Books that keep themselves.
Finance & Taxes
TIDY keeps rental accounting per property, automatically. Sync your bank account and every transaction is pulled in, classified, and rolled into a Monthly P&L per door. Lodging taxes are tracked — and filed where available and authorized — 1099s are handled, stay lengths and participation hours are logged, and every property gets a year-end tax package. TIDY is not a tax advisor — work with your CPA.
Accounting, per property
Informational, not tax advice
TIDY is a technology platform with human account managers. It is not a CPA firm, a tax advisor, a tax preparer, a bank, or a law firm, and nothing on this page is tax, accounting, or legal advice. TIDY keeps the records, tracks the obligations, and prepares the reports; which taxes apply to you, what you owe, what treatment you are eligible for, and how and when you file and remit remain your responsibility — work with your CPA. Payouts go to the bank account you connect. Pros on TIDY are your own pros or independent businesses, never TIDY employees.
Monthly P&L and NOI — actuals against projected, per door
The Monthly P&L is the bottom line, month by month: the year laid out in columns — one per month plus a total — with income, operating expenses, and net operating income (NOI) for each property. It is the view that answers whether a property is actually making money. Switch between Actuals and Projected to see what happened against your forecast. Pick All Properties for the portfolio total, or a single property to review and edit its entries per door. It stands open and current rather than arriving once a month, because rent, bills, bank activity, and taxes roll into it continuously. NOI is the number TIDY works to grow.
Bookkeeping that runs without you
Property-level bookkeeping happens automatically. Every credit and debit carries its date, amount, type, and the property it relates to, so income, operating expenses, and NOI stay accurate without anyone re-keying a statement. That is the point of doing it this way: your books reflect what actually happened, not a spreadsheet you maintain by hand. If you need a specific report, your dedicated account manager builds it.
What rolls into the books
- Rent collection — a receivables pipeline of everything owed, overdue, or paid, tied to a guest or tenant and their reservation or lease. Recurring rent generates payments automatically on an active lease, each request gets a branded hosted pay page with no TIDY login for the payer, and you set the accepted methods, who covers the processing fee, and the reminder cadence.
- Section 8 resident rent and HAP, classified separately — an assisted lease has two payers, so TIDY keeps the PHA-approved family rent to owner and the Housing Assistance Payment as distinct transaction types, matched to the property, household, contract, and coverage month, with retroactive adjustments, recoupments, and utility reimbursements preserved as their own things. Both roll into the lease month once, without double-counting, and a short or late PHA payment never shows up as resident delinquency. It is a distinction most rental accounting tools simply do not make.
- Bills and pro payments — invoices generated the moment a pro marks a job complete, plus vendor bills you build yourself with Create Invoice. Each one is labeled Team or Vendor, so pro job costs and outside vendor bills stay easy to separate when you reconcile.
- Transactions — the synced bank feed underneath everything, classified and attached to properties.
- Taxes — lodging, occupancy, and transient taxes with their rates and due dates, flowing into the P&L.
- Deposits and lease ledgers — security, pet, and damage deposits tracked through Held, Released, and Claimed with the claim amount and reason on the record, alongside per-lease ledgers where every charge, late fee, deposit, utility, credit, and adjustment sits against a live running balance.
Learn more: Section 8 & Housing Choice Vouchers →
Learn more: Bills & Payments →
Tracking
Sync your bank account
Sync your bank account and TIDY pulls in and classifies your transactions. Money in from guest payouts and rent, money out for cleaning, inspections, supplies, and repairs — each entry arrives with its date, amount, whether it is a credit or a debit, and a description of what it was and which property it belongs to. Add as many accounts as you run. Once an account is synced, the feed keeps itself current: nothing is entered by hand, and the classified result is what your Monthly P&L is built from.
Every lodging tax, with its rate and its next due date
Lodging and occupancy taxes vary by property and jurisdiction, and they are the ones that quietly accrue penalties. TIDY tracks each one that applies to a property: the tax name — Transient Occupancy Tax, Transient Lodging Tax, State Sales Tax, a Tourism Improvement Fee — the rate, the agency it is remitted to, monthly or quarterly frequency, the next due date, and an estimated amount. Those figures flow into your Monthly P&L, so the obligation is visible before it is late rather than after. Lodging taxes are a short-term and mid-term rental concern specifically; long-term leases generally do not carry them.
