How to Export Your Data From Buildium (Leaving Buildium)

Why landlords leave, and what the exit looks like

Buildium is built for the property management company: owners to report to, association work, trust accounting, a large report catalogue, and staff. Owner-operators often leave because they are paying for that organisational shape and running the actual work, the turnovers, the inspections, the cleaners, and the resident conversations, somewhere else entirely.

The exit itself is one of the better ones. Buildium publishes a genuine export screen and lets you choose a spreadsheet format on every report, so almost nothing is trapped behind a PDF. The catch is that no single button gets everything, and Buildium says so itself.

1. Run the bulk export first

Navigate to Settings, then Export Data. Buildium says you can download files for Rentals, Associations, Accounting, Tasks, and Communication. Each file contains all the information under one heading, for example every property or every vendor, and arrives as an .xlsx file you can open in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets.

Read Buildium's own caveat carefully, because it is the whole reason this guide has more steps. Its export article states that Buildium does not provide export files for all ledger financials. So treat this screen as the fast way to get your properties, units, tenants, and vendors out, and treat the money as a separate job.

• Settings
• Export Data
• Rentals
• Accounting
• Communication
• Tasks
• Associations if you manage them

2. Run the money reports one at a time, and never take the PDF

Go to Reports and run each report you need. At the bottom of the criteria you get a Report format picker offering PDF, legacy PDF, XLS, XLSX, and CSV, then a Download report button. Choose CSV or XLSX every time. This is the good news about leaving Buildium: nothing important is stuck as a PDF, as long as you remember to change the picker.

Four reports carry most of a migration. Rent roll is your portfolio and lease picture, reached by going to Reports and clicking Rent roll, then setting your criteria and clicking Run report. General ledger shows all debits and credits for every financial transaction over a period of time by property. Tenant statement shows all charges, credits, and payments made for a tenant over a period of time. Vendor ledger shows the detail of all bills and payments made to your vendors.

For one resident in particular, there is a shortcut worth knowing: go to the Rentals menu, open the Rent Roll, click the lease, click the Financials tab, and click Statement. That is the fastest route to a single ledger when somebody queries a balance.

• Rent roll
• Current tenants
• General ledger
• Tenant statement
• Vendor ledger
• Unpaid bills by vendor
• Delinquent tenants

3. Get the contact details from Current tenants

The report you must not skip is Current tenants. Go to the Reports menu and click the Current tenants link. Buildium describes it as showing all current tenants by property and letting you see all tenant contact information, which makes it the one file carrying the email addresses and phone numbers you cannot operate without.

Run it in CSV or XLSX like everything else, then open it immediately and confirm the contact columns actually came through. If any resident is missing an email address in Buildium today, they will be missing one in your next system too, so this is the moment to notice and fix it rather than after you have moved.

4. Avoid the batched reports trap

Buildium has a Batched reports feature that runs many reports at once, and on the face of it that looks like exactly what a person leaving would want. It is not. When you generate a batch, you choose between consolidated PDF files grouped by entity or separate PDF files for each report, and either choice produces a zip file. There is no spreadsheet option.

So a batch gives you a pile of pictures of your data rather than your data. It is also temporary: Buildium says a generated batch is saved in your account for 24 hours. Batches are useful for sending a set of statements to an owner. They are the wrong tool for a migration. Run the reports individually and pick CSV or XLSX.

5. Save the documents separately

The data export does not include your files. Buildium documents a Files menu where documents attach to the object they belong to, with upload, edit, delete, and individual download, and it documents no way to download them all at once.

Plan for that to be the slow part and prioritise: signed leases for current residents, then leases that ended recently enough for a deposit or a dispute to still be live, then inspection reports and anything supporting an expense you claim.

Check this before you cancel

Cancelling runs through Settings, then the Account and billing page, then Manage subscription, then Cancel subscription, then a short questionnaire. Buildium says you will have access to your account through your current subscription period, so if you cancel mid-month you keep working until that period ends.

One thing not to misread: Buildium publishes a data retention policy saying personally identifiable information inactive for ten years or more is automatically anonymised and that no financial information is affected. That is a rule about old data inside a live account. It is not a promise that your account stays reachable after you stop paying. Assume the end of your paid period is the end of your access.

• Export Data files downloaded and opened
• Rent roll, general ledger, and tenant statements taken as CSV or XLSX
• Current tenants report checked for emails and phone numbers
• No report saved only as a PDF
• Signed leases downloaded from Files
• Everything backed up before the period ends

Bringing the files into RentCaddie

RentCaddie has a named Buildium path in its Switch to RentCaddie screen, with the export guidance on the screen while you work. To be precise about what that means: there is no Buildium-specific column preset behind it. RentCaddie reads your headings, works out whether each file is people, money owed, money received, or expenses, proposes a match for every column, and asks you to confirm each one on a review screen. Nothing is saved until you approve it.

Buildium's files land well because RentCaddie reads .xlsx directly, so the Export Data output and the XLSX reports go straight in without converting anything. It also looks up to thirty rows down for the real heading row, which matters for Buildium reports that print a title and a date range above the columns. If a batch lands wrong the whole import can be undone, and the undo keeps anything you have edited by hand since.

Two limits. RentCaddie will not read a PDF, which is the real reason to avoid batched reports on your way out. And each file is capped at 10 MB and 5,000 rows because it is read in your browser, so a long general ledger should be run a year at a time and dropped in as several files.

• Switching property management software: what to move and what to leave behind
• RentCaddie compared with Buildium
• Download RentCaddie's blank import workbook (Excel)

Common questions