The ABCs of running a vacation rental, already written down.
VRABC stands for Vacation Rental ABCs. It is a library of 35 toolkits for independent hosts, and a set of builders that turn your answers into finished documents. Welcome book, operations manual, cleaning checklist, house signs, guest messages. For a condo, a townhouse, a cabin, or a beach house.
A company that manages 200 rentals has every job written down. That is what keeps 200 units clean and 200 inboxes quiet. The independent host does the same jobs with none of the paper.
9 of the 35 are free right now. No account, no email address. One payment of $49 USD opens the other 26. There is nothing to renew.
Written by Eric, who founded a vacation rental company in 2004 and spent a decade deep cleaning other people's rentals every November.
For the condo downtown, and for the cabin at the end of the road
The core toolkits and the builders cover any rental: a condo downtown, a townhouse, a beach house, a lake cabin. The builders ask which one you have and leave out what does not apply. What nobody else writes is the second half. A condo host never has to explain a septic system, decide whether the road is drivable, or tell a guest what to do about a bear.
6 of the toolkits deal with exactly that. Septic. Well water. Wood stove. Bear country. Winter access. Hot tubs.
They are the most detailed documents here. The wood stove pack works to the NFPA 211 sweep standard and explains what glazed creosote means. The wildlife pack cites the actual bear-locker ordinances and their fines. The hot tub pack tells you not to drain the tub during a winter power outage. That is the opposite of what most people do, and it is the reason plumbing cracks.
If you run a condo, judge the Pass on the core 20. If you run a cabin, these 6 are the reason to be here.
A management company writes it down. Most hosts carry it in their head.
A management company has staff and a property management system (PMS). Fine. What keeps 200 doors clean and 200 inboxes quiet is the paper. Their cleaner signs off a turnover standard with 10 photos. The check-in message goes out at 3 days, then again at 1. By January the expense ledger is already mapped to Schedule E. None of that lives in anyone's head, so any of it can be handed to someone else.
The independent host has the same jobs and none of the paper. So the same 20 questions get answered by hand every stay. One cleaner no-show on a same-day turn becomes your 1-star. Then the 1099-K shows up reporting gross, before fees, with a year of receipts still in a shoebox. The fix is the documents themselves. You don't subscribe to a document.
A document someone else could follow without calling you. The checklist has the photo log at the end. The message template comes with the blanks already named, and the expense spreadsheet with the categories already chosen. You download it and swap in your property once. Then hand it off. Nothing to log into, and no subscription that can lapse.
Six jobs that take an independent host's week
Each one below names the download that takes it off your list. Where there's a number, the survey it came from is named and listed with its sample size. Where it's forum consensus rather than survey data, it says so.
Finding a cleaner you can rely on
About 40% of the 554 hosts in Hospitable's 2026 survey said a dependable cleaner is hard to find. One no-show on a same-day turn, and the 1-star lands on your listing. So the standard goes in writing: what to clean room by room, how many towels, sheets and rolls of paper to leave behind, and 10 photos the cleaner sends when the job is done.
Turnover Cleaning Checklist · freeAnswering the same questions every stay
The same 20 questions every stay. In the Airbnb host forums the running estimate is that fewer than a third of guests read the check-in instructions (forum consensus, not a survey). Twelve scheduled templates run from booking confirmation through review request, with check-in details at 3 days out and again at 1. Most of the inbox clears before it fills.
Guest Message Starter Pack · freeSetting a nightly price
Price low and the holiday weekend books the day you list it. Price high and the calendar stays dark. Airbnb's Smart Pricing optimizes for booking probability, which is not the same thing as your revenue. Start with what one night costs you to host: cleaning, supplies, the platform's cut. Never price below it. From there you price up against five comparable places nearby, month by month, weeknights and weekends set separately.
Pricing & Seasonality Worksheet · in the passTracking expenses for tax time
The 1099-K reports gross, before host fees, while the linens, lightbulbs and mileage went untracked all year. A ledger with 22 expense categories already mapped to Schedule E lines, plus payout reconciliation and a mileage log, turns January into a print job.