Keep your short-term rental tax status
Short-term rental tax positions live or die on documentation, and documentation is a record-keeping problem long before it is a tax problem. Two numbers usually matter: how long the average guest stayed, and how many hours you personally put into the property. Both are things owners typically reconstruct from memory in March. TIDY tracks them as they happen.
Length of stay, tracked per property
Every reservation is recorded with its dates against the property it belongs to, so average length of stay per property is a figure you can pull rather than estimate. CPAs look at average-stay math when they assess how a short-term rental should be treated, and stay length also moves with how you operate — minimum-night rules, length-of-stay pricing, and the mix of short, mid, and long-term bookings you run. TIDY keeps the record; your CPA reads it.
Participation hours, logged as you go
Log the hours you spend on a property and they accumulate into a contemporaneous record instead of a reconstruction. Material participation tests turn on hours, and the burden of showing them sits with the owner — which is a documentation discipline more than a tax one. This is the mechanism behind what is sometimes called the “short-term rental loophole” in common usage; it is not our name for it, and it is genuinely fact-specific.
Software does the labor without adding another person’s hours
Here is the structural difference, and it is the one no full-service property manager can offer. Hire a property manager or a cohost and you have added another individual whose hours sit inside the same activity as yours — and several of the material participation tests compare your participation against everyone else’s. TIDY is software. The automation does the work — scheduling pros, messaging guests, chasing rent, keeping the books — without putting another individual’s participation into the picture, and you remain the manager of record making the decisions. Whether that matters to your situation is a question for your CPA, not for us.
What your CPA actually gets
The stay-length history per property, the participation hours you logged, the Monthly P&L per property, and the complete classified transaction history sitting behind every number — exported in whatever format they ask for. TIDY documents the facts. Your CPA decides what they mean.
TIDY is not a tax advisor
Nothing here is tax advice, and nothing here is a promise about an outcome. Whether any tax treatment applies to you depends on your facts — your stay lengths, your hours, your other activities, your elections — and only a qualified professional can tell you where you stand. TIDY tracks and documents the data you and your CPA need. It does not determine your eligibility, calculate your savings, or represent that any taxing authority will accept a position you take. Work with your CPA.
Background reading: Rental Taxes — What Owners and Managers Owe →
Tax filings & forms
Lodging taxes filed or tracked for you*
Where a jurisdiction allows it and you authorize it, TIDY prepares the return and your dedicated account manager completes the filing on your instruction. Where that is not possible, you still have every figure you need — rate, remit-to agency, frequency, next due date, estimated amount — tracked and visible ahead of the deadline so you can file it yourself. Tracking is not filing advice: which taxes apply, how much you owe, and how and when you remit remain your responsibility.
*Filing where available, possible, and authorized by you; tracking everywhere.
1099-K and 1099-MISC for the pros you pay
Pay a pro for their work by credit card through TIDY and TIDY automatically files what the law requires — in the US, a 1099-K to the pro once their volume exceeds the reporting thresholds, which depending on your situation may mean you do not need to file a 1099 yourself. Pay another way and TIDY generates what a 1099-MISC filing is built from: billing reports for any period showing how much you paid each pro and how you paid them. TIDY generates what is needed and files what it is required to file; it is not a tax preparer, so confirm your own filing obligations with your CPA. Pros remain your own pros or independent businesses.
A year-end tax package for every property
Income and expenses by category, per property, ready for your return — the categories a preparer expects to see on a Schedule E, for instance, already sorted by door rather than dumped in one pile. Behind it sits the full year of classified transactions, the Monthly P&L, lodging taxes by jurisdiction, deposits, lease ledgers, and per-pro payment totals. Reports export, custom ones can be built with the columns, filters, and periods you choose, and if your CPA wants something formatted a particular way, ask your account manager and it gets built.
