Independent bookkeeping & advisory firm · Serving clients nationwide, remotely
Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com don’t pay you the nightly rate — they pay a net deposit after service fees, cleaning, taxes withheld, and timing splits. We reconcile every platform payout to gross, build a real profit and loss for each listing, and record lodging and occupancy tax correctly — so your per-property numbers are true and your books are ready for your CPA. Long-term tenants rather than short stays? See rental-property bookkeeping. TechBrot is an independent firm, not affiliated with Airbnb, VRBO or any booking platform.
If your file needs our paid diagnostic first, its fee is credited in full against the cleanup. Either way, you get a fixed fee in writing before any work starts.
Short-term rental accounting reconciles every Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com payout gross-to-net, builds a profit and loss for each listing, and records lodging and occupancy tax, platform-remitted or host-owed, in your own QuickBooks file. Monthly bookkeeping is a fixed fee of $500–$2,500+/mo against a written scope; your CPA decides Schedule C or E and files.
They took something that felt overwhelming to me as a first-year business owner and made it simple.
What stood out the most was TechBrot Inc’s attention to detail.
Nearly every messy short-term rental file fails in the same three areas. Knowing which one you’re in tells us where to start.
The bank deposit gets recorded as the sale, so the platform service fee, the cleaning fee, and any tax withheld vanish — income is understated and your real cost of hosting is invisible. The fix: reconcile every payout gross-to-net, so gross nightly revenue, fees collected, service fees deducted, and tax remitted all appear in the books and the deposit ties out.
Bookings, cleaning, supplies, and utilities land in one bucket with no listing dimension, so you can’t tell which unit carries the others and which one barely breaks even after turnover. The fix: a per-listing P&L in QuickBooks — revenue, cleaning, turnover, supplies, and management assigned to each listing — so every property has a real number behind it.
Some platforms collect and remit occupancy tax for you and some don’t, so the same payout can mean ‘already handled’ or ‘you still owe it’ — and the books rarely show which. The fix: record lodging, occupancy, and transient-occupancy tax correctly per payout, distinguishing platform-remitted from host-owed, with the liability visible. Your registration and filing are confirmed with your CPA and the taxing authority.
Every engagement is scoped to your listings and platforms, delivered in your own QuickBooks file by your TechBrot team, with every close reviewed by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
Every Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com payout reconciled gross-to-net — gross nightly revenue, cleaning and extra-guest fees, the host service fee deducted, and any tax the platform remitted — so each deposit ties out and nothing is lost between booking and bank.
Revenue, cleaning, turnover, supplies, utilities, software, and management tracked to each listing in QuickBooks using Classes or sub-customers — so every property carries its own monthly P&L, reportable by listing or across the whole portfolio.
Lodging, occupancy, and transient-occupancy tax recorded correctly per payout — distinguishing what a platform already collected and remitted from what you still owe — so the liability is clear. Registration and filing are determined with your CPA and the taxing authority.
Cleaning fees collected vs. cleaning cost paid, plus supplies, restocking, linens, and maintenance between guests, tracked per listing — so the margin you actually keep on a stay is real, not the headline nightly rate.
A short-term-rental chart of accounts, per-listing structure, and the right apps connecting your channel manager or PMS — Guesty, Hostaway, OwnerRez, Hospitable — into QuickBooks cleanly, so bookings, fees, and payouts flow into one ledger.
Untangle deposits booked as gross, rebuild per-listing history, and reconcile to a known-good baseline — then, as you scale, fractional CFO advisory on pricing, occupancy, and which listings to keep, built on real per-listing numbers.
The difference between a generalist file and a short-term rental file isn’t effort — it’s the gap between a platform’s net deposit and your real numbers. Each row below is a place vacation-rental accounting diverges from ordinary bookkeeping.
| What it tracks | Short-term rental books | Standard books |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue recognition | Reconciled gross-to-net: gross nightly + fees, less service fee, less tax remitted | Net bank deposit booked as the sale |
| Platform service fees | Broken out per payout, per platform, as a real cost line | Buried inside the deposit, never seen |
| Cleaning fees | Fee collected tracked against cleaning cost paid, per listing | Netted into income, margin hidden |
| Occupancy / lodging tax | Recorded per payout; platform-remitted vs. host-owed kept distinct | Ignored or lumped into revenue |
| Profit reporting | P&L by individual listing and across the portfolio | One company-wide income number |
| Turnover cost | Supplies, linens, restocking, and maintenance tracked between guests | Blended into general expenses |
| Channel / PMS data | Guesty / Hostaway / OwnerRez reconciled into QuickBooks | Lives in a disconnected second system |
| Tax classification | Books kept clean enough to support Schedule C or E — CPA decides which | No structure for either treatment |
We keep the books and reconcile the payouts; the tax line stays with your advisors. Whether your activity is reported on Schedule C or Schedule E, and how it’s depreciated, is your CPA’s call — we keep the records that support it. Whether a given platform remits occupancy tax, and your own registration and filing, is confirmed with your CPA and the state or local taxing authority. Ask on a call.
