in accounting software.
One Generate Charges click posts the current month's rent for every active tenant with a lease in force, and every payment you record updates the SealedFolio rent roll. The collection rate reflects what is actually paid, not last month's snapshot.
Each tenant gets a tenant ledger built from the lease rent and the payments you record, and the same payments set the balance due on the rent roll, so outstanding balances need no manual entry.
One portfolio holds single-family rentals, multifamily units, and commercial suites, with per-property and portfolio totals side by side.
Export the SealedFolio rent roll to CSV for a lender, an accountant, or your own model. It opens in Excel or Numbers, where you can save a PDF for the loan file. Schedule E and T776 tax reports export straight to PDF.
Tenant names, rents, and balances sit in a local encrypted vault on your Mac or Windows machine. Nothing uploads unless you choose to.
There is no hosted account and no web dashboard. You can build and export a SealedFolio rent roll with the internet switched off.
The checklist is the same whether you land on SealedFolio or a cloud platform. Five things separate a report you can hand a lender from a spreadsheet with formatting:
One honest caveat about SealedFolio: if online rent collection or tenant screening is on your must-have list, a cloud platform fits better. SealedFolio leaves those out on purpose to keep the rent roll local, and its Plaid bank import is optional and only runs when you turn it on.
The steps are the same whether you use a spreadsheet or rent roll software like SealedFolio. Software just removes the manual updating after step one:
Update the rent roll monthly, on the same day you reconcile rent received, and again whenever a lease is signed, renewed, or ends. Monthly is the cadence lenders assume when they ask for a current roll, and it is short enough that a missed payment shows up while you can still do something about it. In SealedFolio the roll updates as you record each payment, so the monthly pass is a review rather than a rebuild.
A free template is fine for a couple of doors. Past that, keeping balances and lease dates in sync by hand is where errors creep in, which is the trade-off covered on SealedFolio vs Excel spreadsheets. The monthly routine around it is laid out in SealedFolio's rental property bookkeeping system, and if you are still choosing a tool, SealedFolio's best rental property software guide compares the common options.
Running a rent roll in Yardi depends on which Yardi you have. Yardi Voyager and Yardi Breeze are separate products, and Yardi teaches its rent roll report through its own customer training, such as the Yardi Breeze class "Interpreting & Troubleshooting The Rent Roll". SealedFolio will not guess a click path for a product it does not make, so your Yardi administrator or the help inside the software is the reliable source.
In SealedFolio there is one path. Open Analytics, choose the Rent Roll tab, and pick the month. The report lists each active tenant with rent, amount paid, balance, and status, with expected, collected, outstanding, and collection rate totals on top. Click Export CSV when a lender or accountant needs a copy.
The bigger difference between Yardi and SealedFolio is who each tool is built for. Yardi Breeze is sold as cloud-based property management software, so the rent roll lives on Yardi's servers behind a login. SealedFolio is rent roll software for an owner running their own doors, from up to 3 properties on Pro at $19 a month to unlimited properties on Portfolio at $39 a month, with the tenant list kept on that owner's computer.
A commercial rent roll carries everything a residential one does, plus the lease terms that make office, retail, and flex space different. In SealedFolio, commercial suites sit in the same portfolio as houses and apartments, so a mixed-use owner runs one rent roll report instead of two systems. These are the lines a lender or broker expects on the commercial side:
SealedFolio records lease start and end dates, monthly rent, and the deposit for each tenant, keeps square footage on each unit, and lists leases ending in the next 30 days on the dashboard. It has no dedicated fields for lease type, escalations, or CAM reconciliation, so you note those on the tenant file and update the rent when a step-up lands. The wider commercial workflow is on the SealedFolio page for commercial property asset management. It is built for an owner holding a strip center or a few suites, not for an enterprise CRE team with an asset manager per building.
A rent roll from SealedFolio is not just a record, it is a quick read on the health of a portfolio. Three things are worth a look every month. The collection rate, scheduled rent against what actually arrived, flags a tenant slipping behind before it becomes a pattern. The spread between vacant and occupied units is your real income, not the gross potential rent. And a cluster of leases ending in the same month is a renewal risk you want to see early, not in week one of a vacancy.
For a property you are thinking about buying, the rent roll is also where you sanity-check the asking price. Run the in-place rents through the free cap rate calculator or cash flow calculator before you trust the seller's pro forma.
A SealedFolio rent roll is the honest input for the 2% rule. The 2% rule is a rough screen that says a rental's monthly rent should be at least 2% of its purchase price. A $150,000 house passes at $3,000 a month in rent. A $300,000 duplex needs $6,000 a month across both units. Run the test on the collected column of the rent roll, not on the asking rents in a listing, and treat a pass as a reason to look closer rather than a reason to buy. The rule ignores taxes, insurance, repairs, and financing, which SealedFolio's free cap rate and cash flow calculators account for.
The rent roll SealedFolio keeps current through the year is also your tax prep. Line 3 of Schedule E asks for rents received, meaning what you actually collected per property during the year, not the scheduled rent. That is exactly the collected column of your rent roll, totaled by property. If the roll stayed current all year, April is a report you export, not an archaeology dig through twelve bank statements.
