Consider data from Airdna and look at visitation, visitor growth, what are the feeder markets.If you ever make it to Florida - St Augustine, Palm Coast or Ponte Vedra Beach in particular, I'd be glad to show you around, tell you what to spend and what it will earn. 

FED cannot avoid cutting rates they dropped in December and January and a CPI index report crushed everything that was really all hedged data.  

AirDNA can provide some insights on data in the market you're planning to work in.

How is one able to do data to see how other STRs are booked/performing in that month?

A great place for CA investors because it's close to CA, no income tax, landlord friendly, tech job (Data centers), manufacturing job growth (Tesla), geographically constrained, and the 4th lowest property taxes (do not reassess on sale) in the nation. 

You keep track of all of your real estate related transactions (date, amount, vendor name, purpose, property identifier) and then create a pivot table from this data to quickly create a rough Profit & Loss Statement.

This is HEAVILY skewed data.

How should we go about recording data in QuickBooks.

Get data from your title company or RE agent showing average DOM (days on market) for listings in your subject property area, find out how many homes are currently for sale, pending and sold today, 6 months ago, 1 year ago, 3 years ago.

You need data to tell you people are stuck?