Hospitality Chart of Accounts: The Accounts Behind a Room Rate That Isn't What Lands in the Bank

A 20-room boutique hotel books a three-night stay through an online travel agency at $200 a night, $600 gross. The travel agency's commission comes out before the money reaches the property, and $492 lands in the bank three days later. A generic QuickBooks chart has one place to put that deposit: an income account. Record the $492 net, and the average daily rate the front desk reports understates what the room actually rents for. Record the $600 gross with nowhere for the $108 commission to go, and it disappears into the books, indistinguishable from a discount or a fee charged by someone else entirely.

The same property also runs three different businesses under one roof — rooms, a restaurant, and a handful of smaller guest services — and owns a building that will still be standing decades after the furniture inside its rooms has been replaced twice over. A chart built for a business that sells one thing at one moment cannot tell any of this apart. This guide covers the accounts that keep a booking channel's commission visible, a department's own margin visible, and a building depreciating on a schedule that has nothing to do with the furniture in it.

Why a generic chart breaks down for a hotel, motel, or small resort

The default QuickBooks chart gives a growing business one income account and calls it done, which works fine for a business that sells one thing. A hotel is really several small businesses sharing a building: a rooms department that scales with occupancy, a food and beverage operation that scales with covers served, and a handful of smaller departments — events, parking, spa — that scale with neither. The hospitality industry has long used its own standardized reporting framework for exactly this reason, built around judging each department against its own direct costs rather than one blended number for the whole property. Blend rooms and food and beverage into one "Sales" account, and a property can report a healthy month while its restaurant loses money on every plate served, with nothing on the trial balance to say which department is responsible.

Booking channels compound the problem from the other direction. A guest paying for a three-night stay through an online travel agency (OTA) never sends the property $600 directly — the OTA collects it, keeps its commission, and remits the rest, so the deposit that lands in the bank is already net of a fee the hotel never sees itemized. It's the same gross-up problem a multi-channel e-commerce seller has with marketplace fees taken out before a payout arrives, or a box office settling ticket sales net of a platform's cut. Book only the net deposit, and the average daily rate the front desk reports quietly understates what the room rents for.

A building and its furniture compound the problem a third way, on the balance sheet instead of the income statement. Under IRS depreciation rules, a commercial building depreciates straight-line over 39 years; furniture, kitchen equipment, and housekeeping equipment turn over on schedules measured in single-digit years. A generic chart's one "Fixed Assets" account blends a building's original cost with a mattress that will be replaced three or four times before the mortgage is paid off, and once the two costs are combined, neither depreciation schedule can be computed — the number needed to split them apart was never kept.

How the booking, the department, and the building move through the accounts

A booking's gross rate and its commission, a day's departmental revenue, and a month's depreciation each move through their own accounts, immediately and separately.

The accounts that do the work

These are the accounts from the hospitality template that a generic chart does not give a hotel, motel, bed & breakfast, or small resort. Account numbers, names and types below are exactly as they import.

Room Revenue, Food & Beverage Revenue, and Event & Conference Revenue each carry their own department's sales, so a margin problem in the restaurant never hides inside a healthy room-revenue month. OTA Commissions sits apart from both, an expense against the gross rate rather than a subtraction from it, with OTA Payables holding whatever a travel agency still owes between checkout and settlement. Building and Furniture & Fixtures carry their own original cost, which is what lets two different depreciation schedules — one running decades, one running a handful of years — post through Depreciation Expense and Accumulated Depreciation every month, even though both land in the same two shared accounts. Customer Deposits and Advance Bookings hold a guest's money before the stay it belongs to happens.

How the accounts get booked

Follow one OTA booking, one day's departmental close, and one month's depreciation through the accounts that hold them apart. Figures are illustrative throughout.

The same 20-room hotel's OTA booking settles: the guest pays the OTA directly, and it remits the balance after its 18 percent commission comes out.

It closes a Tuesday's business: 12 rooms sold at an average $200 rate, plus $680 in restaurant and room-service sales, all collected the same day.

At month end, the property's accountant runs depreciation: the $960,000 building, straight-line over its 39-year life, and $84,000 of furniture and fixtures, straight-line over 7 years.

What this looks like on the statements

The same three entries, seen from the reports, across a full month of bookings and departmental days rather than the single examples above.

Room Revenue and Food & Beverage Revenue both carry their department's full sales, and Event & Conference Revenue sits beside them — three numbers instead of one, each answering a different question about which part of the property is working. OTA Commissions of $3,240 is visible on its own line below the departmental margin, the accumulated cost of every booking-channel commission this month, not a number quietly subtracted from Room Revenue first. Depreciation Expense of $3,051 is exactly the $2,051 and $1,000 from Entry 3, added together on the one line the template gives them — the split behind it lives in the calculation, not in two separate line items here.

Building and Furniture & Fixtures carry their own original cost on separate lines, $960,000 and $84,000, so a reader can see how much of the property's fixed assets will still be standing in 30 years and how much needs replacing long before then — a distinction one blended fixed-assets balance could never make. Customer Deposits carries $6,400 in guest money for stays that haven't happened yet, none of it revenue, apart from Advance Bookings and the Occupancy Tax Payable the property holds on the local government's behalf.

What the template changes

The diff, in the grammar the product uses everywhere else.

Get started

The hospitality chart of accounts template includes every account on this page, pre-numbered and ready to import into QuickBooks. It takes about 60 seconds to optimize and gives a hotel, motel, bed & breakfast, or small resort a P&L that shows which department is carrying the property, and a booking channel's commission that shows up as a cost instead of disappearing into a net deposit.

If you already have a chart, the optimizer reads it and shows the diff above against your own accounts, so you can see which departmental, booking-channel, and fixed-asset accounts are missing before you change anything. Split rooms from food & beverage, book an OTA's commission where a reader can see it, and depreciate the building apart from the furniture inside it, and next month's close comes from the trial balance instead of a spreadsheet rebuilt from the point-of-sale export.

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