Break a hotel bill into its individual line items — room, taxes, tips, loyalty credits — and capture the gap between the line items and the receipt total as a variance.
Why hotel folios
A hotel bill is rarely a single charge. A typical folio includes the room rate, occupancy and resort taxes, tips, parking, room service, and sometimes loyalty credits or comped items. Reporting the receipt total without the breakdown loses information your finance team needs for tax reclaim, accrual, and policy enforcement.
The hotel folio editor lets you split the bill into typed line items inline on the expense, and it surfaces any discrepancy between the sum of those items and the receipt total so it's caught at submission instead of audit.
When the editor appears
The folio editor shows up automatically on expenses whose category is hotel-related — typically Accommodation, Hotel, or Lodging (the exact name depends on what your admin configured under Categories and types).
If you change the expense type to something non-lodging (Meals, Travel, Software, etc.), the folio panel disappears.
Add line items
- Go to Expenses and click New Expense.
- Select an accommodation expense type. The Hotel folio breakdown panel appears below the Amount field.
- Click + Add line for each item on the bill.
- For each row, set:
- Type — Charge, Tax, Tip, Credit, or Adjustment.
- Description — for example, "Room", "Occupancy tax", "Loyalty credit".
- Amount — the line item value. For credits, enter the amount as a positive number; the system stores it as negative automatically so the math works out.
- Repeat for every line on the receipt.
You can reorder, edit, or remove rows at any time before submitting the expense.
Line item types
| Type | What it represents | Sign |
|---|---|---|
| Charge | Anything billed to you (room, parking, room service, internet) | Positive |
| Tax | Occupancy tax, resort fee tax, VAT | Positive |
| Tip | Bellhop, housekeeping, room service tips not on the receipt | Positive |
| Credit | Loyalty credits, comped nights, refunded items | Stored negative |
| Adjustment | Manual reconciliation entries (rounding, FX corrections) | Either |
Reconciled vs variance
The panel continuously compares the sum of line items against the receipt total in the Amount field at the top of the expense:
- Reconciled (green badge): The two values match within one cent.
- Variance (amber badge): There is a gap. The exact gap is shown next to the badge and at the bottom of the panel as a signed value (
+$40.00means the receipt is $40 higher than the sum of line items;−$15.00means the line items exceed the receipt).
When there's a variance, a Reason for variance field appears. Use it to explain the gap — for example: "rounding", "FX adjustment", "tip not itemized on folio", "loyalty credit applied at checkout".
Note: Small variances are normal. Hotel bills routinely fail to reconcile because of rounding, missing tip lines, FX gaps, or comped items. The system flags the gap rather than blocking it — your job is just to explain it.
Submission and policy checks
When you submit an expense report, every hotel folio expense is checked against your organization's expense policy. Two outcomes are possible:
- Within policy — the expense submits normally.
- Variance exceeds the threshold — the policy enforcement type (set by your admin) decides what happens:
- Warn only — you see a warning but can still submit.
- Block submission — you must reduce the variance or reach out to your admin before resubmitting.
If your organization sets a percentage threshold of, say, 5%, a $400 receipt with a $40 variance (10%) would trigger the warning or block.
Edit after creation
You can edit folio line items as long as the expense is still in Unassigned status or in a Draft report. Once the report containing the expense is submitted, line items are locked. To change them after submission, recall the report first (see Recall a report).
Plan availability
The folio editor itself is available on every plan. Hotel folio variance enforcement (the policy threshold and the admin Variance Report page) requires the Starter plan or above, since it depends on the Policies feature.