Airbnb Bookkeeping Services
For hosts who own their rentals: Airbnb and Vrbo payouts matched to your bank, a P&L for every property and year-end books your CPA can use.
Airbnb pays you a net amount, reports a gross amount and charges fees in between. If your books only record the deposits, your income is wrong, your fees are missing and nothing ties to the 1099-K.
We keep Airbnb and Vrbo host books in QuickBooks Online or Xero the way a short term rental needs them: every payout broken back into bookings, fees and refunds, every property on its own P&L, and occupancy tax kept out of your income.
Who This Is For
Hosts and small investors who own their short term rentals and list them on Airbnb, Vrbo or Booking.com. You might keep books in QuickBooks Online or Xero already, or in a spreadsheet you no longer trust.
If you manage properties for other owners and send owner statements, vacation rental bookkeeping for managers is the better fit.
Our Key Offerings
Payout Reconciliation
Each Airbnb and Vrbo payout traced to its reservations, host fees and refunds, then matched to the bank deposit.
A P&L for Every Property
Income and expenses tagged by property, so you can see which home earns its keep.
Occupancy Tax Kept Separate
Taxes the platform collected, and taxes you collected yourself, recorded apart from your rental income.
Year-End Package for Your CPA
Reconciled books, a P&L by property and the 1099-K reconciliation, ready when your CPA asks.
Why Airbnb Payouts Do Not Match Your Books
Three numbers describe the same month and none of them agree. Your reservations show what guests paid. Your bank shows the payout after host fees and refunds. Your Form 1099-K shows a gross figure that, in the IRS's words, is not adjusted for fees, credits or refunds (IRS: What to do with Form 1099-K).
The IRS currently says payment platforms report on Form 1099-K when the payments you receive exceed $20,000 in more than 200 transactions (IRS: Understanding your Form 1099-K). Check the current IRS threshold before you file. Either way, the IRS also says you must report the income whether or not you get a form.
Good books record the gross booking, the fees and refunds as separate lines, and the payout as a transfer to the bank. Then all three numbers reconcile. The full method is in how to reconcile Airbnb payouts to your bank and your 1099-K.
What We Do Each Month
- 01
Download payout and transaction reports from each channel.
- 02
Record gross bookings, cleaning fees, host fees and refunds as separate lines.
- 03
Match each payout to the bank deposit.
- 04
Categorize expenses and assign each one to a property.
- 05
Record occupancy tax you collected yourself as a liability, not as income.
- 06
Send you a P&L for each property and for the portfolio.
QuickBooks or Xero Set Up for Short Term Rentals
The default chart of accounts in QuickBooks or Xero is built for a generic small business. We build or refine a short term rental chart of accounts: nightly revenue, cleaning fee income, channel fees, supplies, repairs and utilities as separate lines, with each property tagged so it gets its own P&L.
Payouts go through a clearing account per channel, so a payout that does not match its bookings shows up the day we close the month, not at tax time.
Occupancy Tax: When Airbnb Collects It and When You Do
Airbnb's Help Center says that in areas where tax collection is available, Airbnb calculates these taxes and collects them from guests at the time of booking. Elsewhere, hosts generally need to collect taxes themselves, and even hosts in covered areas remain responsible for assessing all other tax obligations, including state and city ones (Airbnb Help Center, article 2509).
In the books that means two treatments. Tax the platform collected and remitted never becomes your income. Tax you collected yourself sits in a liability account until you pay it. Our occupancy tax guide walks through both.
Year-End: Your CPA Gets a Clean Package
At year-end you get reconciled books, a P&L by property, the reconciliation between your 1099-K and your recorded income, and a list of the larger purchases your CPA will want to look at. Your CPA decides the tax treatment; we make sure the numbers underneath it are right.
Behind on last year already? Start with a cleanup and catch-up.
How It Works
- 01
Discovery Call
A 15-minute call about your properties, channels and where your books stand today.
- 02
Setup
We connect your channels and bank feeds and set up a short term rental chart of accounts in QuickBooks or Xero.
- 03
Monthly Close
Payouts reconciled, expenses categorized by property and a monthly P&L for each home.
Tools We Work With
Results From Clients
Written up from real engagements, with the numbers from each.
Frequently Asked Questions
We work in QuickBooks Online and Xero. If you are on spreadsheets today, we set up the file with a short term rental chart of accounts during onboarding, and the file is yours.
Yes. Each channel gets its own payout reconciliation and its own clearing account, so every channel ties to the bank separately.
The IRS says the gross amount on Form 1099-K is not adjusted for fees, credits or refunds, while your bank receives the payout after those. See our reconciliation guide.
In some areas Airbnb collects and remits certain taxes; in others hosts collect them. Airbnb's Help Center lists which taxes it collects in each jurisdiction. We record both cases correctly in your books.
Yes. Every transaction is tagged to a property, so you get a P&L for each home and for the portfolio every month.
Yes. We start with a cleanup and catch-up, then move to monthly bookkeeping.
Our work is the bookkeeping: reconciled books and a year-end package your CPA uses to prepare the return.
They stay with you. We work in your own QuickBooks or Xero file and keep no local copies of your data.