A complete accounting engine built for landlords
Generate rent invoices, scan receipts with OCR, maintain your general ledger, and run P&L reports — all using HMRC's required expense categories for Making Tax Digital.
Invoices & Accounting — all guides
Complete documentation for every accounting feature — from your first rent invoice to reading your balance sheet.
Accounting capabilities
Generate monthly rent invoices per property and tenancy. Track payment status, send reminders and link receipts automatically to bank reconciliation.
Photograph any paper receipt with the mobile app. The OCR engine extracts the supplier, amount, and date, then creates a ready-to-review transaction.
RentalBux maps imported bank transactions to HMRC expense categories using the transaction description, amount, and payee.
Every transaction creates a double-entry record in your general ledger. The trial balance always balances — giving your accountant a clean, audit-ready set of books.
Run income statements and balance sheets for any date range, filtered by property or across your whole portfolio. Export as PDF or CSV for your accountant.
Record depreciation, accruals, prepayments and year-end adjustments. Every journal entry is stamped with a reason and an audit trail visible to your accountant.
HMRC categorisation — why it matters for every quarterly update
When you submit a quarterly MTD update, you're not sending HMRC a single total figure. You're sending a breakdown by HMRC category: rental income, allowable expenses (repairs, insurance, letting agent fees, mortgage interest relief), and disallowable expenses. If transactions aren't correctly categorised, your submission may trigger a compliance review or produce an incorrect tax calculation. RentalBux auto-categorises most transactions but flags any it can't categorise with confidence for manual review.
The accounting system behind your MTD reports
Every quarterly MTD submission generated by RentalBux is built from the accounting records stored in your system. Behind the scenes, each invoice, expense, receipt scan or bank transaction becomes part of your property's accounting records.
These transactions are organised through the Chart of Accounts, recorded in the General Ledger, and reflected in reports such as the Trial Balance and Income Statement. Together, these records ensure that the totals reported in your quarterly update are based on a complete and balanced set of financial data.
The guides below explain how each part of the system works — from recording transactions and scanning receipts to reviewing your ledger and financial reports before submitting your MTD update.
Repairs vs improvements — getting the categorisation right
One of the most common mistakes landlords make is claiming improvement work as a repair expense. HMRC distinguishes clearly between repairs (restoring to original condition — allowable) and improvements (enhancing beyond original condition — capital expenditure, not allowable annually). RentalBux's expense category selector uses HMRC's own distinction. If you're ever unsure whether work is a repair or an improvement, the category selector includes guidance notes and links to the relevant HMRC guidance.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. If your letting agent provides monthly statements as CSV or PDF, you can upload them to RentalBux. The import tool maps statement columns (rent received, management fees, maintenance deducted) to the correct income and expense categories automatically.
A bill is used when you've received a supplier invoice (plumber, insurer, agent) and want to record the expense against a specific property. A journal entry is for adjustments that don't involve a supplier — depreciation, accruals, prepayments, or correcting a miscategorisation.
In the mobile app, open the Invoices & Bills tab and tap the Scan Receipt floating camera button. Capture a paper receipt or supplier invoice and RentalBux will extract the supplier, amount, date and VAT. You can then link the receipt to the relevant property before saving.
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