How deposit money moves: the accounting behind keep and return
This article is for staff who need to understand what happens on the books when a deposit is kept, returned, reversed, or a pending refund is canceled. If you're just looking for the click path, see...
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This article is for staff who need to understand what happens on the books when a deposit is kept, returned, reversed, or a pending refund is canceled. If you're just looking for the click path, see "Managing an amenity deposit."
Applies to: Properties on the KORE or PREMIUM plan with Accounting enabled. On properties without Accounting enabled, deposit actions still process normally, but no journal entry is posted, there's simply nothing for the ledger to record.
Where the money sits before it's resolved
When a resident pays a refundable deposit, the funds are held in trust, recorded as a liability rather than revenue, since the property hasn't earned it yet and may need to return it.
What each action posts
| Action | What happens on the books |
|---|---|
| Keep (full or partial) | The kept portion moves from the trust liability to revenue. If any portion is refunded at the same time (a split), that portion posts as a refund from trust, in the same action. |
| Return (full or partial) | The returned portion moves out of trust back to the resident. Nothing is recognized as revenue. |
| Reverse a kept deposit | A reversing entry undoes the earlier keep, moving the amount back out of revenue and refunding it to the resident. |
| Cancel a pending refund | A reversing entry undoes the pending return, the amount goes back to held rather than out the door. |
Every one of these posts a balanced entry, and every entry is linked back to the specific booking and deposit action that produced it, so anything you see in the general ledger traces cleanly back to its source.
History is never overwritten
Reversing a kept deposit or canceling a pending refund never edits or deletes the original entry. Each action creates its own new entry. If you pull up the full history for a deposit, you'll see the original action and every reversal or cancellation that followed it, in order, none of it hidden or replaced.
The same is true of the record of who did what. Every deposit action, keep, return, reversal, or cancellation, is written to an append-only audit trail: which staff member acted, when, and from where. Nothing on that trail can ever be edited or removed after the fact, including by a later reversal, canceling a refund adds a new entry to the trail, it does not touch the original refund's entry.
The invoice reflects what actually happened
Unlike some accounting actions that only touch the general ledger, resolving a deposit for anything less than the full charged amount, whether it's a partial keep, a full return, or later a reversal or a canceled refund, updates the booking's own invoice. A negative credit line is added showing the refunded or returned amount, and the invoice total recalculates to match. If you later reverse that action (reverse a kept deposit, or cancel a pending refund), the credit line reverses too, so the invoice always reflects the current, true state of the deposit.
A full keep, with nothing refunded, does not add a credit line, since nothing was returned to reconcile against the invoice.
Good to know
- If your property doesn't have Accounting enabled, or is on a plan below KORE, deposit actions still work exactly the same way from a staff and resident perspective, they just don't post a journal entry, since there's no ledger to post to.
- A deposit action can be split across a keep and a refund in one submission (see "Managing an amenity deposit"). The books reflect both legs from that single action, you won't see two separate unrelated entries that need to be reconciled against each other.
- If you need the full picture for a single deposit, whether it's a straightforward keep, or one that's been through a keep, a partial reversal, and a canceled refund, the general ledger entries linked to that booking and the deposit's own audit trail together give you the complete, ordered history.