You can run a quick estimate in the free Schedule E calculator, check gross against net in the rental income calculator, or work through SealedFolio's Schedule E guide for landlords line by line. The deduction side of the form comes from the same local records that power SealedFolio's rental income and expense tracking.
Most rent roll mistakes come from hand-kept spreadsheets, which is why SealedFolio calculates the rent roll from the payments you record instead of trusting anyone's memory:
A rent roll holds tenant names, what they pay, and where they live. That is exactly the kind of record most owners would rather not park on a vendor's servers. SealedFolio keeps it in a local encrypted vault, so a pricing change, an acquisition, or a breach at someone else's company is not your problem. The reasoning is spelled out in why your rental data should not live in the cloud.
Offline also means the rent roll is an installed program, not a browser tab. SealedFolio ships as a desktop app for Windows and macOS, so the rent roll opens on a plane, in a basement unit with no signal, and on the day a vendor's status page is red. Nothing about generating or exporting the report depends on a server being up, and there is no session to be logged out of at the moment a lender asks for the file.
Local is a deliberate trade-off, so it is worth being plain about the limits. SealedFolio does not collect rent online or screen tenants, because each of those means sending tenant data to a third party. Transactions come in when you record them, when you import a CSV, OFX, QFX, or QIF file on the Portfolio plan, or through Plaid bank import if you choose to switch it on. The app also goes online for license validation and update checks, but the rent roll, the ledger behind it, and the export all run on your machine. If fully automatic bank sync with no review step is a must-have, a cloud platform will fit better.
Rent roll software pulls your unit, tenant, lease, and payment records into one rent roll report so the totals stay current instead of a spreadsheet you update by hand. SealedFolio does this entirely on your own Mac or Windows machine, with no hosted account and no cloud.
Yes. SealedFolio generates a rent roll with collection rate on your own device, and building or exporting the rent roll works with the connection off. The app goes online for license validation, update checks, and optional features such as Plaid bank import, so your tenant and rent data never has to leave your machine.
A rent roll is used to prove what a property actually earns. A lender reads it before a refinance, a buyer checks it during due diligence, an accountant uses the collected column for rents received on Schedule E, and a partner uses it to agree a distribution. Owners also read it monthly for vacancy, late balances, and leases expiring soon. SealedFolio generates it from your own records and exports a CSV you can hand over.
Monthly, on the day you reconcile rent received, plus any time a lease is signed, renewed, or ends. Monthly is the cadence a lender assumes when it asks for a current rent roll. In SealedFolio the roll updates as each payment is recorded, so the monthly pass is a review rather than a rebuild.
Free landlord software is usually paid for another way, through payment processing fees, partner offers, or the value of your portfolio data. A free spreadsheet template is the cleanest free option for one to three doors. SealedFolio has no free tier: Pro is $19 a month or $179 a year for up to 3 properties, and Portfolio is $39 a month or $297 a year for unlimited properties, with no ads, no data sharing, and no hosted account. Every SealedFolio plan is paid at checkout and includes a 30-day money-back guarantee. The SealedFolio guide to the best rental property software in 2026 compares the free cloud tiers side by side.
Yes. SealedFolio installs as a desktop app on Windows and on macOS, and the rent roll, exports, and reports all run locally on that machine. There is no browser login and no hosted dashboard, so the rent roll works with the connection off. SealedFolio Pro activates on 2 computers and Portfolio on 3, so the same rent roll can live on a desktop and a laptop.
A complete rent roll lists each unit or suite, the tenant, lease start and end dates, square footage or unit type, monthly rent and recurring fees, the security deposit held, and the amount due, paid, and outstanding for the period. Commercial rent rolls add lease type, escalations, and common area charges.
You can, and many landlords start with a spreadsheet template. It works until you have enough units that keeping rent, balances, and lease dates in sync by hand becomes error-prone. SealedFolio keeps those totals current from the rent and payments you record, so the rent roll never needs retyping.
Yes. Free spreadsheet templates work for a couple of doors, and several cloud platforms offer free tiers funded by payment processing or partner offers, which means your tenant and income data lives on their servers. SealedFolio takes the opposite approach and keeps the rent roll on your own device.
It does. The collected column of the rent roll, totaled by property, is what Schedule E asks for on the rents received line. SealedFolio tracks it through the year so the number is ready in April instead of rebuilt from bank statements.
Yes. The SealedFolio rent roll spans residential units and commercial suites in the same portfolio, with per-property and portfolio totals.
A rough screen that says a rental's monthly rent should be at least 2% of its purchase price, so a $150,000 house passes at $3,000 a month. Run it on the collected column of a rent roll, not on listing rents, and treat a pass as a reason to look closer. SealedFolio's rent roll gives you that collected figure per property.
It depends on which Yardi product your company runs, Voyager or Breeze, so ask your Yardi administrator or use the help inside the software. In SealedFolio you open Analytics, choose the Rent Roll tab, pick the month, and click Export CSV if someone needs a copy.
Yes. SealedFolio exports the rent roll to CSV for your lender, accountant, or records, and its Schedule E and T776 tax reports also export to PDF.