Airbnb and other channel commissions on the income statement (DRE)

Where the channel commission is entered

The channel commission — what Airbnb, Booking.com or another platform keeps from the booking — is entered on the booking itself, in Bookings or in the Calendar, in the "Origin" block: the "Fee type" field ("Percentage (%)" or "Fixed amount") and the "Fee amount" field. It is not an expense you record in Transactions.

Only bookings created or edited in the dashboard carry that value. Bookings that come in through the booking site, iCal or the API are born without a commission; for them to count, open the booking and fill in the two fields.

The entered commission shows in four places: on the booking detail ("Fee/commission"), on the owner statement ("Channel fee" column), on the operational dashboard ("OTA commissions" card) and on the income statement.

Why is the income statement deducting the Airbnb commission?

Because the income statement now treats the channel commission as a revenue deduction — the same treatment as the owner statement and the operational dashboard. The booking's revenue is the gross amount the guest paid; the commission is the part that never reaches you. In the table, between "Total revenue" and "EXPENSES", the lines "(−) Channel commissions" ("(−) Comissões de canal") and "Net revenue" appear; the month's and the year's result start from net revenue. These lines only appear when there was a deduction in the period — with no commission entered, the table is the usual one.

Right above the table, a status line says, for the chosen regime, whether commissions were deducted and why. Under accrual they are always deducted, allocated by the nights of each month, like revenue. Under cash it depends on a setting of yours, explained below.

Did the Airbnb commission become an expense twice?

Not by the system: the income statement never counts the commission entered on the booking as an expense — it is a revenue deduction, once. The commission shows up twice only when, besides entering it on the booking, you also record it by hand in Transactions, as an expense like "Airbnb commission". Then the statement deducts the booking's commission and adds the manual expense on top.

So this does not go unnoticed, the income statement shows a warning strip when it finds expense entries that look like a channel commission — text with a commission word ("commission", "channel fee", "service fee", "host fee") together with a channel name (Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, Expedia… or one of the origins registered under Settings › Sources). Each listed entry has the button "Não é comissão de canal" (not a channel commission): if it is something else (a fine, a manager's commission), mark it and it leaves the list. If it really is the commission already on the booking, delete the manual entry in Transactions.

Do I need to record the commission by hand?

No. Entering the commission on the booking is the right path; recording it by hand in Transactions is the path that misaligns the reports. The two are not equivalent:

Entered on the booking, the commission is a revenue deduction: the income statement shows gross revenue, deducts the commission and reaches net revenue — the same figures as the owner statement and the operational dashboard.

Recorded by hand, the commission becomes an expense: the income statement's gross revenue ends up higher than the owner statement's and the operational dashboard's, the "(−) Channel commissions" line does not appear, and the result is reached by another route. The owner statement and the "OTA commissions" card of the operational dashboard only read the commission entered on the booking, so they stay without it — and the three reports start telling different stories.

And if you do both, the commission counts twice (see the previous section). If today you record the commission by hand, the fix is to start entering it on the booking and stop recording it; older bookings stay as they are.

What is "I record OTA payments at gross value and enter the commission on the booking"?

It is an option under Settings › Profile ("Registro os pagamentos de OTA pelo valor bruto e informo a comissão na reserva") that only affects the income statement under the cash regime:

Checked: you record the OTA payment at gross value (what the guest paid) and enter the commission on the booking. The cash income statement deducts the commissions from the payments received.

Unchecked (default): you record the net amount the OTA already paid out. The cash income statement deducts nothing — the amount received already came without the commission, and deducting again would subtract it twice.

The accrual income statement does not depend on this option. The status line at the top of the income statement says which of the two cases applies and links to the setting.

Why doesn't the income statement month match the operational dashboard?

The monthly income statement allocates the stay and the commission by night: a booking that crosses a month boundary splits both between the two months. The operational dashboard assigns the commission to the check-in month. Within the year the months may differ; the yearly total closes the same in both.

What the channel commission is not

It is not the booking's origin (the "Origin" field, which feeds the dashboard's origin ranking): the origin says where the guest came from; the commission says how much the channel kept. A booking can have Airbnb as origin with no commission entered, and vice versa.

It is not the cleaning fee charged to the guest nor the operational cleaning cost.

It is not the operation's management commission on the owner, which is set on the property and shows on the statement as "Administration".