Property management creates long-lasting financial records. Rental income, tenant deposits, maintenance costs, and capital improvements all affect your tax position for years. Boxkite automatically backs up your Xero data to Dropbox, ensuring you have complete records when HMRC asks questions or you calculate capital gains.
Property accounting spans decades. A rental property bought in 2015 needs records from purchase through every repair, improvement, and rent receipt until eventual sale. Capital gains calculations require you to prove costs from years—sometimes decades—ago. HMRC can enquire into property income returns for several years back.
Unlike businesses where transactions are largely self-contained, property creates ongoing obligations. Tenant deposits must be tracked through entire tenancies. Improvement costs affect future tax calculations. Mortgage interest needs documenting for relief claims. All this data must survive software changes, accountant changes, and the natural tendency to archive "old" information.
Many landlords and property managers don't realise how long they need to keep records. By the time they're selling a property or facing an HMRC enquiry, the data they need may have been deleted, archived, or lost in a software migration. Boxkite ensures you always have a complete backup.
Property records need to survive for years. These scenarios show why long-term backup matters.
HMRC queries your rental property tax return from two years ago. You claimed significant repair expenses, but someone deleted the old purchase invoices when "tidying up" Xero. Without backup records, you can't prove your deductions and face a larger tax bill plus penalties.
A former tenant disputes deductions from their deposit, claiming damage repairs weren't done or were overcharged. You need the original invoices and photos from when the work was completed. If the contractor invoices were deleted from Xero, you can't prove your case.
You're selling a rental property and need to calculate capital gains. The purchase costs, improvement expenditures, and selling expenses from over 10 years are needed. If someone archived old transactions or you switched accountants, reconstructing this is painful.
Your letting agent's monthly statement doesn't match your Xero records. They claim they sent the correct rent amounts, you claim they didn't. Without historical backup records of what was in Xero before any "corrections," you can't prove discrepancies.
When you sell a rental property, you need records from the entire ownership period. Purchase costs, improvement expenses, letting agent fees, repair invoices—all reduce your capital gains liability. If you owned the property for 15 years, you need 15 years of records.
Most people don't think about this until they're selling. By then, they've changed accountants, switched software, and archived "old" data multiple times. The invoices that would reduce their capital gains tax are gone.
Landlords and property managers face multiple compliance requirements. From annual property income returns to capital gains calculations, accurate records are essential for tax efficiency.
Every rental invoice, expense, and payment is backed up automatically. No manual archiving to remember.
If you use tracking categories by property, all categorised transactions are preserved with their property allocation.
Backups stay in Dropbox indefinitely. When you sell a property years later, your complete cost history is available.
Complete records for tax returns, capital gains calculations, and enquiries. Prove your deductions with historical invoices.
These property management tools commonly integrate with Xero. When data from these systems reaches Xero, it's captured in your backup:
Don't lose the expense records that reduce your capital gains. Start protecting your Xero data with a free trial.
Start Your Free Trial