Picture this. You’ve been a landlord for years, managing everything through a spreadsheet and a shoebox of receipts. It’s worked well enough. Then Making Tax Digital lands on your desk, and suddenly you need digital records and quarterly submissions to HMRC.
If your rental income is over £50,000, you’re already adapting to Making Tax Digital. But for those of you earning £30,000 or more gross profit, based on your 2025/26 tax return, this is when you really need to start thinking about it. There are only two months between the self-assessment deadline for that return and the start of the new tax year in April 2027, when MTD will apply to you. That’s not a lot of time to choose software, get set up and feel confident using it.
The challenges landlords face with the introduction of MTD
To be fair, learning new software for the first time and adjusting to quarterly reporting instead of one annual return isn’t unique to landlords. Plenty of self-employed business owners are working through exactly the same adjustment right now.
But landlords do face a few specific accountancy headaches:
- Many landlords are also self-employed, which means any software needs to cope with both sides of their finances, not just the property side
- Where a property is jointly owned, income and expenses need to be split correctly between owners
- If you manage more than one property, you’ll need a sensible way to allocate costs, some specific to a single property, others shared across the portfolio
- For a lot of landlords, this will be the first time they’ve used any accountancy software at all, so there’s a genuine learning curve to factor in
Introducing Hammock
Because landlords face this specific set of challenges, some software providers have built solutions specifically with landlords in mind. One we’ve come across through our own client work is Hammock. Here’s why we rate it:
- Hammock is the first landlord accounting platform specifically designed for property owners that has been officially recognised by HMRC for MTD compliance, which matters when you’re deciding what to submit your quarterly updates through
- It’s designed around how landlords actually manage their finances with real-time access to their property finances, rather than adapted from generic accounting software
- It manages all ownership structures (joint, partnership, limited companies), allowing the correct split, which can differ per individual property
- It automatically allocates the right percentage of rental income and expenses to each owner, based on their percentage of ownership, making portfolio-wide allocation far more straightforward
Invest time exploring your options
We haven’t been asked to write about Hammock, and there’s nothing in it for us either way. We simply mention it because we’ve seen it work well for a number of our landlord clients. Xero and FreeAgent remain solid choices too, particularly if you’re self-employed as well as a landlord and want one system covering everything. The right answer really does depend on your situation, which is exactly why it’s worth exploring what’s out there, or having a conversation with us about what would suit you best. Don’t forget to look out for free trials and get a feel for how it works with your own numbers before deciding it’s the right long-term fit.
A point we must emphasise… Even software built specifically for landlords still takes some getting used to, particularly if you’ve never used any accountancy software before. Give yourself time to learn it properly. It won’t become second nature straightaway. It is a significant change you’re adapting to (but you will get there!)
Getting the right fit matters
MTD is asking every affected landlord and business owner to change how they keep records. Getting there with software that genuinely suits your situation, rather than whatever’s most familiar, will make the next few years considerably less stressful. If you’d like a second opinion on what’s right for you, get in touch with the team at Accounting Clarkes.
