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Thanks: your guest-stay tracker is on its way

You're on the list. Grab the tracker below, drop it into your Drive, and start logging bookings the next time one checks out. Fifteen minutes a month is what it takes to stay on top of the 7-day rule.

Your download

STR guest-stay tracker: Google Sheets

Click the button below and Google Sheets prompts you to Make a copy; the tracker lands in your Google Drive as an editable spreadsheet. Five tabs (README, Guest Stays, Summary, Personal Use, Properties), pre-set dropdowns fed by the Properties tab, formulas that compute year-to-date average customer use per property against the 7-day threshold, a booking-projection helper, and a §280A(d) personal-use ceiling check.

Open the tracker → (opens Google Sheets in a new tab)

Not tax advice; consult a qualified tax professional for your specific facts. The tracker is a starting point, not a filed form.

What to do with the tracker

  1. Make a copy. Click the button above; the "Copy document?" dialog opens; click "Make a copy" and Google Sheets saves it to your own Drive. The master copy on Field Ledger's Drive stays untouched.
  2. Set the tax year. Open the Summary tab. Cell B1 is the tax year every formula references. Set it to the current tax year.
  3. Add your properties. Open the Properties tab. Delete the two example rows. Add one row per STR you own. Every dropdown across the sheet now shows your properties.
  4. Log the first reservation. Open the Guest Stays tab. Row 2: paste the reservation ID, pick the property from the dropdown, enter check-in and check-out. Columns F, G, H compute automatically. Repeat for every past reservation this tax year (batch-import from your platform's reservation history is fine as a one-time catch-up).
  5. Log personal-use days. Open the Personal Use tab. Add a row for any day you (or family) stayed at the property this tax year, any day spent substantially full time on repairs or maintenance, any day of property showings to prospective renters. The dropdown in column C determines whether the day counts against the §280A ceiling.
  6. Populate the Summary property columns. On the Summary tab, the leftmost column of each of the three tables lets you pick a property name from a dropdown. Add one row per property to each table so the per-property totals compute.
  7. Check monthly. Fifteen seconds to scan the Summary tab: is the year-to-date average at or below 7.0 per property; are any properties trending toward the §280A ceiling; is any specific booking still open on the "should I accept?" question.

Where the tracker stops (and Field Ledger picks up)

A tracker works if you maintain it. Most hosts start strong in January and lose the habit by May; that's the honest failure mode of any download. Field Ledger's default landing experience is AI-assisted natural-language capture on every plan (including the trial): describe the day in one sentence and Field Ledger stages Trip:/Activity:/Expense: draft lines you review and confirm before anything saves. Nothing is machine-asserted for you. If you'd rather type the structured lines yourself, switch to the Form tab; both paths land in the same review queue.

Either path produces the same day-count records this spreadsheet computes (average customer use, §280A personal-use days), plus the material-participation hour log this tracker deliberately does not cover, plus §274(d)-substantiation-aware mileage, plus per-property Schedule E CSV export at year-end. See our year-long walkthrough for the full three-axis discipline the loophole requires.

No pressure. The tracker is yours whether you try Field Ledger or not. But if the "start strong, lose the habit" pattern is what happens to your records, that's the exact gap the app is designed to close.

Try Field Ledger free for 714 days

Same day-count records this tracker produces, plus material-participation hours, mileage, and Schedule E export in one place. AI-assisted natural-language capture is the default entry path on every plan; the Form tab is available if you'd rather type structured entries directly. Either way you review and confirm draft lines before they save. Your CPA gets the same categorized records at year-end.

  • Records for the STR strategy: material-participation hours (§469), average customer use (§1.469-1T), §280A personal-use days
  • Structured single-record forms; opt-in AI-assisted capture with a review-and-confirm gate
  • §274(d)-substantiation-aware mileage
  • Per-property Schedule E CSV export at year-end
  • No credit card required to start; cancel anytime
Start free trial

714-day free trial, no credit card required. Renews monthly or annually at the plan price you select until canceled. Cancel anytime in Manage Billing. Plus applicable US sales tax. Not tax advice.

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