Your year-end statement, and what your accountant needs from it
It is December, which means owners are pulling statements together for their accountants and discovering that the number Airbnb showed them all year is not the number that hit their bank account.
That gap confuses more owners than any other part of this business. So here is the whole stack, in order, in plain language.
The four things between gross and yours
1. What the guest paid. This is the biggest number and the least useful one. It includes the guest's service fee, the cleaning fee, and taxes. None of that is yours.
2. Taxes. In Davidson County the guest pays a hotel occupancy tax of 7% plus $2.50 per night, a rate that took effect July 1, 2023 (Metro Finance). State and local sales tax sit on top of that. The platforms collect and remit most of this on your behalf, which is convenient and also why so many owners have no idea it exists until they look at a statement. It is a guest-side tax that still moves the total a guest compares, which is the part that reaches your calendar.
3. Cleaning. The cleaning fee the guest pays goes to the person who cleaned the house. It passes straight through. It is not revenue, it is not profit, and treating it as either is the single most common way owners overestimate what their home earns.
4. The platform's cut. Airbnb and Vrbo take a service fee. Depending on which fee model your listing is on, part of it comes off the host side and part comes off the guest side.
What is left after those is nightly revenue. That is the real number. It is the one our fee is calculated on, and it is the one you should be comparing year to year.
Why we bill on nightly revenue
Our management fee is a percentage of nightly revenue: 18% for one or two properties, 17% at three or four, 16% at five or six. Not a percentage of what the guest paid. The tiers, the base they are calculated on, and the month-to-month terms are all on our pricing page.
That distinction is worth real money and it is worth understanding, because a fee quoted on gross bookings and a fee quoted on nightly revenue are not comparable numbers even when the percentage looks similar. A manager charging a smaller-looking percentage of the gross — including the cleaning fee and the taxes — can easily cost you more than a larger-looking percentage of nightly revenue. When you are comparing managers, make everyone show you the same base or the comparison is theater.
Then there is the part that does not appear as a percentage at all: maintenance and supplies pass through at cost. What the plumber charged is the line on your statement. What the paper goods cost is the line on your statement. Nothing is added on top. If you want to check us, ask for the invoice — we will send it.
What your statement should let you answer
A statement is not a receipt. It is a management tool, and the five figures it should get you to have not changed since I wrote them out in January. Yours should let you answer these without a phone call:
What did the home gross, and what was my nightly revenue?
How many nights were booked, and how many reservations was that?
What was my average nightly rate, and how did it move against last year?
What did I spend on maintenance, and on what?
What did I spend on supplies?
What is my net, and what did it net last December?
If your current statement cannot answer six questions, it is a payout notice with a logo on it.
Three things to hand your accountant
I am a property manager, not a CPA, and none of what follows is tax advice — get an actual accountant, ideally one who has other short-term rental clients. But these are the documents they will ask for, so gather them now instead of in April:
The annual statement from each platform. Airbnb and Vrbo both produce one, and they use different definitions of revenue — Airbnb's own earnings view covers Airbnb's side of the transaction and stops there. Give your accountant both, not the one you like better.
Your management statements for all twelve months. Especially the expense lines, which are where your deductions live.
Capital purchases with dates. New mattress, new HVAC, new sofa, appliance replacements. Furniture and equipment get treated differently from a repair, and the difference is worth money. Your accountant cannot find these if they only see a total.
Also flag anything unusual for the year: a period the home was out of service, a stretch you used it personally, a large one-time repair.
The end-of-year habit worth building
Every December I go through each home in the portfolio and ask one question: what did this home earn, and what would have to change for it to earn more next year? Sometimes the answer is pricing. Sometimes it is a $1,200 furniture purchase that moves the home into a higher bracket of comparable listings. Sometimes it is that the third bedroom photographs badly and one afternoon with a photographer fixes it. Occasionally the honest answer is that the home is doing fine and the owner should stop worrying about it.
You cannot have that conversation without a statement that tells you the truth.
If your current statements are not giving you those answers — or if you want somebody to read last year's numbers with you before you file — talk to Boost Rentals. Send me a statement and I will show you what your effective all-in cost of management actually was last year. That is a useful number to know in January, whoever manages your home in February.
— Chris Hetzner, Boost Rentals