How to Track OTA Commissions as Expenses (Airbnb, Booking.com & VRBO)
The fee you paid but never saw
Every OTA booking carries a commission, and on most platforms you never actually hand it over — it is deducted before the payout reaches your bank. That quiet deduction is exactly why so many hosts fail to record it. You did not write a cheque, so it does not feel like an expense. But it is one, and ignoring it distorts both your revenue and your costs.
This guide explains how each major platform charges, how to record those commissions correctly as expenses, and how Airflow does the split for you. It is part of our wider guide to accounting for short-term rentals.
How each platform charges
The three big platforms structure their fees differently, and the differences matter for your books.
- Airbnb. Most software-connected hosts, and most hosts outside the US, are on Airbnb's host-only fee — typically around 15% (roughly 14–16%) deducted from the host. A minority remain on the older split-fee model, where the host pays a smaller share (around 3%) and the guest pays a separate service fee on top. Which model you are on changes the fee figure you will see, so check your own payout breakdown rather than assuming.
- Booking.com. Charges a commission per booking, often in the mid-teens percent, and frequently bills it separately or invoices it rather than netting it from each payout. This makes it look like a normal supplier expense — which it is — but you still need to match it back to the bookings it relates to. See Booking.com accounting and payouts.
- VRBO. Typically deducts a host commission per booking, with the exact rate depending on your plan. We cover the bookkeeping for it in recording VRBO income in QuickBooks, and compare the platforms in VRBO vs Airbnb fees and accounting.
The common thread: each platform takes a cut, and that cut is a deductible business expense. The only question is whether your books record it.
Why netting it out costs you
The tempting shortcut is to record only the net payout as income. If a £600 booking pays out £510, you book £510 and move on. It reconciles instantly. It is also wrong in two ways that compound.
First, it understates your revenue. Your gross income was £600; that is the figure a tax return reports and the figure that determines whether you cross a VAT threshold. Record £510 and you have quietly shrunk your turnover by every fee, all year.
Second, it hides a deductible cost. The £90 commission is an allowable expense that reduces your taxable profit. Netted away, it never appears — so you cannot deduct it, cannot see what each platform actually costs you, and cannot compare channels on profitability. You end up paying tax on income you never received while losing a deduction you were entitled to.
| Approach | Income recorded | Fee recorded | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net payout only | £510 | £0 | Understated revenue, lost deduction |
| Gross + fee expense | £600 | £90 expense | Accurate revenue, deduction captured |
Both end at the same £510 in the bank. Only one tells the truth about how you got there.
The correct way to record commission
The principle is simple: record the full booking value as income and the commission as a separate expense. The arithmetic then works out — gross income minus the fee expense equals the net payout your bank reconciliation will match.
In practice:
- Create an expense account for platform commission, ideally one per platform (Airbnb Commission, Booking.com Commission, VRBO Commission) so you can see each channel's cost.
- On each booking invoice, record gross income across accommodation, cleaning and extras lines.
- Add the commission as an expense line (or a separate bill, for platforms that invoice it), tagged to the same booking reference.
- Apply the correct tax treatment to the fee — commission may carry VAT or reverse-charge treatment depending on where you and the platform are based, which is worth confirming with your accountant.
- Tag by property if you run more than one, so each property's P&L carries its own platform costs. See multi-property short-term rental accounting.
Done this way, your monthly P&L shows a clean line for what each platform costs you — often a sobering number, and exactly the one you want when deciding where to push for direct bookings.
How Airflow splits it automatically
Recording gross-plus-fee by hand, booking after booking, is precisely the work that gets skipped under time pressure. Airflow removes the step.
You forward a booking email, or connect Gmail or Outlook so bookings are picked up automatically. Airflow's extractor reads the email and pulls out the guest, dates, nightly rate, cleaning fee, platform service fee, host payout, currency and reference. From that it builds a draft invoice in your accounting software with:
- Gross income on accommodation, cleaning and extras lines, kept separate
- The platform commission recorded as its own line or expense, never netted away, so the deduction is captured and the channel's cost is visible
- Correct tax treatment applied per line based on your registration status
- The booking reference preserved so the fee ties back to its booking
- Currency converted at invoice time with the rate, source and timestamp logged
Every invoice lands as a draft you review and approve — nothing posts automatically. The result is books where every platform's commission shows up as the deductible expense it is, ready to reconcile against the netted payout. Airflow works with Xero, QuickBooks, Sage and FreshBooks.
One thing worth separating clearly: the commission your OTA charges is a cost you record as an expense. Airflow's own commission applies only to direct bookings it processes payment for (6% on direct, deducted from the host payout) and does not apply to OTA bookings at all — those are simply parsed and invoiced. More on that model in commission on what you collect.
See what your channels really cost
Tracking OTA commission as a proper expense is not bookkeeping pedantry — it is how you find out which platforms are worth it. Once every fee is recorded, your P&L answers the question that actually matters: what does each channel cost me per booking, and where would a direct booking pay better?
For the wider context, read the complete short-term rental accounting guide, and to see how the fee lines flow into a clean per-property picture, see your short-term rental chart of accounts.
Get started — early access includes 3 months free. Connect your accounting software, forward a booking email, and review the draft invoice — commission line included. A card is required at checkout, with no charge during the free period.