January, a shoebox and three spreadsheets
Your accountant has asked for your figures by the end of the month. The bank statement shows payouts from Airbnb that cover several bookings at once, net of their fee. Booking.com guests paid you at checkout by card, and Booking.com sends a commission invoice every month that you pay by direct debit. Some Booking.com guests prepaid, and you were paid by a virtual card. Direct guests paid deposits by bank transfer and the balance by card or cash.
To give your accountant a clear picture, you need to know, for each stay, what the guest paid, what commission was taken, and when the money reached you. You spend three evenings with the bank statements, the card machine reports, the OTA extranets and your diary, and still have a few amounts that you cannot place.
Why the numbers do not line up
Each channel pays you in its own way, and none of them match the way your bank shows the money.
- Airbnb pays out several stays in one amount, after deducting its fee.
- Booking.com usually bills commission separately, after the stay, as its own invoice.
- Prepaid OTA bookings may arrive as virtual card payments.
- Direct guests pay deposits and balances at different times, by different methods.
- Card machine settlements group many payments together.
- Cancellations and refunds create negative amounts that are easy to lose.
None of this is difficult on its own. It is the volume and the mixture that turn it into days of work.
What the year-end scramble costs
Evenings you do not have, at a time of year you should be resting. A bigger accountant's bill if they have to do the matching instead. And a lingering worry that something is wrong: income counted twice, commission missed, a refund forgotten.
It also means you do not really know, month by month, what each channel actually brought in after commission, which is useful to know when deciding where to put your effort.
Mistakes found late are also harder to fix. A Booking.com commission charge for a guest who never arrived, or an Airbnb payout that was short, is easy to query in the month it happens and much harder to query nine months later when the booking has been forgotten and the platform's window for questions may have closed.
How we build a monthly payment record
- Your bookings are read from your booking system or calendar each month, with channel, dates, price and guest.
- Payout reports from Airbnb, commission statements from Booking.com and your card machine or payment provider's reports are collected as files or through their connections.
- Your bank statement is read from your bank's export, or from your accounting package's bank feed if you use Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent.
- Each payment is matched to the booking or bookings it covers, and each commission to the stay it relates to.
- Amounts that cannot be matched are listed for you to look at, with a best guess, while the month is still fresh in your mind.
- At the end of each month, and at year end, a summary goes to your accountant in the format they want: income by stay, commission by channel, payments received.
| Money in the bank | Matched to |
|---|---|
| Airbnb payout | The three stays it covers, and the fee deducted |
| Card machine settlement | Balances paid by five guests that week |
| Bank transfer 'J SMITH' | Deposit for the Smith booking in July |
| Booking.com direct debit | Commission for last month's four stays |
We do not give tax advice or prepare your accounts. The record is for you and your accountant to work from.
January, with the record already done
Every month, you spend a few minutes on the unmatched list. At year end, the summary for the year is already there. You send it to your accountant, who asks one question instead of twenty.
Along the way, the monthly view tells you what each channel brought in after commission. You may find that one channel you worried about is worth it, or that another costs more than you thought.
Does this sound familiar at year end?
- Year-end figures take you several evenings or more.
- OTA payouts cover several stays and are hard to split.
- Booking.com commission invoices are paid but not linked to stays.
- Your accountant has to do the matching for you.
- Some amounts in the bank remain a mystery.