The hard part of landlord compliance is not getting the certificates. Any landlord can book a gas engineer or an electrician. The hard part is never missing a renewal across every property, every year, and being able to prove you gave each tenant their copy.
Miss one renewal date and an otherwise diligent landlord is suddenly non-compliant. This guide covers what you need to track, the ways landlords do it, and how to choose a method that actually holds up as your portfolio grows.
Why tracking is the real compliance risk
Most compliance failures are not landlords refusing to get a certificate. They are missed renewals, a gas check that slipped a month, an EICR that expired quietly at the five-year mark, or a certificate that was never passed on to the tenant. The obligation exists on a repeating clock, and the clock is different for every certificate type.
The penalties are real: an unlimited fine for a lapsed Gas Safety check, up to £40,000 for electrical breaches, and, since the Renters' Rights Act 2025, compliance evidence now also affects whether you can recover possession. The full penalty picture is in our UK landlord compliance checklist.
What you actually need to track, per property
For each rented property in England, you are keeping an eye on up to six separate items, each on its own renewal cycle:
| Item | Typical renewal | The tracking trap |
|---|---|---|
| Gas Safety (CP12) | Every 12 months | Annual, so it comes round fast and is easy to let slip |
| EICR | Every 5 years | So far off you forget it exists until it expires |
| EPC | Every 10 years | Rarely front of mind, plus the 2028/2030 rating changes |
| Smoke & CO alarms | Test each new tenancy | Tied to tenancy events, not a fixed date |
| Legionella review | Around every 2 years | No fixed legal date, easy to drop entirely |
| Deposit protection | Within 30 days of each deposit | A hard deadline the moment money changes hands |
You can work out the exact renewal and book-by dates for the certificate types with our free certificate renewal calculator.
The ways landlords track certificates
Memory and paper
Fine for a single property in your first year. It breaks the moment you have two properties, or the moment life gets busy around a renewal date. There is no prompt, so compliance depends entirely on you remembering an annual date unaided.
A spreadsheet
A genuine step up, and where many organised landlords land. You get one place to see every date. What a spreadsheet cannot do is remind you: it sits there silently until you happen to open it. It also does not store the certificate PDFs, and it does nothing to prove you gave the tenant their copy.
Phone or calendar reminders
Better than a silent spreadsheet, because something actually pops up. But you have to set every reminder by hand for every date, keep them updated as certificates renew, and the reminder still does not hold the document or record that you served it to the tenant.
Dedicated tracking software
Purpose-built tools combine the three things the other methods each miss: a single view of every date, reminders that fire before expiry on their own, and a store for the certificate itself, with a record that the tenant received it. For more than one property, this is usually the point where tracking stops being a chore you can forget.
What good certificate tracking looks like
Whatever method you choose, it should do all of the following:
- Show every certificate for every property, and its expiry date, in one place
- Warn you before a certificate expires, without you having to check
- Store the actual certificate so you can produce it on request
- Record that you gave the tenant their copy, not just that you had it
- Keep working as you add more properties, rather than getting harder
How PropCert handles it
PropCert is built specifically for this. It tracks all six certificate types, and it reminds you before each one expires so a renewal cannot slip past unnoticed.
- Add a property and its certificates, and PropCert tracks every deadline for you
- You get reminders ahead of each expiry, so nothing depends on you remembering the date
- On paid plans, your certificate PDFs are stored against each property, ready to produce on request
- On Pro, you can share a certificate with your tenant by secure link, and PropCert logs when they view it, your proof of service (see why having the certificate is not enough)
At a glance: the tracking methods compared
| Method | Reminders | Stores the PDF | Proves tenant got it | Scales past 1 property |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Memory / paper | No | No | No | No |
| Spreadsheet | No | No | No | Somewhat |
| Calendar reminders | Manual | No | No | Somewhat |
| Tracking software | Automatic | Yes | Yes | Yes |
For the full list of what every landlord must hold, see the UK landlord compliance checklist, or work out your dates with the certificate renewal calculator.