Airbnb handles your bookings. VRBO manages your calendar. Neither gives you a clean financial picture of what your property is actually earning stay by stay, after expenses. RentKeep fills that gap, offline, from your phone, for free.
What you will find on this page: How RentKeep works for vacation rental and short-term rental hosts, what it does and what it does not do, how it compares to Guesty and Lodgify, and whether it is the right tool for your situation.
Sarah owns three Airbnb properties in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. She uses Airbnb's host dashboard for bookings. She uses a spreadsheet to track which guests have actually paid, what her cleaning costs were last month, and whether the mountain cabin turned a profit in Q3 or just felt like it did.
The spreadsheet has 14 tabs. She updates it on Sunday evenings, from memory, for the previous week. In November last year, she discovered she had not recorded a $240 cleaning fee for four consecutive stays. The cabin appeared profitable. It was not.
This is the part of vacation rental management that the big platforms do not solve. Airbnb handles your bookings. VRBO manages your calendar. Neither one gives you a clean financial picture of what your property is actually earning, stay by stay, month by month, with expenses accounted for.
“RentKeep fills that gap a free vacation rental management app for hosts who want to track income, log expenses, manage multiple properties, and see their real numbers offline, from a phone, without requiring guests to download anything.”
The Problem
The vacation rental industry generated over $100 billion in global revenue in 2024. The average Airbnb host in the US earned $14,000 per year from their listing. And a significant portion of those hosts have no reliable system for tracking whether that number is actually accurate after expenses.
The channel management platforms Guesty, Lodgify, Hostaway, Hostfully solve the booking side of short-term rental management. Calendar sync across Airbnb and VRBO. Automated guest messaging. Dynamic pricing tools. These are real problems, and those platforms solve them well.
What they do not solve: the financial tracking layer that sits underneath bookings. Which stays generated profit after cleaning fees, supplies, and maintenance? What did the property cost to operate in Q2 versus Q1? Is your nightly rate covering your mortgage, taxes, insurance, and repairs or just your mortgage?
Most vacation rental hosts answer these questions by exporting Airbnb payouts to a spreadsheet and doing the math manually. That works until it does not. A missed expense here, an unrecorded payout there, and the picture you are managing from is no longer accurate.
RentKeep was built to replace that spreadsheet for vacation rental hosts and short-term rental property managers who want property-level financial clarity without the complexity or cost of enterprise software.
Platform payouts and real profitability are different numbers. Most hosts never track the difference until tax season forces the reckoning.
Without per-property expense logs updated throughout the year, legitimate deductions for cleaning, maintenance, and supplies disappear at filing time.
Cloud-dependent tools fail without internet. Vacation rentals are often in rural areas lake houses, mountain cabins, beach properties where cell coverage is inconsistent.
Features
RentKeep is not a channel manager. It does not sync with Airbnb or VRBO. It does not automate guest messaging or manage dynamic pricing. If you need those features, Guesty and Lodgify were built for them. RentKeep does the financial tracking layer that channel managers ignore.
Record every stay: guest name, dates, amount received, payment method. Dashboard shows total income per property, per month, and per year across all platforms.
Log cleaning fees, supplies, maintenance, platform commissions, utilities, insurance. Every Schedule E category tracked per unit. Export for your accountant at year end.
All data lives on your device. Log payments, record expenses, note maintenance issues at the property with no signal. Syncs automatically when you reconnect.
Record payments by any method bank transfer, PayPal, Venmo, cash. Track who has paid and who has not without requiring guests to use a portal they never signed up for.
Log repair requests by unit, attach photos, record costs. Build a full repair history per property for tax deductions and for catching recurring issues before they cost more.
Monthly and yearly revenue summaries, expense reports by category, occupancy data all exportable. Aligns with Schedule E. No more reconstructing records at tax time.
How It Works in Detail
Here is exactly what RentKeep does for each part of vacation rental financial management.
Add each vacation rental as a property in RentKeep. Create units within each property useful if you rent individual rooms or manage a multi-unit vacation property. Record income by stay: guest name, dates, amount received, payment method.
The dashboard shows you total income per property, per month, and per year. Outstanding balances for direct bookings where guests pay on arrival, or for platform payouts that land at different times than the stay are tracked separately from confirmed income.
For hosts managing three to ten vacation rentals across platforms, this single view of actual received income by property is something neither Airbnb's dashboard nor a combined spreadsheet provides cleanly.
Yes. Log expenses per unit: cleaning fees, supply restocking, maintenance and repairs, platform commissions, utility bills, property insurance, mortgage interest. Every expense category you need for Schedule E tax reporting can be tracked by property.
At year end, RentKeep exports a complete income and expense summary by property. Your accountant gets actual numbers organized by property, not a folder of Stripe payouts and Venmo receipts.
