Invoices and booking receipts

Overview

There are many instances where you, your corporate clients, or the traveler need access to booking receipts or invoices for lodging bookings:

• Business travelers may require proof of payment to claim travel expenses from their employer
• Your clients may need documents to help reconcile travel spending or for internal reporting purposes
• You may want documentation for financial reporting, sharing with corporate accounts, generating bill-back invoices, or booking reconciliation
• Leisure travelers may want a receipt for personal financial management or expense reporting

Invoices are legally compliant formal documents usually issued by a tax-registered seller at time of check-out for lodging bookings. Booking receipts are proof of payment that can be issued any time post-payment.

The entity responsible for providing a booking receipt or invoice to the traveler for lodging bookings will depend on the payment model.

How to identify Updated Expedia Collect properties

Updated Expedia Collect is represented as a subset of Expedia Collect properties in Rapid content. If a partner would like to identify an Updated Expedia Collect property, both expedia_collect and updated_expedia_collect must be true.

Business model flags

Example business model object

{
  ...
    "business_model": {
      "expedia_collect": true,
      "property_collect": false,
      "updated_expedia_collect": true
    }
}

Booking receipts

The Rapid API Booking Receipt feature enables you to obtain a PDF representation of the Itinerary API response for Expedia Collect and Updated Expedia Collect bookings. You can then integrate these receipts into your workflows.

For instance, you might choose to:

• Email the receipts to clients or travelers
• Store and expose the document on trip management pages
• Make the PDF available to your support agents and business teams

By default, a Rapid API booking receipt includes:

• Property information including name, address, rate type, and room type
• Traveler details
• Stay dates
• A breakdown of the total booking cost, including nightly rate and any additional taxes or fees
• Current state of the booking (booked, changed, or canceled)

Booking receipts are available for multi-room bookings. Each room associated with the booking will be represented on a separate page of the document.

Enabling Rapid API booking receipts

Interested in enabling Rapid API Booking Receipts? Reach out to your Expedia Group representative.

Configuring your booking receipts

You have some flexibility in how the booking receipt is configured.

You can:

• Choose between defaulting to Expedia‑branded or unbranded versions of the document during your booking receipt onboarding
  • You can override this branding default by adjusting the parameters of the Retrieve API request
• Choose which client details should be included on the receipt, including company name and/or address by including these details in the Retrieve API request
• Include a recipient email address at time of book using the Rapid Book API
  • Booking receipts will then be generated and automatically sent to the recipient at time of book, change, or cancel

Retrieving Rapid API booking receipts

You can access the booking receipt via a link in the non_vat_expedia_invoice itinerary-level field of the Rapid Itinerary API response.

Example Itinerary API response

{
  "itinerary_id": "8999989898988",
  "property_id": "8150374",
  "links": { "cancel": { ... },
  "non_vat_expedia_invoice": {
    "method": "GET",
    "href":
"/v3/itineraries/8999989898988/invoice?token=MY5S3j36cOcLfLBZjPYQ1abhfc8CqmjmFVzkk7euvWaunE57LLeDgaxm516m"
    }
  },
    ...
}

You can also choose to have the document emailed to a specific contact by including an email address in the Booking API request body.

Example Booking API request body

{
  "affiliate_reference_id": "4480ABC",
  ...
  "rooms": [ ... ],
  "payments": [ ... ],
  "invoicing": {
    "company_name": "My Employer",
    "company_address": {
      "line_1": "123 Employer Ave",
      "line_2": "Suite 742",
      "city": "Seattle",
      "state_province_code": "WA",
      "postal_code": "98121",
      "country_code": "US"
    },
    "point_of_sale_display": "My Corporate Travel Site",
    "email": "example@myemployer.com"
  },
  ...
  "traveler_handling_instructions": "Please use the card provided for payment."
}

If you require that the booking receipt be sent from your own email domain, we recommend you access the file using the link in the non_vat_expedia_invoice field of the Itinerary API response, and then utilize your own internal systems to email the receipt to the traveler or agent.

Optional details to include in Rapid API booking receipts

You have the option to provide additional company, client, or traveler details in your Booking API requests to further modify the booking receipt. These are optional parameters and are not required for booking receipt generation.

Please see the table below for more details on the optional parameters available to you.

Note: You should only provide the traveler’s email address or the traveler’s company email address in the email field. The email provided should never be your own or a contact within your organization.

Invoices

Rapid partners may use the invoicing object in the Booking API to inform suppliers of the need for an invoice. Optionally, partners can also include details of the corporate client to be added to the invoice in addition to the traveler name.

This is preferable to sending information in a PDF via email or fax, or by overloading the traveler instructions or special request fields.

It is important to be aware that passing VAT invoice request fields will not trigger a notification to the property. Rather, these fields are transmitted to properties via the Partner Central extranet and the connectivity APIs they use to consume Expedia Group bookings.

Passing these fields has the benefit of:

• Making properties aware in advance of the need for a VAT invoice
• Giving them the opportunity to generate the invoice for the traveler

However, actioning the request for an invoice and making it available to the traveler remains the responsibility of the property on Property Collect and Updated Expedia Collect bookings.

Note

• In order to pass an invoice request to a supplier, the consent_to_share boolean must be passed. If consent_to_share is not provided, the information will not be shared with suppliers.

Example Booking API request snippet with invoicing object

{
  ...
  "invoicing": {
    "consent_to_share": true,
    "company_name": "alphaDemandPartner",
    "company_address": {
      "line_1": "555 1st St",
      "line_2": "10th Floor",
      "line_3": "Unit 12",
      "city": "Seattle",
      "state_province_code": "WA",
      "postal_code": "98121",
      "country_code": "US"
    },
    "email": "chucktesta@mydomain.com",
    "vat_number": "1234567890"
  }
}

Note: You should only provide the traveler’s email address or the traveler’s company email address in the email field. The email provided should never be your own or a contact within your organization.

Requesting booking receipts and corporate invoicing on Updated Expedia Collect bookings

Partners that are enabled for both booking receipts and corporate invoicing can use both features on bookings.

If the partner provides consent_to_share for an Updated Expedia Collect booking:

• Rapid will pass the invoice request to the supplier to have an invoice issued at check-out, and
• The partner will also be able to retrieve the booking receipt for the booking.

If the partner does not provide consent_to_share no information will be sent to the supplier but the partner will still be able to obtain the booking receipt.