The only rent tracker that reads your Gmail.
Interac e-transfers, Zelle, Venmo, and Cash App receipts land in your inbox the moment your tenant sends rent. BorderBird matches them to your tenants by name and writes to your rent ledger. No more copy-pasting amounts into a spreadsheet at the end of the month.
What it actually does
Real workflow, not roadmap promises. Every capability below is shipped.
Gmail-based payment detection
Connect Gmail and BorderBird scans for the email patterns that matter — 'INTERAC e-Transfer: Money has been sent to you', Zelle payment notifications, Venmo receipts, and Cash App payment confirmations. Matches go to your tenant by name. Recent payments import directly; historical payments queue for review.
First-and-last deposit logic, built in
When a tenant moves in and pays first-and-last together, the Split Payment dialog records the first-month portion as applied immediately and parks the last-month portion as a held deposit. When the tenant gives notice, the held deposit allocates to the final month automatically — no manual journal entry to remember at lease end.
Received vs applied — separated forever
rent_received is what cash arrived. rent_applied is what month that cash satisfies. Two distinct tables means partial payments, prepayments, and late catch-ups all get the right tax-year treatment. Your year-end Schedule E export shows the right rental income for the calendar year, even if the cash came in late.
Vacating tenant + lease renewal flow
Vacating Tenant dialog handles the deposit return calculation, partial-month proration, and final move-out walk-through. Renew Lease dialog rolls forward the rent amount, optionally with an increase, without breaking the historical tenant ledger. Past payments stay attributed to past leases; new payments get new lease history.
NR4 reporting month — the 15th rule, done right
CRA's reporting month rule for non-resident withholding: rent received on or before the 15th counts toward that month; received after the 15th rolls to the next. BorderBird applies this consistently across the rent ledger and the Part XIII remittance calculation, so the two never diverge.
Backfill from any prior year
The Backfill Payments dialog lets you enter historical rent received and applied with original dates, so when you switch to BorderBird mid-year your tax-year totals reconcile. Important if you're moving from a spreadsheet or want a clean Q4 onboarding.
Why cross-border rent tracking is different
A US-only landlord cares about one number: gross rental income for the calendar year, in USD, on Schedule E line 3. That fits any rent tracker.
A cross-border landlord cares about three: gross rent in the local currency for Schedule E (or T776), the same gross rent converted to CAD using the Bank of Canada annual rate for the CRA T1, and the gross rent allocated to the right NR4 reporting month for Part XIII withholding. The three numbers must reconcile to the same underlying payments.
BorderBird stores payments once and produces all three views from the same source data. There's no scenario where your Schedule E and your T776 disagree about how much rent you collected — they're always drawing from the same rent_received ledger.