Jeff runs six lakefront vacation rentals on Lake Huron—five that he owns and one arbitrage property. The properties are all lakefront, which means seasonal maintenance demands and a steady stream of small repairs and supply runs.
With a small team handling maintenance, lawn care, and cleaning, he needed a way to track finances across multiple properties without becoming an accountant.
Jeff had used QuickBooks for other businesses and didn't want to go down that road again. "You pretty much have to pay somebody to do the damn thing," he recalls.
When Jeff saw an Ambrook ad on Facebook promising automated bookkeeping, he decided to test it for Lake Life Cabin Rentals. His rule was simple: if it wasn't easy to set up quickly, he'd walk away. "If it doesn't work within the first small amount of time, and if it's like QuickBooks—if it's a pain in the butt—I'm not gonna go any farther."
Ambrook passed the test.
The Problem: Lost receipts, lost write-offs
Before Ambrook, Jeff's bookkeeping system was a box of receipts and year-end Excel spreadsheets. "I did mine at the end of the year and I just kept stuff in a box and had all the receipts I had to put in Excel sheets," he said. "The amount of time it took to do that was a lot of hours."
But the real cost wasn't just time—it was money left on the table. Receipts got lost. His team would make purchases and forget to report them. Mileage went untracked. Small expenses added up to big gaps at tax time. A $50 hardware run here, a forgotten cleaning supply trip there—things were slipping through the cracks.
"It's not just the hours. It's how many receipts you lose, how many you forget to log at the time you make the purchase, how many you sit on for months."
Lake Life Cabin Rentals operates six vacation properties on Lake Huron in Northeast Michigan.
The Setup: No accounting background required
What sold Jeff on Ambrook was how quickly he could get up and running, without needing to understand accounting.
Jeff connected his bank accounts and started categorizing transactions right away. Ambrook's interface made it intuitive to assign expenses to the right categories, and the automations meant that recurring purchases—like hardware store runs—got tagged automatically.
"Anybody who has tried QuickBooks knows that you have to understand accounting to use it. With Ambrook, you don't. That's big."
Jeff set up each of his six cabins as a separate enterprise, giving him clear visibility into each property's performance. When his maintenance worker fixes a faucet at Cabin One, the receipt gets logged directly to that cabin. When he runs a marketing campaign across all properties, he tags them all and can then easily split the cost proportionally in Ambrook.
"If my team's out doing maintenance on Cabin One, they just log the receipt under Cabin One in Ambrook, right when they do it."
Each cabin is tracked as a separate enterprise in Ambrook, giving Jeff clear visibility into profitability by property.
3 Key features: What Jeff uses and why
1. Team Spending Cards
Jeff issued Ambrook Wallet cards to his maintenance worker and cleaner. He can set spending limits, pause cards when they're not needed, and his team uploads receipts on the spot.
"The cleaner needs cleaning supplies," Jeff explains. "Now, rather than have me do it, they can just pick up the supplies, put it on the card, take a picture of the receipt, pop it in Ambrook. And everything just goes right through."
2. Auto-Categorization
For recurring purchases like hardware supplies, Ambrook recognizes the transactions and automatically categorizes them—saving Jeff from manual data entry.
"When my hardware purchases, or other things I purchase all the time, go into Ambrook," explains Jeff, "it just automatically tags them for me."
3. Reporting & Cash Flow Tracking
Now that Jeff has over a year of data in Ambrook, he's started using the reporting features to track cash flow trends month over month.
"Now that I've been using it for over a year, I can look at history for my monthly costs and cash flow," says Jeff. "I use some of the other reporting too—now that I have more time built up using it." With each cabin tracked as a separate enterprise, he can see exactly where money is going property by property.
It's part of what he values most: knowing where the business stands without having to ask anyone.
"It lets you give cards to your workers. You can set a limit on them or turn them off till they need to use it. There's no lost paperwork and it's all always up to date."
Jeff, owner of Lake Life Cabin Rentals, cut his bookkeeping to a couple hours a month with Ambrook.
The Impact: 20–30% more write-offs captured
The biggest financial benefit? Capturing expenses that used to slip through the cracks.
Jeff estimates he's now claiming 20–30% more write-offs because his team logs expenses in real time rather than reconstructing them at year-end.
Mileage is a prime example. Before Ambrook, Jeff would manually count receipts and calculate trips to each store. Now he can run a report showing how many trips were made to each location—including trips made by his workers.
"Most people forget to capture that," says Jeff. "If they have their son pick something up or one of their workers pick something up for them, they don't get the mileage for that because they don't think about it."
“You'll gain an extra 20 or 30% write-offs because you're doing it right on time. You're not losing the receipts, you're not forgetting to log them, your people aren't sitting on them and you aren't forgetting to ask them for them."
Time savings
Jeff went from hours of year-end data entry to a couple hours per month of bookkeeping maintenance.
"Once your first two months are set up in Ambrook and you get everything automated," says Jeff, "you're only spending a couple hours a month doing your bookkeeping."
Real-time visibility
Perhaps most valuable: Jeff always knows where his business stands financially—without relying on anyone else.
"The best part is knowing at every second where you're at without having to rely on someone else. Ambrook's always up to date, instantly."
"Ambrook's always up to date, instantly."
Jeff's maintenance and cleaning team use Ambrook spending cards to purchase supplies on the go.
His advice: "Take a chance."
Jeff's advice to other short-term rental operators?
"Take a chance and try it. When I saw the advertisement, it hit something. I was like, I'm going to try this. If it's that simple and easy, I'm going to try it. And sure enough, it was very simple."
For small property managers—even those with just one or two Airbnbs—Jeff sees a clear opportunity: stop missing write-offs and stop wrestling with software that wasn't built for you.
"Even somebody who just has one Airbnb, I think they're missing a lot of those write-offs and they have no easy way to do it because they're just normal everyday people," explains Jeff. "Ambrook's ease of use would be beneficial for them. It'd be something anyone could pick up and run with."
"Even somebody who just has one Airbnb, I think they're missing a lot of those write-offs because they have no easy way to do it. Ambrook would be beneficial for them. It's something anyone could pick up and run with."
Jeff's story points to a bigger opportunity for short-term rental operators. Most are leaving money on the table—missing write-offs, losing receipts, skipping mileage tracking—because the tools available weren't built for how they actually run their businesses.
For Jeff, the switch to Ambrook meant keeping thousands more dollars in his pocket at tax time.
Take mileage alone: his maintenance worker runs to Ace Hardware regularly—20 miles round trip, roughly 200 trips a year. That's 4,000 miles he'd never have tracked before. "That's $2,000 back in my pocket that I wasn't capturing before. Most people aren't keeping track of those little things like that," he said. "Ambrook makes it simple."
“That's $2,000 back in my pocket that I wasn't capturing before. Most people aren't keeping track of those little things like that. Ambrook makes it simple."
Try Ambrook for free