STR Financial Command Center · in the passHandling a bad review
Ten reviews averaging 4.9 become 4.55 the moment one guest leaves a 1-star. Future guests judge you by your reply, so you can never answer angry. 25 written responses cover the range: 10 positive, 8 lukewarm, 7 negative, including the review that is factually wrong. Four in-stay touch points head the bad one off.
Review Response Library · in the passBeing the only person who can run it
83% of hosts run the rental alongside another job (PriceLabs Global Host Report, 1,400+ hosts), and still can't take a two-week trip, because nobody else could run the place. Vendors, shutoffs, lockout / Wi-Fi-down / no-hot-water playbooks, and a 2-page backup-host page for the friend covering a week.
Operations Manual Template · in the passRead the full Host's Playbook: 12 pain points, mapped to fixes
Every toolkit lists its contents before you pay
35 toolkits in all. 27 toolkits in both print-ready PDF and editable Word, plus 8 Excel workbooks. There's no sample page to flip through. Every file lists what's inside on its own page before you pay, every worksheet, sign and spreadsheet tab written out, 168 of them across the 26 paid toolkits. You can also download 9 whole files with no account, which tells you more about the writing than a sample page would. Three of those contents lists, in full, right here:
Turnover Cleaning Checklist
PDF · Free · no account- Room-by-room checklist (kitchen, baths, bedrooms, living, outdoor) with the commonly-missed items called out
- Guest-supplies restock list with par levels you can edit
- Photo-verification log: 10 photos your cleaner sends after every turnover
- Damage & left-behind-items quick report section
- Final walkthrough "guest eyes" pass: the 5-minute check before you mark the unit ready
STR Financial Command Center
XLSX · In the pass- P&L dashboard: monthly and YTD income, expenses, net, per-property split
- Booking log with nights, ADR, platform fees, and payout reconciliation
- Expense ledger: 22 categories mapped to Schedule E line items
- Mileage log with per-trip purpose (audit-friendly format)
- Occupancy & ADR calculator by month
- Year-end tax-prep checklist: what to gather, what to ask your CPA
- Per-property tracking across your whole portfolio
Operations Manual Template (SOP Binder)
DOCX · In the pass- Property fact sheet: systems, shutoffs, quirks, access codes log
- Vendor & contacts directory (with backup options per trade)
- Turnover SOP: cleaning standard, supplies, laundry, inspection
- Guest issue playbooks: lockout, Wi-Fi down, no hot water, noise complaint, plumbing
- Emergency procedures: gas, water, fire, power, severe weather
- Backup-host handoff page: the 2-page version for a friend covering a week
- Quarterly review checklist to keep the manual current
That's 3 of 35. The other 32 read the same way: a contents list you can check against your own week. No blurb ending in "and more".
Start with these 7
Free items download the moment you click. No account, no email address. Paid items come with the one-time All-Access Pass: all 26 for $49 USD.
PDFFreeTurnover Cleaning Checklist
A room-by-room list your cleaner works from on a turnover, plus what to restock. When they're done they send you 10 photos.
WORDFreeGuest Message Templates: Starter Pack
12 ready-to-send messages cover every stay, from booking confirmation to review request. Paste them into your Airbnb or Vrbo saved replies and swap the bracketed fields once.
WORD ProComplete Welcome Book Template
Swap the placeholder text for your details and the welcome book is done: arrival, Wi-Fi, house rules, appliance guides, local spots, and emergencies, all answered before a guest has to ask.
WORD ProGuest Messaging Master Pack
45+ templates cover the messages you have to get right: refund demands, complaints, a suspected party at 11pm, damage found after checkout, and cancellations.
EXCEL ProSTR Financial Command Center
One workbook logs bookings, expenses and mileage, sorts 22 categories onto the lines of Schedule E (the US tax form rental income goes on), and totals what you cleared each month.
PDF ProRevenue Management Playbook
How to build a nightly rate from your own costs and comp set, put four multipliers on the calendar, fix orphan nights, run a discount ladder that never goes under the floor, and review it all in fifteen minutes a week.
