STR Accounting: Two Systems, One Foundation

Late nights chasing reconciliations. Owners asking questions you can’t answer. Numbers that don’t match.

That’s STR accounting, and it’s complicated because it isn’t one system at all. It’s two.

We recently unpacked this in a live webinar with Clearing. Missed it? Watch the recording here →

Property managers actually run on two accounting systems:

• Trust accounting → stewardship of owner funds, deposits, taxes, reimbursables.

• Financial accounting → your company’s income, expenses, profit, and growth story.
  

Trust accounting builds credibility with owners; financial accounting proves profitability to banks, investors, and buyers. Both are essential. They must stay separate (compliance and fiduciary duty) but also work together (to show true financial health). Blur the lines, and chaos follows. The lines blur most often in three areas: revenue, expenses, and liabilities. Getting them right takes the right tools, consistent practices, and, for many PMs, a trusted partner.

A Great Tech Stack Has the Following

• Trust workflows, owner statements (Clearing is a great option)

• Financial P&L, balance sheet, cash flow (QuickBooks Online is often a go-to)

• Virtual cards, approval workflows, PMS integrations

  
  

The key: keep ledgers distinct but connect the systems. Avoid double entry. Enable real-time reporting.

3 Areas to Get Right

1. Revenue Recognition

The challenge: Bookings rarely line up with payouts. Delays, cancellations, and misclassified fees create errors.

Best practices:

• Revenue Ledger Mapping: Mapping revenue-related data fields accurately between QBS and Clearing.

• Data Alignment: Match all bookings, fees, and payout data in Clearing with revenue entries in QuickBooks.

• Variance Detection: Identifying any timing or categorization mismatches is critical. 

  
  

Why it matters: Owners see accuracy. You see profitability. Regulators see compliance.

2. Expense Management

The challenge: Property-level costs get mixed with company overhead. That leads to leaks, mistrust, and messy tax records.

Best practices:

• Monthly reconciliation. Run an expense report from your trust accounting system and another from your financial accounting system, and double-check all expenses

• Use exception reporting. Many systems allow you to run “exceptions” or “uncategorized transactions” reports. These highlight anything that slipped through without proper coding.

• Spot-check vendors. Pick a few vendors each month and make sure every invoice is accounted for in both the trust and operating books.

• Check timing differences. Sometimes the discrepancy is just timing—one system recorded the invoice, another only logs after payment clears. Document those differences so they don’t get mistaken for errors.

  
  

Why it matters: Small leaks don’t snowball. Owners see transparency. You stay in control.

3. Assets & Liabilities

The challenge: Trust accounts carry obligations: deposits, taxes, and owner balances. Mismanaging them = compliance risk and sleepless nights.

Best practices:

• Segregate funds: Keep trust and operating accounts separate; mixing them is risky and often illegal.

• Separate liabilities: Show clearly what’s owed to owners vs. what’s your company’s.

• Reconcile monthly: Match bank, books, and liabilities every month. Create an audit trail.

Why it matters: Protects fiduciary duty, avoids disputes, and builds an audit-ready foundation for growth.

In Summary

Best-in-class accounting isn’t just tidy. It’s a growth advantage:

• Owners stay longer.

• Banks and investors trust your books.

• You reclaim hours otherwise lost to cleanup.

  
  

⚠️ One caution: some PMs think “one account, one system” is simpler until they face missing owner funds or delayed payouts. Operators have been forced to borrow just to pay owners.

✅ The good news: with the right structure (and the right partner), you can move from messy to scalable in a matter of months. Owners see clarity, regulators see compliance, and you see opportunity.

How HostAllies Can Help

At HostAllies, we’ve lived the chaos of STR accounting firsthand. As property managers ourselves, we saw how easy it was to get buried in reconciliations, owner questions, and compliance risks while trying to grow a business.

That’s why we built HostAllies:

• To take the back-office burden off your plate.

• To put systems in place that are accurate, compliant, and scalable.

• To give you the confidence that every dollar is where it should be, so you can focus on guests, owners, and growth.

  
  

We go beyond bookkeeping. We design workflows, connect the tools, and keep the process running month after month. The result? Clean books, stronger owner trust, and more time for you to actually run your business.

👉 If you’re ready to turn accounting from a liability into a growth driver, HostAllies can help.