Here’s a fact that should bother you: if your chart of accounts has one giant “Rental Income” bucket, you have no idea which fees are actually profitable.

Not roughly.

Zero idea.

That’s not a QuickBooks problem. QBO can handle every quirk of vacation rental accounting — split revenue streams, occupancy tax pass-throughs, owner trust liabilities, multi-property P&Ls.

The problem is that QuickBooks doesn’t know any of that when you set up the file. It builds you a chart of accounts for a long-term residential landlord and calls it done.

If you’re running short-term rentals — your own or on behalf of owners — that starter COA is going to cost you. Misclassified income. Expense categories so broad they hide your biggest cost drivers. Owner statements that don’t tie to reality. And eventually, a tax season that takes twice as long as it should.

This is the fix. Build it once, and everything downstream — your PMS integration, your owner reports, your tax prep — gets easier.

(This article is the rundown on how to specifically chart accounts. For the full picture of STR accounting end to end, see our deep-dive into STR property management accounting guide.)

What QBO’s Default Setup Doesn’t See Coming

Select “Rental Property” as your industry when you create a new company file, and QBO hands you Rental Income and Repairs & Maintenance. That’s it.

Nowhere in there:

• Cleaning fee revenue (taxable in some states, not others)

• Platform fees paid to Airbnb, VRBO, and other OTAs

• Guest damage and chargeback expense

• Supplies and consumables, separated from repairs

• Owner distributions and trust liability, if you manage for others

• Occupancy tax collected and remitted

• Revenue split across multiple properties or owners

None of that is a QBO limitation. It’s a you-haven’t-built-it-yet gap. Let’s close it.

Income: Stop Hiding Your Best Data in One Bucket

A single “Rental Income” account tells you nothing about what’s actually driving revenue. Split it:

• Rental Income – Nightly Rent: the base rate

• Rental Income – Cleaning Fees: track separately; tax treatment varies by state

• Rental Income – Pet Fees

• Rental Income – Additional Guest Fees

• Rental Income – Damage Waiver / Insurance Fees: if you collect and keep these

• Rental Income – Other: the catch-all

Managing for multiple owners? Nest a sub-account per property or owner under each parent. QBO supports this natively — no workaround required.

Expenses: Where Most STR Books Fall Apart

This is the section that separates clean books from a reclassification nightmare. The target is enough detail to be tax-useful, without so many accounts that nobody codes anything correctly anymore.

• Advertising & Platform Fees: OTA commissions and listing fees

• Cleaning & Turnover: payments to cleaning crews

• Supplies & Consumables: toiletries, paper goods, welcome items (kept separate from cleaning labor)

• Repairs & Maintenance: fixes that don’t extend the asset’s life

• Property Management Fees: co-host or management company payments

• Utilities: sub-accounts per type for larger portfolios

• Insurance

• HOA Dues

• Professional Fees: accountant, attorney

• Occupancy Tax Remitted

• Guest Damage & Chargebacks

• Linens & Furnishings (under threshold): small purchases expensed same-year, below your capitalization limit

• Software & Subscriptions: PMS, channel manager, dynamic pricing tools

• Merchant & Processing Fees

The Two Liability Accounts Almost Everyone Forgets

These are the accounts that quietly create tax exposure when they’re missing:

Occupancy Tax Payable. Tax you collected from guests but haven’t remitted yet isn’t your income — it never was. It sits in this liability account until you pay the taxing authority, then it zeros out.

Owner Funds Held. If you manage properties for owners, this is the trust liability tracking what you owe back to them. (Full structure in the owner trust accounting guide.)

Assets Worth Tracking Separately

• Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment: capitalized furnishings above your threshold

• Accumulated Depreciation: FF&E, the contra-asset offsetting the above

• Security Deposits Held: refundable deposits are liabilities, not income

See It in Action: The Maplewood Cabin

One three-bedroom cabin. One month of activity:

• 14 nights at $185/night average = $2,590 nightly rent

• Cleaning fees charged to guests = $420

• Airbnb service fee charged back = $312

• Cleaning crew paid = $280

• Supplies restocked = $65

• Occupancy tax collected = $253

• Occupancy tax remitted = $253

• Repair (broken door handle) = $85

Net income for March: $2,268.

