Getting started
Every account is built around properties, not a single fixed plan. Add one property and you're on Basic; add a second through fifth and the account moves to Extra automatically; a sixth property moves it to Premium. Pricing follows the same tiers, per property, per year. Tier can also be set higher manually without adding more properties — useful if you want Guidebook or Portfolio access ahead of actually hitting the property count.
With more than one property, a property switcher appears so every page — Bookings, Expenses, Reconciliation, and the rest — scopes to whichever property is currently selected. Nothing shown on screen is ever blended across properties unless you're specifically looking at a multi-property view like Compare or Portfolio (see Multiple properties below).
Bookings
A booking can be added by hand — guest name, dates, source (Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, or Direct), and status — or pasted in as a batch if you're migrating from a spreadsheet. A new booking is always checked against every existing confirmed booking for that property before it's saved: if the dates overlap one already on the calendar, from any source, it's flagged instead of silently creating a double-booking.
Cancelling a booking doesn't delete it — it's marked cancelled and stays visible in the history, so a payout or expense that referenced it still makes sense later.
Calendar sync
Paste in the iCal export URL from Airbnb, Booking.com, or Vrbo (each platform gives you one from its own calendar settings) and Hosts Assist pulls in every reservation from that feed automatically — no manual re-entry. Sync runs on its own roughly once an hour, or you can hit "Sync now" for an immediate pull.
Each sync reports exactly what happened: how many bookings were imported or updated, how many were skipped because the year is locked, how many looked like a possible duplicate of something already on the calendar, and how many were excluded because they weren't a real booking at all (a platform-side minimum-stay gap or a manual block, not a guest). That last category is worth understanding: Airbnb and Vrbo mark a plain closure distinctly from a real reservation, so those get filtered out automatically. Booking.com's own calendar export doesn't give hosts that distinction — a real reservation and an ordinary closed-off date range can arrive with the exact same generic text. Because of that, every Booking.com event imports as a booking rather than risking a real reservation being silently dropped; if a date range you'd simply left unopened shows up as a placeholder "Booking.com guest" booking, that's expected — just delete it, it isn't a duplicate or a bug.
A previously-imported booking is kept in sync going forward too: if its dates or guest name change on the platform, the next sync updates it here to match, rather than creating a second copy.
Calendar export
This is the reverse direction from sync — a private link you publish so other platforms (or your own separate calendar app) can see your confirmed bookings here and block those dates elsewhere. Turning it on generates a public feed link; guest names are included in that feed by default, but that can be turned off if you'd rather the export only show dates as busy. Only confirmed bookings ever appear in it. If the link ever leaks, rotate it — the old one stops working immediately and a fresh one takes over, with no need to reconfigure anything else.
Expenses
Every expense has a date, payee, amount, and category, with a receipt attachable either by taking a photo (mobile camera) or picking an existing file. Two features exist to cut down on repetitive entry:
- Recurring templates — set up a monthly bill once (e.g. a cleaning contract or utility) and Hosts Assist prompts "Add now" once it's due each month, rather than you re-typing the same amount and payee every time.
- Amortize — a large one-off cost can be spread across a month or a year for reporting purposes (so it doesn't distort a single month's numbers), without actually being split into twelve separate entries. It stays one real expense at its real date and amount; amortize is just a tag that changes how sub-year reports account for it.
An expense can also be split across multiple properties if it genuinely covers more than one (e.g. a shared supply run) — each property gets its fair share of the cost as its own linked entry. A locked year (see Reconciliation) blocks new or edited expenses against it, on every property involved in a split, not just the one you're currently viewing.
Payouts
A payout is the actual money that lands in your account, logged separately from the booking it corresponds to and then linked to it. Linking matters because Reconciliation uses it to tell a booking that's been paid apart from one that's still owed — a confirmed, already-checked-out booking with nothing linked to it is exactly what shows up as needing attention.
Reconciliation
This is the yearly summary: total income, total expenses, and net, plus occupancy rate (nights booked against nights available) and average nightly rate. The average rate deliberately excludes stays with no payout logged yet and any marked as family/friends, since a free or unpaid stay would otherwise drag the number down without reflecting anything real. Any confirmed, already-checked-out booking with no payout linked is listed separately so it doesn't get missed.
