What to check in the agreement
- The rate — often different by room type, season or promotion.
- What it is taken on — the value before tax or after it. On the same order the two give different answers, and booking the wrong one overstates the cost every time.
- Who collects the money — the guest pays the property (and the platform bills its commission), or the platform takes the payment and pays out the rest later. The second kind of money is a settlement to be matched against the payout, not cash in the drawer.
For a restaurant, commission is one half of a question most cannot answer: after the app's cut of a price that was marked up to absorb that cut, what is actually left on each dish once it has been cooked?
Examples
Hotel. A ₹10,000 booking (room revenue before tax) at an illustrative 15% commission: ₹1,500 to the site, ₹8,500 to the property.
Restaurant. An order worth ₹1,000 before tax and ₹1,050 with it, on an app whose agreement takes 25% of the pre-tax value: the commission is ₹250. Taking 25% of ₹1,050 books ₹262.50 — a cost overstated by the commission on the tax.
How Nivasik handles it
- Hotels: the channel manager keeps a commission register, and the parity sheet shows the list price that nets your own rate after each channel's cut. A travel agent in the City Ledger carries its commission rate.
- Restaurants: a Swiggy or Zomato order is punched in at the counter; the app's commission is booked as a cost on the pre-tax value and stored on the order; a payout register checks the weekly transfer; and a per-dish view shows cost to make, what it earns at the counter, and what is left after the platform's cut.
- Commission and menu markup percentages are set per property, because both are negotiated.