Notice what happened with the $253 in occupancy tax — it flowed in and flowed right back out through the liability account, never touching income or expenses. That’s the whole point. It was never your money.

Building It: Five Minutes Per Account, Once

1. Go to Accounting > Chart of Accounts → New
2. Pick the account Type first (Income, Expense, Other Current Liability, etc.)
3. Pick the Detail Type — for income, “Sales of Product Income” or “Service/Fee Income” both work; just be consistent
4. Name it clearly, using the conventions above
5. Add a Description if more than one person codes transactions — this is what prevents ambiguity six months from now
6. Check Is sub-account and select the parent if it’s nested
7. Save. Repeat.

Budget 30–60 minutes total. It buys back hours of reclassification later.

Three things worth doing while you’re in there:

• Keep the whole COA under 60–70 accounts — past that, people stop coding correctly because nothing is obviously the right home anymore

• Use the Description field aggressively — “Cleaning & Turnover” means something different once it says “payments to cleaning crews for guest turnovers only, not supplies”

• If you’re on QBO Plus or Advanced, use Classes or Locations to get property-level P&L without multiplying income accounts

• Lock reconciled periods via Account and Settings > Advanced > Accounting so nobody accidentally reopens last quarter.

Four Mistakes That Show Up in Almost Every STR File

Platform fees dumped into a generic “Fees” account. OTA commissions, credit card fees, and software subscriptions all land in one place, and suddenly you can’t see your largest variable cost at all.

Security deposits booked as income. They’re refundable. They’re a liability until you decide otherwise. Booking them as revenue inflates your top line and manufactures a tax problem you didn’t need.

No occupancy tax liability account. Tax collected from guests that you haven’t remitted should never touch your P&L. Skip this account and you’ll likely overstate income — and under-remit to the tax authority.

One “Repairs” account doing three jobs. Consumables, routine maintenance, and capital improvements are not the same thing. Blur them together and you miss deductions on the consumables while creating audit risk on improvements that should’ve been depreciated.

If any of that sounds familiar, it’s worth having someone look at your actual books. PX Accounting’s owner statement audit reviews your historical data and flags exactly these patterns across your full booking history.

Connecting the COA to Your PMS

Guesty, Hostfully, OwnerRez, and most other PMS platforms can push reservation and financial data into QBO. But the quality of that connection is entirely dependent on whether your COA is built to receive it.

Map nightly rent, cleaning fees, and taxes to specific income accounts, and the sync is clean. Map everything into one “Rental Income” account, and every dollar of granularity collapses the moment it hits QBO — permanently.

Build the COA first. Map the PMS to it second. Reversing that order is how good data becomes useless data.

Next Steps

Starting fresh? Use the account list above as your build template — set it up before you connect any integration or import a single transaction.

Already have a file that’s messy or incomplete? The fastest way to find out how bad it is: get your owner statements and booking data reviewed for classification errors.

Our free audit flags misclassified income, missing liability accounts, and payout discrepancies across your last 60 days — no cost to see where you stand.

Quick Questions

Should I use Classes or Locations for multiple properties?

Yes, if you’re running more than two or three. It gets you property-level P&L without multiplying your chart of accounts — one class or location per property, assigned to every transaction.

How do I handle rent I collect on behalf of owners?

It’s not all yours. Set up an Owner Funds Held liability account to track what’s owed, and recognize only your management fee as income.

Where do OTA commissions go?

Advertising & Platform Fees — an expense, not a revenue reduction. Keeping commissions out of your revenue line keeps your expense ratios meaningful.

How many accounts is too many?

Under 20 properties, 40–60 accounts is typically plenty. Past 80, the COA is over-engineered and coding accuracy starts to slip.

Do I need a separate company file per property?

No — not if the properties share one legal entity. Use Classes or Locations. Separate files are only necessary when properties sit in genuinely separate entities with separate tax filings.

Jessica Hudson, CPA specializes in short-term rental tax, bookkeeping, and financial operations for vacation rental hosts and property managers. She’s also got a particular weakness for fresh chocolate chip cookies.