Payment day for forty hosts
Hosts are paid every two weeks, or monthly, depending on how your school does it. The accommodation officer takes the placement list, checks each student's actual dates against their booking, adds the extra night for a late flight, takes off the week a student left early, and adjusts for the student who switched from half board to self catering. Then it goes into a spreadsheet for the accounts person, who sets up the bank payments.
A host rings the week after to say she is a night short. She is right, because the extension email went to reception and never reached accommodation. Another has been paid for a student who moved to a different host on day four.
Why host pay is harder than it looks
The rate itself is simple. What makes it hard is how often the underlying stay changes, and how many people hear about those changes.
- Extensions come in through agents, reception or the student themselves.
- Early departures are sometimes known in advance and sometimes only when the student does not come back.
- Students move host, and the week gets split between two households.
- Rates differ by meal plan, room type, peak season and sometimes by host.
- Extra nights for early arrivals or late flights are agreed informally.
The payment spreadsheet is a copy of the placements, made on payment day, so every change since the placement was made has to be remembered and applied by hand.
The cost of getting host pay wrong
Underpaying hosts damages the relationship with the people your homestay offer depends on. Overpaying costs money that is awkward to ask back. Both cost time: the accommodation officer spends payment day checking dates rather than looking after students and hosts, and queries from hosts take several emails to settle because nobody can easily show how the amount was worked out.
It also makes it hard to see what homestay actually costs you against what you charge students and agents for it.
The host payment run we build
- Placements are held as dated records: student, host, check-in, check-out, meal plan and room type.
- Extensions, early departures and host moves change the placement record, from whichever team hears about them, through a simple form.
- Your rate card is stored with its seasons and any host-specific rates.
- On payment day, the run calculates each host's nights per student, applies the right rate, and lists each adjustment separately with its reason.
- Anything unusual, such as a placement with no check-out date or nights that overlap with another host, is held back for a person to check.
- Once the accommodation officer approves, the run produces a payment file for your bank or accounts package, such as Xero or Sage, and a statement for each host.
- Hosts receive their statement by email, showing each student and night, so most queries answer themselves.
| Change in the stay | How the run treats it |
|---|---|
| Extension by a week | Extra nights at the rate for those dates |
| Left early | Nights to the actual check-out date, per your policy |
| Moved to another host | Nights split between the two hosts |
| Meal plan changed | Rate changes from the date of the change |
| Extra night for a late flight | Added as an approved adjustment with a note |
What you pay for early departures, and whether hosts get notice payments, is your policy. The run applies it; it does not set it.
Payment day becomes a check, not a rebuild
The accommodation officer opens the run, reviews the exceptions, approves and sends the file to accounts. Hosts get a clear statement. When a host queries a payment, the answer is on the statement or one click away in the placement history.
Because every night is recorded against a student and a host, you can finally compare homestay income from each booking with what you paid out for it.
Do host payments feel like this?
- Host pay is worked out in a spreadsheet copied from placements.
- Hosts regularly query how their amount was calculated.
- Extensions and early leavers are missed on payment day.
- Host moves in the middle of a week cause mistakes.
- You cannot easily see the margin on homestay.