What goes on an Airbnb invoice in Costa Rica

The idea that settles everything: you sell the lodging to the guest. Airbnb, Booking and Vrbo are intermediaries, not your customer. That is why the invoice goes out in the guest's name and for what the guest consumed.

What goes inside the invoice

Item	On the invoice?
Price of the nights	Yes
Cleaning fee	Yes
Extras: parking, pets, additional guest	Yes
The fee Airbnb charges the guest	No
The commission Airbnb charges you	No

Cleaning is not a charge separate from the lodging: it is part of what you sold. It is invoiced like the nights and with the same VAT treatment. Leaving it out “because it is a cost” leaves income with nothing behind it.

Why the commissions stay out

Because they are not part of what you sold the guest. The commission is a transaction between you and the platform, and it travels its own road: it is supported with a factura electrónica de compra — a purchase invoice you issue yourself — not by subtracting it from the guest's invoice.

Subtracting the commission from the invoice does two bad things at once: it declares less income than there was, and it leaves the commission expense unsupported. Both are fixed by invoicing in full and documenting the commission separately.

Invoice or simplified receipt: it depends on the details

If the guest gives their identification

An electronic invoice goes out in their name. That is what applies when the guest wants it to support an expense.
If they do not

A tiquete electrónico — a simplified receipt — goes out instead. You do not skip the invoicing: what changes is the type of document.

And a consequence for the guest worth knowing. A simplified receipt cannot be used to deduct an expense. If your guest is travelling for work and will want to deduct it, they need an invoice in their name — and for that they have to give you their details before you issue it.

Currency and exchange rate

You can invoice in dollars. When you do, the document carries the Central Bank reference selling rate — not the rate at the bank where you receive the money, and not the rate on the day the deposit landed.

This is one of the differences that fails to reconcile later: the platform settles at one exchange rate and the invoice was issued at another. That difference is exchange rate variance, and it has its own accounting treatment. It is not an error to correct on the invoice.

The VAT: included or shown separately

Platforms usually hand you a single price with the tax inside. The invoice shows the net price and the 13 % separately, which means working the tax out of the total — dividing by 1.13, never subtracting 13 %. The arithmetic and what the shortcut costs are in the VAT article.

The case · a two-night booking with cleaning

Two nights at ₡45,000: ₡90,000
Cleaning fee: ₡10,000
Total charged to the guest, VAT included: ₡100,000
Net price on the invoice (÷ 1.13): ₡88,495.58
VAT on the invoice: ₡11,504.42
Airbnb's commission: Not on this invoice — it has its own

When to issue it

When you collect. If the guest pays at the property, that day; if the platform collected and settles with you, when it settles. A booking on its own is not yet income: a cancellation with a refund is not invoiced, and one where you keep the money is.

Quick answers

One invoice per booking or one per month?

One per booking. The monthly one is the purchase invoice for the platform's commission, which is a different document entirely.

The guest is a company. Does anything change?

Only that the invoice goes out in the company's name with its identification number. The VAT is the same.

Can I invoice the platform instead of the guest?

No. The platform is not your customer — it introduced you to one. Invoicing the platform for the stay misstates who bought what.

From Ticuenta

The booking, turned into the document

The nights, the cleaning and the extras come across as lines; the guest's details are saved; the VAT is worked out of the price; the Central Bank rate of the day goes in. The commission gets its own document.

See how it works

About this article. What a document must contain, and the difference between an invoice and a simplified receipt, come from the version 4.4 annex; the exchange rate rule, from the same source — it is the Central Bank reference selling rate that goes inside the document.

Verified as of 24 September 2026. Tax rules change. This is information, not tax advice.

Sources: Ministry of Finance Current legal texts (Sinalevi)

What goes on an Airbnb invoice in Costa Rica, line by line