How the Card Processing Fee Works in Amenity and Event Booking Accounting

When a resident pays for an amenity booking or an event ticket by card, Stripe (URBI's payment processor) charges a small processing fee, roughly 2.9% of the payment plus 30 cents. The mechanics described in this article apply the same way to both amenity bookings and event bookings: who pays the fee, where it shows up in your books, and why the invoice total and the journal entry total do not always look identical.

The one difference between the two: an amenity booking often includes a refundable security deposit, so its invoice reconciles to the journal entry on revenue plus deposit-held together. An event booking never has a deposit, so an event invoice reconciles to the journal entry on the revenue line alone.

Applies to: Properties on the KORE or PREMIUM plan with Accounting enabled.

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The property absorbs the fee, not the resident

The resident is charged exactly the booking or ticket amount, plus tax if applicable. The processing fee is never added on top of what the resident pays.

Instead, the property absorbs the fee as a cost of doing business. URBI records it as an expense in your books, in the Credit Card Processing Fees account (account 5095). That expense reduces the cash the property actually keeps from the booking.

At the moment of payment the fee is recorded as an estimate (2.9% plus 30 cents). Once Stripe reports the exact fee it charged, URBI posts a small follow-up journal entry that adjusts account 5095 to the precise amount. So the fee on the original posting entry may be off by a few cents from the final Stripe fee until that adjustment lands, usually within a few minutes. No staff action is needed.

In plain terms:

Cash the property nets = booking charge + tax − processing fee

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What gets created when a resident pays

The moment a resident's amenity or event payment completes, URBI automatically:

1. Creates an invoice for the booking or ticket, showing the charge and any tax.

2. Posts a journal entry (JE) in the General Ledger with a clear, readable title:

   Amenity booking: {Amenity Name} - {Resident Name} (Unit {label}) - {Booking Date}

   For example: Amenity booking: Party Room - Jane Smith (Unit 402) - 2026-07-09

   For an event ticket, the same idea applies, with the event's own details:

   Event: {Event Name} - {Resident Name} (Unit {label}) - {Event Date}

   For example: Event: Summer BBQ - Jane Smith (Unit 402) - 2026-07-09

3. Links the journal entry to the invoice. You can find it by opening the invoice and clicking the Journal Entries tab.

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Why the invoice total and the JE total don't always match, and that's expected

This is the question staff ask most often, so here is the plain-language answer.

For an amenity booking, the invoice total is made up of two things the journal entry always records in full:

• Amenity revenue (account 4040), the booking charge
• Security deposit held (account 2100), if the booking included a refundable deposit

Add those two together and you get the invoice total, every time.

For an event booking, there is no deposit, so the invoice total matches a single line: Event revenue (account 4050), the ticket charge.

The processing fee sits on its own separate expense line in the same journal entry. It doesn't add to the invoice total and it doesn't subtract from it either, it only reduces the cash line (account 1010) the property nets from the transaction.

So if the journal entry's header total looks a little different from the invoice total, that's the processing fee, sitting off to the side as an expense, not a bookkeeping error.

The short version to tell a board member or owner: "The invoice total matches the revenue (and, for an amenity with a deposit, the deposit-held amount) the journal entry records. The small gap you may see is the card processing fee the property paid, shown separately as an expense."

Once a deposit is later resolved, expect the invoice total to change again. The match described above holds at the moment of payment. When staff later keep, return, or split the deposit through the Manage deposit action, and keep less than the full amount, a credit line is added to the invoice for the refunded or returned portion and the invoice total recalculates. A linked correction entry keeps the general ledger in step with that new total, so the two stay reconciled even after the deposit is resolved. See How deposit money moves for the full detail.

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Where to find each piece

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What this is not

• This does not change what the resident pays. Residents are never charged the processing fee on top of their booking or ticket.
• This does not require any manual entry from staff. The fee, revenue, deposit (where applicable), and cash lines are all posted automatically at the moment of payment.