Host Port and Xero.
Every booking, fee and commission in the right account, in the right period, without anybody retyping a spreadsheet at the end of the month.
Start freeWhy short-term rental books go wrong
It is rarely the bookkeeping that defeats people. It is that a booking is not one number. A guest pays a total; a platform takes a cut; a cleaner gets paid; a card processor takes its slice; and what finally lands in the bank matches none of those figures. Multiply that by three channels with different conventions and a year of stays, and the gap between what you think you earned and what your accountant can prove you earned gets wide enough to matter.
The usual fix is a spreadsheet and an evening a month. It works, right up until the month you are busy, and then it quietly stops being accurate and nobody notices for a quarter.
Connecting your accounts removes the retyping. But the retyping was never the dangerous part — getting the numbers right is, and that is a harder problem than it looks.
Three channels, three different numbers
This is the part that silently corrupts short-term rental accounts, and it is worth understanding even if you never connect anything. Each platform reports a different quantity, and they cannot simply be added together.
What Airbnb sends you, with their commission already taken off. The guest paid more than this.
The full amount the guest agreed to pay. Commission of 12 to 23 per cent comes off later, depending on country and the programmes you have opted into, plus a payment charge where they collect.
The booking arrives with no fee attached, so the payout looks identical to the guest total.
Add an Airbnb payout figure to a Booking.com gross figure and you have compared a net number against a gross one. The total looks plausible, which is precisely why it survives. Host Port resolves each channel to the same three quantities before anything is sent anywhere — what the guest paid, what the channel took, and what should reach your bank — and flags the bookings where a channel reported nothing rather than quietly assuming zero.
You can see the same three figures yourself on the Earnings screen, per listing, per channel, per month, before any of it goes near your accounts.
What a booking is actually made of
A stay is never one number. Kept itemised rather than collapsed into a total, your margin stays visible without anyone re-deriving it, and each part can go where it belongs.
The nightly total for the stay, after any discount the guest was given.
Separated rather than buried in the nightly rate, because most hosts pay it straight back out and want it visible on both sides.
Anything charged on top: pet fee, extra guest, early check-in, whatever you have set up.
What Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo took. An expense against the booking it belongs to, not a lump at month end.
Card fees on direct bookings, and Booking.com’s payment charge where it applies.
Keeping commission as its own line is the difference between knowing a channel costs you fifteen per cent and merely suspecting it. It is also, in most places, a deductible expense — and it cannot be deducted if it was never recorded.
Making the bank line agree
Platforms do not pay per booking. They pay in batches, on their own schedule, with commission already removed and sometimes several stays rolled into one transfer. So the figure arriving in your bank rarely matches any single invoice, which is where most people give up and code the lot to a suspense account.
Because each booking carries what the guest paid, what the channel took and what was expected to land, the payout becomes something you can match against rather than guess at. Direct bookings are simpler — they arrive through your own card processing, so the card fee is known exactly rather than inferred.
Set your start date to the beginning of an open period. Posting into books your accountant has already closed creates more work than it saves.
What you will need to decide
Connecting is the quick part. The decisions below are the ones worth a minute of thought first, because they shape how useful your accounts are afterwards.
Which Xero organisation
If you run more than one, be deliberate about it. This is the set of books your bookings end up in, and moving them afterwards is a genuine nuisance.
Which accounts the money lands in
Income, cleaning, commission, card fees. If you already have a chart of accounts you are happy with, use it — this should fit around your bookkeeping rather than the other way round.
How you want listings separated
Xero tracking categories are what let you see profit by property instead of one undifferentiated pile. Worth setting up before you have a year of data, not after.
Where to start from
Pick the beginning of a period your accountant has not closed. Posting into books that have already been signed off creates more work than it saves.
Who sets it up
Do it with your accountant or bookkeeper if you have one. The mapping is the only part needing a judgement call, and they will have opinions worth hearing.
What it deliberately does not do
We would rather you knew the edges now than discovered them in February.
- Owner statements and trust accounting. Those are built for management companies running third-party owners and we deliberately do not go there.
- Filing anything. Host Port puts the transactions in Xero; your BAS, VAT return and everything else stays between you and your accountant.
- Deciding your tax treatment. We put figures where you tell us to put them. What is deductible is not our call to make.
- Touching anything before your start date, so a closed period stays closed.
If you need trust accounting and owner statements, a platform built for management companies is a better fit and we would rather say so than sell you something that nearly works.
The things people ask
What actually reaches my accounts?
The parts of a booking, kept apart rather than collapsed into one figure: accommodation, cleaning, any extras, the channel’s commission and card fees. That way your income is the real number and commission shows as the expense it is, against the booking it came from rather than as a lump at month end.
Does it handle channel commission correctly?
Yes, and it is the part worth caring about. Airbnb reports what it is paying you with commission already deducted. Booking.com reports the gross, with 12 to 23 per cent coming off later depending on country and opt-ins, plus a payment charge where they collect. Vrbo and Agoda report no commission at all. Host Port resolves that per channel before anything reaches Xero, rather than adding figures together that mean different things.
Can I see profit by property?
Yes, if you put each listing on a Xero tracking category when you set it up. Without that you get one combined set of numbers, which is fine for a single property and useless for five.
What happens when a booking is cancelled or refunded?
The change follows through rather than leaving the original sitting there as income you never received. A refund posts against the booking it belongs to, so the invoice and your bank still agree.
What about GST and VAT?
You set the tax rate against each account when you map them, and Host Port uses the rate you chose. We do not decide your tax treatment and we do not file anything — that stays with you and your accountant, which is where it should be.
I take bookings in more than one currency. Does that work?
Bookings carry the currency the guest actually paid in. If you have multi-currency on your Xero plan it will post in that currency; if not, you will want everything in your base currency, and it is worth sorting that before you connect rather than after.
Will it make a mess of accounts I have already closed?
Not if you set the start date properly. Nothing before that date is sent, so pick the beginning of a period your accountant has not signed off and you will not be posting into finished books.
What if my chart of accounts does not look like your defaults?
Change the mapping. The defaults are a starting point for hosts who have never thought about it, not a structure you have to adopt. Most accountants will want to set this themselves and that is the right instinct.
Do you support QuickBooks or MYOB?
Not with a direct connection today. You can export your earnings as a CSV from the Earnings screen, which carries the same figures and imports into either of them.
Where do I start if my books are a mess?
With the Earnings screen, before you connect anything. Look at what you actually made per listing, per channel, per month. If those figures are not right then nothing downstream of them will be either, and that is worth finding out first.
Start with the numbers
Before you connect anything, open the Earnings screen and look at what you actually made per listing, per channel, per month. If those figures are not right, nothing downstream of them will be either — and if they are, the rest is plumbing.
Free for unlimited listings. Pro adds two-way channel sync at $10 USD per listing per month.
Start freeAlso worth reading: what Host Port costs.