How to submit hotel cancellation fee and hotel refund?

[Tmhowe13]

I booked an advance purchase hotel for a customer meeting. Customer cancelled meeting. Hotel charged a cancellation fee and issued a refund minus the cancellation fee. My company card now has a charge for the full price of the hotel and a credit for the refund minus the cancellation fee. 

I don't see a way to add the refund to the hotel section of the expense report, or account for the cancellation fee to reconcile the difference between the hotel charge and the hotel refund amount.

Can anyone advise on how to correctly submit an expense report for this scenario?

[leela2516]

@Tmhowe13  - I am not sure how your company has things set up, but in our company, we would do the following:

• Initial entry for the Hotel charge would be booked to Hotel
• Then when I received the refund minus the cancelation fee, I would book that amount to Hotel as a negative value. 
• This would allow the net amount to be booked to Hotel, however, local finance may prefer the cost to be booked elsewhere in which case, they could make a journal entry adjustment to book it elsewhere.

However, it really all depends on where your company wants to book this cost, maybe an Other - Miscellaneous type expense. I would recommend reaching out to your support team to see what their recommendation would be. 

Hope this helps!

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@Tmhowe13 what @leela2516 said is correct. I usually tell people to treat a credit/refund just like any other company card charge. The difference is it should be put on the same report as the incorrect charge with the positive amount.

Hotel is slightly different since it requires itemization. I would try to submit the refund as Miscellaneous if your company has that expense type and use the comment field to explain it is a credit. However, I don't know if your company would allow for that.

[Tmhowe13]

Thanks to @leela2516 and @KevinD for the direction. I was able to find an internal company finance resource who advised to list the hotel charge under "Hotel Incidentals" expense and provide snapshot of original hotel email receipt, along with a comment explaining the hotel expense, refund and cancellation fee. I then had to create another "Miscellaneous Other" expense type to list the refund amount and attach a snapshot of the  receipt showing the hotel expense, refund and cancellation fee, along with a comment explaining the hotel expese, refund and cancellation fee. 

This was accepted by my company.

[leela2516]

You're welcome @Tmhowe13! I'm glad there is a resolution for you.