Now matching · July 2026 cohort · bookkeeping-input roles

Short term rental bookkeeping: the VA who feeds clean data to your accountant .

✓Your VA tags transactions, captures receipts, reconciles OTA payouts, preps owner statements.
✓Your accountant or bookkeeper closes the books from data that's already tied out.
✓Embedded in 5 days. Trained. One contract with us, one monthly invoice.

Book a free consultation → See how placement works

TRAINED ON QUICKBOOKS · STESSA · REI HUB · HOSTAWAY

● PLACING BOOKKEEPING-INPUT VAs WEEKLY

[ THE PIVOT ] Where most STR bookkeeping breaks down

Your accountant doesn't want to triage Airbnb payouts. Your VA does.

Every comparison post on Google ends the same way. REI Hub vs Stessa vs Landlord Studio vs QuickBooks. None of them close your books. They're filing cabinets. Someone still has to match the Airbnb payout to the booking, back out the 3% channel fee, post the cleaning expense to the right unit, and tag the bank line so it ties out at month-end. That is the daily input layer. It is not what your CPA wants to bill hours on, and most STR operators end up doing it themselves at 11 PM on a Sunday.

We place the trained VA who owns that input layer. They tag the transactions, capture the receipts, reconcile the OTA payouts, and prep the owner statements. Your accountant or bookkeeper takes clean, tied-out data and closes the books. You see one shortlist of candidates in 4 days, an embedded VA in 7, and a month-end handoff your accountant doesn't have to rebuild.

[ WHAT THEY OWN ] The daily input layer your accountant works from

What an STR bookkeeping VA actually does for you.

[ 01 ]

OTA payout reconciliation

Airbnb keeps about 3% from the host. VRBO closer to 8%. Host-only structures flip the math again. Your VA matches every payout to the booking it covers, backs the channel fee out, and tags gross revenue and the fee on their own lines. Your accountant opens the month with deposits that already tie to the source.

[ 02 ]

Transaction tagging + receipt capture

Cleaning fees, supply runs, repair invoices, utility bills, permit renewals. Every transaction gets posted to the right property and the right expense category, and the receipt or invoice gets attached. Your bookkeeper or accountant inherits a ledger they can audit instead of a screenshot folder.

[ 03 ]

Owner-statement prep

If you co-host or manage for owners, the bookkeeping needs to keep owner funds separate from yours. Your VA pulls the inputs together each month: per-property revenue, expenses paid on the owner's behalf, the management fee line. Your licensed bookkeeper reviews and signs off, then the statement goes out.

[ 04 ]

Clean handoff to your accountant

Your accountant shouldn't be reconciling 14 months of Airbnb deposits in March. Your VA closes the daily layer within the first week of the next month. Bank lines tagged, expenses categorized, receipts attached, OTA tax tracking up to date. Your accountant opens a tied-out ledger and runs the actual close from there.

The VA owns the daily inputs. Your accountant or bookkeeper owns the books. That split is honest about what each role is good at, and it is the model most STR operators with portfolios past 5 units already run.

[ PROCESS ] From signed to scaling in 5 days

How we place your VA. In 5 days.

DAY 0

Discovery call

45 minutes. We map your portfolio, your stack, and the highest-leverage role to fill first.

DAY 1–2

We pick your VA

We filter STR-trained candidates against your portfolio, your stack, and the role. Scorecards, interviews, reference checks. Done internally, before placement.

DAY 3–4

We train them on your operation

PMS access loaded, message templates dialed in, SOPs walked through. Your VA learns your business before day 1, then starts ready.

DAY 5

Embedded & operating

Your VA joins your inbox, your PMS, your team chat. Ready on day one. Monthly training keeps them sharp after.

[ THE STACK ] Trained on what your accountant already uses

The bookkeeping tools your VA works inside.

Picking software is a downstream decision. Pick what your accountant wants to see and your PMS can export to. Every VA we place is trained on the common stacks before they meet you, so they walk in ready to work in the file your accountant already has open.

REI Hub

Built for rental portfolios. Per-property P&L, owner-statement layouts, depreciation tracking. Best fit if you own the units.

Stessa

Free tier covers the basics for 1 to 10 units. Where most owner-operators land first, just past the spreadsheet stage.

Landlord Studio

Strong on long-term + short-term mix. Tax-prep reports your accountant can open without translating.

QuickBooks Online

When your accountant insists. Class-tracking per property, integrates with everything, more setup work upfront.

Baselane

Free, landlord-focused, weak on STR-specific channel-fee handling. Your VA fills that gap by tagging the fees by hand.

PMS exports

Hostaway, Guesty, Hospitable. Your VA pulls the channel-level payout reports and ties them to the bank feed your accountant pulls from.

Don't have a stack yet? Start with the rental property bookkeeping template. A starter chart of accounts and per-property tagging convention your VA can run against on day one, in a format your accountant will recognize. For broader context on the operator playbook, see our guide on STR investment.

[ FAQ ] Questions operators ask about this

Things people ask before they hand off the daily inputs.

[ 01 ] Do I need bookkeeping software, or do I just need the VA? +

Both, and in that order. Software is the filing cabinet. REI Hub, Stessa, Landlord Studio, or QuickBooks all work; pick what your CPA wants to see and what your PMS exports cleanly to. Then the VA is the person who actually closes each month inside it, matching payouts, backing out channel fees, posting expenses to the right property. Software without the person to run it is a $30/month subscription that doesn't get opened past March. We help you pick the stack on the discovery call if you don't have one yet.

[ 02 ] How do you handle the channel-fee math, Airbnb takes 3%, VRBO takes 8%, host-only is different again? +

Your VA backs the fee out of every payout. Gross revenue posts to the property's income line; the channel fee posts to its own expense line, tagged by channel. Airbnb host-only structures, VRBO 8%, Booking.com's variable take: each gets its own consistent treatment in the chart of accounts. So when you look at your P&L you can see net revenue per property and channel cost per channel, separately. No more wondering why the deposit doesn't match the booking.

[ 03 ] What happens with transient occupancy tax? Doesn't Airbnb collect and remit that for me? +

In most major markets, Airbnb and VRBO collect occupancy tax and remit it for you. In some they collect but don't remit. Your direct-booking channel never does either. Your VA tracks which jurisdictions are covered by which channel, files the local returns that aren't already covered, and keeps the audit trail. If you get a notice from a city or county, the answer is one folder away. Not three days of digging through Airbnb's transaction CSV.

[ 04 ] I co-host for a couple of owners. How do you keep their money separate from mine? +

Proper double-entry bookkeeping, by the book. Owner funds run through a separate account from your operating money. Every transaction tagged to the right property and the right owner. Your management fee comes off as its own revenue line. At month-end each owner gets one statement showing their property's income, expenses, your fee, and net to them. Clean enough that if the state ever asks, the answer is already on file.

[ 05 ] My CPA charges me a fortune to clean up the books each March. Will this fix that? +

Yes. That's the point. Your VA closes each month within the first week of the next one. Bank match done, expenses categorized, depreciation schedules current, owner statements out. Come tax season, your CPA opens a tied-out trial balance instead of 14 months of mystery Airbnb deposits. Most operators we place save more on the accounting bill in year one than the VA costs in year one. We'll do the math with your CPA's actual rate on the call.

Booking July + August 2026 · bookkeeping-input roles

Stop tagging Airbnb payouts at midnight. Place the VA who owns the daily inputs.

45-minute call. We map your stack, your portfolio, and your accountant's handoff format, then put a shortlist of trained STR bookkeeping VAs on your desk in 4 days. Your accountant runs the close from clean data.

Book your discovery call → Email the team