A finished year can be locked, which stops any booking, expense, or payout dated in it from being edited, added, or removed — including by an automatic calendar sync. It's a deliberate, explicit action (and reversible — unlocking just requires doing it again), meant for closing the books once a year is genuinely done, not an automatic year-end behavior.
A PDF statement can be generated for any date range, not just a full calendar year, styled like a bank statement summary — useful for handing to an accountant or a property owner you manage on behalf of.
Rates
Set a direct-booking nightly rate and a weekly rate; a stay is priced using full weeks at the weekly rate plus any remaining nights at the nightly rate (10 nights = 1 week + 3 nights), not just the nightly rate multiplied out. A single peak surcharge percentage can be applied on top for Christmas and Easter — both periods share the one figure rather than needing separate settings.
Guidebook
Extra tier and above. A guest-facing digital guide you build once per property: welcome message, check-in/check-out times and instructions, wifi details, house rules, parking info, emergency contacts, and freeform sections for food/drink recommendations and things to do nearby, plus a hero photo. Once published, it's reachable at its own public link — no login required — so a guest can open it straight from their phone. A printable card with a QR code linking to that same page is available to generate and leave at the property, for guests who'd rather scan than type a URL.
The public page only ever shows what's been explicitly published — editing the guide doesn't change what guests see until you publish again.
Message templates
Reusable message snippets — check-in instructions, a house-rules reminder, whatever gets repeated often — with basic rich text (bold, italic, inline images), so a guest message doesn't have to be retyped from scratch every time.
Automated check-in emails
Once enabled and pointed at a message template, an email sends itself automatically a chosen number of days before each check-in, at a chosen time. The sender name and subject line default to the property's own name but can be overridden, and a brochure link (a URL to wherever you already host a PDF or webpage — no separate file upload) can be included and inserted into the template via a token. A reply-to address routes any guest reply somewhere other than the account's own login email. A test send is available to check exactly what a guest would receive before turning it on for real.
Directory
A simple contact list per property for the people who actually keep it running — cleaners, handymen, whoever else gets called when something needs doing. Nothing more than name, contact details, and notes.
Log
A maintenance issue tracker: log something that needs fixing, mark it resolved once it's done. Resolved issues aren't deleted or hidden — they stay in the list, sorted after whatever's still open, so there's a record of what's already been handled.
Compliance docs
A document vault per property for anything with a renewal date — a license, an insurance certificate, a safety inspection. Add an expiry date and the list sorts the soonest-expiring document first; anything with no expiry set just sorts to the end. A badge warns as a document approaches its expiry so a renewal isn't missed.
Settings
Beyond currency and the general account preferences, Settings is also where year locks are managed — lock or unlock one year at a time, or every property on the account at once rather than switching between them one by one. The automated check-in email and compliance docs sections described above live here too, alongside an email log showing exactly what automated emails have actually been sent, with delivery status.
Collaborator logins
A collaborator login is a separate, read-only sign-in — typically for a cleaner — that only ever shows a simple bookings view (dates and guest names, nothing financial, no settings, no other page in the app). These are provisioned by Hosts Assist support rather than self-service, so if you want one set up for someone, get in touch and it'll be created against your account. Any collaborator login already set up is listed in Settings.
Recently Deleted
Deleting an expense or a payout doesn't erase it immediately — it moves here first and can be restored if it turns out to have been a mistake, rather than being gone for good the moment a delete button is clicked.
Multiple properties
Once an account has more than one property, a Compare properties page becomes available: the same core numbers (income, occupancy, nightly rate) for every property side by side, so it's obvious at a glance which one is actually performing best. At the Premium tier, a Portfolio page goes further with a consolidated overview across every property on the account, rather than switching between them one at a time.
Mobile & offline
Hosts Assist installs like a normal app — add it to your phone's home screen and it opens full-screen with its own icon, no app store involved. It also works without a signal: bookings, expenses, and everything else logged while offline are queued and sync automatically the moment a connection comes back, rather than failing or getting lost.
Support
Beyond this page, in-app support is a proper two-way ticket system (Settings → Support), not just an inbox — a reply from Hosts Assist shows up right there against the same thread. For anything that can't wait, the contact page reaches the same place directly.