A payout number tells you a listing made money. It does not tell you whether the property did. After cleaning, supplies, utilities, platform fees, maintenance and the mortgage, two listings with similar revenue can have very different profit.
This guide shows the per-property bookkeeping that separates a busy calendar from a profitable one — what to track on every booking, how to handle expenses, and the few metrics that tell you the truth.
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Track every booking, tagged to a property
For each booking, record check-in and check-out (nights follow automatically), the property, the platform, the nightly rate, the cleaning fee and the actual payout. Tagging every booking to a property is the single most important habit — it is what lets you compare properties later instead of staring at one blended number.
The metrics that actually matter
Revenue is the start. The numbers that reveal performance are net profit (revenue minus expenses), ADR (average daily rate = revenue divided by nights booked), and occupancy (nights booked versus nights available). A property can have a high nightly rate and still underperform if it sits empty; another with a modest rate but high occupancy quietly wins.
Expenses per property — including the boring ones
Cleaning is obvious. The ones hosts forget are supplies and consumables, utilities, platform service fees, insurance, maintenance and repairs, and furnishing replacement. Tag each expense to a property (or to "shared" for portfolio-wide costs) so per-property profit stays honest. Most of these are deductible against rental income — log them with a category as you go.
See the whole portfolio at a glance
Once bookings and expenses are tagged, a dashboard can show total revenue, net profit, ADR, total nights and bookings across every property — and a monthly view shows seasonality so you price ahead of demand. Our Airbnb & Short-Term Rental Income Tracker is built around exactly this: per-property profit, ADR and nights, updating as you log each stay.
Skip the setup work
Everything in this guide works with paper and a pencil. If you want the structure ready-made — designed, tested and printable in minutes — the matching templates are below.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good occupancy rate for an Airbnb?
It depends heavily on location, season and pricing — a high-demand city differs from a seasonal cabin. Rather than chase a benchmark, track your own occupancy and ADR over time and optimise the trade-off between them (a slightly lower rate that fills more nights often beats a high rate that sits empty).
Which Airbnb expenses are tax deductible?
Ordinary and necessary costs of running the rental — cleaning, supplies, utilities, platform fees, insurance, maintenance and often a portion of mortgage interest and depreciation — are commonly deductible, but rules vary by country and by how the property is used. Keep every receipt tagged to a property and confirm specifics with a tax professional.
Spreadsheet or software for short-term rental bookkeeping?
For one to a handful of properties, a purpose-built spreadsheet that tracks bookings and expenses per property gives you per-property profit, ADR and occupancy without a monthly fee — and exports cleanly when you do hand things to an accountant.
About this guide. Published by OmniAura Digital, the team behind the printables and templates in our library. Our guides describe methods you can use with paper and a pencil; where we mention templates, they are our own products. Spotted an error? Tell us at support@omniauradigital.com and we'll fix it.
General information only — not financial or tax advice. Short-term rental tax rules vary widely by location; confirm with a local professional.