Financial Reporting: Expenses & Extras

Expenses & Extras Management

The Expenses & Extras management feature allows you to efficiently enter and track any expenses or additional sources of income that occur outside of your regular rental activity.

This comprehensive guide covers how Expenses & Extras functionality integrates across the following areas:

1. Expenses & Extras
2. Owner Statements
3. Reservations
4. User Permissions
5. Public API
6. Tasks

What's New in 2025

Don't miss out on exploring the exciting new feature enhancements we've introduced in 2025. Be sure to read our latest updates to discover how these improvements can streamline your property management workflow and enhance your financial tracking capabilities.

Continue reading the sections below to learn how to maximize the potential of Expenses & Extras across all areas of your property management system.

1. Expenses & Extras - Main Section

To access Expenses & Extras, please follow the steps below:

1. Go to your Hostaway Dashboard
2. In the left sidebar, where you can find all the features
3. Click on Expenses & Extras

In the main section, you will find the following tabs:

• Expenses - Track and manage all costs and expenditures
• Extras - Record additional income sources and revenue streams
• Categories - Create and manage custom expense and income categories
• Automation - Set up recurring expenses and automated financial entries
   

Columns & Filters

By default, the system shows you the most relevant columns, but there are more fields that you can select from the gear icon.

• The selection of columns and filters will be stored in the browser, so you will see the same configuration when you come back to this section
• Other Users will not see the same selected columns
• Columns can be dragged & dropped and ordered

You will be able to filter by:

• Dates
• Quicks dates
• Categories
• Amount
• Listings
• Reservations
• Owners
• Owner Statements

New Custom View

You can create and reuse Custom Views in the Expenses & Extras.

Expenses & Extras Tabs

The possible actions within these tabs are:

1. Add an Expense or Extra
   • Expenses include items with negative values
   • Extras include items with positive values
   • Expenses or extras will appear in Owner Statements if
     • A new statement is created
     • Filters are changed
     • Manual refresh was requested
     • Date + Listing or Date + Owner match the Owner Statement
2. Attach a file
3. Edit
4. Duplicate
5. Delete
6. Download Report. This option will generate a CSV file. You can filter/choose the results before downloading them.
7. Importing Expenses & Extras
   • You have an option for bulk-importing expenses and extras, so you can register them in a separate spreadsheet and easily add them to our system.
   • Here you can find the template. It is important that:
     • You respect the column names
     • Fill in all mandatory fields
     • Use a comma-separated format
     • Respect the format

None of the actions done in this section will automatically update existing Owner Statements. However, opening an Owner Statement will invite you to do so if the system detects that a compatible expense was added or an existing one (in the Owner Statement) was edited or deleted.

Categories Tab

Managing categories is simple and intuitive. In this section, you can:

1. Create new categories
2. Edit existing ones
3. Delete any that are no longer needed
   
   

Automations Tab

You may need to record the same expenses repeatedly, which we call recurring expenses—costs that remain consistent in amount and timing across multiple listings. Manually entering these expenses each time is inefficient, error-prone, and time-consuming.

Automations is a powerful feature that allows you to set up expenses that automatically repeat at defined intervals (monthly or weekly) and apply them to specific listings and owners.

How to Set Up Automations

1. Navigate to Expenses & Extras → Automations
2. Click Add automation
3. Fill in the required details:
   • Expense amount and description
   • Recurrence frequency (weekly or monthly)
   • Target listings and owners
   • Start date and duration
4. Click Create

Once you create the automation, it becomes active and automatically generates expenses or extras for every selected listing or owner according to your specified schedule.

Benefits

• Save time by eliminating repetitive data entry
• Reduce errors through consistent automated processing
• Ensure accuracy with standardized recurring transactions
• Improve efficiency across your property management workflow

2. Expenses & Extras - Owner Statements

The Owner's Statement will automatically populate the Expenses & Extras section and affect the Owner's Statement Total based on two conditions:

1. Listing + Date: The date and the listing must be part of the Owner's Statement
2. Owner + Date: The date and the owner must be part of the Owner's Statement

Existing Owner Statements will be kept as a “snapshot”, even if they are not compliant when an expense or extra is updated outside of the owner statement.

However, when you update or refresh a statement (filters, assigned owners), we will apply Expenses & Extras that match the Owner Statement (not the ones that exist in it, if there is a difference).

Moreover, each time you open an Owner Statement, the system will check if there is a discrepancy between the saved statement and the main table.

Expenses can also be added while creating Owner Statements.

Creation and edition will push data to the main expenses and extras section

Sometimes you may want expenses for accounting purposes only, but don't want them to appear on the owner's statements. In these cases, it is possible to hide them, and they will be excluded from the list.
 

They can be recovered by clicking on “X expense(s) hidden.”
 

3. Expenses & Extras - Reservations

In Reservations, you can find a sub-section to reflect any related expenses:
 

A financial field can also be found there when the expense or extra is associated with a reservation.

4. Expenses & Extras - User Permissions

Expenses & Extras have their specific set of permissions, as you can see in the image below.

5. Expenses & Extras - Public API 

We added support to the public API. Now it will be possible to:

• Create. Expenses must have a negative value and extras a positive one
• Retrieve the expense and all the data it contains
• Update the expense and any data that can be updated via the dashboard:
  • Concept (mandatory)
  • Category (if we don’t have that category, it will create a new one)
  • Date (mandatory)
  • Reservation
  • Listing (listing will correspond to the one from the reservation if not provided)
  • Owner email and ID,
  • Amount
• Delete any expense

6. Expenses & Extras - Tasks

Tasks can automatically generate expenses when completed. 

You have an option for auto and manual tasks to create an expense when a task is marked as “done”.

The expense will consider the task cost (applying a negative value), the task description will be the expense concept, and the reservation and/or listing will also be automatically assigned. The Expense date will correspond to the date when the task was marked as done. Categories can be assigned as well.

Once the expense is generated, it is still possible to edit it if needed, but changes to the expense will not affect the task. Editing the task (for instance, the cost or the description) when it has already been completed will not update previously generated expenses.