Guides / Rent record template

Free allotment rent record spreadsheet

A ready-made rent record for allotment treasurers: one row per plot, automatic amount-due and outstanding-balance calculations, and totals your AGM report can lift straight out. Built from what actual association treasurers track, and free with no sign-up.

What is in it

• One row per plot: plot number, member name and contact details.
• Money columns that work themselves out: enter the annual rent and any discount, and the amount due calculates itself.
• Payment tracking: status (billed, paid, part paid, overdue, waived), date paid, method and bank reference, with dropdown lists so entries stay consistent.
• Live totals: total due, collected so far, and still outstanding, updating as you record payments. This is the line your AGM wants.
• An instructions tab so the next treasurer can pick it up cold.

How to use it well

1. One file per rent year. When the new year starts, save a copy, clear the payment columns, and keep the old file as your archive.
2. Record payments the day they arrive. The spreadsheet is only as trustworthy as its most recent update, and "I'll enter the weekend's cash on Thursday" is how mysteries begin.
3. Put discounts in the discount column, minuted. Concessions and half-plots agreed at committee, visible in the record, so the arithmetic explains itself.
4. Keep it somewhere shared. A drive the committee can reach, not one person's laptop. The test: if the treasurer went on a three-month cruise tomorrow, could the association collect rent?

What a spreadsheet cannot do

This template will hold your records straight, but it is honest to say what it will not do, because these are the jobs that actually consume a treasurer's year:

• It will not tell members what they owe. You still write and send every rent notice.
• It will not chase anyone. Reminders and overdue notices are still your evenings.
• It will not take the payment. Members still pay by whatever mix of cash, cheque and mislabelled bank transfer your site currently endures, and you still match each one to a row by hand.

For a site of 20 plots, that overhead is manageable. Somewhere between 30 and 60 plots, it stops being a record-keeping job and becomes a part-time unpaid role. That is usually the point committees look at our guide to collecting rent online.