WORDFreeSeptic-Safe "Do Not Flush" Sign
Print this free sign for every bathroom. Most guests have no idea what one flushed wipe does to a septic system. Now they do.
Four jobs a document can't do
A checklist can't answer a guest at 11 p.m., and a PDF can't prove the turnover happened. Neither one knows where your spare heater went, or takes a booking from last summer's guest. The Home Manual, the Turnover Tracker, Inventory, and Book Direct do those four jobs. All free with an account.
FREE TOOL
Free
Home Manual
A guest guidebook at a short link: Wi-Fi with tap-to-copy, arrival steps, house rules, local favorites. Printable QR sign included, and the PDF export is yours to keep.
FREE TOOL
Free
Turnover Tracker
Calendar-synced turnovers for the cleaner you already trust. They get a text-able checklist link with photo proof, problem flags, and a claim-ready PDF report. No app to install.
FREE TOOL
Free
Inventory & Loans
The kayaks, bikes, cribs and space heaters guests borrow, and that quietly walk off. Book an item out for a date range and mark it back when it returns. The same four kayaks can't go to two families in one week.
FREE TOOL
Free
Book Direct
A booking page for your property with real availability from your calendar, a quote, and a request form. Guests pay on your own payment link. No platform fee in the middle.
Answer once, print finished. Or download and edit.
Two ways in. The builders ask about your property once and print finished documents. The library files download and open in Word or Excel. Both are yours to keep.
Answer the questions
The builders ask about your place once: rooms, Wi-Fi, quirks, rules. Say condo or cabin and the wrong questions disappear. The 9 free files need no account at all.
Print finished documents
Welcome book, operations manual, cleaning checklist, signs, guest messages. Finished, in your name, ready for the counter or the cleaner. The library files open in Word, Excel, Google Docs and Sheets.
Hand it off
Give the checklist to the cleaner, put the QR sign by the door, load the messages as saved replies. The host tools take it from there: turnovers by text, a manual at a link, a booking page of your own.
Keep it, and change it
Change the Wi-Fi password next year and reprint. The library files sit on your drive. Nothing renews, nothing expires, and the Pass covers every property you run.
What the pass covers. One payment of $49 USD opens all 26 paid toolkits. 20 of them are the core set every host uses. The other 6 are written for cabins, lakefronts and mountain houses. If you run a city condo and never touch a septic tank, ignore those 6 and judge the pass on the core 20.
Straight answer on those per-item prices. You can't buy a single file here; there is no one-item checkout. Each number is what that toolkit was priced at on its own, and nobody has ever been charged one. They're printed so you can count. Go down the list, mark the ones you'd really use, and add those up before you decide. The only thing for sale is the $49 USD pass, which also takes the Home Manual and Turnover Tracker from 1 property to 500.
If a management company already writes your SOPs, you're buying what you have. If you want software that does the work, these are documents you fill in once. If you want it done for you, that's the 1:1 session. And if you run one property and have never once wished you could hand it off, take the 9 free files and stop there. Go down the library list and mark the ones you would actually use this year. If you cannot name 4 of the 26, do not buy the pass yet.
Fixed-fee help from the person who wrote the files
Most problems are a missing document. The rest need a second pair of eyes. Every service starts with me saying whether a file would do instead.
1:1 Coaching
One call about the thing keeping you up. From $199 USD.
AI Audit
Whether ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity name you or a competitor when guests ask. What to fix first. From $795 USD.
Local SEO Audit
Your website against the searches guests type for your town. A report, a 90-day list, a call. $449 USD.
Listing Audit
One listing read by someone who is not you. Ten fixes in order. $149 USD.
Done-for-you Documents
A 45-minute call, then the finished set appears in your account. $199 USD.
Lexaily
Bookkeeping and owner statements for hosts who have outgrown the spreadsheet.
All services · Revenue management · Hosting in Canada · The ABCs, in order
Where these came from.
I'm Eric. For close to a decade, from the mid 2000s into the 2010s, I took a crew into Whistler every November. We deep cleaned more than 40 rental properties over two to three weeks, from condos to large homes. Every one of them had been professionally cleaned between guests all year. We were there for what those cleans missed.
