Frequently Asked Questions

Visit our Sign Up page, fill out the form with your information, and you'll have instant access. Your first 2 months are free (limited time launch offer), and setup takes less than 5 minutes.

Yes. Your first 2 calendar months are completely free with all core features (limited time launch offer). You'll also get a 30-minute onboarding call to help you get up and running. After your trial, pay per property with volume discounts as you grow.

All you need is an email address to create your account. If you use Hospitable, have your login handy: connecting it lets CohostIQ pull in your properties for you. No booking system yet? You can add your first property by hand with just a name and city.

Yes. CohostIQ scales with your business. Whether you manage 5 properties or 500, the platform adapts to your needs. Smaller operators benefit from organized workflows and time savings; larger operations rely on the team management, cleaning operations, and reporting features. Volume pricing means cost per property drops as you grow.

CohostIQ supports short-term rentals (STR), mid-term rentals (MTR), small hotels, and homeowner associations (HOA). The onboarding wizard adapts to the type you pick: HOA companies skip PMS connection and reservation import, for example, and get dues rulesets instead of payment rulesets. Most of the platform (billing, reporting, owner/member portal, QuickBooks sync) works for all four. HOA management has its own set of tools; see HOA & COA for details.

Less than 5 minutes. Setup is three short screens, and anything that isn't needed to get going is left for later. You can be looking at your own properties in CohostIQ the same sitting you sign up.

Three screens: Connect, Import, and Go.

1. Connect. Connect your booking system (Hospitable), tell us whether you use QuickBooks, optionally set up Stripe for taking payments, and secure your account with two-factor sign-in.
2. Import. CohostIQ scans your booking system and shows you what it found. Pick the properties you want, confirm the cities and timezone (pulled from your properties, so you don't build a location list by hand), and optionally pull in your booking history. No booking system? Add your first property by hand with just a name and city.
3. Go. Set your cut (for example, a percentage of the nightly rate), add your owners, and optionally invite your team. HOA companies set up dues here instead.

Every answer can be changed later.

Those are set up after you go live, so they don't slow down getting started. During onboarding we only ask whether you use QuickBooks. If you do, connecting it is its own short walkthrough. If you don't, owner invoices generate and send straight from CohostIQ with nothing else to configure. Taxes, Airbnb cohost payout rules, and fine-grained team permissions are all available from Settings whenever you're ready.

CohostIQ supports several import methods:

• PMS import (recommended). Once you've connected Hospitable or your other PMS, you can pull historical reservations straight from the source. Set the start date as far back as possible and the importer handles the rest.
• CSV import. Upload a spreadsheet of reservation data using our template.
• Manual entry. Add reservations one at a time if you have just a handful.

The more history you import, the more useful the year-over-year reports and tax summaries become. New reservations sync automatically from your PMS going forward.

During onboarding, only the admin (the person who created the account) can complete the setup steps. Other team members invited during onboarding will see a "Setup in Progress" page until the admin finishes setup. Once live, team members have access based on their assigned roles.

Yes. Everything you set up during onboarding can be modified later. Add more properties, change payment rulesets, update team member roles, and adjust settings anytime from your dashboard. Onboarding just gets you started fast.

CohostIQ connects to your PMS (Hospitable, with others on the way) to pull in properties and reservations. You keep using your PMS for guests, channels, listings, and messaging. CohostIQ adds the things your PMS doesn't do: owner billing, cohost payout math, cleaning operations, maintenance with property item tracking, and the QuickBooks sync to tie everything together.

If your smart locks and thermostats are connected to Hospitable, CohostIQ sees them too. You can lock and unlock doors from CohostIQ, and we watch your locks and thermostats for problems so you hear about them before a guest does (see the maintenance question below).

Maintenance in CohostIQ is built around the items at each property. Every appliance, hot tub, HVAC unit, and major furnishing is tracked with purchase dates, warranties, and full repair history. When something breaks for the third time, you see it instantly as a repeat offender so you can stop pouring money into a unit that needs replacement.

Tickets can be created manually or created automatically:

• Guest issues reported in Hospitable become an urgent Break/Fix ticket.
• Low smart lock batteries open a ticket when a lock drops below the threshold you set.
• HostBuddy and Turno can create tickets automatically too.

CohostIQ also keeps an eye on thermostats connected through Hospitable and flags likely problems with the thermostat or AC unit, such as high humidity while a guest is in the home, the fan left on with nobody there, or the temperature drifting well past the setpoint. We don't control your thermostats; we just tell you when something looks wrong.

Assignments go out by push notification and SMS, and your maintenance crew works the ticket from the mobile maintenance app (separate from the cleaning app). They log parts, hours, and photos on the phone. Costs flow straight to the right owner's statement with a full audit trail.

Owner statements generate from reservations, your payment rulesets, and any logged expenses. Each statement shows gross revenue, management fees, cleaning fees, maintenance, and the net payout. Owners can view statements directly through the owner portal, and you can download PDFs. If you connect QuickBooks, statements post directly as invoices and credit memos with no double entry.

