Everything you need to know about DeductFlow. Nothing here is tax advice — that's a CPA's job. This is how the app works.
Sign in with Google in about 10 seconds. There's no separate password to set up. Every new signup gets a 7-day Pro trial automatically, no credit card required.
Yes. The onboarding wizard walks you through naming your first property, picking the business type, and setting your federal tax bracket. Takes about a minute. Add more properties anytime from the property selector at the top of the app.
Yes. Every new signup gets a 7-day Pro trial with full access. No card up front — you'll only be charged if you upgrade after the trial ends.
Two options: enter each expense manually (fastest for under ~30 items), or use CSV import on the Income and Expense pages. If your CSV has non-standard columns, ask the in-app AI assistant to walk you through mapping — it's built for this kind of thing.
The IRS standard is "ordinary and necessary" — an expense that's common in the rental business and helpful for running it. Cleaning fees, repairs, supplies, insurance, utilities all qualify. Personal expenses don't. Mixed-use expenses (a phone used for both personal and business) should only include the business portion. When a specific expense is unclear, that's a CPA question.
Pick the closest category — you can change it later. If you're really stuck between two, "Other expenses" is fine. The category affects which line the expense lands on in your CPA report, but doesn't change whether it's deductible.
Receipts are optional in DeductFlow but strongly recommended for anything over $75. In an audit, the IRS asks for receipts to prove expenses actually happened. Snap a photo and attach it to the expense — it stays with the record forever.
No — business meals are typically 50% deductible. Enter the full amount you paid; DeductFlow auto-adjusts to 50% when it builds your CPA report.
Log it once, then use the Duplicate action next month. Faster than re-entering the details every time.
$0.725 per mile for January–June 2026, and $0.76 per mile from July 1, 2026 (Internal Revenue Bulletin 2026-29). DeductFlow values each trip at the IRS rate in effect on the trip's own date — $0.70/mile for 2025 and $0.67/mile for 2024 trips.
Any trip with a legitimate business purpose for your rental — supply runs, property inspections, cleaner handoffs, contractor meetings, hardware store trips. Commutes to a regular day job don't count. Every trip needs a documented business purpose.
Save your odometer readings at the start and end of each year. The IRS uses those to compute your business-use percentage if you're claiming actual vehicle expenses instead of the standard mileage rate.
Yes — CSV import is supported on the Mileage page. Most mileage tracking apps export in a standard format; if yours doesn't match, ask the in-app assistant.
Three options on the Income page:
1) Enter one annual total per platform (Airbnb, Vrbo, direct) — takes about 2 minutes.
2) Click Add Income to log individual bookings.
3) Import CSV to upload your platform earnings file.
If a single payout covers multiple properties, split it across them. See the step-by-step guide to adding income for details.
Yes. Anything the guest pays that goes to you counts as income — cleaning fees, resort fees, pet fees, service charges. Then log the actual cleaning cost separately as an expense. The two don't cancel out; both need to be tracked for accurate reporting.
Match the totals from your 1099-Ks against what you enter in DeductFlow to sanity-check. The app tracks income independently — you don't need the 1099-K to file, but the numbers should reconcile. Your CPA will ask.
Straight-line spreads an asset's cost evenly over its useful life. A $27,500 building depreciates at $1,000/year over 27.5 years. It's the default method in DeductFlow because it's simplest and works for most assets.
Bonus depreciation lets you deduct the full cost of a qualifying asset in the year you place it in service, instead of spreading it over years. Check the bonus depreciation box per asset in DeductFlow. Works best for furniture, appliances, and building components identified in a cost segregation study.
Similar to bonus depreciation but with an annual cap. Bonus is usually easier for STR hosts because there's no cap. Your CPA can help decide which is better for your specific situation.
An engineering study that breaks down a building's cost into shorter-life components (5, 7, 15 years) instead of the standard 27.5 years — unlocking accelerated depreciation, often 20–40% of the building's cost as year-one bonus depreciation. Studies typically cost $3k–$8k and are most impactful in the first year of ownership.
DeductFlow's Cost Seg module tracks the total from your study — it doesn't perform the study itself. See cost seg for Airbnb owners for a deeper explainer.
Assets with a useful life of more than one year that you own and use in the business: the building itself (27.5 years), furniture and appliances (5–7 years), vehicles (5 years), improvements. Land is never depreciable. Consumables (supplies, cleaning materials) are expensed, not depreciated.
Simplified: $5/sqft with a 300 sqft cap ($1,500 max). No records needed. Fastest option.
