My Hotel is located in Pinellas County, Florida, USA, where three separate tax brackets are applied too room rent including 6% Florida State sales tax, 1% Pinellas County sales tax, and 6% Pinellas County Tourism Development tax. Collectively, these total 13%. However, due to rounding to the nearest penny, when applied individually, the total can vary by $0.01 - $0.05 depending on the number of nights on the reservation and how the tax brackets are configured.
In Mews, they are configured as three separate tax brackets to accurately track how much is owed to each governing body and for which tax. Each day, I have to review the Billing screen for each OTA group to look for room reservations where payment has been applied using a Virtual Credit Card pre-approved for a specific amount which may be an exact match to the room and tax total or may be $0.01 - $0.05 more or less. I am attaching pictures to show what this looks like before I make adjustments and after I make adjustments.
To enable the OTA-owned Bill to be automatically closed when the reservation is checked out, the Bill total must be $0.00. To achieve this, I post an external payment using the type “Exchange rounding difference” exclusively for this purpose. By month’s end, I can accrue close to 100 individual postings that collectively can total as much as $0.25 more or less whether as a credit or a debit. I track this manually in my monthly reporting.
Each day, depending on the number of reservations arriving and new reservations booked whether payment has already been applied at the time the reservation is imported by Mews, I can spend 30-60 minutes processing these individual adjustments to bring each bill to a zero balance.
I am writing to the Mews community to ask how other properties that may face this challenge manage it. Have I been overthinking this for too long and leaving OTA-owned bills with relatively insignificant non-zero balances? In asking Mews Support about this, I have been told a number of times that this is the result of how the OTAs calculate tax versus how Mews calculates tax. The OTAs have the same three tax brackets I built into Mews, but I suspect that apply a 13% flat tax amount to the room rent on the reservation because the three separate tax brackets has no meaning for them.
The rounding of each individual tax bracket leads to the minor variances when compared to the pre-approved amount on the Virtual Credit Card. I fear that in an audit that may one day occur (I always prepare for the worst), if I did not adjust each of these variances, the volume of open OTA bills would be questioned. I also feel like the number of names on the Accounting ledger in “To be resolved” status would grow with each passing day.
In advance, thank you for your insights and consideration. I merely find it impossible to believe my property is the only one to experience this.