What gets recorded, and what you get back
| Money event | What TIDY records automatically | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Bank sync | Sync your bank account and TIDY pulls in and classifies every credit and debit — date, amount, type, and the property it belongs to. | Categorized income and expense lines on the right property, with nothing keyed in by hand. |
| Guest booking payout | A credit in the transaction feed with its date, amount, and a description naming what it was and which property it belongs to. | An income line on that property’s Monthly P&L, feeding NOI. |
| Rent payment | The receivable flips to Paid — automatically when the tenant pays online, or through Record offline payment for cash, checks, and external transfers. On an assisted lease, resident rent and the PHA Housing Assistance Payment are classified separately. | A ledger entry on the linked lease with an updated running balance, plus income on the P&L. Rent is never posted twice, and a late PHA payment never reads as resident delinquency. |
| Pro or vendor invoice | An invoice generated automatically when a pro completes a job, or one you build yourself with Create Invoice, labeled Team or Vendor. | An operating expense on the P&L, plus per-pro payment totals behind 1099-K filing and 1099-MISC prep. |
| Security or damage deposit | The property, the guest or tenant, the reservation or lease dates, the deposit type, the amount, the channel, and when it was held or released. | A Held, Released, or Claimed status — with the claim amount and reason recorded when you keep any part of it. |
| Lodging or occupancy tax | Tax name, rate, the agency it is remitted to, monthly or quarterly frequency, next due date, and an estimated amount, per property. | Due dates you can see coming, the tax flowing into the Monthly P&L, and the filing completed where that is available and you authorize it. |
| Stay lengths and participation hours | Every reservation with its dates, per property, plus the participation hours you log against that property. | Average length of stay as a number you can pull, and an hours record you and your CPA can review. TIDY tracks; it does not determine tax treatment. |
| Year end | A full year of classified transactions, income, operating expenses, NOI, taxes, deposits, and pro payments, already sorted by property. | A year-end tax package per property — income and expenses by category, ready for your return — plus exports for your CPA and 1099-K filings for card-paid pros over the threshold. |
TIDY keeps the books, tracks the obligations, and prepares the reports. It does not file your income taxes, determine what you owe, or decide what tax treatment you qualify for — that is between you and your CPA.
Where every dollar goes
- 01
Sync the bank account
Connect the account your payouts and rent land in. TIDY pulls in and classifies the transactions on its own — credits and debits, each carrying the property it relates to. Rent paid online flips to Paid automatically; cash, checks, and external transfers get recorded offline and behave exactly the same way.
- 02
Every dollar lands on a property
A tenant payment credits the lease it belongs to, so the running balance updates live and the same rent is never posted twice. On an assisted lease, resident rent and the PHA Housing Assistance Payment stay classified as separate things that roll into the same lease month.
- 03
Pros and bills go out
Invoices are created automatically when a pro completes a job, and you record vendor bills yourself with Create Invoice. Payment methods, approval workflows, and group billing rules are yours to configure, and each payment becomes an expense on that property. Pros are your own pros or independent businesses — you set what they are paid.
- 04
Taxes and documentation accumulate
Lodging and occupancy taxes are tracked by rate, remitting agency, frequency, and next due date, and filed where that is available and you authorize it. Stay lengths and the participation hours you log build the record your CPA may ask for later.
- 05
The Monthly P&L updates
Income, operating expenses, and net operating income roll up by month per property, in Actuals and Projected views, for a single door or the whole portfolio. NOI is the number TIDY works to grow.
- 06
The year-end package comes out
Income and expenses by category for every property, ready for your return, with 1099-Ks already filed for card-paid pros over the threshold and billing reports ready for the pros you paid another way. Reports export, and your account manager can build a specific one on request.
TIDY first-party data · August 21, 2026
13+ years · 100,000+
TIDY has been trusted for 13+ years by 100,000+ homeowners and property managers, with a 4.5+ Google rating. Accounting, bookkeeping, tax tracking, and reporting are part of the same 3.9% of gross bookings or rent ($19 per unit per month minimum) — versus the 20–35% a traditional property manager charges, a saving of up to 85%.
Rental accounting & taxes FAQ
Does TIDY sync with my bank account?
Can I see profit and loss per property?
Does TIDY help with short-term rental tax status?
Does TIDY file my lodging taxes?
Does TIDY handle 1099s for my cleaners and pros?
What do I get at the end of the year?
Does TIDY replace QuickBooks?
The rest of what TIDY automates
Close the books without doing the books
Bank sync, a Monthly P&L per property, rent and guest payments, deposits, bills, lodging taxes filed or tracked, 1099-K and 1099-MISC support, stay-length and participation tracking, and a year-end tax package — all included in 3.9%, with a dedicated human account manager to build the report your CPA asks for.
Last updated: August 21, 2026