Short-term rental hosts juggle cleaning fees, supplies, mortgage interest, and a Schedule E that the IRS reads more carefully than most W-2 returns.
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Schedule E rental-real-estate income reports rent received and 15+ expense categories — cleaning, repairs, supplies, insurance, mortgage interest, depreciation, utilities, taxes, advertising. Cash Compass tags each expense to the matching Schedule E line so the year-end CSV export goes straight to your tax preparer or TurboTax import without the Sunday-night categorization marathon.
Cleaning supplies, replacement linens, coffee pods, toiletries, propane refills, smoke-detector batteries. Supply spend climbs with turnover frequency, and it is the category most often under-recorded. Premium unlocks unlimited receipt scans — useful for hosts running 2-5 listings with weekly Home Depot or Costco runs. Free tier handles a single-listing host with lighter expense volume.
Plenty of hosts run more than one listing. Tag each expense with the property name (Property: Lake House, Property: Downtown Condo) so the chart shows which listing is actually profitable after all costs. Useful when deciding whether to keep, sell, or shift a property to long-term rental.
Voice, photo of a receipt, or 3-tap manual entry — every method takes under 5 seconds.
Cash Compass picks the category automatically. Override once and it learns your pattern.
Weekly chart shows where money went. Adjust caps before the month is over, not after.
Match Cash Compass categories to Schedule E line items. The major ones: Advertising (listing-promotion fees), Auto and Travel (mileage to/from property), Cleaning and Maintenance (housekeeper, supplies, repairs), Commissions (Airbnb's host fee, currently 3% on most listings), Insurance (landlord policy, umbrella), Legal and Professional (accountant, attorney consultation), Mortgage Interest (Form 1098 from lender), Repairs (anything that restores rather than improves), Supplies (consumables — coffee, toiletries, paper goods), Taxes (property tax, occupancy/transient tax), Utilities (electric, gas, water, internet for the property), Depreciation (Form 4562, separately calculated). Improvements get capitalized and depreciated, not expensed — distinguishing repairs from improvements is the most-audited Schedule E issue. The 2024 IRS audit-priority data put Schedule E with rental losses among the top categories for individual return review.
If you rent your personal residence for fewer than 15 days in a tax year, the income is not reportable and the expenses are not deductible. This is sometimes called the 'Augusta rule' after Masters-week homeowners in Augusta, Georgia who rent for the week. The 2024 IRS Publication 527 outlines the test. For dedicated short-term rental properties (rented 15+ days a year, not personal-use for more than 14 days or 10% of rental days whichever is greater), Schedule E applies with full expense deductibility. Mixed-use properties (e.g., a vacation home you also rent) require prorating expenses by rental-day fraction. Cash Compass tags each expense to the property; for mixed-use, you handle the proration math at tax time using the rental-day count. Most full-time STR hosts are well past 15 days and use the property exclusively for rental — straightforward Schedule E.
Cleaning and Maintenance is a Schedule E line for routine, recurring costs — housekeeper between bookings, supplies replenished monthly, regular HVAC filter changes. Repairs is a separate line for restoring something to working condition (fixing a broken AC unit, patching drywall, replacing a leaky faucet). Improvements (replacing the whole AC system, adding a deck, renovating a kitchen) are capitalized and depreciated over years, not expensed. The 2024 IRS Tangible Property Regulations include a $2,500-per-item safe harbor for de minimis expensing — purchases under that amount can usually be expensed in the year incurred. Cash Compass categorizes each receipt as Cleaning, Supplies, or Repairs based on your tag; for items over the safe harbor or large improvements, flag them for the tax preparer to handle on Form 4562. Repairs and maintenance are usually a host's largest variable cost after cleaning.
Depends on scale. Single-property hosts grossing under $40,000-$60,000/year usually do fine with Cash Compass plus a separate property-only checking account plus a yearly tax preparer. A single listing is comfortably within tracker scope. Multi-property hosts (5+ listings) or those operating as a formal LLC with employees usually want QuickBooks Online or Stessa (which is purpose-built for rental real estate, with free tier). Stessa is the strongest fit for serious portfolio investors because it handles per-property P&L, cap-rate calculations, and depreciation schedules natively. Cash Compass is honest about being a personal-budget tracker that handles small-scale STR hosting as a side; it does not aim to be Stessa for portfolio holders. Pick by listing count and complexity, not by feature count.
Built native for iPhone, iPad, and Mac with iCloud sync. Works offline.
No bank logins, no Plaid, no data sales. All data lives in your iCloud.
Manual entry, charts, category tracking — all free, forever. Premium is optional.
Free to start. Premium $29.99/year unlocks unlimited receipt OCR and CSV export structured for Schedule E.
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