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Efficient financial management is the backbone of successful property management. Clear and accurate booking reconciliation builds trust between property managers and owners while ensuring smooth operational workflows. However, challenges often arise when payments—such as deposits from Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) or check deposits—do not automatically align with booking details.

When transactions remain unmatched, they can result in accounting errors, missed payments, and time-consuming manual efforts to balance your trust account. This is where Clearing steps in, providing a robust solution for manual deposit matching. With Clearing’s tools, property managers can seamlessly match transactions to bookings, ensuring all financial entries align with expected payouts and that financial records stay accurate.

Clearing streamlines the booking reconciliation process for deposits received manually with its intuitive approach to manually matching transactions to bookings. This method enables property managers to efficiently handle offline payments, ensuring financial accuracy and operational efficiency. By utilizing features such as the transaction feed and booking data matching tools, managers can seamlessly align booking deposits with bank transactions and maintain well-organized records. Whether reconciling single transactions or managing bulk payments, Clearing’s user-friendly workflows minimize errors, enhances financial transparency, and saves property managers valuable time.

Login to Clearing and navigate to the “Transactions” section in the left hand menu. Locate the deposit you need to match. You can utilize the transaction filtering settings and date range option to hone in on a specific booking deposit from an OTA or through your payment processor, if necessary.

If the transaction isn’t visible, you can click the “Missing transactions?” button to audit transactions in the bank account and help locate the missing transactions.

Go to the “Bookings” section in the left hand menu and find the specific booking that requires a booking reconciliation. The bank deposit might be for multiple bookings. Rest assured that you can match a single bank deposit for multiple bookings.

Click “Open” button and review the booking financial line items to ensure that the totals match the booking details in your property management system.

In the booking, you will be able to see the different financial line items included on the booking financial record. Review these details and ensure that the amounts are as expected.

You can always locate the reservation number for the PMS and/or OTA directly in the booking record.

In each booking, you have a “Reconciliation” section which compares the “Total expected payout” to the “Total matched in transactions”. Check this section to determine how much the total expected payout will be. This will help you with determining the transactions for matching later on.

Ultimately, the goal will be to fully reconcile every booking. This “Reconciliation” section can help a property manager determine when there are discrepancies between what has been received and what has not yet been received.

Go to the top of the booking details section and copy the booking ID to your clipboard. Only copy the PMS booking ID, not the OTA code.

Go back to the transaction already identified previously and click the "three-dots button" for more menu options. Select "Match with Booking Data".

Once clicked, a new popup window will appear. Paste the copied booking ID into that field and click the "+" button. You can repeat the process for other bookings that make up this deposit.

Clicking the “+” button will populate the financial lines from the booking with the selected deposit transaction, as shown below.

Check the boxes to select the booking line items you’d like to allocate to the corresponding deposit transaction details, then click the "Match with booking(s)" button to confirm, as shown below.

We give you the option to select the booking lines to match because often, the PMS might provide booking financials that were not collected. For example, pass-through taxes or processing fees.

In theory, after selecting the booking lines the total of these amounts should match the bank transaction and you can click on "Match with booking(s)".

If the bank deposit covers only a portion of the total expected payout for the booking(s) added, you have the option to run a match using a "ratio". For example, if the guest pays in 2 installments, the bank transaction should cover half of the total payout. In this case, you select the booking lines and then click on "Calculate ratio to match this transaction with booking financials". This option will calculate the ratio to apply to each booking financial to ensure that their sum equals the total transaction amount.

For example, if the total guest payment for a booking is $1000 and the guest paid in 2 transactions, $500 each, the ratio will be 50%. It will be applies to the individual booking lines. You will be able to replicate this process once the other payment hits your bank account.

If you have multiple bookings and need to apply the ratio to only certain bookings and keep the rest as they are, i.e. without applying a ratio, you can check the box "keep full amount" for the bookings where the ratio isn't necessary.

Check the transaction to ensure it now shows “Open sub-transactions” button. This will confirm your match when opened.

Click on “Open sub-transactions” button and verify that each sub transaction is matched to the booking.

Here you can click on the booking to view the booking financial details and confirm it’s fully reconciled and paid after manually matching the bank account deposit transaction.

This kind of match can be undone. You simply have to open the main transaction details and click on "delete sub-transactions".

If a single payment deposited into your bank account covers multiple bookings, you can match each booking individually to that bank deposit transaction. Simply enter the booking IDs one at a time into the 'Match with booking data' field, reconciling the full payout step by step with the corresponding bookings in Clearing.

Take control of your financial booking reconciliation process with Clearing!

By matching bank account payment deposits from OTAs (or collected as cash or checks) with booking financials from your property management software, you can maintain accurate, fully reconciled records. This improves financial transparency, gives your team greater control over business financials, and streamlines the property management financial reconciliation processes.

Are you ready to simplify your workflow and ensure every payment received in your bank account aligns with its booking financial details?

Contact us today for a personalized demo and learn how to match a bank account deposit or transaction with a booking in Clearing.

Explore our comprehensive knowledge base today to dive deep into Clearing's features and embark on a journey to revolutionize your Short-Term Rental financial management experience.

Clearing is a Financial Technology Company, not a bank. Deposit Accounts are issued by Evolve Bank & Trust, Member FDIC.