A monthly P&L for every property

Why per property, and why monthly

A combined figure across three or four properties hides the one that is losing money. It averages a strong summer flat against a tired house with an old boiler and reports something in the middle that describes neither. You cannot sell, refurbish, re-price or re-let an average.

Monthly matters for a different reason. An annual set of accounts arrives long after every decision it could have informed. A monthly number arrives while the year is still changeable — while there is time to raise a rate, change a minimum stay, replace a supplier or accept that a property is not working.

It does not need to be accounting-grade. It needs to be consistent, complete enough to be trusted, and produced at the same point every month.

What goes above the line

Revenue for a property in a month is less obvious than it looks. Decide these once:

• Which stays belong to the month — recognise on check-out, on check-in, or apportion by night. Apportioning is the truest and the most work; check-out is the simplest to run. Consistency beats precision.
• Whether revenue is shown gross of channel commission with the commission as a visible cost line, or net. Gross with a visible commission line makes a bad month easier to diagnose.
• Where cleaning fees charged to guests sit. They are revenue, but they are revenue with a matching cost, so keep them on their own line rather than mixed into accommodation revenue.
• What happens to a cancellation fee or a damage charge retained. Both are revenue; both distort a month if they land unlabelled.

Write the four answers down. In eighteen months, when a year-on-year comparison looks strange, this note is what tells you whether the property changed or the method did.

The cost lines

Keep the list short enough that every cost has one obvious home. A workable set for a let property:

1. 1Channel commission — if revenue is shown gross.
2. 2Cleaning — the turnovers themselves, premiums included.
3. 3Linen and laundry — hire, laundering, and replacement stock.
4. 4Consumables — everything the guest uses up.
5. 5Utilities and council charges — the bills that arrive whether or not anyone stayed.
6. 6Repairs and maintenance — reactive work, plus servicing and safety checks.
7. 7Furnishings and replacement — the standing allowance for things that wear out.
8. 8Rent or mortgage interest — whichever applies to how you hold the property.
9. 9Insurance, licences and compliance.
10. 10Software and subscriptions.
11. 11Professional fees.

Two lines are commonly missing and both matter. The standing replacement allowance, because without it every month looks fine until the one where the sofa goes. And your own time, if you do the work yourself — priced at what you would pay someone else, so the number tells you when hiring becomes the better decision.

Allocating the costs that are not property-specific

Some costs arrive covering several properties, several months, or both: a bulk consumables order, an annual insurance premium, a software subscription, a van. A per-property P&L is only as good as the rule you use to split them.

• Split at the point of capture, not at month end. A receipt split when it is photographed is accurate; one split six weeks later is a guess.
• Pick the simplest basis that is roughly right — equal shares, bedroom count, or nights sold. A defensible rule applied every month beats a perfect rule applied occasionally.
• Spread anything annual across the twelve months it covers. An insurance premium landing whole in April makes April look catastrophic and the other eleven months look better than they were.
• Write the rule down next to the category, and change it only at a year boundary.
• Leave genuinely shared overhead — your phone, your accountant — in a small "portfolio" bucket rather than forcing a split that means nothing. Just keep the bucket small enough that it cannot hide a real property cost.

Capturing each cost against the property, and where it applies the stay, with the receipt attached, is what makes this a report rather than a reconstruction. Costs and analytics in HostHQ.

A worked example

One two-bedroom flat, one month, revenue shown gross with commission as a cost line.

Two subtotals do the work. Net before finance tells you how the property performs as an operation, which is comparable across properties however they are held. Net for the month tells you what actually happened to your money.

The discipline that keeps it honest

• Close on the same date every month, whether or not the month was interesting.
• Capture costs as they happen. A receipt photographed at the till is evidence; a receipt you will find later is an estimate.
• Never leave a cost uncategorised to deal with later. Later is the month you stop doing this.
• Do not renumber or rename categories mid-year. A comparison is only possible against a stable list.
• Read the page, do not just produce it. Five minutes looking for the line that is bigger than last month is the entire return on the exercise.
• Keep the method note current, and date every change to it.

The point is not bookkeeping. It is that by the fourth or fifth month you start recognising the shape of a normal month for each property, and an abnormal one announces itself immediately.

The monthly checklist