Just wondering for what reasons do you use Excel/Google Sheets? I’m asking because I’m thinking of creating some services to help Hosts save time and money.
I use an Excel spreadsheet to track rental space basis and calculate depecation deductions, and to apply pro rata calculations for land vs building components, sq footage if rental space and remainder of property, and guest usage days and guest plus private usage days for depreciation, interest, insurance, maintenance etc expenses. If you have a proposed product, get mod permission to test and provide a sample.
I haven’t had a proposed product yet. I’m trying to do some market research and see what people use spreadsheets for and how it could be improved to help people make more money.
If your spreadsheet could raise my rates and occupancy that would be great.
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Dear lord. I think the only phrase I understand in that whole paragraph is “usage days.”
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It could be used to analyse peak and off-peak periods. Using it, it’d be possible to raise and decrease your rates according to your occupancy.
Stretch your profits to the max, calculating throughout the year
I already keep track of all of that in excel. Will your spreadsheet load automatically from platform data?
If the API permits, it’s completely possible to do so, but Airbnb API is open to partners only, atm.
I wouldn’t use this if it just correlated price and vacancy rate. What would help me (which I now do manually) is a rolling average of advert prices for hotels and similar Airbnbs near me for future weeks/months.
I use them to keep track of all my expenses for tax purposes. Receipts but also utility charges and split them based on the (downloaded) occupancy stats Air provides in .csv form. I also use them to work out how my Air payments affect my tax and other income that is means tested.
But I spent 20 years of my professional life building Excel spreadies so it is (almost) fun for me. Sad, I know.
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Also from my days working for a software company the people providing the data will often charge third party developers to gain API access to their data which they have to pass on to their own users even though it might be their own data.
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How do you do manually? Do you have to open Airbnb and check every property near yours and note price for future weeks/months down?
I would use a spreadsheet to track guest contact info, length of stay, how much they paid, their star rating of me, and other data. But I wouldn’t make time to manually enter all of that. So what I REALLY want (and would pay for) is an app that can gather that data from my Airbnb account into a spreadsheet. If you create THAT, you will become rich.
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Seems like someone thinking of making a product like this should know.
I don’t use a spreadsheet. In fact, I really dislike spreadsheets. They are flat and data isn’t. I have built a relational database which injests all kinds of information, primarily using the information contained in the confirmation email from AirBNB. There is a lot of really useful information in those emails, not the least of which is how far out is my listing getting booked.
I will never release this database however. Supporting and developing a “shrink-wrap” solution was part of my life once, and I have no interest in doing this again.
Does Airbnb provide any sort of export? If they does, we can have a look and see if something can be done to automatically fill in a spreadsheet
Yes. They do. Always have. Look at the transaction tabs.
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That’s such a great idea - leveraging confirmation emails to see how far out you’re booked! Do you mind sharing other unexpected data points?
Yes, they do have the export tool for certain info, and I’ve always used that at tax time. It doesn’t include certain data that I’d like to have, such as my guest’s contact info, review of me & my review of them. I know of data collecting software that gathers Airbnb data at the city-wide level, so I assume a software could be created to gather data from our own accounts that we want to keep (without having to manually copy/paste).
So then why mention it?