Channel Manager

Sell your rooms on Booking.com, Expedia and Agoda through ChanneX: rooms left, prices and selling rules follow the desk, OTA bookings arrive as reservations, and OTA payouts and commission are booked and settled.

The Channel Manager sells your hotel's rooms on Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda and other online travel agencies (OTAs) through ChanneX, and brings their bookings back as ordinary Qvian reservations. Your front desk stays the source of truth: rooms left, prices and selling rules go out automatically within a minute of any change, and OTA bookings, changes and cancellations arrive within a minute. When the OTA takes the guest's money, Qvian books what the OTA owes you and the commission you owe it, night by night, and the OTA money section settles both.

Last updated 19 October 2026

Where to find it

Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager. Everything is on that one page: rooms on sale, selling rules, OTA money, OTA bookings and the sales channels screen. OTA bookings also appear in Reservations and on the room grid like any other booking.

How it works

Qvian holds the ChanneX account, not the hotel

ChanneX is the channel manager in the middle: one connection to it reaches hundreds of OTAs. Qvian holds one ChanneX account for all its hotels, and each hotel is a property inside it. A hotel never signs up at ChanneX and never types an API key. Pressing Connect builds the hotel's property, room types and rates in ChanneX from the hotel's own rooms in Qvian.

The desk is the source of truth

Nothing is priced or counted twice. The channels read from the same rooms, seasons and blocks the front desk uses:

What goes out	Where it comes from	How fast
Rooms left per room type, per night	The room ledger: every booking, hold and room block, from any desk, POS or channel	Within 30 seconds of the change
Price per night	The room's own price or the season covering that night, plus extra-guest charges and the service charge, plus the channel percentage if you set one	About a minute after the last edit (edits are grouped so a season being typed in goes out once)
Selling rules: stop selling, minimum and maximum stay, no arrivals, no departures	The Selling rules section on the Channel Manager page	Within a minute of saving

Only what changed is sent. Once a night at 03:30 Maldives time Qvian sends 500 nights of rooms left and prices again, in case anything drifted. Bed & breakfast is never priced separately: it is always the room price plus your breakfast price.

What comes in

ChanneX tells Qvian the moment a booking is made, changed or cancelled, and Qvian also checks every minute so nothing is missed while a server restarts. A new booking becomes a reservation (booking method OTA) with its guests, rooms and the OTA's total. A change moves the dates and rooms and re-rates the stay so the total still matches the OTA. A cancellation cancels the reservation and frees the rooms. Each booking is listed under OTA bookings with who collects the money: ‹OTA› pays or Hotel collects.

Where the money goes

An OTA booking is paid one of two ways. When the hotel collects, the guest pays at the desk and nothing special happens. When the OTA collects (Booking.com "Payments by Booking.com", Expedia Collect), the guest has already paid the OTA. The OTA owes you that money, and you owe the OTA its commission. Qvian books both automatically. Each OTA gets two accounts at each hotel, created on its first booking: ‹OTA› Receivable (what it owes you) and Payable to ‹OTA› (the commission you owe it).

When	What Qvian books	Example: 2 nights, 250 collected by Booking.com, 15% commission (37.51)
The booking arrives (OTA collects)	The OTA owes you the guest's money. It sits in Customer Deposits until the nights are stayed. The payment also shows on the guest's folio, so the desk never asks the guest to pay again	DR Booking.com Receivable 250 · CR Customer Deposits 250
Each night is stayed (marked served)	The night's revenue, and inside the same entry that night's share of the commission. The last night takes the remainder, so the nights add up exactly to the OTA's figure	Night 1: DR OTA Commission 18.75 · CR Payable to Booking.com 18.75. Night 2: 18.76
The booking is changed or cancelled	Only the difference. A cancellation reverses the money collected, and any served night's revenue reverses together with its commission	Cancelled before arrival: both accounts back to 0
The OTA pays you (Record payout)	Money into the bank, and the receivable cleared. If the OTA kept its commission, that clears the payable too	Kept commission: DR Bank 212.49 + DR Payable 37.51 · CR Receivable 250. Paid in full: DR Bank 250 · CR Receivable 250
You pay the OTA's invoice (Pay invoice)	Money out of the bank, and the payable cleared	DR Payable to Booking.com 37.51 · CR Bank 37.51

Commission is counted only on nights already stayed, so the You owe figure grows night by night and is complete at check-out. Booking.com and Expedia invoice the same way, for completed stays.

