On Booking.com, most of the money flows the other way

Most hotels think of an OTA as something that sends them money. On Booking.com that is only partly true. When the guest pays at the property, nothing comes from Booking.com at all: you collect the money, and Booking.com sends you an invoice for its commission once a month.

At one property, about two in every three Booking.com reservations were paid this way. Booking.com's payouts screen covered the other third. Read only that screen and you are looking at the smaller half of your Booking.com business.

"Paid" means opposite things on two screens

On a payout, paid means money reached you. On an invoice, paid means money left you. Booking.com marks its invoices paid once you have settled them. Copy both into one column called "paid" and every invoice reads as income.

When you bring Booking.com into a sheet with other OTAs, keep the direction of every figure: money in, or money out.

The same commission, netted and invoiced

For bookings where Booking.com takes the payment, it deducts its commission and payments fee from the payout that pays you. The month's invoice then lists the same commission again. The invoice says so, in small print: it "may (partly) be settled with your payout".

That is not a double charge — but count the payout deduction and the invoice both as costs, and you have doubled it yourself. Match each invoice against the payouts that already settled it before treating it as money owed.

The payout ID support asks for is on the PDF

If you call Booking.com about a payout, they will quote a payout ID — a long number. The reference on the payouts list is a different code. The payout ID Booking.com uses is printed on the Remittance Advice PDF for that payout. Download it before you call.

Read the tax document, not its name

Booking.com's tax documents are worth opening rather than filing by name. One we looked at was titled "Tax Payment Overview". Its GST lines were all zero; the only amount on it was a line labelled "5% Withholding tax", and it named no section of any act.

Use the document's own words in your books, and let your accountant decide what it is. A tax label you add yourself is a claim made on your hotel's tax account.

What to keep for Booking.com

• Both directions: the payouts you received and the commission invoices you paid.
• Each invoice matched to the payouts that already deducted the same commission.
• The Remittance Advice PDF for every payout — it carries the ID support will ask for.
• Every tax document, opened, with its own wording, not a name you gave it.