How to Track Airbnb Cleaning Fees in QuickBooks Online

Who This Is For

If you collect cleaning fees through Airbnb and pay a cleaner or cleaning service for your short-term rental, this article is for you. The accounting gets confusing fast because money flows in two directions - Airbnb collects a cleaning fee from your guest, then pays it to you in a lump payout alongside your nightly rate. Meanwhile, you owe your cleaner separately. If you're recording this wrong, your income looks inflated and your expenses are understated - or vice versa.

This guide assumes you're using QuickBooks Online (QBO) and receiving payouts from Airbnb. The same logic applies whether you manage one property or twenty.

Why Cleaning Fees Are More Complicated Than They Look

Airbnb rolls the cleaning fee into the same payout as your nightly rate. When $1,450 lands in your bank account, it might include $1,200 in nightly revenue and $250 in cleaning fees. There's no separate line item in your bank feed.

At the same time, you pay your cleaner $200 per turn, whether that comes from a separate bank transfer, a check, or a platform like Zelle or Venmo.

The mistake most hosts make: they record the $1,450 payout as a single line of income and only record the $200 cleaner payment as an expense. That's technically correct from a cash flow perspective, but it obscures the economics of your cleaning operation. More importantly, if you're ever in a position where your cleaning fee doesn't fully cover your cleaning cost - or exceeds it - you want to see that clearly in your books.

For IRS purposes, cleaning fees received are gross rental income. Cleaning expenses paid are deductible operating expenses under Schedule E (or Schedule C if you're running a hotel-like operation). You need both sides recorded properly.

Setting Up Your Chart of Accounts

Before recording anything, confirm you have the right accounts in QBO. Go to Accounting > Chart of Accounts and verify or create the following:

Income accounts:

• Rental Income - Nightly Rate (or just Rental Income)

• Rental Income - Cleaning Fees

Expense accounts:

• Cleaning and Housekeeping (or Turnover Cleaning)

Keeping cleaning fee income separate from nightly rate income lets you run a quick report at any time to see whether your cleaning fees are covering your cleaning costs. That's useful data when you're pricing your listing.

Step-by-Step: Recording an Airbnb Payout That Includes a Cleaning Fee

Here's a realistic example.

The booking:

• Guest pays: $1,200 nightly rate + $250 cleaning fee = $1,450 gross

• Airbnb service fee (charged to guest): handled on their end, not your concern

• Airbnb host fee: $43.50 (3% of $1,450)

• Your payout: $1,406.50

When this payout hits your bank account, QBO will pull it in as a single $1,406.50 deposit. Here's how to record it correctly.

Option 1: Record Directly in the Bank Feed

1. Find the $1,406.50 deposit in your QBO bank feed.

2. Click on it and select Split.

3. Add two lines:

   • Line 1: Rental Income - Nightly Rate for $1,200

   • Line 2: Rental Income - Cleaning Fees for $250

4. Add a third line for the Airbnb host fee as a negative amount:

   • Line 3: Airbnb / Platform Fees (expense account) for -$43.50

5. Confirm the three lines net to $1,406.50 and save.

This approach works well if you're doing low volume - say, under 10 bookings per month.

Option 2: Use a Journal Entry or Sales Receipt

For higher-volume operators or anyone using a property management system (PMS) like OwnerRez or Guesty that exports data to QBO, you may prefer to create a Sales Receipt for each booking that breaks out the components, then match it to the bank deposit.

Create a Sales Receipt with:

• Product/Service: Nightly Rental - $1,200

• Product/Service: Cleaning Fee - $250

• Product/Service: Airbnb Host Fee (mapped to your platform fee expense) - (-$43.50)

• Total: $1,406.50

Then match the Sales Receipt to the bank deposit when it clears.

This method gives you a cleaner audit trail and is easier to reconcile at month end.

Recording the Cleaner Payment

When you pay your cleaner $200, record it as a separate transaction:

• If paying by bank transfer: categorize the outgoing transaction in your bank feed directly to Cleaning and Housekeeping.

• If paying by check: create a Check in QBO payable to your cleaner, coded to Cleaning and Housekeeping.

• If your cleaner is a 1099 contractor: make sure they're set up as a Vendor in QBO with their tax information saved. QBO can generate 1099-NEC forms at year end if you've tracked payments correctly. The 2024 threshold for 1099-NEC filing is $600 - check with your CPA on current thresholds.

What Your P&L Should Show

After recording both sides for the example above, your income statement would reflect:

Notice that your cleaning fee income ($250) exceeds your cleaning expense ($200), netting you $50 per booking. Over 80 bookings in a year, that's $4,000 in cleaning margin. Or, if your cleaner charges $275 and you're only charging a $250 cleaning fee, you're losing $25 per booking - which you should probably fix.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Lumping all Airbnb income into one account. You lose visibility and make tax prep harder.

Forgetting to record the Airbnb host fee as an expense. The fee comes out before the payout hits your account, so it's easy to miss. If you just record the net payout to income, you're understating both income and expenses.

Treating cleaning fees as a pass-through. They're not. The fee is your income. The cleaner payment is your expense. They don't offset each other on your books.

Not tracking cleaner payments as 1099 contractor payments. If you pay an individual cleaner more than the IRS threshold in a calendar year and don't file a 1099-NEC, you're exposed. Keep every payment in QBO under that vendor's name.

A Note on Multi-Property Operations

If you manage multiple STR properties, consider adding a Class or Location tag in QBO to every income and expense line. That way you can pull a P&L by property and see which ones are running a cleaning surplus or deficit. This is especially useful when deciding whether to raise cleaning fees on a specific listing.

What to Do Now

1. Check your QBO chart of accounts and add Rental Income - Cleaning Fees as a separate income account if you don't have it.

2. Pull your last three months of Airbnb payouts and verify they're split correctly between nightly income, cleaning fee income, and Airbnb host fees.

3. Confirm every cleaner payment is categorized to a cleaning expense account - not to a general or miscellaneous account.

4. If you're paying an individual cleaner regularly, make sure they're set up as a vendor in QBO with tax info on file.

5. Run a quick P&L for the year to date and check whether your cleaning fee income is covering your cleaning costs.

If your books are a mess and you're not sure where to start, that's exactly the kind of cleanup work we do at PX Accounting for STR operators. Reach out and we can sort it out.

By Jessica Hudson, CPA - specializing in short-term rental tax, bookkeeping, and financial operations for vacation rental hosts.