Booking receipts

Deliver booking receipts to travelers for pre-paid bookings made via Rapid API.

Overview

There are many instances where you, your corporate clients, and travelers need access to receipts or proofs of payment for lodging bookings:

• Business travelers may require proof of payment to claim travel expenses with their employer.
• Your clients may need documents to help reconcile travel spending and 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.

Rapid API booking receipts

Rapid API's Booking Receipt feature enables you to obtain a PDF representation of the Itinerary API response so you can integrate these receipts in your various workflows. For instance, you might choose to email the receipts to clients or travelers, store and expose the document on trip management pages or 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.
• Breakdown of 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.

Configuring your booking receipts

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

• Choose between defaulting to Expedia-branded or unbranded version 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

Access the booking receipt via a link in the non_vat_expedia_invoice itinerary level field of the Rapid Itinerary API response.

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

Booking receipt vs invoice document source

The entity responsible for providing a receipt or invoice for a lodging booking will depend on the partner, rate type, and which entity is responsible for collecting funds from the guest.

• Property Collect: The property is responsible for providing receipts and/or tax invoices to the traveler when they are the entity charging the guest for the stay and for purchases made on-site during the guest's stay. Expedia Group cannot provide booking receipts and/or invoices on behalf of properties for Property Collect bookings.
• Expedia Collect and Updated Expedia Collect: As outlined above, Expedia can now provide a booking receipt for pre-paid bookings made via Rapid API. Note that this booking receipt document can serve as proof of payment for the booking but is not a tax invoice. Properties remain responsible for providing receipts and/or tax invoices for any bookings paid for at the property and for additional purchases made on-site during the guest's stay. Please see more details about Rapid's booking receipt functionality below.

Invoicing for corporate clients

Corporate clients of travel management companies may require invoices for agency hotel bookings for corporate governance processes and to reclaim taxes on hotel stays where applicable. As per the table above, for both Property Collect and Updated Expedia Collect bookings, the property is responsible for issuing the (tax) invoice to the traveler as recipient of the service.

For Property Collect and Updated Expedia Collect bookings, the invoicing object allows partners to inform suppliers of the need for an invoice. The invoicing object also gives partners an option to ask for details of the corporate client to be included in the invoice in addition to the traveler name.

Important:

• 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.
• Partners should consider the invoicing object for Property Collect and Updated Expedia Collect bookings as a way to pass a 'Special Invoice Request' to properties. Providing the invoice remains the property’s responsibility and Expedia cannot guarantee that the property will create the invoice as per the invoicing request.

Example

{
...
    "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"
        }
    }
}

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.

Example

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

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 at the same time on Updated Expedia Collect 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.

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