Moving to Rentor from a spreadsheet or another system? The Import Data wizard brings your whole portfolio across in one go — properties, units, tenants and even opening balances — with a full preview before anything is saved, and a rollback if you change your mind.

Preparing your file

The wizard accepts CSV or Excel, with one row per unit and a header row on top. Three columns are required — property, unit and rent — and the rest are optional: unit type, deposit, furnished, address, county, town/area, property type, tenant name, tenant email, tenant phone, tenancy start, and opening balance.

A few practical notes:

• Each tenant row needs an email or a phone number — one is enough. A tenant with an email claims their account by "forgot password"; a tenant with only a phone number is still imported, still owes rent and still gets receipts, is reachable by SMS if you have SMS switched on, and claims their account later through you (see below). A row with neither is skipped and listed in the error report.
• Everyday formats are understood — "KES 12,500", dates like 15/03/2024, "2BR", "bedsitter".
• An opening balance can be arrears the tenant owes, or credit they're carrying.

Running the import

1. Open Import Data under Account and choose your file.
2. Review the column mapping. Rentor matches your columns to its fields automatically; fix any that landed wrong using the dropdowns, then click Re-check.
3. Read the preview. Before a single row is saved you'll see exactly what would be created — properties, units, tenancies, new tenant accounts — plus any opening arrears and credit totals. Problem rows are listed line by line with the reason; click Download error report (CSV) to fix them in your spreadsheet. Serious blockers (like exceeding your plan's unit limit) are shown in red — imports respect your plan capacity just like adding units by hand.
4. Commit. The button names what it will do — "Import N units into my account". Rows with errors are skipped and told to you; the valid rows import together.

What you get afterwards

• Your properties and units appear under Properties, tenancies under Tenants — live immediately.
• Opening balances become honest ledger rows: arrears show as an open invoice labelled "Balance brought forward" naming your file, and credit carries forward against future rent. The history is on the invoice itself, so tenants see where the figure came from.
• New tenant accounts are created for every imported tenant. Those with an email: ask them to use "forgot password" with that email to set a password and claim their account. Those with only a phone number are created as pending records — their rent, receipts and reminders work from day one, and they claim the account the same way as any tenant a landlord adds by phone: they sign up on Rentor with that phone number, prove it with the code Rentor texts them, and the request lands on your Join requests page showing that the phone matches — you confirm, and their record becomes their account. See Adding a home you already rent. Tenants who already had Rentor accounts are simply linked — never duplicated.
• Open each imported property to add photos and confirm its location before you list anything — see Publishing listings & boosts.

Rolling back

Every import is recorded under Your imports with what it created. If something's wrong, click Roll back on the batch and everything it created is removed cleanly. Then fix your file and import again.

Import wizard vs the tenant CSV

Two tools, two jobs:

• Import Data (this wizard) — your whole portfolio: creates properties, units, tenancies and opening balances from scratch.
• Import CSV on the Tenants page — just tenants into units you've already created on Rentor. See Inviting & managing tenants.

If you're starting fresh on Rentor with an existing portfolio, use this wizard first.

On the phone app: the wizard is under More → Manage → Import your portfolio, and it works by pasting rather than uploading: copy the rows out of Excel or Google Sheets — a header line, then one line per unit — paste them in and press Check it. You get the same preview of what would be created, nothing is written until you confirm, and Past imports has the same Roll back. It takes up to 599 rows at a time; an actual Excel file (.xlsx) needs the website.