Set up taxes and fees

Nothing kills trust at checkout like a total that grew on the way there. Guests forgive a high price. They do not forgive a surprise. Configure your taxes and fees once and every booking shows the guest the real number from the start.

Add the taxes that apply to you

Taxes are configured in Settings and applied to your bookings automatically. A tax can be a percentage of the price or a fixed amount per person per night, which is how most tourist taxes work. For most hosts that means VAT and a city or tourist tax, though the exact set depends on where you operate. If you are not sure what applies, that is a question for your accountant, not a forum. Get the list right once and every quote after that carries the correct amounts without you thinking about it.

Add your fees

Fees cover the work that is not the room, a cleaning fee being the obvious one. They are set up in the same place and flow into bookings the same way. Resist the urge to build a long menu of small charges. Guests compare final totals, and a total that arrives in one honest piece beats a cheap-looking rate with four add-ons stacked on top.

What the guest sees

Once configured, taxes and fees show up in the guest's total and in the booking's charge breakdown. The guest sees what they will pay before committing, and you can open any booking later and see exactly how its price was built. When a guest questions a charge, the breakdown answers for you.

The report that replaces your spreadsheet

Come filing time, the Taxes and Fees report summarises what you have collected. Instead of exporting bookings and rebuilding the maths in a spreadsheet at midnight before a deadline, you open the report and read the totals. Your accountant gets clean numbers and you get your evening back.

Set it up in an afternoon, then make one test booking on your own site and check the total line by line. If that one quote is right, the next hundred will be too.