The redesigned guest folio provides a transparent financial summary for every reservation. This update offers a tax breakdown for every line item, such as nightly rates, fees, or services. Each entry shows applicable taxes, including both percentage-based and fixed amounts, as set in your tax configuration.
Important:
Once this feature is enabled, all reservations use the new guest folio layout. However, only newly created reservations display the line-by-line tax breakdown. Existing reservations continue to display taxes as one total.
Understand how adjustments affect the guest folio
All account users can view the guest folio breakdowns, but only users with administrative or accounting permissions can adjust line items or change tax settings. Guesty logs all tax and folio changes are logged for audit purposes.
The tax breakdown is based on your tax setup in Guesty. Adjustments made to the guest folio have the following effect:
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Line item adjustment: Adjusting a taxable line item, like accommodation fare or fees, causes the related taxes to automatically recalculate. This change is reflected at the line item level and in the total tax summary.
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Standalone fixed tax adjustment: Adjusting a fixed rate tax not tied to a specific item, such as a $10 local tax, updates the tax like any other line item. This change appears at the line item level and in the total tax summary.
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Percentage tax adjustment: Adjusting a percentage tax related to a line item, such as a 10% city tax on accommodation fare, only affects the total tax summary. This won’t change individual line items, and the total shown in the tax column may differ from the sum of the individual line item taxes. (See more details below.)
See more information and screenshots below about the two different tax types.
Access the guest folio
Follow the steps below to access the guest folio breakdown and view the tax summary.
Step by step:
- Sign in to your Guesty account.
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Navigate to the relevant reservation.
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Click Balance due in the banner at the top-right corner.
- Toggle between By night and By line item to change the details displayed. Taxes appear in a new column for both options.
View items by night
- Click By night.
- Click the arrow to the left of a date to expand the line items.
- Click a line item to open the side panel and view the percentage taxes applied to that item.
View items by line item
- Click By line item.
- Click a line item to open the side panel and view the percentage taxes applied to that item.
View tax breakdown details
- From either the by night or by line item view, click the tax total at the bottom to open the slide panel.
- View the subtotal, total taxes, and net total, providing a transparent financial summary for every transaction. For auditing purposes, adjustments are indicated with the user name and timestamp.
Tax total discrepancy
If the adjustment is made to a percentage tax applied to a line item, the adjustment applies to the total tax amount only. The total shown in the tax column may differ from the sum of the individual line item taxes. Guesty displays a warning when this occurs.
Updates for Accounting users
The new tax breakdown per line item is reflected in Accounting by Guesty as follows:
Accounting folio
The accounting folio creates a separate journal entry for each percentage tax applied per line item in the "Accounts payable" and "Advanced deposit" ledgers. For example, instead of one "GST" entry, the breakdown displays entries like "Net rental income GST" and "Cleaning fee GST".
A journal entry is also created for any line item tax adjustments made.
Revenue recognition
Important:
Because each new tax journal entry is linked to a specific line item, the tax recognition date depends on the business model setup for that related line item.
If a tax is a standalone fixed fee, its recognition is based on the "Guest taxes" setting in your business model. If a tax is a percentage applied to a specific item, it follows the recognition rule of that parent line item.
For example, if your business model is set as follows:
Net rental income: Recognized on check-in
Cleaning fee: Recognized on check-out
Guest taxes: Recognized on check-in
The revenue for each tax is recognized based on those rules:
Net rental income GST (10% percentage tax): Recognized on check-in (follows the parent item).
Cleaning fee GST (10% percentage tax): Recognized on check-out (follows the parent item).
Local tax ($5 fixed fee standalone item): Recognized on check-in (follows the "Guest taxes" setting).
You can see these specific dates in the accounting folio as the recognition date for each journal entry:
Note:
Reversing a transaction with a linked tax line item automatically reverses the tax. For example, reversing a cleaning fee journal entry also reverses the "cleaning fee GST". However, reversing "cleaning fee GST" alone does not reverse the "cleaning fee".