The Owner Portal gives each property owner their own secure login to view their properties. Owners can see upcoming reservations, review past statements, track property performance, and view maintenance history. Transparency builds trust and cuts down on owner emails asking the same questions every month.

CohostIQ includes a range of reports:

• Revenue reports. Track income by property, owner, or time period.
• Occupancy reports. See booking rates and identify gaps.
• Year-over-year comparison. Compare performance across years.
• Expense reports. Analyze spending by category.
• Cleaning P&L. Cleaner pay vs. cleaning fees collected, with property and cleaner leaderboards.
• Tax reports. Per-jurisdiction summaries based on your tax setup.

All reports can be filtered by date range and exported to CSV or PDF.

Yes. CohostIQ uses role-based permissions. Common roles include Admin, Manager, Cleaner, Maintenance, Purchasing, and CSR. Each role has specific permissions for what users can see and do. You can also limit team members to specific properties or locations so they only see what's relevant to their work.

CohostIQ runs cleaning operations end to end. Jobs are auto-created from reservations and assigned to your preferred cleaner or crew per property. Templates support reusable checklists with conditional tasks (different items based on day of week, guest count, pet count, or season), and 4 different pay models per template (total job, lead + sub, per hour, or per room).

Cleaners work the job from the mobile cleaning app: timer, step-by-step checklist, photo uploads tied to tasks, problem reporting, and linen tracking when laundry goes off-site. Cleaner pay is calculated per job, totaled per pay period, and paid via cash, check, Venmo, Zelle, PayPal, Stripe, or QuickBooks payroll (coming soon). The cleaning cost flows straight to the right owner's statement.

If you use Turno, you can import their templates and pull in completed Turno projects for reporting.

Cohost payout math is the reason a lot of cohosts find us. Airbnb pays you a percentage of the entire booking (or the booking minus cleaning), plus the cleaning fee. Your actual commission is usually a percentage of base rent only, and the cleaning fee Airbnb passes through includes a 15.5% host fee on top of the real cleaning cost. The result: Airbnb overpays you, and you owe the owner a credit on every reservation.

CohostIQ supports 5 payout methods to match however your platform pays you: Cleaning Only, Cleaning + a percentage, Percentage Excluding Cleaning, Percentage Including Cleaning, or Fixed per Booking. For each reservation we calculate the right commission, the right cleaning credit, and the right owner credit automatically. No spreadsheets, no reverse-engineering payouts, no missed credits.

Yes. CohostIQ ships two separate mobile apps (progressive web apps, no app store install needed):

• Cleaning app. Cleaners see their jobs, run the checklist, upload photos, report problems, track linens going off-site, and check in with optional GPS. Pay is tracked per job.
• Maintenance app. Technicians get assigned tickets with full property and item history, log parts and labor, upload before/after photos, and close tickets from the field.

Both apps use single sign-on from the manager portal (no separate accounts) and produce a complete audit trail behind every job.

Yes, but on rails. Owner billing, cohost payouts, and statement math run on deterministic rules so the dollars are always right. AI shows up where it actually helps:

• CIQ Concierge (Beta). AI guest messaging that drafts or auto-sends replies grounded in each property's real data, and never invents details it can't verify. A human can step in anytime. Available as an add-on module.
• InboxIQ (Beta). Every guest conversation in one installable app for your team, with CIQ Concierge suggestions built in. Available as an add-on module.
• Ask CohostIQ. A built-in assistant grounded in your real data. Ask "what was Sunset Villa's revenue last March?" or "any open maintenance at Lakeside?" and get answers from your portfolio. It can also create maintenance tickets straight from the conversation.
• CohostIQ MCP (in development). Our own Model Context Protocol server, so you can connect Claude, ChatGPT, or Cursor to your CohostIQ data for fuzzy queries while the deterministic billing rules keep your statements safe.

Yes. You set up a short list of the consumables you care about (toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap, coffee, and so on). At the end of each job, cleaners mark each one Good, Low, or Out in the cleaning app, and you see which properties need supplies before the next guest arrives.

Linens are handled per property too. You set the mode (on-site, off-site cleaner, vendor service, or mixed), and when laundry goes off-site, the cleaning app tracks the checkout with a days-out counter so nothing gets lost.

For vacation rental and short-term rental portfolios, CohostIQ uses volume-based per-property pricing. The more properties you have, the lower the per-property rate, and volume discounts apply automatically as you add properties, so there's nothing to upgrade or downgrade manually. See the pricing page for current tiers.

Homeowner and condo associations are priced differently, by unit count, as a flat monthly rate. See HOA & COA pricing.

We accept all major credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover) through Stripe. Contact us at support@cohostiq.app if you need custom billing arrangements.

No long-term contract. Pricing is month to month and you can cancel anytime from your account settings.

If you cancel your subscription, you'll have access until the end of your current billing period. After that, your account is deactivated but your data is retained for 90 days in case you decide to return. You can request a full data export at any time before or after cancellation.