Comparison

ProperLease vs QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a capable accounting package. It was built to run a business's books, not to manage tenancies, and the gap shows the first time you need a lease, a deposit balance, or a late rent notice.

Start free with one property One property free, forever. Import your existing data from CSV.

48provinces and states with a lease document ProperLease fills or generates

2record types a chart of accounts has no place for: the lease and the deposit you owe back

1afternoon to migrate, working from a CSV export

This is a comparison about fit, not quality. A general ledger thinks in accounts and transactions. A rental business thinks in properties, units, tenants and leases. Neither model is wrong, but only one of them already contains the records a landlord actually needs.

Most landlords who run rentals through general accounting software end up surrounding it with spreadsheets and word processor templates to cover the parts it was never designed for. That is the cost worth measuring, and it is paid in hours rather than on an invoice.

Where ProperLease wins

The honest case for choosing ProperLease over QuickBooks.

The lease is a first-class record

ProperLease fills the official government form in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec, and generates a residential lease carrying the required disclosures in 45 US states. Accounting software has no concept of a tenancy agreement, so the lease lives outside it as a loose PDF.

A deposit is money you owe back, not income

In a general ledger a deposit tends to land as one more line item. ProperLease holds it against the tenancy, separate from rent, so at move-out the balance you owe is a fact rather than a reconstruction.

Occupancy exists as a concept

There is no such thing as a vacant account in bookkeeping. ProperLease knows a unit is empty, which is what lets it show occupancy, vacancy loss, and cashflow for the door rather than for the business as a whole.

Notices come from the tenancy, and the send is logged

A late rent or eviction notice is filled from the records you already keep, emailed, and logged with the recipient, date and time. These are our own templates rather than a tribunal's official form, but the dated log of what you sent is the part that matters if the tenancy ends up in front of one.

Priced for a portfolio, not a business

Premium is $14.99 CAD a month or $99 CAD a year for everything you own, with one property free, forever. There is nothing to add on per property.

Where QuickBooks is the better choice

A comparison you can trust has to be able to say this part out loud. Here is where they genuinely win.

It is real double-entry accounting, and ProperLease is not

If you need a proper chart of accounts, journal entries, accounts payable, or financial statements that a lender or an auditor will accept, that is what QuickBooks is built for. ProperLease tracks rental income and expenses per property. It does not pretend to be your general ledger.

Your accountant already knows it

QuickBooks is an industry standard, and there is real value in handing your accountant a file they open every day. It also sits inside a large ecosystem of integrations, payroll and bank feeds that a focused rental tool does not attempt to match.

Rentals may not be your only business

If the properties are one part of a company that also invoices clients, carries staff, or holds inventory, you need business-wide books. In that case the honest answer is to keep QuickBooks for the company and use ProperLease for the tenancies, rather than choosing one.

Side by side

ProperLease against QuickBooks, feature by feature.