This is the specific feature that most vacation rental hosts discover they need only after their first tax season as a short-term rental operator. Platform payouts and real profitability are different numbers. RentKeep tracks the difference.
Yes. All data is stored on your device. You can log a payment, record a maintenance expense, update a guest record, or review your property financials without an internet connection.
For vacation rental hosts who are physically at their properties doing turnover inspections, meeting cleaners, checking maintenance issues between stays, offline access is practical, not theoretical. Vacation rentals are often in rural areas lake houses, mountain cabins, beach properties where cell coverage is inconsistent.
When you reconnect, RentKeep syncs automatically. No manual export, no data entry catch-up.
No. RentKeep is a host-side management tool. Guests are never asked to log in, create accounts, or interact with the app. You manage all records guest details, stay dates, payment amounts, outstanding balances on your side.
This matters for direct booking hosts. If you accept direct bookings outside Airbnb and VRBO, you need a way to track who has paid and who has not without requiring guests to use a payment portal they did not sign up for. RentKeep lets you record payments received by any method bank transfer, PayPal, Venmo, cash, check and track balance status per guest.
Yes. Log maintenance requests and repairs by unit. Record costs. Attach photos. Maintain a full repair history per property.
For vacation rental hosts, maintenance documentation serves two purposes. First, it gives you the expense records needed for tax deductions. Second, it builds a repair history that catches recurring issues: the water heater that needs attention every winter, the HVAC filter that gets replaced every six months, the deck boards that are due for replacement.
Knowing your maintenance cost per property per year is the difference between pricing your nightly rate accurately and consistently undercharging because you forgot to account for the annual repair bill.
Monthly and yearly revenue summaries by property. Expense reports by category. Occupancy tracking. All exportable as data you can share with an accountant or import into tax software.
For short-term rental hosts, the relevant tax forms are Schedule E (rental income and expenses) and, depending on your structure, Schedule C if you offer substantial services to guests. RentKeep's expense categories and income records align with Schedule E line items. You do not need to reverse-engineer your tax records from platform payout statements.
Comparison
The honest comparison most vacation rental software sites will not make.
Guesty and Lodgify are channel management platforms. They sync calendars across Airbnb, VRBO, Booking.com, and your direct booking website. They automate guest messaging. They offer dynamic pricing tools and revenue management dashboards. Guesty starts at roughly $27 per month per listing. Lodgify starts at $13 per month. For hosts managing 5-plus listings across multiple platforms who need booking automation, these platforms earn their cost.
What they do not do well: property-level financial tracking for hosts who want to know their actual net income after all expenses. Their reporting is booking-centric, not accounting-centric. Hosts still typically export to spreadsheets for real financial analysis.
Airbnb's host dashboard shows you your Airbnb payouts and booking performance. It does not show you your operating costs, your net margin, or your income from direct bookings or other platforms.
RentKeep does not compete with channel managers. It complements them. Use Guesty or Airbnb for booking management. Use RentKeep for property-level financial tracking, expense logging, and income records across all your revenue sources platform payouts, direct bookings, and any other payment method.
| Feature | RentKeep | Guesty / Lodgify | Airbnb Dashboard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Income tracking by property | Partial | Airbnb only | |
| Expense tracking by property | |||
| Offline access | |||
| Works with direct bookings | |||
| Guest login required | |||
| Channel sync (Airbnb/VRBO) | N/A | ||
| Dynamic pricing | |||
| Free to use | |||
| Tax-ready expense reports | |||
| Mobile-first, offline |
Is It Right for You?
RentKeep is the right tool for a specific type of vacation rental host. Be honest with yourself about which one you are.
RentKeep fits you if
RentKeep does not fit you if
For those needs, Guesty, Lodgify, or Hospitable are the right tools for that operator.
The honest answer: most hosts with fewer than five vacation rentals are overpaying for channel management features they do not fully use and underpaying attention to financial tracking that directly affects their reported profitability and tax liability.
Day to Day
The workflow for a vacation rental host using RentKeep looks like this.
A guest checks in at your lake house on Friday. You receive a direct booking payment of $890 via bank transfer. You open RentKeep, log the income against the lake house property, note the guest name and stay dates, and mark the payment received.
On Sunday, the cleaner charges $120 for turnover. You log it as an expense against the lake house. While you are at the property doing a quick check between guests, you notice the deck railing needs repair. You log a maintenance note with a photo, no internet connection required. The record syncs when you drive back into cell range.
At the end of the month, you pull the revenue summary for the lake house. Total income: $2,670. Total expenses: $480 cleaning, $95 supplies, $210 maintenance. Net: $1,885. That is the number that matters for tax purposes and for evaluating whether the property is hitting your investment return target.
Without RentKeep, those numbers come from a Sunday evening reconstruction exercise in a spreadsheet. With it, they are logged in real time and available in a report with two taps.