Actual: percentage of home used × real expenses (mortgage interest, utilities, repairs). Usually a bigger deduction but more paperwork.
Pick one method per year per property; you can switch year to year.
The space must be used regularly AND exclusively for the rental business. A desk in a corner of your living room typically doesn't qualify. A dedicated room used only for managing the rental does.
Allocate the home office across them by a reasonable method — revenue share, nights hosted, or a fair split. DeductFlow's home office module supports per-property allocation.
Material participation is the IRS standard for whether you're actively running a business or just passively invested in it. For STR hosts, meeting the threshold (100+ hours/year, more than anyone else involved) means rental losses can offset your W-2 income — often worth $10k–$40k/year for high earners. Below the threshold, losses are subject to passive loss rules that offer far less benefit.
The IRS can and does audit this. Documentation is critical. DeductFlow logs every hour with timestamps so you have an auditable record.
An IRS provision allowing STR rental losses to offset W-2 income if you log 100+ active hours per year and more than any other single person involved. Short-term rentals (average stay under 7 days) qualify as non-passive business income, which is why this works. See the complete guide to material participation.
Cleaning, guest communication, listing management, supply runs, property inspections, coordinating repairs, bookkeeping, marketing — anything that's real operational work on the property. Travel to and from the property counts if the purpose is business. Passive time (watching a listing sit open) doesn't count.
No — reasonable estimates are fine, especially catching up on prior weeks. Just be honest and consistent. Log daily or weekly when you can; reconstructing months of activity later is painful and less credible in an audit.
A single PDF with: profit & loss summary, category-by-category expense breakdown, full mileage log, depreciation schedule, active hours documentation, and any cost seg study totals. Your CPA can drop it straight into their tax software. Also downloadable as CSV for spreadsheet workflows.
The PDF is designed for reading and reference. The CSV export is the one your CPA can import into most professional tax software. Ask them which format they prefer — we generate both.
Anytime. The report always reflects your current data. Most hosts export once at year-end for their CPA meeting; some export quarterly to stay on top of things.
Free plan: 1 property, 50 expenses per year, up to 20 mileage entries.
Pro plan: unlimited properties and expenses, active hours log, CPA-ready PDF export, cost segregation, depreciation tracking, employee payment tracking.
Pro is $24/month or $199/year. Through Aug 31, 2026, the founding rate locks annual Pro at $149/year for life — code FOUNDING149 applies automatically at checkout. Every new signup gets a 7-day Pro trial — no credit card required to start.
Yes, cancel anytime from your account settings. If you cancel a paid plan, you keep access through the end of your billing period, then downgrade to the free tier — your data stays. Nothing gets deleted.
Your data stays in your account indefinitely, whether you're on free or Pro. You can also download a full backup (JSON format) anytime from the Backup & Restore menu — every expense, mileage entry, income record, and everything else you've tracked.
Yes — Pro supports unlimited properties on one account. Add them from the property selector at the top of the app. Each property has its own P&L, expense log, mileage log, and CPA report.
On Supabase servers in US data centers, with row-level security ensuring each user can only read their own records. Your data is also cached locally in your browser for offline access and speed. Nothing is sold, shared, or used for advertising.
Yes. Sign-in is Google OAuth (no passwords to leak). Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Row-level security policies mean the database itself won't return your data to any other user. We don't have access to your bank accounts and don't request them — DeductFlow is a record-keeping tool, not a bank connection.
Yes, anytime. From Backup & Restore in the app sidebar, download a JSON file with every record you've tracked. Restore it into any new DeductFlow account or use it as an offline backup.
The assistant is designed to answer questions about how to use the app and what tax terms mean. It's grounded in the same knowledge base as the in-app tips and this FAQ. For anything specific to your tax situation — "should I deduct this," "how do I file this" — it will always defer to your CPA. That's a hard rule.
Open the help widget in the bottom-right of the app and tap Share feedback. Every submission is read by the team. For urgent account issues, email info@deductflow.com — we reply within one business day.
QuickBooks and spreadsheets are general-purpose — they don't know what a short-term rental is. DeductFlow is built for it: 17 IRS-aligned categories mapped automatically, mileage rate applied per-trip, active hours tracked toward material participation, cost seg totals in one place, and a CPA report format built for STR filings. Replaces a stack of a bookkeeping app, a mileage app, a time tracker, and a spreadsheet.
Open the help widget in the app and ask the assistant, or send us feedback.
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