Issues with Resolution Request Debits Accounting Process

Kyle87
Level 2
Austin, TX

Issues with Resolution Request Debits Accounting Process

Many issues regarding resolution request debits (in the case where host pays the guest):
1) Because many hosts have more than one listing, resolution debits should apply to the PARTICULAR property it applies to, and follow that property's payout routing rules. Primary hosts might interact with a number of co-hosts. Why should I, as a co-host, get hit with the entire amount of a resolution debit for a property that I had nothing to do with, simply because it was the subsequent payout on the primary host's account? (That is, the payout immediately following a resolution debit).
It's then the primary host's responsibility to track down that payment, who it was debited from, reconcile the accounts manually such that the correct payout routing rules are in effect applied.

2) This becomes even more difficult because the transaction history of a resolution debit isn't associated with a particular reservation or listing in the ledger. We now need to audit our entire history, and doing so will be extremely time consuming because you literally can't search the transaction history for resolution requests. Note that I've given feedback previously for this to be an option, like an ability to filter the transaction history for resolution requests.

3) One additional problem the current process poses is that payout routing rules don't necessarily indicate a host/co-host situation. For example, we have managed rentals in which the property owner was one of the routing rules. Other listings, we manage as equal business partners, and not a host/co-host situation where the co-host is "serving" the primary host.

There are so many problems with Airbnb's current method of handling resolution accounting. Please fix this!! In a nutshell, proper accounting would dictate that payout routing rules and liability routing rules should be identical and associated with the specific property in question.

I understand are a few situations in which it makes sense for only the primary host to be debited/credited, and not co-hosts, but this brings about SOOOOO many more accounting issues, as you can see here.

23 Replies 23
Kyle87
Level 2
Austin, TX

In our current situation, a guest refund was deducted from a completely different listing's payoung and not following the payout routing rules for the particular listing that the guest cancelled on. 

Antony14
Level 2
California, United States

This is a serious deficiency in the accounting system.  It may be symptomatic of the way transactions are being treated.  I've been searching for more complaints, and am in conversation with Support regarding these problems.   In addition to mis-applying adjustments, it makes it very difficult to reconcile accounts.  There have been blog posts to Medium.com regarding the Airbnb transaction system, expressing pride in how they are able to ensure through double-entry accounting that money is not "missing", at least as regards Airbnb's interests.  It is interesting to consider money being transferred to a "wrong" account.  Airbnb's system would think everything was ok, because a charge to one account would be balanced with a credit to another.  There would be no money "missing".  But if the money was earned by your property but paid to someone else's account, it would seem missing to you!  There is no easy way to confirm it's going where it should as outlined below.  The problem with resolution adjustments may be a result of the flaw I discuss.

 

Below is the summary of the problem I submitted to Support:

 

While the audit trail might be apparent from Airbnb's view of the accounts, a host's view has deficiencies that create headaches. 
An example (I will ignore both host and guest fees for simplicity)
A host has payout rules splitting 90% to payee#1, 10% to payee#2
A reservation is made for $100.
The host's transaction history shows 
trx1: Reservation: $90
trx2: Payout: transfer to payee#1 $90
nothing else is shown, so the host cannot verify the amount sent to payee#2, and the full reservation amount is not shown.
For a different property with a payout rule of 20% to payee#1, 80% to payee#3
A reservation is made for $100.
The host's transaction history shows
trx3 Reservation: $80
trx4 Payout to payee#3 $80
trx5 Reservation: $20
trx6 Payout to payee#1 $20
In this case the entire reservation shows up, and the payouts can be tracked.
I would submit that the logic is flawed - the reservation is being split according to payout rules, when only the payout should be split.

This has implications for a host trying to reconcile the accounts. The host must transfer manually each reservation amount in order to track the "missing" funds. They need to get the records of receipts from each payee and match those with the "missing" amounts. There is no simple way to reconcile using the transaction history that can be downloaded as a .csv file.

The above transactions should be revealed to the host as:
trx1: Reservation $100
trx2: Payout transfer to payee#1 $90
trx3: Payout transfer to payee#2 $10

trx4: Reservation $100
trx5: Payout transfer to payee#3 $80
trx6: Payout transfer to payee#1 $20

 

The deficiency has real world consequences. Resolution adjustments are not being charged against the originating reservation, which would allow splitting the charges against the payout accounts according to the payout rules. Instead they are being charged directly against payout accounts with no regard to the reservations (and therefore not against the relevant property, for multi-property hosts), but are arbitrarily applied against a single payout account.

