Book-keeping and reconciling Airbnb payments

[Alex168]

hi,

I'm looking for advice from any book keepers out there, how would you post the Airbnb transaction data* to a chart of accounts?

(*downloadable from Airbnb as a csv file)

Each record links a payment entry with an amount accrued to a booking. Sometimes multiple payments are needed to settle a booking (for longer bookings) and a single payment from Airbnb can cover multiple bookings.

Can anyone give the book keeping steps needed? Specifically, for the csv data, which accounts to debit/credit etc?

Many thanks

xref similar question on Wave app community:

https://community.waveapps.com/discussion/5577/airbnb-host-use-case

[Alex168]

Example:

3 lines on the csv reporting:

payout of 350

of which, 200 is booking A, and 150 is booking B

Say, booking A is worth 400 (so above payment is only half) and booking B is 150 (whole payment)

1. when bookings are confirmed: credit income, and debit accounts receivable (400 + 150)

2. when bank statement received: debit bank 350, credit accounts receivable 350

3. but what to do when payout notice is received, and how to reconcile?

[Karol22]

Hi Alex, check out this Airbnb Accounting & Bookkeeping guide by BNBTALLY: https://blog.bnbtally.com/airbnb-accounting-and-bookkeeping 

In short, how you post Airbnb transactions to your chart of account is dependent on your business model as a host. There are several. Check out the following chart of accounts templates for QuickBooks or Xero to see if any fit your business:

• Airbnb Investment Property: QuickBooks | Xero
• Airbnb Arbitrage: QuickBooks | Xero
• Airbnb Co-Hosting: QuickBooks | Xero
• Airbnb Property Management: QuickBooks | Xero
• Trust Accounting for Airbnb Property Managers: QuickBooks | Xero
• Airbnb Costs for all Business Models: QuickBooks | Xero

Also, FYI, my accountant connected my Airbnb & QuickBooks integration with BNBTALLY, I've been using this system for over a year to help manage the properties I own and the properties I manage on behalf of others. It automates all of my Airbnb reservation accounting, it deals with multiple reservations in one payout and reservations with multiple payouts. It also helps me split all itinerary line items (accommodation fare, cleaning fee, Airbnb service fees, taxes, etc...) into their own chart of account codes and divide income based on property for perfect reporting.

It's actually quite important to account for Airbnb Service Fees separate from the payout for tax reporting, because Airbnb does not deduct their fees from the 1099-K they report to the IRS - it's required for hosts to keep track of these fees.

Either way, even if you don't use QuickBooks or Xero, you can still copy from the chart of accounts in the above articles for your spreadsheets as I think they are extremely very helpful!

[Alex168]

xrefs

https://community.waveapps.com/discussion/5577/airbnb-host-use-case

https://central.xero.com/s/question/0D53m00005R0F1qCAF/reconciling-airbnb-transactions

[Alex168]

Ok I think the following is a solution, I'll try to test this sometime within the next week and report back here, but meanwhile any comments welcome:

Let's call this the Z-Recon (if there's a standard book-keeping name for this please post)

The "Z" connects 4 points:

(1) Top left of the "Z" is a list of Airbnb bookings which are loaded as invoices. Unique reference is the Airbnb booking reference.

(4) Bottom right of the "Z" is the host's bank statement with deposits received from Airbnb

To link these we load the Airbnb transaction CSV file, twice as follows:
(2) The "Amount" column is loaded as a deposit to merchant bank "Airbnb". Include "Confirmation Code" in the load, as this is the Airbnb booking ref to match to (1). 
(3) The "Paid Out" column is loaded as an invoice to supplier "Airbnb" 

We can then reconcile (1) vs (2) and (3) vs (4)

Since Airbnb supply the csv so that (2)=(3), we can then apply a single journal entry (column total of csv file) to zero those off.

I think that's it. To make this work automatically, the book-keeping system would just need an auto-match rule option using a reference number (Airbnb booking ref in this case).