I run a holiday let business. I use AirBnB, Home Away and Holiday Lettings as agents to rent my properties. They give me csv statements accounting for their payments to me. ( rental fees I charge to the guests who stay, the guests originally pay the agent and it is passed on to me)
I don’t know how to integrate this with my bank statements. I would like it when a transfer is made, it automatically shows it against the agents csv or the other way round. Otherwise I have to tag each transaction manually.
I tried importing the csv as a sales invoice. Not sure if thats what it is, but I kept getting errors as not all lines are filled in, or relevant. Don’t know how to make it work
Do AirBnB take a fee before paying you your share?
For example, they charge £500, take a fee of £100, and pay you the remaining £400.
Yes Airbnb take the commission nbefore they pay out, but Home Away do a different system, they take their commission, then the company that process the payment sends a seperate charge for their commission.
I would think that a Merchant Account set up would be the best way to record this. It would work in the same way as you handle PayPal, GoCardless or another merchant account.
So you would technically 3 transactions:
-
Money in - The full amount, e.g. £500.00 - normally tagged to the full invoice (e.g. if you issue an invoice to the person who booked the accomodation)
-
Money out - The £100.00 commission - normally tagged to an invoice to AirBnB or other provider
-
Money out - The remaining £400.00 for you - normally tagged as a transfer to your current account
I’m not aware of the formats of any of your CSV files, but you could try uploading them as a bank statement (using the ‘Other’ option from the drop down list).
I hope that helps. If you wish, you can send me a copy of the CSV file in a private message (click my name and then ‘Message’), and I’ll be able to advise on that further 
I’m sorry I just don’t understand any of this. Are there tutorials or something? I’m getting nowhere.
Airbnb, just give me the money they owe me after their commission, I’ don’t invoice them or the guest, its all done by Airbnb, who handle the money. I just get a transfer of the money owed to me after the guest has arrived. I have never recorded what their commission is in any of my tax returns so far. My accountant hasn’t said that I need to.
The problem I’m having, is uploading the csv files from Airbnb. It doesn’t work and I don’t know how to make it work. Then I don’t know how to use it in the whole system, where does it go?
I’ll try sending you a copy of one of the csv files.
Thank you
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I think we’re both over complicating this
All you would need is to create 1 invoice (say at the end of the month, or if you prefer, you can create one for each payment). The invoice would be for the client ‘AirBnB’.
Then, simply tag the payment into your bank account as a payment from a customer, and tag it to the new invoice.
I would also suggest attaching the statement to the invoice as a record, should any queries be raised.
And that’s it! No need to import any statements or invoices
Thank you.
I’ll have a go.
Tina
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I am having the exact same problem. As an Air host I only have the csv from them. I looked at the “invoice” thing here, and its incredibly complicated. There are fields for loads of things I either don’t need or don’t understand! Creating a client for Air makes no sense to me and the instructions are terrible.
Hi @Kerensa
Apologies if you find the instructions unhelpful, but we’re happy to help where we can to try and make these clearer for you.
For accounting purposes, AirBnB, or Air Host in your case, are just another paying client. Even if you don’t physically send them an invoice, it’s used to record the sale and allocate it to a client (in this case, Air Host or AirBnB). So in the event that HMRC ever queried where, for example, £500 of your income came from, you could point them to the invoice created for that particular transaction.
What boxes are on your invoice creation screen that you don’t feel that you need? It’s not something that’s come up before, but again, we’re happy to help.
Hi Kerensa, I haven’t got to the invoice creation yet, but I have managed to upload my csv to a merchant bank account. I persevered, if you want help with that, I can help. I’ve worked out the best thing. ( from the knowledge base) is to create a merchant bank account for Airbnb then do a search for Worldpay on your bank account and tag it as transfer between accounts, thenchoose the bank account labelled airbnb/WorldPay merchant bank account, that you set up. After that, I upload the csv with only one column for payment, and it goes in the credit section, to offset the debits and the balance should be 0.00
Now I have to work out how to create invoices
Just to add, do a search under " Merchant Account Tagging and Invoicing" that where I got the advice from
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