Answers · Bookings into your accounts
How do I record Airbnb and Booking.com commission in my accounts?
Short answer
Record the full booking value as income and the channel's commission as a separate expense. Never record only the net payout. Airbnb deducts its fee before it pays you, so the fee has to be shown as a cost of the booking. Booking.com often bills commission on its own invoice, which you record as an expense against the bookings it covers. Give each channel its own commission account so you can see what it costs you. Airflow reads the fee from each booking-confirmation email and puts it on its own line of a draft invoice in Xero, beside accommodation and cleaning, for you to review and approve.
Read the guide to tracking channel commission as an expense →
Why the fee goes missing
On most channels you never hand the commission over. It is deducted before the payout reaches your bank, so it does not feel like an expense. If a 600 booking pays out 510 and you record 510, your turnover is understated by every fee all year, and turnover is the figure a tax return reports and the one that decides whether you cross a VAT threshold. The 90 of commission, a business expense, never appears.
The rates differ by channel. Airbnb now charges most hosts a single service fee of 15.5% of the booking subtotal, taken from the payout, within a range of 14 to 16%. On the older split fee most hosts pay 3%, and Airbnb says that structure is being phased out. Booking.com charges a commission per booking, often in the mid-teens per cent. Vrbo charges hosts on its pay-per-booking plan about 8%: a 5% commission plus a 3% payment processing fee. Rates change and vary by country, so the only certain figure is the one on your own payout breakdown.
How to do it with Airflow
- 1
Create the accounts in Xero
Add an expense account for commission, ideally one per channel: Airbnb Commission, Booking.com Commission, Vrbo Commission. Keep accommodation and cleaning in separate income accounts.
- 2
Connect Xero and send Airflow your booking emails
Connect your Xero organisation in the Airflow portal, then forward your confirmation emails or connect Gmail or Outlook. The same process creates draft invoices in QuickBooks Online, Sage or FreshBooks.
- 3
Airflow puts the fee on its own line
Each email is read into a booking: guest, dates, nightly rate, cleaning fee, the channel's fee, payout, currency and reference. The draft invoice shows accommodation, cleaning and the fee as separate lines, tagged to the property and tied to the booking reference.
- 4
Review, approve and add any separate bills
Open the draft in Xero, check the account and tax treatment on the fee line, and approve it yourself. Where Booking.com invoices its commission separately, enter that invoice as a bill against your Booking.com Commission account.
One Airbnb booking, recorded in full
A stay with a subtotal of 1,000.00, using the 15.5% single fee most Airbnb hosts pay. An illustration, not your rate.
| Accommodation | 900.00 |
|---|---|
| Cleaning fee | 100.00 |
| Airbnb host service fee | -155.00 |
| Payout to match in the bank | 845.00 |
| If you recorded only the payout | 155.00 of income and 155.00 of cost missing |
Airbnb charges its fee on the nightly rate plus your cleaning and other fees, not on taxes.
Record the fee the channel reports, not a headline rate
Commission is charged on a commissionable amount, which is not always the booking total. On one reservation with a total of 1,560, the commissionable amount was 1,533.56 and the commission 230.03: 15% of the commissionable amount, not of the total. Multiplying a headline rate by the booking total will be slightly wrong every time, so use the figure on the confirmation or the commission invoice.
Tax on commission, and money that is not income
Commission may carry VAT or reverse-charge treatment depending on where you and the channel are based, and in some countries VAT is applied to Booking.com's commission. Confirm the treatment with your accountant. Keep three other amounts out of income: a refundable damage deposit and an occupancy tax you collect to pass on are liabilities, and the service fee a Vrbo guest pays to Vrbo is neither your income nor your expense.
Other ways to do this
Airflow is one option. These are the others, and when each is the better choice.
- A manual entry for each payout
- Enter the gross booking and the fee yourself in your accounting package. Accurate if you are careful, and realistic for a few bookings a month.
- The channel's own reports
- Your Airbnb payout breakdown and Booking.com's commission invoices give you the fee for each booking. You can total them each month and post one commission figure per channel, at the cost of per-booking detail.
- A bookkeeper
- A bookkeeper who knows short-term rentals will gross up the payouts and post the fees for you, and can advise on the tax treatment of the commission.
What Airflow does not do
- Invoices are created as drafts. Airflow does not approve, send or file them.
- Airflow does not record Booking.com's separate commission invoice. You enter that bill and match it to the bookings it covers.
- Airflow does not decide the tax treatment of commission, deposits or pass-through taxes for your country. The review step is where you confirm them.
- Airflow charges no commission of its own on channel bookings, and it cannot change what a channel charges you.
Common questions
Is Airbnb's service fee an expense or a reduction of income?
An expense. Record the gross booking as revenue and the fee as a cost. Netting it off makes both your revenue and your costs look smaller than they are. A chart of accounts for short-term rentals →
Should I use one commission account or one per channel?
One per channel. Your profit and loss then shows what each channel costs, which is the number you need when deciding where to push for direct bookings. A chart of accounts for short-term rentals →
How is Vrbo's fee different from Airbnb's?
Vrbo takes about 8% from a host on its pay-per-booking plan, as a 5% commission and a 3% payment processing fee, and charges the guest a separate service fee. Both host charges are costs of the booking; the guest's fee stays out of your books. Vrbo and Airbnb host fees compared →
Where do cleaning fees and damage deposits go?
A cleaning fee is income, in its own account. A refundable damage deposit is a liability until you refund it or keep part of it. Treatment varies by country, so confirm it with your accountant. Cleaning fees, deposits and taxes in your books →
Why is what I keep lower than the headline rate suggests?
Taxes collected on your behalf, currency conversion and the occasional refund also sit between what the guest paid and your payout. The useful figure is the share of the guest's money that ended up as yours, by channel. What your channel commission actually costs →
Try it on your own bookings
Forward a few booking emails and look at what Airflow builds from them. A card is needed at sign-up.
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