Only Booking.com and Airbnb send their commission with each booking. Expedia, Agoda and the others do not, so for them Qvian uses the commission rate in your contract with that site. Until you enter it, the site's row in OTA money shows No rate · set it and its commission reads not known.

Common Tasks

How to Connect Your Hotel to the Channel Manager (connect ChanneX, set up channel manager, sell rooms on OTAs)

Do this once per hotel. It creates the hotel in ChanneX with its rooms and rates, and sends 500 nights of rooms left and prices.

Required permission: Settings update, in the hotel's own organization

Before you start: The hotel sells rooms in Qvian: each room type is a room service with its rooms and price, and seasons are entered if you use them. To sell bed & breakfast, breakfast needs a price in Meal plans.

Go to Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager
Under Rooms to sell on Booking.com, Expedia and Agoda, tick the room types to put on sale. Guests see shows tonight’s price on the OTA
For each room, Room only is always sold. Click Bed & breakfast to sell that too
Choose the channel price: Same as the desk (the OTA’s commission comes out of it) or Desk + a percentage
Click Connect

Result: The page shows Connected with Rooms on sale, Selling rules, OTA money, OTA bookings and Sales channels. The first full send is listed in Sending history.

Note: Each room type needs its own room service. Two room types sharing one service cannot be told apart by the OTA.

How to Connect Booking.com, Expedia or Another OTA (add OTA, link Booking.com, connect Expedia, add sales channel)

After Connect, the hotel links its own OTA accounts. Nobody needs a ChanneX login.

Required permission: Settings update

Before you start: The hotel already has its account with the OTA (its Booking.com extranet, its Expedia Partner Central).

Go to Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager
Scroll to Sales channels. This is ChanneX's own screen, shown inside Qvian and already signed in
Add the channel, enter the hotel ID the OTA gave you, and map each room and rate
If the screen has timed out, click Reload the channel screen

Result: The OTA starts showing the rooms, prices and rules Qvian sends, and its bookings arrive under OTA bookings.

How to Change Which Rooms Are on Sale (remove room from OTA, add room type to channels, channel markup)

Add or take off a room type, or change the channel price.

Required permission: Settings update

Go to Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager
Open the ⋯ menu and choose Change rooms on sale
Tick or untick room types, turn Bed & breakfast on or off, and set the channel price
Save

Result: Rooms on sale updated. A room taken off is closed on every channel first (0 rooms, stop sell), then switched off.

Note: To stop selling one night or a date range, use a selling rule instead. Taking a room off sale closes all its future nights.

How to Stop Selling or Set a Minimum Stay on the OTAs (stop sell, close out dates, minimum length of stay, closed to arrival, restriction)

Selling rules apply to every channel. The desk still sells, so you can close the OTAs and keep the last rooms for direct guests.

Required permission: Settings update

Go to Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager and find Selling rules
Click + Add rule
Choose what the rule does: Stop selling, Minimum stay, Maximum stay, No arrivals or No departures
Choose the nights (first night – last night, optionally only some weekdays), the rooms and the rates (Room only, Bed & breakfast)
Click Save rule

Result: Rule saved — the channels follow within a minute. Where two rules cover the same night, the stricter one wins.

Note: A minimum stay counts on the arrival night: a 3-night minimum on Friday refuses a 2-night stay arriving Friday, not one arriving Thursday.

How to Record an OTA Payout (Booking.com paid us, OTA remittance, reconcile OTA payout, virtual card payout)

Do this when an OTA's money lands in your bank for bookings it collected.

Required permission: Settings update

Before you start: The bank account exists under Settings → Billing → Bank Accounts.

Go to Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager and find OTA money
On the OTA's row, click Record payout
Pick how it paid. They kept their commission shows the amount that should land net of commission. Paid in full shows the full amount
Enter Landed in the bank as on your bank statement, choose the account it went Into, the Date it landed and the Payout reference from the OTA's statement
Under Stays this payout covers, untick any stay the statement does not include
Check the line underneath, which says what will be booked, and click Record payout

Result: The bank goes up, Owes you goes down by the stays covered and, if the OTA kept its commission, You owe goes down too. Last settled shows the payout.

