Switching Property Management Software: What to Move and What to Leave Behind

The short answer

Every move needs the same five files: a rent roll, a tenant contact list, what each resident owes, what each resident has paid, and your expenses. Download all five while the old account is still open and paid for, check the counts and totals against the screens you are leaving, and cancel only after the files are saved on your own computer.

Key takeaways

Export first, cancel second. Most plans close the door the day the subscription ends.
Five files carry a move: rent roll, tenant contacts, charges owed, payments received, and expenses.
Email addresses and phone numbers are the piece most often left behind. They live on the contacts screen, not the rent roll.
Signed leases and receipts are downloads, not exports. Pull those separately.
A spreadsheet is your data. A PDF is a picture of your data. Always take the spreadsheet when one is offered.
Keep the original downloaded files even after the move is done.

Why people leave, and why the move stalls

Most landlords do not leave software because of one big failure. They leave because the price went up, because the part they use every day is the part that works least well, because they took on a kind of rental the software was never built for, or because they are paying for three tools that do not talk to each other. Deciding to go is usually the easy part.

The move is what stalls, and it stalls in the same place almost every time. The old system holds years of rent history, the new one starts empty, and nobody wants to be the person who types it all back in. That worry is fair, but the job is smaller than it looks. Almost everything you need lives in four or five reports you can download in about half an hour.

The five files that carry a move

Whatever software you are leaving, the same five things have to come with you. Names change from one product to the next, but the contents do not.

People often bring only the balances and think they are done. Balances are an answer without the working. If a resident asks what they paid last March, or an accountant asks what rent you collected in a year, you need the charges and the payments underneath the balance, not just the number at the end.

Rent roll: property, unit or room, who lives there, lease start and end, rent, deposit, and balance
Tenant contacts: names, email addresses, and phone numbers
Charges: every rent charge, deposit, utility bill-back, and late fee, paid or unpaid
Payments: every payment you received, with the date and how it was paid
Expenses: what you spent on each property, by date and category

The email address is the piece that gets left behind

A rent roll is built for lenders and accountants, so it carries money. Contact details usually live on a different screen, called something like Tenants, Residents, Contacts, or Directory. It is easy to export four money reports, feel finished, and discover later that you have twenty residents and no way to reach any of them.

Without email addresses you cannot invite anyone to a resident page, email a receipt, or send a rent reminder. You end up asking every resident for an address you already had, which is the one part of a move your residents actually notice. Check the past or archived residents too. Deposit questions, tax questions, and reference requests all arrive after somebody has moved out.

What is not worth moving

Not everything deserves the effort, and trying to move all of it is how a two-hour job turns into a two-week one. Some things are faster to set up fresh, and a few should not be moved at all.

Applications that are still in progress belong in that last group. Screening reports are bought under an account and are not yours to hand to a different company, so finish the applications you already started where they are, and start new ones in the new system. Old lease templates are usually worth rebuilding too. It takes less time than forcing the old one across, and it makes you re-read what you have been asking people to sign.

Settings and preferences: quicker to set again than to move
Listing photos: keep the originals, but do not treat them as a migration
Message threads: save anything you might need for a dispute, not the whole inbox
Applications still in flight: finish them where they started
Lease templates: rebuild them, and read them while you do

Do this before you cancel

The single most expensive mistake is cancelling first. Most plans cut off access on the day the subscription ends, and nobody is obliged to open the door again so you can grab one more report. Assume the day you cancel is the last day you can see any of it.

The tax rules are their own reason to keep the files. The IRS says to keep the records that support income, deductions, or credits on a return until the period of limitations for that return runs out, which is usually years after the software subscription that produced them. Downloading an export is not the same as keeping your records, so store the folder somewhere you will still have it in five years.

Download the five files as spreadsheets
Download every signed lease as a document
Download receipts and statements you may need later
Compare counts and totals against the dashboard you are leaving
Save everything in one folder and back that folder up
Cancel only after all of the above is done

The order to export in

Do it in this order and each file checks the one before it. Start with the rent roll, because it tells you how many properties, rentals, and residents you should see everywhere else. Then the contact list, and confirm it holds the same people. Then charges, then payments, and check that charges minus payments produces the balances the rent roll showed. Expenses come last, because nothing else depends on them.

If a report will only download as a PDF, look for the same numbers on a different report before you settle for it. A spreadsheet is your data and any software can read it. A PDF is a picture of your data, and turning it back into rows is slow, manual work that introduces mistakes in exactly the place you can least afford them.

Guides for the software you are leaving

Each guide below covers one platform: why people leave it, where the export buttons actually are, what each downloaded file contains, what to check before you cancel, and what honestly happens when you bring those files into RentCaddie.

Every guide is written from the vendor's own help documentation, and each one says plainly where that documentation runs out. Where a platform does not publish a way to export something, the guide tells you to copy it by hand rather than sending you looking for a button that is not there.

How the files come into RentCaddie

RentCaddie reads spreadsheets. Drop in a CSV, an .xlsx, or an .xls and it works out whether the file is people, money owed, money received, or expenses, then shows you what it found before anything is saved. It looks up to thirty rows down for the real heading row, so a report title, a date range, and a filter list sitting above your columns will not confuse it.

It does not read PDFs, and it will not pretend to. If your old software only produced a PDF, that report has to be typed in or replaced with a spreadsheet version. Files are read in your browser, so each one is capped at 10 MB and 5,000 rows. If a file is bigger than that, export it again split by date range, a year at a time, and drop the pieces in one after another.

Nothing saves until you approve a review screen, and if a batch lands wrong the whole import can be undone. The undo deliberately keeps anything you have edited by hand since the import rather than deleting it, so an undo cannot take work with it.

Download RentCaddie's blank import workbook (Excel)

Common questions

Can I export everything from my property management software at once?

Usually not. Most products give you a set of individual reports rather than one complete migration package, so a real move means downloading four or five of them: the rent roll, the contact list, charges, payments, and expenses.

Will I lose my data if I cancel first?

Assume yes. Most plans end access on the day the subscription ends, and support is not obliged to reopen an account so you can download one more report. Export everything while you can still log in normally.

Do signed leases come across in an export?

No. An export carries rows and columns. A signed lease is a document, and it has to be downloaded on its own. Save a copy of every current lease, and any recent ended lease you might still need for a deposit question.

What if my old software only gives me PDF reports?

Check whether the same numbers appear on another report that does offer a spreadsheet, because they often do. If they truly do not, the choice is to type that information in or to keep the PDF as a record and start the new system with current balances only.

Should I move residents who have already moved out?

Bring their contact details and final balances if you can. Deposit questions, tax questions, and reference requests all arrive after someone has gone, and being unable to answer them is worse than the few extra minutes it takes to include them.

How long does switching actually take?

The downloading is usually half an hour to an hour. The checking is what takes real time, and it is the part worth doing slowly. For a small portfolio in decent shape, an afternoon is a fair expectation.

Terms used in this guide

Rental language, explained

Every term linked above, with a plain-English definition and a practical property-management example.

Rent roll Lease

Browse the full property management glossary

Sources and methodology

Written to help independent landlords make an operational decision. Legal and tax topics are educational, not professional advice. Comparison claims use public vendor information; we do not invent hands-on testing.

IRS: how long should I keep records