How do I track income and expenses for a holiday let?
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Short answer
Record every booking's revenue against the month it belongs to, keep your costs on fixed lines (cleaning, utilities, insurance, maintenance, mortgage interest), and separate three things that are easy to mix up: profit, cash, and tax.
A spreadsheet does this until the year gets busy. Stayem builds the same sheet from bookings you have already recorded: revenue per booking across twelve months, a cost grid with 21 ready-made holiday-rental lines, a profit statement, a cashflow view, and a one-tap Excel export with live formulas.
What to record for each booking
Whatever tool you use, a booking needs enough detail to answer questions a year later:
- The stay dates and the number of nights — a stay crossing New Year belongs partly to each tax year.
- Rent and extras separately: cleaning fees, pool heating or late checkout are not room revenue.
- Where the booking came from, so you can see what each platform really contributes.
- What has arrived and what is still owed, with the date money was received.
- The currency each amount was in, if you take more than one.
The cost lines worth keeping
Group costs by what they actually are, because that is what turns a total into a profit figure:
- Running costs: cleaning, laundry, utilities, internet, pool and garden, maintenance, insurance, local taxes, marketing.
- Cost of money: mortgage interest and bank charges — these reduce profit.
- Capital: furnishings, equipment, a new roof, and mortgage capital repayments — these do not reduce profit, but they very much leave your bank account.
Profit and cash are different answers
A property can show a profit and still leave your account lower at the end of the year, because capital repayments and equipment purchases are cash out without being costs. That single difference is behind most owner confusion, so keep both views: a profit statement for your accountant, and a month-by-month cash view for yourself.
Tax is the third thing. Rules differ by country and by how you hold the property, so Stayem never calculates it: you type what you owe and it flows into the statement. Nothing here is accounting advice — your accountant decides the treatment.
How Stayem does it
Because your bookings are already in Stayem, the year assembles itself. Choose whether revenue counts as the nights are stayed or when the money arrives, and the sheet reads the way your accountant wants it. Money received shows in normal text, money still owed in grey, so you can see what is fact and what is a promise.
Underneath sit the profit statement (gross revenue, running costs, amortization of furnishings, tax you typed, cost of money, profit after tax, net yield) and the cashflow view, with cumulative movement from January. One tap exports the year to Excel, with live formulas so the file still works after you edit it, and a second tab carrying the year's statistics.
Common questions
Can I just use a spreadsheet?
Yes, and many owners should. A spreadsheet stops being enough when bookings arrive from several platforms in different currencies and you start re-typing the same booking into it. The advantage of doing it in Stayem is that the bookings are already there.
Does Stayem calculate my tax?
No, deliberately. Tax rules vary by country and by ownership structure, so a formula would be wrong for someone. You type the tax on the activity and the statement uses your figure.
How should a stay that crosses New Year be counted?
Split it. Stayem spreads that booking's revenue pro-rata across both years when you count revenue as the nights are stayed, or puts it in the year the money arrived if you count on a cash basis.
Can I give the file to my accountant?
Yes. The Excel export holds every booking with dates and channel, the cost lines grouped as an accountant groups them, the profit statement and the cashflow, all sharing the same twelve month columns. The file records which basis produced it, so it still makes sense months later.
See whether the property made money
Your bookings become the year's profit and loss. Free to start, no credit card.
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