Creating a business model

Accounting by Guesty is a premium feature available to Pro users only. Please contact us to discuss activating it.

The business model is the basis for our accounting solution since it tells us how to calculate fees and share the reservation's revenue. Since it is a reflection of the contracts you have with your property owners, so you should set up one model for each contract (even if you have more than one contract with a specific owner). Read our "getting started" article before getting started and follow the instructions below or watch our video.

Important:

If you do not have at least one additional fee set up, an error will occur when you try to create a business model.

Create a business model

Step by step:

  1. Sign in to your Guesty account.
  2. In the top navigation bar, click the mode selector and select Accounting mode.
  3. Click Business models.
  4. If this new business model is very different from models you already have, click Add business model in the top-right corner of the page, and set it up from scratch. If it is similar to an existing model, you can use it to set up the new business model - click the existing business model and make the necessary changes.
  5. Fill in or edit the information for the following fields. Learn more below.
    • Name
    • Activation date
    • Description
    • PMC commission
    • Trust account income
    • Trust account expenses
  6. Save your new business model: If you clicked Add business model before, you will see Save at this point. If you used an existing business model, you will see "Save as new" and "Save and update" instead. Click Save as new.

The business model will be applied according to the check-in date of each reservation.

Important:

Tier-based commission splits are not supported in business models. For example, setting up the owner share as 80% of monthly revenue when the revenue is less than or equal to $X, and 75% when it is higher than $X.

Business model fields explained

Name

Create the business model's internal name. It will only be used in Guesty to help you identify the model and is not visible to guests.

Activation date

This is the date in which the business model will become active and apply to the listings assigned to it. This can be a past, current, or future date. Learn more here.

Description

Provide a short explanation of the business model, to help you find it quickly when needed.

PMC Commission

Net rental income

Decide what is added to your net rental income on top of the accommodation fare, which is always added. Your commission will be calculated out of this amount.

Commission setup

Choose how much the PMC commission for confirmed and canceled reservations will be out of the net rental income. If needed, you can set up a specific commission for certain booking channels by clicking "Add condition per channel". 

Trust account income

Use the fields in this section to set up how the income is split between the PMC (you), vendors, and owners.

Add recurring owner charge

If there is an owner charge that happens repeatedly, you may want to set a recurring charge. After creating a name for the owner charge, choose the relevant category, write a description of the expense, and choose how often the charge should occur based on the following parameters:

  • Per stay
  • Per guest
  • Per night
  • Per guest per night
  • Per month
  • Per quarter
  • Per Stripe payment
  • Per GuestyPay payment (Pilot)

Select the recognition parameters, which define the date the transaction should be recognized in your accounting. The options are:

Click the toggle Charge for the expense and set the revenue share between the PMC and the owner, which you can set either as an amount or percentage. Choose the conditions for this expense and what manual reservations or channel reservations the conditions will apply to.

Tip:

An example of a recurring owner charge could be a monthly marketing fee that is split 50%-50% between the PMC and the vendor, for example.

Cancellation fee

Choose how to split the payment for a canceled reservation between you and the owner.

Cleaning fee

Choose how to split the payment for a reservation's cleaning fee between you and the owner/vendor, for confirmed and canceled reservations.

The split can be based on percentages, such that you always get X percent of the fee and the owner/vendor gets 100-X percent of the fee, or you can decide that you will always get a fixed amount out of the fee, and make sure that the rest of the fee is paid to the owner/vendor.

Guest taxes

Choose whether the owner or you, the PMC, is responsible to remit the taxes to the relevant tax authorities.

Additional fees

For each additional fee, choose how to split the payment between you and the owner/vendor.

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Trust account expenses

Add recurring expense

If there is a vendor expense that happens repeatedly, you may want to set a recurring expense. After creating a name for the expense, choose the relevant category, write a description, choose the value of the expense (by amount or percentage) and the relevant vendor, and choose how often the charge should occur based on the following parameters:

  • Per stay
  • Per guest
  • Per night
  • Per guest per night
  • Per month
  • Per quarter
  • Per Stripe payment
  • Per GuestyPay payment (Pilot)

Select the recognition parameters, which define the date the transaction should be recognized in your accounting. The options are:

Click the toggle Charge for the expense and set the revenue share between the PMC and the owner, which you can set either as an amount or percentage. Choose the conditions for this expense and what manual reservations or channel reservations the conditions will apply to.

Channel commission

Choose how to split the payment for booking channels commissions between you and the owner, based on your setup in Guesty.

Note:

A recurring expense is paid from the trust account, not the operational account of the PMC.

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