Great question, @Annette102. I am eager to hear what other people say. For us, we are aiming to keep the whole setup as simple as possible. I am no accountant!
We have one listing (an in-law suite in our home) and we are using the income to build our own travel fund. In our situation, we don't have to collect occupancy, VAT or service taxes, but we do need to track and pay income tax any profit we make. That means we need to track guest fees and expenses (capital costs like the few pieces of furniture we purchased to set up, linens, breakfast and cleaning supplies, cleaners fees, and utilities).
I have a very simple file for receipts and an Excel spreadsheet that tracks incoming and outgoing money. This also allows me to calculate average expenses per booked night and to play around a bit to see what my %profit would look like with different nightly rates, cleaning fees etc., rather than just guessing. I have a specific pocket in my wallet where I collect all my receipts on the run. Every couple weeks, I go through them: I assign a receipt number to each receipt, file it in my "shoebox", and enter it in my spreadsheet. When I get a payout, it also gets entered in the spreadsheet. Come tax time, I just have to look at the total to know what I have to pay taxes on. Easy peasey.
| Air BnB Tracker: 2017 Finances | | |
| | | | | | | |
| Transaction Date | Rect# | Closing Balance | Expense Amount | Income Amount | Expense Category | Expense Details |
| | | $ - | | | | |
| April 25 2017 | 1 | -$ 137.99 | $ 137.99 | | Startup | linens |
| May 2 2017 | 2 | -$ 160.98 | $ 22.99 | | Startup | kitchen table |
