Financial Management for Short-Term Rentals

In this episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast, we are joined by Jonathan Sukhia, CEO and Co-Founder of Topkey, the AI-powered financial operating platform for short-term rental property managers. Topkey integrates with popular accounting software and PMS platforms, including Hospitable, helping property managers reduce manual data entry, streamline accounting processes, and speed up financial reporting.

Jonathan shares his journey from finance to hospitality and Airbnb, and how it led to building a solution designed to centralize and automate financial operations for vacation rental businesses. We discuss expense management issues that vacation rental operators face and how the right software tools can help them stay in control of their finances.

Press Play now to discover how Topkey addresses the complex financial management challenges STR property managers face, helping them stay organized and save time through automation.

If you prefer to read the highlights, we’ve got a summary of the key takeaways below.

Problems That Topkey Helps to Solve

Jonathan explains that Topkey is a financial automation platform built for vacation rental businesses, helping them save time and money. “We help operators do two things very well: close their books faster, and eliminate the loss or leakage from spend that otherwise isn’t properly billed back to owners.”

Jonathan notes that when they set out to build Topkey, they spent several months interviewing STR property managers about their challenges. Those interviews revealed that the biggest pain points in managing finances were tracking various expenses, categorizing them by property to assign them to the owner charge or owner statement, and getting the books in order.

“That was the initial impetus. When we launched Topkey, we were helping managers track expenses more cleanly back to owner charges, through a sleek mobile interface that integrated directly with the PMS and the accounting software. Our core value proposition was: we can help you capture an expense, quickly tag it to a property and a category, and sync it back to the owner statement in the PMS. It’s expanded a lot since that initial product.”

Financial Management Can Be a Bottleneck to Growth

Jonathan emphasizes that as your business grows, you should get your financial management in order and build systems and processes before adding more properties to your portfolio.

“You need to have systems in place as you scale a business. If you don’t, things break down. Everyone knows this intuitively, but it’s harder to practice what you preach in the busy season, when things are going wild. We typically see the inflection points at 10 units, 30, 75, and 250—each one demanding a new system, because at some point you start drowning in workflows that no one on the team can maintain.”

Importance of Trust Accounting

Jonathan points out that proper trust accounting, which requires separate bank accounts for property owner funds vs. your operating funds, isn’t just good practice; it creates the financial foundation for sustainable growth. In many states, it’s a legal requirement for property managers, and non-compliance can lead to penalties and legal action. “For example, if you're in California, the state can audit you, and you can get in trouble if you don't have your trust account in order.”

Trust accounting differs from regular bookkeeping, so implementing it for vacation rentals can be challenging, and even people who are good with finances struggle with it.

“The core challenge and the starting point for all of this is expenses. Getting the expense side right is the tip of the spear. If you don’t have that right, it’s hard to know whether you’re accurate at all. The other piece is the revenue side: getting all the revenue data right and accounted for, and making sure what’s in your bank actually matches what’s in your PMS or the OTA. So it’s complicated.”