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Hotel and motel bookkeeping: post the night audit, not the bank feed
The PMS night audit — not the bank feed — is the source of truth for a hotel’s books. Payouts land days later, netted for OTA commissions and processor fees, so books built from deposits understate revenue and hide what each channel costs. We post daily from the night audit, run a clearing account per OTA, and keep municipal accommodation tax and HST in their own liability lanes so ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR come off numbers that actually reconcile.
By the AnalytIQ Accounting team · Last reviewed: August 12, 2026
The night audit closes the day — the ledger should follow it
Every property management system, from Cloudbeds to WebRezPro to a branded Opera install, produces a night audit that locks the day: room revenue by rate code, adjustments and comps, no-show charges, and the tax lines. That daily summary is what we post to the general ledger — one journal per day, tied to the PMS report number. Rebuilding revenue from bank deposits instead collapses a week of folios into a few netted lumps and makes every downstream number a guess.
The audit also splits the two receivable worlds a hotel runs at once: the guest ledger (folios for people currently in-house) and the city ledger (direct-bill accounts for crews, corporate clients, and group blocks that pay on invoice). We reconcile both to the PMS monthly, because a city ledger nobody ages is where a motel’s cash quietly disappears — a rail crew account that slips 90 days is a real loan you never priced.
OTA clearing accounts: see the commission, not just the net
Online travel agencies pay you two completely different ways, and the ledger has to show gross revenue and commission expense in both — otherwise your channel mix is invisible and your margins look better than they are. We run a clearing account per OTA and reconcile it to the extranet statements monthly:
| Channel | Who charges the guest | What hits your bank | What the books need |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct (phone, website) | You, at the desk | Full folio, less processor fees | Room revenue, HST, and MAT split from the folio |
| OTA, hotel-collect model | You, on arrival | Full amount now; commission invoiced later | Gross revenue now, commission payable accrued |
| OTA, merchant model | The OTA, at booking | Net payout or a virtual card charge | Gross revenue plus commission expense, through the clearing account |
Once the clearing accounts are clean, the monthly report can answer the question owners actually argue about: what did each booked room-night cost by channel, after commission? That number is what justifies rate fences and direct-booking incentives — not a feeling about Expedia.
MAT and HST stack on every folio
Most GTA municipalities now levy a municipal accommodation tax on short-term room revenue — typically 4 to 6 per cent, remitted to the municipality on its own return, on its own schedule. MAT is a liability from the night it is charged, so it gets its own account, reconciled to room revenue monthly; commingling it with HST is how a property ends up short at remittance time. And the taxes stack: when the hotel bills MAT to the guest, HST is generally calculated on the MAT-inclusive amount, which the folio setup has to get right once, at the PMS level.
Length of stay flips the whole treatment. Accommodation supplied for a continuous month or more is generally HST-exempt, and long stays typically fall outside MAT as well — so a motel running a construction-crew contract next to nightly tourist traffic is running two tax regimes in one building. We tag long-stay folios at the source so the exempt revenue, and the input-tax-credit consequences that come with it, are tracked rather than discovered.
ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR — off books that agree with the PMS
The stats a hotelier runs on — ADR, occupancy, RevPAR — come from the PMS, but they are only trustworthy when PMS revenue ties to ledger revenue, which is exactly what daily posting buys you. We add the department split the PMS alone will not give you: rooms versus breakfast, vending, laundry, and parking, each with its own margin behaviour. For flagged properties, the franchise royalty and marketing-fund fees are accrued monthly as a percentage of gross room revenue, so a brand audit finds a schedule, not a surprise, and the true cost of the flag is visible next to the OTA line it is supposed to replace.
The monthly close an operator can run the property on
Each close shows occupied room-nights against available, ADR and RevPAR against last year, commission cost by channel, MAT and HST liability reconciliations, and the city ledger aged with stale accounts flagged. Housekeeping and front-desk labour per occupied room comes from payroll mapped to departments — our hotel and motel payroll page covers the scheduling and tips mechanics. If your ownership group includes US investors, or a US brand flag takes royalties across the border, the withholding questions live on our hotel cross-border tax page — and our bookkeeping services page shows how the cloud-first monthly close runs for every client.
Common questions.
Why can’t I keep hotel books from bank deposits alone?
Because OTA payouts arrive netted for commissions and processor fees, days after the stay. Deposit-based books understate gross revenue, hide channel costs, and give you MAT and HST liabilities that no longer tie to any folio.
How do OTA commissions get booked?
Under the hotel-collect model you record gross revenue when you charge the guest and accrue the commission the OTA invoices later. Under the merchant model the OTA pays you net, so a clearing account grosses the booking up into revenue and commission expense.
Does HST apply on the municipal accommodation tax?
Generally yes — when the hotel charges MAT to the guest, HST is calculated on the MAT-inclusive amount. The MAT itself is remitted separately to the municipality on its own return, so it needs its own liability account.
Related reading
Books that reconcile to the night audit.
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