Hotel GST Reconciliation for OTA, TMC, and Direct Bookings

Hotel GST reconciliation becomes difficult when the money path and the invoice path are different. OTA bookings may be prepaid, pay-at-hotel, commission-deducted, or virtual-card settled. TMC bookings may be billed to a company but consumed by an employee. Direct bookings may include advances, partial payments, and upgrades.

A clean monthly close requires one reconciled view across PMS invoices, OTA statements, TMC reports, bank receipts, and GST returns.

The problem with payout-based accounting

Hotels often reconcile from bank payouts because that is the easiest number to see. But GST should be reconciled from taxable supply and invoices. An OTA payout is net of commission, adjustments, and sometimes tax collected at source. If you book only the payout, room revenue and GST liability can be understated.

The six-way match

1. PMS booking: Guest, stay dates, room charges, taxes.
2. Guest folio: Final charge lines, payments, discounts, credit notes.
3. Tax invoice: Legal recipient, GSTIN, SAC, rate, tax breakup.
4. Channel statement: OTA/TMC gross booking value, commission, TCS, payout.
5. Bank receipt: Actual settlement amount and date.
6. GST return: GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B numbers.

If these six records do not tie, month-end becomes guesswork.

OTA-specific checks

• Match OTA reservation ID to PMS booking ID.
• Separate gross room value from OTA commission.
• Track TCS and commission GST separately.
• Confirm whether guest or OTA is the invoice recipient.
• Review cancellations and no-show penalties.

TMC-specific checks

Travel management companies add another layer because the booking contact, guest, payer, and GST invoice recipient may all differ. Your front desk should not decide invoice recipient at checkout based on the guest's business card. The sales contract or TMC instruction should drive it.

How Hotelary handles this

Hotelary's channel manager stores external reservation IDs, while Hotelary Finance keeps the folio, invoice, tax, and payment ledger connected. That lets the accountant export a booking-source-wise GST register instead of manually reconciling spreadsheets.

Monthly close checklist

• Run PMS sales register by invoice date.
• Run folio revenue by stay date for management review.
• Export OTA and TMC statements.
• Match every cancellation to a credit note.
• Confirm advances and deposits are treated consistently.
• Review mismatch report before filing GSTR-1.

Further reading

• Booking.com partner statements for reservation and commission data.
• GST Portal for return filing.
• For reducing channel complexity over time, read reduce OTA dependency.