Note: If the amount landed plus the commission kept is more than the OTA owes for the ticked stays, the line turns red and nothing can be recorded. Check the ticked stays against the statement.

How to Set an OTA's Commission Rate (Expedia commission, Agoda commission, contract rate, commission percentage, No rate set it)

Do this once for each site that does not send its commission with bookings (Expedia, Agoda and most others). Booking.com and Airbnb send theirs, and their figure is always used.

Required permission: Settings update

Before you start: You have the commission percentage from your contract with the site.

Go to Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager and find OTA money
On the site’s row, click No rate · set it (or the current rate, such as 15% your contract, to change it)
Enter the Commission as a percentage of each booking’s total
Check the stays it applies to now: each shows its commission and how much is booked today for nights already stayed
Click Save rate

Result: The row shows the rate, and You owe includes the commission on nights already stayed. Every new booking from that site takes the rate, night by night as it is stayed.

Note: Setting or changing the rate also updates that site's stays already in Qvian, including checked-out ones, so set it before you record their payout.

How to Pay an OTA Commission Invoice (Booking.com invoice, pay commission, Expedia commission invoice)

When the OTA paid you in full, it sends a monthly invoice for its commission. Record it when you pay it.

Required permission: Settings update

Go to Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager and find OTA money
On the OTA's row, click Pay invoice
Compare the invoice with What the invoice should say, the commission per stay
Enter Amount paid, the account it was Paid from, the Date paid and the OTA's invoice number
Click Record payment

Result: The bank goes down and You owe clears by the amount paid, oldest stays first.

Note: Paying less leaves the rest owed. Paying more leaves credit with the OTA.

How to Send Everything to the Channels Again (full sync, resend availability, refresh OTA prices)

Use this if an OTA shows something different from the desk. Qvian already does this every night at 03:30.

Required permission: Settings update

Go to Settings → Integrations → Channel Manager
Open the ⋯ menu and choose Send everything again
Open ⋯ → Sending history to see the send listed as Sent on request

Result: 500 nights of rooms left, prices and rules are sent in two calls.

Note: It can run once every 5 minutes.

Never re-enter an OTA booking by hand

If an OTA booking shows Needs the desk or not created, Qvian keeps retrying it every 10 minutes from what the OTA sent. Typing it in yourself creates a second reservation for the same guest and sells the room twice. Fix the cause (usually a room type no longer on sale) and let the retry pick it up.

Troubleshooting

The OTA shows a different price from the desk

Cause: The channel price includes the service charge (the desk shows it on the bill), and any Desk + percentage. The OTA may also add its own taxes or discounts.

Fix: Check the season covering that night, the service charge and the channel percentage. If those match and the OTA still differs, use ⋯ → Send everything again.

A room I blocked is still on sale on Booking.com

Cause: Changes go out within 30 seconds, and the OTA takes a little longer to show them.

Fix: Wait a minute and check again. ⋯ → Sending history lists every send. If a send failed, the page shows it and Qvian retries by itself.

Bed & breakfast is not on sale

Cause: Bed & breakfast is the room price plus breakfast. Without a breakfast price it cannot be priced, so it is closed.

Fix: Set the breakfast price in Meal plans, then open ⋯ → Change rooms on sale and click Bed & breakfast on the room. A room shows No breakfast price while none is set.

The guest is asked to pay, but the OTA already took their money

Cause: Only bookings marked ‹OTA› pays carry the OTA's payment.

Fix: Open the reservation. A booking the OTA collected shows the payment on its folio and a balance of 0. If it says Hotel collects, the guest pays at the desk; the OTA did not take the money.

"They kept their commission" is greyed out in the payout

Cause: The site sends no commission with its bookings and no contract rate is set, so Qvian does not know how much it kept.

Fix: Click No rate · set it on the site’s row in OTA money, enter your contract rate and save. Then record the payout.

Why does "You owe" keep growing?

Fix: Commission is booked night by night as each night is stayed, so it grows until check-out. That is when the OTA invoices it too.

The payout is less than "They kept their commission" said

Cause: The OTA deducted something Qvian does not know about (a refund, a chargeback, a fee), or the payout covers different stays.

Fix: Untick the stays the statement does not include. Enter what actually landed. Anything left owed stays on the OTA's row until the next payout.

Related: Accounting