Short-term Rental Expense Spreadsheet (Free Template)

Whether you manage one vacation rental or multiple properties, the end of every month can be stressful for many short-term rental owners. Bills, taxes, mortgages, and other expenses all need to be paid, making it feel like all you do is crunch numbers. Having a short-term rental excel spreadsheet will make running your business a lot easier.

Your time, money, and energy are of the essence as a vacation rental owner or property manager. When you manage a vacation rental business, many small expenses come up. Pair that with fixed costs like salaries, cleaning fees, and trash services, and you’ve got yourself an accounting nightmare! 

Your time is best spent tending to your host duties, not worrying about who to pay next.


Don’t see the form to download the Expense Spreadsheet? Click here.

Use a short-term rental accounting worksheet to minimize the burden and easily keep track of your income and expenses. It’s the best decision you can make, aside from using Lodgify’s built-in accounting tools. And why is that, you might ask? Read on to find out!

Why do you need a short-term rental expense spreadsheet?

If you’re renting out a vacation home, you might wonder, “why do I need a short-term rental excel template?” Ultimately, the goal for all vacation rental tasks is to make it as easy and painless as possible. When you use a vacation rental income and expense worksheet, you minimize manual accounting work. Adding this spreadsheet to your toolkit just makes sense.

Save time and effort

By using a short-term rental accounting spreadsheet that’s already programmed to meet your vacation rental needs, you avoid having to manually calculate your finances every month. Instead of starting from scratch each billing cycle, you just have to pop in your monthly expenses and earnings then you’re done! No more time wasted doing the same tasks over and over.

short term rental expense spreadsheet

What’s more, when it comes to filing your taxes, you’ll already have your numbers available in one handy short-term rental spreadsheet, saving you time and stress. 

Looking to go a little deeper? Consider using Lodgify’s accounting tools. This helpful tool calculates how much your business is earning and spending, sums up your total revenue from all your properties and listings, and lets you filter for booking periods. You can also keep track of incoming and outgoing payments. This tool eliminates hours of administrative work and gives you a much deeper analysis of your finances.

Improve staff management

As a vacation rental owner, you are well aware of the many steps that go into room presentation, upkeep during the stay, and clean-up after your guests leave. With each of these steps comes an array of fees and services. To keep the business running smoothly, payments should be handled swiftly and on time. In the event of late payments or inconsistencies, you can aggravate staff and consequently receive subpar service, and your guests deserve nothing but the best!

When you implement a system that consistently keeps payments to your staff members on time, you deliver better service to your guests. Guest satisfaction equals more bookings, which is more money in your pocket.

Don’t overlook any expenses

The little expenses that come with managing a property, like replacing a door handle or deep cleaning the carpets, can really add up at the end of the day. Sometimes, these small costs are missed, leading to unknowns in your budget. Keep your customers, employees, and wallet happy by tracking them in our worksheet.

Bonus tip: Put these expenses in our vacation rental income calculator to estimate how much you should be making from your property.

Understand your vacation rental’s performance

When you don’t have data to understand your business, you can have a feel for how well your business is doing, but you’ll never really know. Eliminate the guesswork by using a short-term rental accounting spreadsheet. You can see where the bulk of your expenses are coming from and decide if you want to cut back on any purchases.

Vacation rental income and expense worksheet

In terms of the positives, you can also see how well your business is doing. By tracking key data in your short-term rental analysis spreadsheet, you can figure out what months perform better, what type of guests you appeal to, and what your projected revenue will be. Once you have the numbers, you can identify areas for improvement and, if necessary, reinvestment.

An expense template can help you to understand your average rate, but if you want to appropriately price your properties to maximize profits, we encourage you to use our dynamic pricing tool. Lodgify integrates with PriceLabs, which automates flexible prices based on real industry data. Once you have your prices perfectly adjusted to meet your needs, you can pop the numbers into your expense report and see just how well your vacation rental business is doing.

What does the vacation rental income and expense worksheet cover?

Our short-term rental expense spreadsheet allows you to write in all the expenses and purchases you’ve made for your vacation rental on a yearly and monthly basis. The template already includes some basic costs, such as cleaning products and property management tools, but you can customize it to meet your needs. For example, if one of your properties has a pool, you can put in the maintenance fees associated with the amenity, so you don’t lose track of how much the upkeep is costing you.

Beyond expenses, you can also evaluate your income and income expectations. You can add in the gross income for each month and compare that to your expected earnings. You’ll also get a rough estimate of your average nightly rate for each month.

Short term rental accounting spreadsheet

Lastly, you’ll be able to contrast your expenses to your earnings to better understand profit margins and what percentage of your earnings are going to expenses and fees.

Running a vacation rental business is no small feat, so making sure that you’re spending wisely and tracking your expenses is the best way to keep your vacation rental on track. You can start by downloading our free short-term rental expense spreadsheet (in Excel format) in the form below. And remember: if you’re looking for more in-depth financial analysis, don’t forget that you can try Lodgify’s accounting tools for free. You can start your 7-day free trial today!

Download our free short term rental expense spreadsheet

You never want to navigate the vacation rental business blindly. Having markers for expenses and earnings helps you to understand where your money is going and what you might need to change to maximize your bookings and income.


Don’t see the form to download the Expense Spreadsheet? Click here.

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