Airbnb and other channel commissions in Transactions and 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. If the chosen origin has a default commission registered under Settings › Sources, the booking is born with it filled in; you can change it on the booking. It is not an expense you record in Transactions: the system records it for you, as explained below.

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 system never estimates a commission that was not entered.

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

An "Airbnb commission" expense I never recorded showed up. What is it?

It is the booking's commission, recorded automatically when the booking is confirmed (or checked in/out) and has a commission entered. In Transactions it appears as an expense in the "Comissões de canal" (channel commissions) category, described as "Comissão [channel] - Reserva [guest] ([property])", with the badge "Channel commission · withheld from payout", which links to the booking. It is born already marked as paid, with one important difference: no money left your account — the channel deducted the commission before paying out. That is why it does not enter "Amount paid" nor the cash income statement, and never shows among payables.

That expense belongs to the booking: you do not edit or delete it in Transactions (the pencil and the bin are disabled, and the tooltip says why). To change the amount, change the commission on the booking; to remove it, clear the booking's commission. If the booking is cancelled, the expense goes away; if it is confirmed again, it comes back.

When the stay crosses a month boundary, there is one expense per month of stay, each with that month's share of the commission — the same per-night proportion used to recognise revenue. A stay from 30 Aug to 2 Sep of R$ 1,000 with a 15% commission produces R$ 100 in August and R$ 50 in September; the sum is always the whole commission.

Why did "Expenses recorded" go up?

Because the channel commission is now an expense — before, it was a revenue deduction on the income statement and did not appear in any expense figure. From now on, in Transactions, on the income statement and on the dashboard, "Expenses recorded"/"Total expenses" include the commissions of bookings with a commission entered. Revenue does not change (it stays gross, what the guest paid) and the result does not change: the commission only moved lines. What changes is where you see it.

Why does the income statement still show "(−) Channel commissions" in some months?

Because bookings from before this change do not have the automatic expense yet — for them, the income statement keeps deducting the commission entered on the booking as a revenue deduction, on the "(−) Comissões de canal" and "Receita líquida" (net revenue) lines, exactly as before. No commission disappears: each booking is counted one way only, either through the automatic expense or through the deduction. As the history is converted, those lines stop appearing. The status line above the table still says, for the chosen regime, whether there was a deduction and why.

Did the Airbnb commission become an expense twice?

Not by the system: the automatic expense exists once per booking and month, and the income statement never deducts again a booking that already has the automatic expense. 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".

So this does not go unnoticed, the income statement shows a warning strip when it finds hand-made 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). Automatic expenses never enter that warning. 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 counts it twice and misaligns the reports: the owner statement and the "OTA commissions" card of the operational dashboard only read the commission entered on the booking, so the manual expense does not appear there — and the reports start telling different stories. If today you record the commission by hand, the fix is to start entering it on the booking and stop recording it.

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 cash regime (the cash income statement and the "Amount received" card):

Checked: you record the OTA payment at gross value (what the guest paid) and enter the commission on the booking. Cash shows the amount received already net of the withheld commission.

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

The accrual regime does not depend on this option. Neither does the automatic expense: it exists in both cases and is never a cash outflow.

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

The monthly income statement and the automatic expense allocate 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 (which also becomes an automatic expense, but that one is a real payable).

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

It is not the "Taxa OTA" category, which exists for hand-made entries; the automatic expense always uses "Comissões de canal".