Is your rental actually profitable? Work out your net profit step by step
· Hostopus · 5 min read
Airbnb and Booking.com pay out at month end and the number looks good. The platform has already taken its cut, and the cleaner, the electricity and water bills, the building fee and the broken air conditioner have not been paid yet. On top of that, your income usually arrives in euros or dollars while your costs are in Turkish lira. Until you bring these together you cannot tell whether a home is really making money.
The net profit formula
The calculation fits on one line: Net profit = Booking revenue − Platform deductions − Operating costs. The real work is collecting every item.
- Booking revenue: what the guest pays at your price for the stay, the cleaning fee and any extra guest fee.
- Platform deductions: the Airbnb service fee, the Booking.com commission and any payment processing fee.
- Operating costs: cleaning, electricity, water, internet, gas, building fees (aidat), maintenance and repairs, supplies, insurance, tax and accountant fees.
How much do the platforms take?
According to Airbnb's official fee page, hosts are being moved to a single-fee structure, and under it most hosts pay a 15.5% service fee (as of 2026). Most hosts still on the split-fee structure pay 3%, and in that case the guest pays a separate service fee.
Booking.com does not publish a single rate. Its partner help page says the commission depends on your country, property type and the agreement you signed. Commission applies to the room rate and to extra fees such as cleaning, but not to local taxes such as city tax. You get one invoice a month covering guests who checked out the previous month. If you use Payments by Booking.com and get paid by bank transfer, a percentage-based payment service fee is also charged on every completed reservation.
A worked example
All the figures below are examples; use your own home's numbers. Say one apartment has this month:
- Booking revenue (including cleaning fee): €2,000
- Airbnb service fee at 15.5%: €310
- Cleaning, 8 checkouts × 1,200 TL: 9,600 TL
- Electricity, water, internet: 4,500 TL
- Building fee: 3,000 TL
- Maintenance and supplies: 2,000 TL
The lira costs add up to 19,100 TL. At an example rate of €1 = 45 TL that is about €424. Net profit: 2,000 − 310 − 424 = about €1,266. Had you looked only at the platform payout you would have seen €1,690; the gap is the costs that slip by.
How currency throws it off
When income is in euros and costs are in lira, net profit depends on the exchange rate. In the same example at 40 TL per euro, the same lira costs come to about €478 and net profit falls to €1,212. If you do not fix which day's rate you use for each item, month-to-month comparisons move even when the home performs the same.
The payout side can lose money to conversion too. Airbnb's payout page says that if your listing currency differs from your payout currency, an exchange fee is deducted from your payout. Booking.com also notes that conversion differences can occur on virtual card or bank transfer payouts, depending on your bank or card network.
Tracking it by hand
- Open a sheet for each month and give each home its own column.
- Copy gross revenue and deductions from the platform statements into separate rows. If you only write the net payout, you cannot see what commission cost you.
- Enter cleaning, bills, building fees and maintenance receipts with their dates. Add fixed costs such as the building fee and internet to every month.
- Decide which day's rate you use for foreign currency items and apply the same rule every time.
- At month end, put revenue, costs and profit side by side for each home.
Why it gets hard
One home on one platform is manageable. With two or three homes on two platforms, every booking needs its own commission, cleaning and exchange-rate rows. Booking.com invoices a month later, Airbnb's fee is hidden inside the payout, and bills arrive on different days for each home. Skip one month and you only find out which home lost money at the end of the year.
How Hostopus handles it
When Airbnb and Booking.com bookings reach Hostopus through the channel manager, the booking's income items are written to the Earnings screen automatically: the room rate, the cleaning fee charged to the guest and any extra guest fee. The service fee or commission reported by the platform is recorded as a "Platform Host Fee" expense, and Booking.com's payment charge as a "Platform Transfer Fee" expense, both linked to the same booking. Records are dated on the check-in day. For bookings you enter yourself, the platform fee you type in is also recorded as an expense.
If a co-host in Hostopus handles cleaning or management and you have turned on a cleaning, commission or fixed-amount automation for the property, that payment is also added as an expense on every booking.
Bills, building fees, maintenance and repairs are entered by you. The add-expense window has ready categories such as electricity, water, internet, dues, maintenance, repairs, taxes and insurance. A cost that repeats every month, like the building fee, can be entered once for 2 to 36 months with "Add recurring expense".
You enter the amount in the currency you paid in: euro, dollar, pound, lira or manat. Hostopus converts it to the home's currency. A past-dated record is fixed at that day's rate; a future-dated record is finalised at the rate of its own date once that date has passed. Last month's profit does not shift with today's rate. You choose the currency you want to see figures in under Settings.
On the Earnings screen you pick a home and see total income, total expenses and profit for a month or a year. The Dashboard shows turnover, expenses and profit for the selected period across all your homes or for one. The Performance screen shows each home's operating expenses, expense per night and expense ratio.
In short
To find a home's profit you need to subtract commission, cleaning, bills, building fees and maintenance from the platform payout, and convert lira costs at a consistent rate. If you want booking revenue and platform deductions recorded automatically and the remaining costs kept in a few taps, you can try Hostopus free for 60 days. For what a channel manager does, see our channel manager guide.