Alongside that, I walked properties before guest arrival to confirm they were ready. That was steady work through my years at EMR Vacation Rentals, the company I founded in 2004 and sold to my business partner Blake MacKenzie in 2012. He runs it today and we still work together. So I have spent a long time standing in rentals somebody else had already called clean, writing down what was wrong with them.
Today I run Zima Enterprises. I build the marketing and direct-booking systems for cabin, lakefront and mountain rental operators. I also build Lexaily, a direct-booking plugin, myself.
I own a place on septic. It ran as a short-term rental for a while, and the sign in this library was posted in its bathrooms. I live at the end of a road with two spots that stop people when the weather turns.
I would rather you download a free file and find out whether it fits than take my word for any of this.
Coaching: one session, by inquiry
For the parts no template can see: your pricing knot, the permit fight with your county, the direct-booking setup on your own site. One 1:1 working session with me. You send the context ahead. We spend the time on your actual numbers, and you leave with the next steps written down. If the answer is a free download, that's the answer you'll get.
How coaching worksLexaily: direct bookings on your own WordPress site
The direct-booking plugin I build, for operators already on a PMS like Track or Barefoot. Your own site sells from that same calendar, guests pay by card through the SlimCD gateway, and the confirmation emails send themselves. It's built and tested end to end. Not in general release yet; early access is opening to a first group of operators. A booking taken on your own site keeps the roughly 15% the platforms take.
See LexailyQuestions hosts ask before they download
What's actually free?
9 complete resources, free, with no account and no email address. That includes the Turnover Cleaning Checklist, the Guest Message Starter Pack and the Income & Expense Tracker. Each one is the whole file. The Home Manual and Turnover Tracker are also free for your first property, on a free account.
Can I buy just one toolkit?
No, and I would rather say so here than let you go hunting for a buy button. There is no per-item checkout, so nothing in the library has a separate price. The $49 USD pass is the only thing for sale. Go down the list, mark what you would actually use this year, and decide whether that set is worth it.
What does the All-Access Pass include?
Every paid resource in the library. That's 26 toolkits today, including the 6 cabin, lakefront and mountain packs (septic, hot tub, bear country, wood stove, well water, winter access), plus anything added later, and the two host tools at up to 500 properties each. One payment of $49 USD. There's no subscription and no per-door fee.
I host in Canada. Does this apply to me?
Yes, and three of the toolkits come in a Canadian edition: the income and expense tracker built around the T776, the registry and tax tracker, and the startup checklist. The rules are different from the US ones. BC runs a provincial registry, Toronto requires city registration and a 6 percent accommodation tax, and Quebec needs a registration number on every listing. Hosting in Canada has the summary. If you host in Toronto, start with the Toronto short-term rental rules and the MAT.
Who is this not for?
Hotels, and anyone already paying a management company that writes their SOPs. You'd be buying paper you already own. Skip it too if you want a person to do the work: these are documents you fill in once and hand to a cleaner, a co-host, or your CPA. And if you've never wished you could hand the property to someone for a week, the 9 free files are probably all you need.
What formats do the files come in?
27 toolkits in both print-ready PDF and editable Word, plus 8 Excel workbooks. Download whichever suits the moment: the PDF prints as-is, the Word file is yours to customize, and nobody spends an evening converting one into the other. Trackers and calculators are Excel (.xlsx). Everything opens in Google Docs, Sheets and LibreOffice too.
Is this legal or tax advice?
No. These are general business tools written by an operator, and regulations and taxes vary by city and situation. Run anything binding past your own CPA, insurer, or attorney.
The straightforward part
Start free. 9 complete files, no account and no email address. That's how you find out whether I write documents you'd actually hand to a cleaner. If you then buy the pass and it doesn't earn its keep, tell me. I'll fix the file, walk you through it, or refund the pass. There's no deadline, no form, and nothing that says all sales are final: the guarantee, in full.
Take the free checklist. Hand it to someone this week.
If it saves you one same-day scramble, you'll know whether the other 26 are worth $49 USD.