Is the cleaning fee income for a short-term rental host?

The basics

In your books, the cleaning fee is income. It is money guests pay you as part of the booking. The cost of cleaning is a separate line: an expense. Keeping the two apart gives you an honest view of each stay.

This page is about bookkeeping, not tax advice. How the fee is taxed depends on your situation and location, so ask a tax professional.

Why it counts as revenue

The guest pays one total. The platform takes its fees and pays out the rest to you. The cleaning fee is part of what the guest paid for the stay, so it belongs on the revenue side.

Platform fees can also apply to it. On Airbnb, service fees are a percentage of the nightly price and any fees charged by the host (opens in a new tab), which includes a host-set cleaning fee. Fee setups vary, so check your own payout breakdown rather than assuming one rate.

The rule: count each thing once

• Revenue: nightly price plus cleaning fee plus any other host fees.
• Platform fees: an expense, taken from your payout.
• Cleaner's pay: an expense, recorded when you pay it.
• Supplies used for the turnover: an expense.

The common mistake is to treat the cleaning fee as a pass-through and leave both sides out. That hides your real revenue and your real costs. Another mistake is to record the cleaning fee as income and also subtract it again when you count cleaning costs.

A worked example

Hypothetical numbers for one 3-night stay:

In this example, the cleaning fee covers the cleaner's pay with $15 to spare. But platform fees also apply to part of that fee, and supplies cost extra. Seen together, cleaning runs about $6 short here: $90 in, $87 in cleaning costs, and about $9 of the platform fee falls on the cleaning fee. You only see that if you record both sides.

How to set this up

1. Record the full payout breakdown for each stay, including the cleaning fee line.
2. Record each cleaner payment as its own expense.
3. Add turnover supplies separately. Our turnover cost guide shows what to include.
4. Review each month whether the cleaning fee covers cleaning costs.

For a wider view of the whole rental, see revenue and costs.