With MTD (Making Tax Digital) coming into force in April 2026 for Landlords with a portfolio income of greater than £50k per year, I’m curious what software Landlords are either using or planning to use to fulfill their legal requirements of maintaining digital records.
I’m aware of a number of options for Landlord specific software, which might combine MTD with Property management facilities, and also the option of Accounting only software, but am interested in hearing what others plans are, to help me decide whats best for me going forward.
Thanks for this post I was not aware this was coming!
Looking online for free software I have come across My Tax Digital. At present it appears to work for VAT registration and use for Self Assessment is on its way. Whether it remains free I am unsure of but briefly using it appears similar to the spreadsheets I use anyway.
Just as a heads up to landlords; MTD only applies to self employed landlords and not Limited Company landlords who report their income by Corporation Tax return.
(But no doubt MTD for Corporation Tax will come in eventually too)
Interesting conversation. I have been looking at options for Property management software, (excel spreadsheets aren’t really cutting it anymore), that allow for budgets to be created and invoices to be uploaded. I don’t fall into the category yet for using MTD software, but i don’t mind using it if nots too expensive.
Also, i have read qualifying income is now £20k:
You will need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax if all of the following apply. You:
are an individual registered for [Self Assessment]
get income from self-employment or property, or both
Having just had a look at all the gov recommended software options currently available, this is going to add some cost to the equation. If you’re going to have to pay for something that has always been free to DIY in the past, would it not simply be easier (and possibly cheaper depending on what software option you might choose) to get an accountant to do all this for you?
Mind you, whereas they once did this annually, they now have to do it quarterly so they’re probably hiking their prices too. Never used one so no idea.
That’s helpful to know, thanks. So, software that costs significantly less than £700 would be economically viable for you at least. That’s definitely achievable. I was seeing figures anywhere from free (although I’m not entirely sure a free version will do all I need with five properties) to about £200 a year.
Seeing as you’re already doing the figures for him, using software would make economic sense. From what I’ve seen, the more costly software does make it pretty straightforward for the average LL. I think accountants might be seeing this as a threat.
Bank account. If you don’t already have a separate bank account for your rental business, set one up now and use it exclusively for receiving rent and paying expenses. This will make integrating the bank account with the MTD software a lot easier so you won’t need to exclude personal expenses.
Then, on usehammock website:
Hammock is the accounting platform for landlords. We provide bookkeeping, tax statements and property investment metrics (loan to value ratio, rental yields, profit and loss, arrears balance and more) for landlords. We’ll help you get rid of the spreadsheets and paper notes, by giving you real-time access to their rental income and expenses.
I keep records of sheet of expenses, invoices and receipts already. I like my system. I don’t want to have to fight with software that miscategorises income and expenses from a linked bank account.
I hope there will be software options that just let me enter my income and expenses manually, or even let’s me upload my expenses spreadsheet in a predefined format.
I am currently experimenting with Hammock on the 30 day free trial being offered and I can confirm that you don’t have to connect it to your bank account. You are able to manually enter all your income and expenses. Although the idea is to link it to your bank account. You then categorise each transaction to describe the type of income or expenditure for the first month. It then tracks all repeat transactions saving you time.
I’ve been with hammock since April and use an agent so I get Rent minus fee and hammock automatically calculates the fee and places into the correct box .
Got to say I was impressed and they spent over a hour with me , I am thick when it comes to tech and they reorganised it and basically set me up !
and I paid £59 for the year!
Well I’ve now tried Hammock, and set up all properties & tenants. It does work quite well, but as I’m over 11 properties its a monthly cost of £19.99, and that’s discounted for the first year, so will ordinarily be £25pm.
The one thing I haven’t yet figured out is how I will do the quarterly return to HMRC, and I believe it’ll still be down to my Accountant to upload this to HMRC. It does not appear to offer an automated link to HMRC for this purpose. So, I expect more costs from my Accountant.
Hence, I’m not yet convinced this is the software for me. I note that N R L A Portfolio, which is a free software, is currently working on a MTD compliant finance module, which they tell me will auto link to HMRC. So I’m waiting on that before making final decisions.
at the moment.