Common Mistakes
Three mistakes surface repeatedly among hosts who track finances manually.
Cleaning fees collected from guests are taxable income in most states. Hosts who log their Airbnb payout without separating out the cleaning fee portion often underreport taxable income then get surprised at tax time when their accountant makes the adjustment.
The IRS allows deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, insurance, depreciation, maintenance and repairs, supplies, and platform commissions prorated for the percentage of time the property is rented. Hosts who do not track expenses by property throughout the year lose legitimate deductions because they cannot reconstruct costs at tax time.
A vacation rental that generates $30,000 in Airbnb payouts and costs $22,000 to operate is not a $30,000 business. It is an $8,000 business. Hosts who track income but not expenses manage from a number that does not exist.
RentKeep tracks both sides of that equation, per property, in real time.
How It Works
The barrier most hosts imagine is more complicated than the actual process.
Free on iOS or Android. No account required. No credit card. Open the app and you are at the dashboard.
Tap to add a property. Enter the name (Lake House, Mountain Cabin, Unit 4B), address, and any relevant notes. If you manage multiple units within one property a duplex vacation rental, for example add each unit separately.
Create a recurring or one-time income record format that matches how you receive payment: Airbnb payout, direct booking transfer, VRBO payout, cash. Consistent category labeling makes monthly reports accurate without extra cleanup.
Set up the expense categories you use regularly: cleaning, supplies, maintenance, platform fees, utilities, insurance. These map directly to Schedule E categories.
Every payout received, every expense paid, every maintenance issue noted. Two to three minutes per transaction. Real numbers, by property, building over time.
FAQ
Everything you need to know about RentKeep for vacation rental hosts.
Yes. RentKeep is free on iOS and Android with no monthly fee and no unit limit. There are no paid tiers for vacation rental hosts. The full feature set income tracking, expense logging, maintenance records, financial reports is available at no cost.
No. RentKeep does not connect to Airbnb, VRBO, or any booking platform. It is a manual tracking tool for hosts who want to record income and expenses themselves. If you need calendar sync across booking platforms, Guesty, Lodgify, or Hospitable are the right tools for that function.
Yes. Because RentKeep does not require guest accounts or platform integration, it works with any payment method. Bank transfer, PayPal, Venmo, cash you log what you received and from whom. This makes it particularly useful for hosts who accept direct bookings alongside or instead of platform bookings.
Vacation rental management platforms like Guesty and Lodgify focus on booking operations, calendar sync, guest messaging, and dynamic pricing. RentKeep focuses on financial tracking income by property, expense logging, tax-ready reporting. Most hosts with fewer than five properties need strong financial tracking more than they need booking automation.
Yes. All data is stored on your device. You can log income, record expenses, note maintenance issues, and review property financials without internet access. Data syncs automatically when you reconnect. This matters for vacation rental hosts managing properties in rural, coastal, or mountain areas where connectivity is variable.
Yes, with no limit. Add as many properties as you manage. Each property has its own income records, expense log, maintenance history, and financial reporting. The dashboard gives you a cross-property view of total income and outstanding balances.
You create your own expense categories to match your operation and your tax reporting needs. Common categories for vacation rental hosts include cleaning, supplies, maintenance and repairs, platform commissions, utilities, property insurance, mortgage interest, and property taxes. These map directly to Schedule E deduction categories.
All data is stored on your device by default. No third-party cloud service has access to your income records, expense data, or guest information. One-tap backup lets you export your full database for safekeeping. Restore on any device in under a minute.
No. Guests are never involved with RentKeep. The app is entirely host-side. You manage all guest records, payment logs, and stay information yourself. Guests do not log in, create accounts, or interact with the platform in any way.
Monthly and yearly revenue summaries, expense reports by category, and occupancy data all exportable. These align with Schedule E reporting for rental income. Your accountant receives organized income and expense records by property rather than reconstructed spreadsheet data.
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The channel managers will tell you their platform is all you need. Airbnb will tell you their host dashboard shows you everything important. Neither of them will tell you that the number you actually need to manage your vacation rental business is net income per property after all expenses, tracked in real time, organized for tax reporting.
That is the number RentKeep is built to give you.
Sarah, the Gatlinburg host from the beginning of this page, downloaded RentKeep after that November accounting exercise. Three properties, five minutes of setup per property, and a running income and expense record that updates as payments come in and costs go out. Her Sunday evening spreadsheet sessions now take 10 minutes instead of two hours. More importantly, she knows whether each property is profitable not approximately, not after a quarterly reconstruction, but in real time.
Download RentKeep free on iOS and Android. Set up your first vacation rental in under five minutes. Your Airbnb dashboard will still show you your bookings. RentKeep will show you whether they are actually making you money.
Free · Works Offline · No Guest Login · iOS and Android