Fees and commissions

Fees and commissions split reservation revenue between the owner and you. Each fee posts an expense on the owner statement and the same amount as revenue on your property manager statement. You set a fee up once on Fees and Commissions, then apply it to listings.

Kind	Typical use
Management commission	Your percentage of the rent
Booking channel fees	Booking.com and Vrbo fees you charge to the owner
Merchant fees	Card processing fees you pass to the owner
Cleaning fees	Cleaning revenue that belongs to you
Other fees	Flat or percentage fees such as an admin fee

Create a management commission

1. On Fees and Commissions, click Add Fee and select Management Commission.
2. Enter the name, the rate and the booking channels it applies to. Select several channels in one fee instead of one fee per channel.
3. Under the advanced settings, choose the revenue recognition. It must match your default under Settings > Accounting Preferences. Choose Booked only, or All reservations when cancellation revenue is commissionable. Add a tax rate if one applies.
4. Check the accounts. The revenue account appears on your statement, the expense account on the owner statement.
5. Choose the commissionable accounts, the base the rate applies to. The default is usually rent net of channel and merchant fees. Add the cleaning fee revenue account when cleaning counts. Each account shows the PMS line types mapped to it.
6. Open Preview, pick a channel and a reservation, and check the commission per line. Test each channel.
7. Save.

Other fees work the same way. A channel fee, merchant fee or other fee that posts to a commissionable account lowers the commission base.

Flat and percentage fees

Create them as Other Fee. Name them with their amount, such as “Admin Fee 5%”. A flat fee has a charge basis: per reservation, per night, per guest, or per guest per night. Set Include reservations to Booked only so cancelled bookings are not charged.

Booking channel fees

Airbnb fees come with the payout and need no fee. For Booking.com and Vrbo, the Booking Channel Fees templates charge the owner on the reservation date instead of when the channel’s bill arrives:

• Actual channel fee takes the fee from the PMS reservation line at 100 percent. It needs the channel commission line mapped to a reference account under Settings > Accounting Preferences. The reservation then shows the channel fee and the struck-through PMS line.
• Estimated channel fee takes a percentage, such as 5 percent, of the revenue accounts you choose. Use it when the PMS line is missing or unreliable, which is common for Vrbo.

Skip this setup when you pay channel fees yourself.

Conditional fees

Under Amount conditions, apply a fee only when the commissionable amount is equal to, greater than, lower than or between amounts. Example: 25 percent above 10,000 dollars and 30 percent below. “Greater than 0” skips reservations of zero.

Apply fees to listings

1. Open the fee and go to its Listings tab.
2. Select the listings and set the start date, or leave it as Inception to apply it from the beginning without an end.
3. Save.

A start date before your go-live date creates no journal entries before the ledger start. It does pull in merchant fees of advance deposits for stays after go-live. A fee that looks inactive is usually attached to no listing.

New listings get suggested fees from your library. Attach only those that apply, because two similar fees double-charge. To remove a fee, open the listing, go to its fees and remove it. When published statements already cover the fee, the portal offers to archive it instead. The fee then ends at the first open date and its earlier entries stay.

On the Listings tab of a fee you can also change the start and end dates of many listings at once.

A date change is refused when statements in review or published still hold fees that the change would leave without a period. Return those statements to draft, newest month first, change the dates, then publish or send them to review again. A month that is already paid out shows the difference as a balance forward on the next statement. When you switch a listing to booked date, leave the start date blank, or bookings made before it block the change. To keep past statements as they are, end the old fee after the last booking that sits on a statement.

Fees on a listing group

A fee on a listing group applies only to reservations booked on the group itself, such as a combined unit. The member listings keep their own fees. To charge the same rate on every member, apply the fee to each member.

Before you publish statements

Finish fee setup before any owner statement is in review or published. Fees do not recalculate on reservations that are locked. See Adjust reservation financials and fees.