In the case that is the proximate cause of my examining this, a large resolution was applied entirely against a 10% payee, wiping out their income for over a month, even though they only originally received 10% of the original reservation. This is unfair and wrong and because none of the transactions were exposed to the property host, hard to uncover.

The only thing apparent was that the 10% payee was claiming to not have received any income, and that Airbnb's support center could not tell whether or not the payments had been made. Everything from Airbnb's view looked correct, but from the host's and payee's view funds were missing.

This is something that needs to be examined in depth by the designers of Airbnb's financial reporting and payouts system.

 

Charlie34
Level 2
Beaver Creek, CO

Yes,   Agreed.  This is a HUGE glitch or shortcoming in Airbnbs payments system thru their resolution center.    I have 8 listings with 8 different owners and 8 different bank accounts and if I give a credit to a guest for $400.00 for property "A" and it gets deducted  RANDOMLY from my property "E" for example (just because it received the next deposit) ,  that is CRAZY and is just WRONG.   None of my properties are the same owners or same bank accounts.    It creates huge problems for me and I wont put my additional 13 properties on Airbnb because of this, and eventually I will take off the 7 I have on if it is not resolved soooooon!   

 

Any ideas who we need to talk to at AIRBNB who would help make this much needed change?

 

Charlie   *

 

****

 

*[Personal information hidden for safety reasons–in line with the Community Center Guidelines - to use the Direct Messaging function here in the Community Center, hover over the post profile photo and click 'Sent Message']

Same horrible situation for me...

I have been calling for two weeks regarding the very same issue to no avail, and have experienced the most infuriating experiences with the airbnb support staff none of which have been able to help me. A refundable was approved from one property I manage to which that payout was made, but the refund was taken from another properties payout method (netted from a payout) The airbnb support staff suggested I call Paypal and see if they would reverse the transaction!!! The they suggested I call the owner of the property that received the payout and authorized the refund to see if they would just pay the other property back. Of course I explained this was not a proper accounting, and that the refund needed to come from the property and payout associated with that property. Its a simple accounting transaction, and the audit trail needs to follow the property. And they said Im sorry we cant do that. They are sorry they cant fix their mistake? Imagine as hosts if we don't fix everything we need to. This is a substantial amount of money and they wont do anything about it, they say they will call me back and never do, what if this happens again, has anyone had any luck in having them reverse and correct the transaction? Isn't this illegal? Isn't this prudently taking money from another account? This has been a terrible experience and dealing with every inexperienced support team staff at airbnb has been the most unprofessional experience of my business career as a property manager. HElP!

Yes, we need to take to twitter to get some visibility on this issue. Airbnb's customer support will never bring about an update to their system. I just sent out a couple tweets on this payment routing issue to raise the awareness of upper management. If you, or anyone else, experiencing this issue can jump on Twitter and support the tweets (by either retweeting, liking, or commenting) maybe we get them to create a technical update! 

 

https://twitter.com/Lorrrrrrre/status/1450553589441703937?s=20

 

https://twitter.com/Lorrrrrrre/status/1450556863918002177?s=20

 

Please mob them! We need to get this fixed. Its been over 4 years since this post was created complaining. 

 

Angela246
Level 2
West Palm Beach, FL

Same issue here. This makes reconciliation a nightmare with multiple properties and separate bank accounts / accounting files. Such a simple thing - a reimbursement should  be listed under the property report and debited from the associated bank account for the reservation/property of which the reimbursement was issued.  This is basic accounting - and a major oversight.  It would essentially be more convenient to issue a check to refund a guest, though I'm sure that would create it's own set of potential problems.  Airbnb needs to resolve this one ASAP.  Would love to hear if there are any updates on this... 

Obviously still not resolved.

I have been calling for two weeks regarding the very same issue to no avail, and have experienced the most infuriating experiences with the airbnb support staff none of which have been able to help me. A refundable was approved from one property I manage to which that payout was made, but the refund was taken from another properties payout method (netted from a payout) The airbnb support staff suggested I call Paypal and see if they would reverse the transaction!!! The they suggested I call the owner of the property that received the payout and authorized the refund to see if they would just pay the other property back. Of course I explained this was not a proper accounting, and that the refund needed to come from the property and payout associated with that property. Its a simple accounting transaction, and the audit trail needs to follow the property. And they said Im sorry we cant do that. They are sorry they cant fix their mistake? Imagine as hosts if we don't fix everything we need to. This is a substantial amount of money and they wont do anything about it, they say they will call me back and never do, what if this happens again, has anyone had any luck in having them reverse and correct the transaction? Isn't this illegal? Isn't this prudently taking money from another account? This has been a terrible experience and dealing with every inexperienced support team staff at airbnb has been the most unprofessional experience of my business career as a property manager. HElP!

