Hostfully adds two finance tools to its marketplace, both answering the same question about per-property profit

Hostfully added two integrations to its marketplace on 7 October, and both are aimed at the same question: what is each property actually earning after costs.

MagicBnB takes data already in Hostfully and turns it into portfolio reporting. Hostfully describes it as flagging underperforming listings, reconciling revenue against your bank, and showing true net profit per property.

Topkey is the larger of the two. It is a financial operating system for property managers that categorises bills, receipts and payments by property, manages expenses and approvals, and supports revenue recognition. Topkey raised a 5.2 million dollar seed round in July 2023 led by Felicis, so it is an established vendor in this space rather than a new arrival.

Why two at once

Per-property profitability is the gap in most short-term rental stacks. A PMS knows what came in. An accounting package knows what went out. Very few managers can answer, without a spreadsheet, which of their units lost money last quarter once cleaning, maintenance, card fees and owner splits are counted. Both of these tools exist because that spreadsheet is a monthly chore.

Bank reconciliation is the part worth looking at closely. Revenue in a PMS is what the platform says it will pay you. Revenue in your bank is what arrived, after an OTA held something back, a chargeback landed, or a payout got split across two deposits. Reconciling the two is tedious and it is where the real number lives.

The overlap problem

There is a wrinkle here that Hostfully has not addressed. The company launched its own accounting module for US and Canadian managers in mid September. Now it is listing two third-party finance tools in the marketplace, and both do work that sounds adjacent to it.

That is not a contradiction, and marketplaces normally carry some overlap with the host platform. But it does put the decision on the operator. Before connecting either of these, work out which system is going to be the one you trust for a given number. Running expense categorisation in two places is how you end up with two different profit figures for the same property and no way to tell which is wrong.

Worth noting too: Hostfully's announcements are a few lines each, with no pricing, no plan requirement and no regional availability. Topkey and MagicBnB both price their own products, so the cost of these is whatever those vendors charge, not something bundled into a Hostfully plan. Check that before scoping it.

What to do with this

If you manage for owners and your month end involves a spreadsheet that reconciles payouts against a bank statement, one of these is worth a trial. Topkey is the fuller product if approvals and revenue recognition matter to you, which generally means a larger portfolio or an accountant who asks pointed questions. MagicBnB is the lighter answer if the only thing you want is net profit per listing and a flag on the units dragging the portfolio down.

If you already run accounting elsewhere and it works, neither of these is urgent. The reason to move is that your current answer takes a day a month to produce, not that a new connector exists.