Per-property P&Ls, Schedule E mapping, and 14-day rule tracking — built for hosts running 1 to 12 doors, not VRBO-only "we do real estate" generalists.
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Short-term rental hosts have an accounting problem generalist bookkeepers consistently get wrong. Each property is functionally its own business: separate occupancy patterns, separate cleaning vendors, separate Airbnb/VRBO/Booking.com payout streams, often a separate mortgage and depreciation schedule. The IRS treats most STR activity as Schedule E rental income — unless average guest stay drops below 7 days with substantial services provided, at which point it flips to Schedule C and becomes subject to self-employment tax. That single test (the "average rental period" rule) reshapes the entire return, and the average bookkeeper has never heard of it. We map every property to a class in QuickBooks, reconcile Airbnb host fees and Resolution Center charge-offs separately from cleaning passthroughs, and produce the per-property P&L your CPA needs to depreciate correctly under §168 cost segregation. Bench did this well for the price; nobody at the $495/mo tier replaced them.
These are the niche-specific issues a generic $200/mo bookkeeper either misses or charges extra for.
Airbnb deposits arrive net of host service fee, cleaning passthrough, and occupancy tax — generalist bookkeepers post the net deposit and lose the gross revenue, breaking your 1099-K reconciliation
Per-property profitability is invisible without class tracking — one bad door can wipe out three good ones and you only find out at tax time
Schedule E vs Schedule C classification depends on average guest stay and services provided; getting this wrong is a 15.3% self-employment tax mistake
Cost segregation studies (typical $5k-$50k tax savings per property) require a depreciation schedule your books actually support — most STR hosts cannot produce one
Bench shut down Dec 2024 and its STR-host pages still rank on legacy authority; everything else is either software-only (Stessa, Hurdlr) or a generalist firm that does not know per-property class tracking.
| Provider | Monthly | Focus | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-serve software, no human bookkeeper | |||
| Generalist "real estate" tier | |||
| Tax-first, not monthly bookkeeping | |||
| Per-property P&L, Schedule E mapping, CGMA-supervised |
3 questions. We reply within 1 business day with a specific scope of work and flat monthly rate for your situation.
Five property-level P&Ls plus a consolidated owner-level statement. Each property gets its own QuickBooks class so you can see gross revenue, host fees, cleaning, supplies, utilities, mortgage interest, and depreciation per door. The consolidated view is what your CPA needs for Schedule E; the per-property view is what tells you whether the lake house is actually paying for itself or quietly subsidizing the mountain cabin.
At 6 nights average with no substantial services (no daily housekeeping, no concierge, no meals) you are almost certainly still Schedule E — the threshold is 7 days average AND substantial services for Schedule C. But "substantial services" is a facts-and-circumstances test, not a checklist. If you offer airport pickup, daily linen changes, or guided experiences, you could trip into Schedule C and pick up 15.3% self-employment tax on net income. We flag this at onboarding and document the position so your CPA can defend it.
Airbnb files a 1099-K showing gross bookings (what the guest paid) minus refunds, but excluding host service fees. We reconcile three numbers each month: gross guest payments (from the Airbnb earnings report), net deposits (what hit your bank), and 1099-K running total. The difference is host service fees, occupancy taxes Airbnb collected and remitted, and Resolution Center charge-offs — each posted to its own account. At year-end your books tie to the 1099-K to the dollar.
Yes. If you commission a cost-seg study (typically worthwhile on any property bought for over $300k held more than 2 years), we load the resulting depreciation schedule into your books and tag each component asset to the correct property class. Most generalist bookkeepers either ignore the study or dump it as one line into "depreciation" — that loses the audit trail and makes a future partial-asset disposition impossible to substantiate.