How I automated managing my 3 apartments in Liege
Vincent, 45, a landlord in Liege, shares how he went from 6 to 2 hours of management per week by automating rent tracking, indexation and receipts.
- 01 Manual management
- 02 The trigger
- 03 The transition
- 04 The results
- 05 My advice
Manual management: 6 hours per week
I have owned 3 rental apartments in Liege since 2019. A 2-bedroom in Outremeuse (rented at 780 EUR), a studio in the Carre district (rented at 620 EUR) and a 1-bedroom in Saint-Leonard (rented at 710 EUR). All rented via residential leases of 3-6-9.
For 4 years, I managed everything by hand. My system: one physical binder per apartment, an Excel spreadsheet for rent tracking, and a calculator for annual indexation. Receipts? A Word template I filled in by hand each month. Reminders? A phone call when I remembered to check the accounts, i.e. not every month.
Result: approximately 6 hours per week of management. And above all, errors. In 2022, I applied the wrong indexation to the studio (12 EUR/month error for 8 months, i.e. 96 EUR overcharged that I had to reimburse). In 2023, I only detected an arrears after 6 weeks because I was not checking my account every month.
The trigger: 6 weeks of arrears
The 2023 arrears episode was the trigger. My studio tenant had lost his job and was too embarrassed to tell me. If I had detected the delay at 5 days instead of 6 weeks, I could have reacted sooner and limited the damage to 1 month instead of 2.
At the same time, a friend who is a landlord in Brussels showed me his dashboard: automatic alerts on the 5th day of delay, receipts generated in 1 click, indexation calculated automatically. He spent 45 minutes per week for 5 apartments. I was spending 6 hours for 3.
The decision was made: I would migrate to an online management tool.
The transition: 2 weekends of work
The migration took 2 full weekends. Here is what I did, step by step:
Weekend 1: data entry
- Creation of 3 property records (address, surface area, EPC, equipment)
- Entry of 3 active leases (dates, rents, charge provisions, deposit)
- Upload of documents: signed leases, inventories, EPC certificates, insurance certificates
Weekend 2: automation configuration
- Payment alert settings (notification on the 5th day of delay)
- Automatic indexation configuration (anniversary dates, reference health index)
- Receipt templates with compulsory Belgian mentions
- Maintenance schedule (annual boiler, smoke detectors)
Scan all your paper documents before archiving them. A lease signed in 2019 that you need in 2025 is impossible to find in a binder pushed to the back of a cupboard. Digitally, a 3-second search is all it takes.
The longest part was scanning old documents. But it is a one-time investment: once everything is online, adding a new property takes 30 minutes.
The results after 18 months
After 18 months of use, the assessment is clear:
Management time: from 6h to 2h per week. The saving comes mainly from automatic receipts (30 min/month saved), payment tracking (no more manual account checking) and indexation (0 minutes instead of 1h of calculation and correspondence).
Errors: 0 indexation errors in 18 months, compared to 2 per year before. The formula is set up once and applied automatically on the anniversary date.
Arrears detection: alert on the 5th day instead of the 30th. In March 2025, the alert allowed me to detect a delay from my Outremeuse tenant. A simple call the same day was enough: he had forgotten to renew his standing order after a bank change. Resolved in 48 hours.
Tenant relations: the automatic monthly receipts are appreciated by tenants (particularly for social housing applications or bank files). The rental management software generates documents compliant with Belgian requirements.
My advice for making the switch
If you manage your rentals by hand and are hesitating to migrate to a digital tool, here are my 3 tips:
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Do not migrate everything at once. Start with payment tracking (it is the most impactful), then add receipts, then indexation. Each building block delivers a measurable gain.
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Choose a tool adapted to the Belgian market. Indexation based on the health index, receipts compliant with Belgian law, EPC tracking: these are Belgian specificities that French or international tools do not always handle. Compare rental management software before committing.
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The return on investment is immediate. 4 hours per week saved is 200 hours per year. Even at a modest rate, the time saved is worth far more than the monthly subscription for software.
More landlord testimonials: My experience as a landlord in Wallonia, From paper to digital management and My tenant has not paid for 3 months.
- “**Automate payment alerts as a priority.** Tracking receipts is the most time-consuming and critical task. A tool that alerts you on the 5th day of delay is a game-changer.
- “**Centralise all documents in one place.** Lease, inventory, receipts, EPC, insurance: everything must be accessible in 2 clicks. A physical binder per apartment is unmanageable beyond 2 properties.
- “**Let indexation be handled by automatic calculation.** Rent indexation based on the health index is a precise formula. Calculating it by hand exposes you to errors (in your disfavour or the tenant's). Automate it.
Frequently asked questions
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With manual management (correspondence, spreadsheet, phone reminders), allow 5 to 7 hours per week for 3 properties. With rental management software, this drops to 1.5 to 3 hours. The saving comes mainly from automating payment tracking, receipts and indexation.
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Yes. The indexation formula is fixed: (base rent x new health index) / starting health index. Software automatically calculates the new rent on the lease anniversary date and generates the indexation letter. This avoids calculation errors and oversights.
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Not necessarily. A well-structured spreadsheet can suffice for 1 or 2 properties. Beyond that, dedicated software offers functions that are difficult to replicate in a spreadsheet: automatic alerts, compliant receipt generation, document archiving, indexation calculation. Costs range from 0 (limited free versions) to 10-20 EUR/month.
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It depends on the software. Some offer a tenant space where the tenant can view their receipts, report a problem or download documents. This is not compulsory but improves communication and reduces phone or email queries.
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