Guides · Dec 9, 2025 Note 01
All writingThe year-end sheet is already written
If every repair, fee and rent payment files itself through the year, the tax return is a reading exercise. What the sheet contains and what your accountant will ask.
The shoebox is a real thing. Receipts in a drawer, a bank statement with pen marks, an afternoon in January reconstructing the year from memory. The alternative is not more discipline; it is filing each thing once, at the moment it happens, against the property it belongs to.
What the sheet contains
One line per property: rent received, deductible expenses by category, mortgage interest entered once and pro-rated, and the net figure. Beneath each line, the items that make it up, each dated and each with its document.
What your accountant will ask
- Whether a repair was a repair or an improvement — the work order's description usually settles it.
- Whether a fee was for letting or for management — Haven categorises these when the invoice is filed.
- Whether the mortgage interest figure is the whole year's — the record shows the statement it came from.
Export the sheet, or give your accountant a login and let them read the lines themselves. Either way, January is a morning.