Vacation rental profit and break-even worksheet (with formulas)

A full calendar feels like a profitable one. It often isn't. Once channel fees, cleaning, staff, the pool guy, the slow drip of broken kettles and the loan payment come out, many vacation rentals make far less than the booking total suggests, and some lose money in the months that look busy.

This post gives you a vacation rental profit and break-even worksheet you can rebuild in any spreadsheet. It covers every line from revenue down to net profit, with the formula for each, then turns them into three numbers that answer the real questions: how many nights you need to sell to cover costs, what return you make on the money you put in, and how long it takes to get that money back.

We use one hypothetical villa all the way through, so you can see the arithmetic. Every figure in it is illustrative, not a benchmark. The only real numbers in this post are official fee and tax rates, each linked to its source and checked as of October 2026.

The vacation rental profit worksheet, line by line

Work in months. Monthly figures match how bills arrive, how the OTAs pay you and how most hosts think about a season. Split every cost into two groups: variable costs, which rise with each night or stay you sell, and fixed costs, which you pay even in an empty month.

Revenue starts with ADR and nights sold. If you have not calculated those carefully before, read our guide to occupancy, ADR and RevPAR first. It explains why owner stays and cleaning fees should not be mixed into the figures.

Channel fees and taxes: use official rates only

Channel fees are usually the largest variable cost, and the easiest one to guess wrong. Do not use a "typical commission" from a forum. Use the rate in each contract.

Airbnb publishes its rate. Under its single fee, Airbnb says most hosts pay 15.5% of the booking subtotal, others typically 14% to 16%. Booking.com and Agoda set the rate in your own agreement. Our Airbnb vs Booking.com fees guide explains what each one charges on, and the free OTA fee calculator works out what you keep per booking. If your bookings come from several channels, use a blended rate: total fees on last year's statements ÷ total revenue.

Tax depends on where the property is and how you are registered. Two examples from our licence guides:

• Vietnam. Household businesses with annual revenue up to VND 1 billion pay no VAT or personal income tax but still report revenue. Above it, a tax office answer gives VAT of 5% of revenue for accommodation, and income tax of 2% on the revenue above the threshold; households that can document their costs may instead pay income tax on net income. The Vietnam homestay licence guide has the details.
• Indonesia. Villas pay regional hotel tax (PBJT) at no more than 10%, set by each regency. Gianyar, which includes Ubud, sets it at 10% in Bylaw 7/2023. For income tax, individuals on the final SME scheme pay 0.5% of turnover, and the first Rp500 million a year is not taxed. See the Bali villa licence guide.

Confirm your own rates with the local tax office. They change, and your status decides which one applies.

Depreciation and financing: the two lines hosts skip

Depreciation is the cost of wearing out what you bought. A $12,000 furniture and fittings package that lasts five years costs you $200 a month, whether you notice it or not. Leave it out and your profit looks better every month until the day you have to refurnish with money you never set aside. The five years here is your own planning assumption, not a tax rule.

Financing has two parts that belong in different places. The interest on a loan is a cost, so it goes into the profit calculation. The principal you repay is not a cost; it reduces the debt. It still leaves your bank account, so track it in cash flow. Mixing the two makes a property look worse on paper than it is, or better in the bank than it is.

The same logic applies to a prepaid lease, common for Bali villas. If you paid ten years upfront, divide the lease by 120 and treat that as monthly rent. Otherwise the first year looks terrible and the next nine look too good.

A worked example: a two-bedroom villa in Ubud

This is a hypothetical villa. Prices are in US dollars to keep the arithmetic easy. The owner owns the building, spent $40,000 on renovation and furniture (half of it borrowed), and sells the whole villa as one unit at $140 a night, including the 10% PBJT. In a 30-night month, the villa sells 18 nights (60% occupancy) in 6 stays of 3 nights. All bookings come through Airbnb on the single fee.

The income tax line is deliberately cautious: it applies 0.5% to all turnover, while the real figure is lower if your yearly turnover stays under Rp500 million. Replace it with your own calculation.

Break-even, ROI and payback

Three formulas turn the worksheet into answers.

Sensitivity: occupancy ±10 points

Vacation rental profit is more sensitive to occupancy than most hosts expect. Change one number to see it. Hold the price and every other cost still, and move occupancy 10 points either way.

Ten points of occupancy moves monthly profit by almost $280 in each direction, because fixed costs do not move at all. That is the real lesson of a break-even worksheet: the villa above is a fine business at 70% and barely worth the effort at 50%. Before you buy, build or sign a lease, run the low case first. If you can't live with it, change the plan, not the assumptions. Our low season playbook covers what to do about the quiet months, and the cost to open a homestay checklist helps you price the investment side.

Run the same table for price (ADR ±10%) and for your fee rate if you plan to shift bookings between channels.

How Santara AI fits into the numbers

Santara AI does not forecast profit, calculate ROI or file taxes. What it gives you is the actual side of this worksheet, so you can compare your plan with what really happened.

The Reports screen shows one monthly statement per property: gross booking revenue, minus channel fees, minus the expenses you add, equals the owner's net. You can add expenses such as utilities, repairs or staff, and download the statement as CSV to drop into your own worksheet. Revenue is counted at checkout, and currencies are never converted, so a villa earning in rupiah stays in rupiah.

Because Santara AI replaces both the PMS and the channel manager, those bookings come from one calendar that feeds Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and the rest of 54 channels, so the revenue line is not split across extranets.

FAQ

Keep reading

• Villa owner statements and management fees
• Airbnb host fee change 2026
• Short-term rental glossary

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