Import payments and deposits

Importing your bookings gets the stays right; importing the money gets the balances right. Bring your deposits and payments across too and every booking shows what's genuinely still owing from day one — instead of your whole history looking unpaid.

Bookings first, then payments

Run the bookings import first. Payment rows are matched to bookings by the booking reference from your old system, so the bookings have to be in before the money can find them. Then go to Accounting → Payments and open the payments import.

What a payment row carries

Each row is one payment: its own reference, the booking reference it belongs to, the amount, and the date it was paid. A deposit a guest paid in your old system is simply a payment row — import it and the booking shows the remaining balance owing. Amounts must be plain numbers: a cell like $1,000 or 1,000.00 is refused with a clear message rather than misread.

You see a preview before anything is written. Confirming writes the payments and re-works each affected booking's balance. Re-importing the same file is safe — rows already brought in are skipped, not doubled up.

Bookings settled through a travel agent

Not every settled booking was settled in cash. If a booking was covered by invoicing a travel agent — you billed the agent, and that invoice settles the stay — mark the row as an invoice instead of a payment. It reduces the booking's balance owing exactly as it did in real life, and you can record the agent's name so the paperwork reads correctly. You can also carry across the reference of the matching invoice in Xero, so the booking links straight to it.

Refunds

Refunds in your history are recorded against the way the guest originally paid, so a refunded card payment reads as a card refund and your records show the money moving the way it actually moved.

One figure or the rows — not both

The bookings import also accepts a simple amount-paid column, which is fine on its own for straightforward history. But don't use both for the same booking: once payment rows are imported for a booking, its amount paid is worked out from those rows alone, and the simple figure is superseded. Pick one way to represent each booking's settled history.

Troubleshooting

A payment row was refused because its booking wasn't found

The booking reference on the payment row must match the reference the booking was imported with. Check the two files use the same references, import any missing bookings, then upload the payments file again.

A booking still shows the wrong balance

Open the booking and look at its Payments tab — every imported row is listed there. A missing deposit means a missing row in your file; an inflated balance usually means the amount column carried symbols or commas and those rows were refused in the preview.