	ProperLease	QuickBooks
Leases and documents
Province and state lease documents	Fills the official government form in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec. Generates a residential lease carrying the required disclosures in 45 US states.	Not something general accounting software sets out to do. The lease is drafted elsewhere and attached as a file, if it is attached at all.
Late rent and eviction notices	Plain-English notice templates filled from the tenancy record, emailed, and logged with the date they went out. They are our own wording, not the tribunal's official form.	Not a feature of an accounting package. You find a template and fill it in by hand.
Move-in and move-out condition reports	Built in, photo backed, attached to the tenancy so move-out compares against move-in.	Outside the scope of bookkeeping entirely.
Documents stored against the tenancy	Documents attach to the tenant and the lease: the signed lease, ID, insurance, the move-in inspection. They sit on the record they belong to, not in a folder.	Documents can be attached to transactions. There is no tenancy record for them to belong to.
Rent and money
Dated rent ledger per tenant	Every payment is a permanent dated entry. Nothing is overwritten, so the history survives.	Strong as a transaction record. Whether it reads as a per tenant rent ledger depends on how carefully you modelled tenants as customers.
Late rent surfaced without you looking	Expected rent is compared to what arrived. Anything short or missing is flagged on the dashboard and in your inbox.	Overdue invoices can be surfaced if you invoice each tenant each month. That is a workflow you have to build and maintain.
Deposits tracked as money you owe back	Held separately from rent, so the balance you owe at move-out is never guesswork.	Recordable as a liability by an owner who knows to do that. It is not handled for you, and the move-out balance is only as good as the setup.
Expenses tracked per property	Categorised per property and unit, with receipts attached, as you spend rather than in April.	Excellent. Categorisation, receipt capture and bank feeds are exactly what the product is for, and it does them better than we do.
Tax and reporting
Year-end reports built for the T776 and Schedule E	One export per property, with the categories already lined up to the form your accountant is filling in.	Solid general reporting. Getting output shaped to the T776 or Schedule E per property is a mapping exercise you own.
Real cashflow per property	Rent in, expenses out, per door, so you can see which property is actually earning.	Business-wide cashflow is a core strength. Per unit cashflow requires classes or locations set up and kept tidy.
Dated record of what you sent	Every notice and reminder ProperLease sends is logged with the recipient, the date and the time. A resend adds an entry rather than replacing one.	A thorough audit log of book changes. It has no record of what you sent a tenant, because messaging tenants is not its job.
Cost and effort
How it is priced	one property free, forever. Premium is $14.99 CAD a month or $99 CAD a year for the whole portfolio. No per-door charge, no per-document fee.	Sold as a subscription in tiers, with add-ons. Check their site for the current shape of it.
Time to get running	An evening. Add a property, add a tenant, import your payment history from CSV.	Longer. A chart of accounts, tenants as customers, and properties as classes all have to be designed before the first payment is entered.
Works from your phone	A native iPhone app. Mark rent paid, photograph a receipt, start a condition report from the doorway.	A capable mobile app for receipts and business bookkeeping, built around accounting rather than around a tenancy.

This comparison reflects publicly available information as of September 21, 2026, plus our own reading of how these approaches work in practice. Products and prices change, and we do not publish other vendors' prices here. Check the vendor's own site before you decide. If you think something on this page is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.

Frequently asked questions

Can QuickBooks manage rental property?

It can track the money. Landlords commonly model each property as a class or location and each tenant as a customer, and that works for income and expenses. What it does not carry is the tenancy itself: the lease document, the deposit you owe back, occupancy per unit, and the notices you serve. Those get handled in spreadsheets and templates alongside it.

Should I replace QuickBooks with ProperLease?

If rentals are the whole business and you do not need formal double-entry books, most owners find one tool is enough. If you also run a separate company, or your accountant requires proper financial statements, keep QuickBooks for the books and use ProperLease for the tenancies. We would rather tell you that than sell you a migration you regret.

Can I import my QuickBooks data?

Yes. Export to CSV and the importer maps properties, tenants and payment history, so your rent record and year to date figures carry across instead of resetting. For most small landlords the migration is an afternoon.

Does ProperLease do double-entry accounting?

No, and it is not trying to. ProperLease keeps a dated rent ledger per tenant and categorised expenses per property, which is what a T776 or a Schedule E needs. If you require journal entries and a balance sheet, that is an accounting package's job.

What does ProperLease cost?

One property free, forever, then Premium at $14.99 CAD a month or $99 CAD a year for the entire portfolio. It is not priced per door. We do not publish other vendors' prices here because they change, so check theirs directly.

Will my accountant be able to work with ProperLease exports?

Yes. Year-end reports come out per property with categories already aligned to the T776 in Canada and Schedule E in the US, as CSV and PDF. Most accountants would rather receive that than a rental folded into a company-wide profit and loss.

Moving off QuickBooks: migrate your rentals in an afternoon What rental expenses are deductible Landlord taxes in Canada and the T776 Year-end tax reports

Run your rentals with absolute clarity

ProperLease helps self-managing landlords in Canada and the US track rent, generate provincial and state leases, serve notices, and stay tax ready.

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