We're excited to announce the release of Hostex 5.2.0 — a major update designed to give you complete control over your vacation rental finances.
This release includes:
- A brand-new Reservation Finance module
- Powerful charge management
- A professional Invoicing system
- Automated payment collection
- Optimized reservation creation and extension workflows
Whether you're handling financial reconciliation, collecting direct-booking revenue or extra fees from guests, or managing security deposits and invoices, everything is now in one place.
Finance Module
The fully upgraded Reservation Finance module (formerly the Rates module) gives you a complete financial overview of every reservation, with convenient tools to manage it all.
What's New
- Payout Overview: See exactly what channels like Airbnb and Booking.com owe you, with real-time status tracking (Unreceived / Partial / Received).
- Smart Breakdown: View itemized payout details including Accommodation, Cleaning fees, Extra guest fees, Pet fees, Commission, and Adjustments.
- Payout Adjustments: Manually adjust channel payouts when needed — perfect for handling special cases or corrections. The system automatically creates audit trails for every change.
- Transaction Management: More conveniently record income and expenses directly within each reservation. All transactions are timestamped, categorized, and linked to their source.
- Inline Editing: For direct-booking reservations, edit income and payout details directly — adjust amounts on the fly.
Charges
Introducing Charges — a brand-new feature for automatically creating and collecting any type of fee from your guests. The system automatically generates a secure payment page, and you can customize how and when guests are notified. Guests can open it on any device, with support for credit cards, PayPal, and local payment methods.
Key Capabilities
- One-Time Charges: Create custom fees for cleaning, late checkout, damage deposits, or any one-time expense.
- Recurring Charges: Create custom monthly rent, weekly service fees, or any periodic payment. The system automatically generates payment instances with individual due dates.
- Custom Payment Schedules: Create fully customized payment plans with specific amounts and due dates for each installment.
- Tax Support: Configure multiple tax types (VAT, Tourist Tax, City Tax, etc.) per charge. Tax settings are remembered for faster creation next time.
- Full and Partial Refunds Supported: Refund any amount up to the remaining refundable balance.
- Guest-Facing Labels: Choose whether each charge name is visible to guests on their invoice.
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Each charge displays its real-time status — Unpaid, Partially Paid, Paid, or Overdue — with clear indicators so you never miss a pending payment.
Invoicing
Every charge now generates a professional invoice that you can share with your guests — perfect for business travelers who need reimbursement documentation.
Invoice Features
- Standalone Invoice Pages: Each invoice has its own unique URL (
INV-XXXXXXXX) that guests can access directly — no login required. - Complete Business Profile: Add your brand logo, legal name, tax ID, registration number, contact info, and business address.
- Editable Guest Details: Guests can edit their own "Bill To" information directly on the invoice, ensuring their company details are accurate for reimbursement.
- Payment Status Display: Invoices clearly show whether they're UNPAID, PARTIALLY PAID, PAID, OVERPAID, or REFUNDED.
- Payment History: A complete timeline of all payments and refunds appears on every invoice.
- PDF Export & Print: Guests can download invoices as PDFs or print them directly.
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Invoices automatically calculate and display all applicable taxes with itemized breakdowns — subtotal, each tax line, and total amount. Support for both tax-exclusive and tax-inclusive pricing modes.
Other Improvements
1. Fully Rebuilt Manual Reservation Creation
Create reservations directly from the calendar with the new manual booking flow:
- Single or Multi-Room: Book one room or multiple rooms with shared dates and guest info.
- Auto-Split Pricing: For multi-room bookings, enter the total amount and the system automatically splits it per room.
- Flexible Payout Editing: Add, remove, or edit fee items inline before creating the reservation.
- Payment Handling: Record immediate payment or create a charge for later collection.
2. Streamlined Security Deposit Flow
The Security Deposit feature has been simplified and integrated with your Stripe account.
- Easy Setup: Configure deposit amounts in your Check-in Guide (per-property or globally).
- Automatic Collection: Deposits are collected through your connected payment account.
- Auto-Refund: Deposits are automatically refunded to guests at 8:00 PM on check-out day (or 2 hours after hourly bookings end).
- Deduction Tracking: Any deducted deposits are clearly recorded and settled to your wallet (minus processing fees).
3. Optimized Extend Stay Workflow
A redesigned Extend Stay modal makes handling guest extensions seamless:
- Flexible Duration: Add any number of nights to a stay.
- Automatic Date Calculation: Check-out date updates automatically as you adjust nights.
- Payment Handling: Choose whether payment was received (records income) or not (creates a charge for later collection).
- Zero-Amount Extensions: Free extensions skip payment handling and simply update dates.
- Auto-Tagging: Extended stays are automatically tagged for easy identification.
Ready to streamline your vacation rental finances? Log in and explore the new Finance and Charges modules today.
As always, we welcome your feedback — your input is what drives us forward.