On a different stack? If it tracks reservations and pays out to a bank account, we can reconcile it — bookings, fees, and payouts flow into clean per-listing books instead of living in two disconnected systems. Ask on a call.
Every short-term rental engagement follows the same four-phase rhythm — built so your books reconcile to every payout before anyone tries to advise on them.
A 30-minute call to map your listings, the platforms and channel tools you use, how payouts arrive, and how occupancy tax is currently handled — and where the books stop reconciling. No pitch.
If needed, a cleanup to undo deposits booked as gross and rebuild per-listing history, plus QuickBooks setup with a short-term-rental chart of accounts and channel-manager sync.
Every platform payout reconciled gross-to-net and every account tied to the bank monthly, with cleaning, turnover cost, and occupancy-tax recording kept current per listing.
A monthly package with per-listing P&L and a portfolio view, plus advisory on pricing, occupancy, and which listings to keep or add as you grow.
Once every payout reconciles and your per-listing numbers are real, the question changes from “are the books right?” to “what do we do next?” Which listing earns its keep after cleaning and turnover, whether a market still supports your nightly rate, when occupancy says it’s time to drop a property or add one, how much you can safely draw between seasons — the decisions that actually move a short-term rental business.
That’s where short-term rental advisory comes in: a QuickBooks ProAdvisor who knows your listings turning the numbers into pricing, occupancy, and portfolio decisions. As automation commoditizes basic bookkeeping, this judgment layer is where the value — and the margin — now lives. Tax classification and filing stay with your CPA. Explore fractional CFO & advisory
Checked against TechBrot’s methodology.
Each state page starts from one lodging-tax rule that changes how a host’s bookings are split in the books there, cited to the statute.
Because the platform’s net deposit is not your revenue. Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com each subtract a host service fee, route the cleaning fee, sometimes withhold and remit occupancy tax, and split multi-night stays across timing — so every payout has to be reconciled gross-to-net, per listing. Standard bookkeeping that records the bank deposit as the sale understates income, hides your platform fees and cleaning cost, and can’t tell you which listing actually earns.
Yes. We tie each platform payout back to its parts — gross nightly revenue, cleaning and extra-guest fees collected, the host service fee deducted, and any tax the platform collected and remitted — so the deposit matches the books and nothing is lost between the booking and the bank. We reconcile a single listing or a portfolio spread across several platforms.
We record it correctly in your books — distinguishing what a platform already collected and remitted on your behalf from what you still owe directly — so the liability and the remittance are clear. Which platforms remit varies by jurisdiction and platform, and your own registration and filing obligations are determined with your CPA and the relevant state or local taxing authority. We keep the records; we do not file your tax returns.
That is a tax-classification decision your CPA or EA makes, not us. It generally turns on whether you provide substantial services to guests and on whether you materially participate — concepts we’ll explain at a literacy level and keep your books clean enough to support either treatment. But the determination and the filing belong to your CPA. TechBrot keeps the books that support the classification; it does not file income taxes.
Yes. We track the cleaning fee collected against the cleaning cost actually paid, plus supplies, linens, restocking, and between-guest maintenance, assigned to each listing — so you see the margin you really keep on a stay rather than the headline nightly rate. That per-listing turnover picture is what makes pricing and keep-or-drop decisions real.
Yes. We reconcile channel managers and property-management systems such as Guesty, Hostaway, OwnerRez, Hospitable, and Lodgify to QuickBooks, so bookings, fees, and payouts flow into clean per-listing books instead of living in a disconnected second system. If your tool tracks reservations and pays out to a bank account, we can usually reconcile it.
Pricing depends on the number of listings, how many platforms and channel tools are involved, whether occupancy-tax recording is needed, and your reporting needs. Short-term rental engagements are quoted as a fixed monthly fee against a written scope with no hourly billing — see our pricing page for how that works.
Yes. This page is short-term-rental-specific — payout reconciliation, per-listing P&L, cleaning and turnover cost, occupancy tax, and channel-manager integration. Owner-held, long-term, and multi-entity property work — security deposits, owner draws, mortgage splits, depreciation, and 1031 basis — lives on our real estate accounting page. Many hosts need both, and we keep one clean set of books across them.