Payments overview

Payments in HotelBee are split across three layers — what the guest pays with (the method), where the money lands in your books (the account), and how the tax authority sees it (the fiscal method). Once those are configured, every payment recorded at the front desk, the POS, or the booking engine flows through cleanly. This article gives you the map.

The three layers

1. Payment method (what the guest paid with)

A payment method is what shows up in the payment dialog when staff record a payment: "Cash", "Visa", "Maestro", "Bank Transfer EUR", "Booking.com Virtual Card", "Room Charge", "Voucher". Each method has a base type — cash, card, bank, account, or roomCharge — that controls how it behaves.

2. Payment account (where the money lives)

Payment accounts are your chart of accounts, pre-coded with hospitality-specific accounts: 1000 Cash Register, 1010 Petty Cash, 1100 Primary Bank Account, 1200 Credit Card Clearing, 1300 Accounts Receivable, and so on through revenue (4xxx), expenses (5xxx-6xxx), and tax liabilities (2100s). Every payment method points to a default account, so when a guest pays cash at the front desk, HotelBee posts it to your Front Desk Cash account automatically.

3. Fiscal method (what the tax authority sees)

In jurisdictions with mandatory real-time fiscalization (Albania's eFiskalizim, Italy's RT, parts of Greece), every payment must declare a fiscal category to the tax authority. HotelBee's payment-method form forces you to pick a fiscal method; the system then includes that classification in every fiscal invoice it sends.

Optional: HotelBee Payments (Stripe)

HotelBee Payments is the built-in card-processing integration powered by Stripe Connect. Once activated under Settings → HotelBee Payments, you get four extra capabilities:

• In-app card charging — charge a card from the reservation or POS without using an external terminal.
• Booking engine deposits — direct guests pay a deposit (or full prepayment) when booking on your site.
• Card authorization — send a guest a secure link before arrival, they enter the card, you charge it later. Replaces the "please email a copy of your card" workflow.
• Payouts and reporting — Settings → HotelBee Payments has tabs for Payments, Payouts, and account settings, embedded directly via Stripe Connect.

Where payments are recorded

Every payment in HotelBee gets a row in the transactions list with the method, account, currency, amount, who took it, and which reservation/order/invoice it belongs to. Payments are entered from one of these screens:

• Reservation view — deposits before arrival, mid-stay payments, the final settle at check-out.
• POS payment dialog — closing a restaurant or bar order with cash, card, voucher, or room charge.
• Booking engine — direct online bookings that included a deposit (HotelBee Payments only).
• Channel manager — virtual cards from Booking.com / Expedia attached to OTA reservations, charged from the reservation view.
• Manual transactions — for movements that aren't tied to a reservation or order (cash drops, account-to-account transfers, opening balances).

Typical money flow

A normal hotel stay generates a sequence like this, all visible on the reservation's payment panel and the day's transaction report:

1. Booking is made → 30% deposit charged via card (online deposit account).
2. Guest checks in → no extra payment.
3. Mid-stay → guest charges €40 of POS orders to the room (room charge method, posts to the folio).
4. Check-out → balance settled with card terminal (card method, card-clearing account).
5. Daily reconciliation → finance imports the day's transactions into the accounting system using the payment account codes.

Fiscalization integrations

HotelBee speaks several real-time fiscal protocols natively:

• Albania (eFiskalizim) — fiscal cash desk and business setup under Settings → Integrations → Fiscal. Each invoice and POS receipt sends an IIC reference, NIVF, and NSLF to the tax authority before printing.
• Bilanc (Albania accounting) — exports payments and invoices into Bilanc with the right account codes, so finance doesn't re-key them.
• Financa5 — alternative Albanian accounting export.

Cards on file and authorizations

Storing card numbers in plain text is a PCI compliance fail and a security risk. HotelBee handles this safely via two paths:

• OTA virtual cards — encrypted storage; the Reveal action requires permission and is logged. Charge them on or after the activation date.
• Card authorization links — send the guest a unique URL; they enter the card on a Stripe-hosted page, the card is tokenized to your Stripe account, and you can charge it through HotelBee without ever seeing the number.