Antony14
Level 2
California, United States

How does one get the attention of Airbnb to this?  All of you are superhosts?  Does that give you any additional access to Airbnb staff to bring this issue tho their attention?  I have attempted through the resolution dispute center, but to no avail.  The resolution center seems to be concerned with individual transactions but does not seem attuned to underlying defects in their processes that cause the problems.

Top right of screen, hover over your profile photo.  Under Transaction History you can share your feedback to Airbnb.  I also called support about it, and they said resolution payouts are attached to the Airbnb account, not the property or bank account (terrible for bookeeping).  And they suggested I send a feedback request.  While superhosts receive shortened wait times on phonecalls to support, unfortunately I don't know of any other benefits in this regard.

Kyle87
Level 2
Austin, TX

This is an ongoing issue for years. I’ve had multiple customer support agents give the feedback, I have sent feedback in the feedback section of the app pertaining to this, and now this thread which is over a year old and has multiple hosts agreeing it’s an issue. And still nothing!! Aren’t you worth like 30 BILLION dollars Airbnb? And you can’t get simple accounting practices correct? I can tell you that I’ve eliminated co-hosting and my involvement in multiple listings because of this issue. It’s not worth the hassle to co-host or host for others anymore. Less business for Airbnb and they caused it. This forum is so bogus- Airbnb doesn’t look obviously. They haven’t even responded. And we, the multiple listing superhosts, are their bread and butter. It’s offensive and rude that we’re directed here to describe our complaints and then they’re never tended to or responded to. 

I have been calling for two weeks regarding the very same issue to no avail, and have experienced the most infuriating experiences with the airbnb support staff none of which have been able to help me. A refundable was approved from one property I manage to which that payout was made, but the refund was taken from another properties payout method (netted from a payout) The airbnb support staff suggested I call Paypal and see if they would reverse the transaction!!! The they suggested I call the owner of the property that received the payout and authorized the refund to see if they would just pay the other property back. Of course I explained this was not a proper accounting, and that the refund needed to come from the property and payout associated with that property. Its a simple accounting transaction, and the audit trail needs to follow the property. And they said Im sorry we cant do that. They are sorry they cant fix their mistake? Imagine as hosts if we don't fix everything we need to. This is a substantial amount of money and they wont do anything about it, they say they will call me back and never do, what if this happens again, has anyone had any luck in having them reverse and correct the transaction? Isn't this illegal? Isn't this prudently taking money from another account? This has been a terrible experience and dealing with every inexperienced support team staff at airbnb has been the most unprofessional experience of my business career as a property manager. HElP! Sam I sent evidence of the original transaction and payout, and the refundable, and nothing they don't care

 

 

Lauren620
Level 2
Washington, DC

Does Airbnb itself ever chime in on these threads? Can we expect that if this thread gets more activity or gets shared on Twitter they may jump in on the convo? It is a major issue. If you offer hosts the ability to assign a different bank account to different listings then all transactions obviously need to go to the assigned account, not just original reservation fees. No brainer. 

I have been calling for two weeks regarding the very same issue to no avail, and have experienced the most infuriating experiences with the airbnb support staff none of which have been able to help me. A refundable was approved from one property I manage to which that payout was made, but the refund was taken from another properties payout method (netted from a payout) The airbnb support staff suggested I call Paypal and see if they would reverse the transaction!!! The they suggested I call the owner of the property that received the payout and authorized the refund to see if they would just pay the other property back. Of course I explained this was not a proper accounting, and that the refund needed to come from the property and payout associated with that property. Its a simple accounting transaction, and the audit trail needs to follow the property. And they said Im sorry we cant do that. They are sorry they cant fix their mistake? Imagine as hosts if we don't fix everything we need to. This is a substantial amount of money and they wont do anything about it, they say they will call me back and never do, what if this happens again, has anyone had any luck in having them reverse and correct the transaction? Isn't this illegal? Isn't this prudently taking money from another account? This has been a terrible experience and dealing with every inexperienced support team staff at airbnb has been the most unprofessional experience of my business career as a property manager. HElP!

Airbnb's customer support has gone WAAAY down during the pandemic. It is deplorable how badly Airbnb has skimped. There is basically not a chance that talking to them will help bring about an update to their system. I just sent out a couple tweets on this payment routing issue to raise the visibility of this issue to upper management. If you, or anyone else, experiencing this issue can jump on twitter and support the tweets (by either retweeting, liking, or commenting) maybe we get them to take a look at this! 

 

https://twitter.com/Lorrrrrrre/status/1450553589441703937?s=20