By default, Mews accounts for revenue and tax at the time of consumption (i.e., when your goods or services are consumed). To account for tax on a prepayment at the time it's received, you can use deposits—a feature that allows you to settle a prepayment and recognize tax before your guest ever arrives for their stay.

Note: When you use deposits to account for tax on a prepayment, the system records that prepayment as revenue. If you don't want to recognize revenue at the time of payment, you should not count deposits when calculating revenue.

How deposits work

When you receive a prepayment, you can create a new deposit (for the same amount as the prepayment) and attach the tax rate of your bookable service. Every deposit is made up of two revenue items—one with a positive value and one with a negative value.

Positive deposits are essentially pre-payments. They are added as a positive amount to the bill before the guest arrives, as accounts receivable, under the customer’s unpaid items. A positive deposit mimics the value of all items on a bill that are to be closed with the deposit. This allows users to settle prepayments.

The negative deposit is listed under the customer's unpaid items with the stay item; it mimics the payment, allowing you to settle the item without accounting for revenue and tax twice.

Note: If a customer has paid a deposit, and then cancels their reservation at a later date, the consumption time of the negative deposit is changed to the same time as when the reservation was canceled.

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