How do I enter a hotel invoice with private or multiple items?

A hotel invoice often contains more than just the overnight stay, for example breakfast, other services or private items such as the minibar. This article explains which amount to enter in Spesenfuchs and how to split the invoice if necessary.

Privately incurred items

Costs that are actually incurred for private reasons are not entered in Spesenfuchs. Enter the hotel receipt with the business-related portion only.

Example: The hotel invoice contains the business overnight stay and private drinks from the minibar. Enter the hotel receipt with the amount for the overnight stay only. Do not enter the minibar.

Business expenses paid privately

This is different from a business expense that you initially paid with your own money, for example a business overnight stay paid with your private credit card. This is still a business expense. Enter it in full in Spesenfuchs so that it can be reimbursed to you.

"Paid privately" therefore does not mean that the expense was incurred for private reasons.

Splitting a German hotel invoice

On a German hotel invoice, individual items may be treated differently for tax purposes, for example the overnight stay and breakfast.

1. Enter a receipt with the receipt type Hotel and select Germany (Euro) as the currency.
2. Enter the costs for breakfast in the breakfast field of the hotel receipt.
3. If the invoice contains another business-related item that cannot be entered separately in the hotel receipt, split the invoice: enter part of the amount as a hotel receipt.
4. Enter the remaining business-related amount as a separate receipt with the appropriate receipt type.
5. Leave out privately incurred items in both receipts.

Foreign hotel invoices

For foreign receipts, no German input VAT is taken into account. It is therefore not necessary to split the invoice by tax rate.

1. When entering the receipt, select the country in which the hotel is located.
2. Enter the business-related gross amount. It is entered with 0% tax.
3. If the invoice contains private items, deduct them first and enter only the business-related portion.

For more information on entering receipts, see the article Enter receipt.