Walkthrough - Setup of e-conomic integration and Understory Accounting
How to connect e-conomic
Requirements: Administrator logins for both your Understory and your e-conomic accounts, and the Accounting extension enabled on your account.
Go to Finance — in the left-hand menu in Understory.
Open the Settings tab — at the top of the Finance page.
Press Configure integration and select e-conomic — you're taken to the Understory login page.
Log in and press Allow access — this authorises the integration to read the bookings, payments and gift cards it needs to create your entries.
Log in to e-conomic and press Add app — this grants Understory permission to post entries to your e-conomic account.
You're returned to Understory — the connection is confirmed within a few moments.
How to set up your accounts
After connecting, tell Understory which e-conomic accounts each type of entry should go to. You do this yourself on the integration's configuration page.
Open the e-conomic settings — under Finance → Settings → Configure [On your integration]
Choose a journal (daybook) — this is where all entries from Understory will land in e-conomic.
Map your VAT codes — match each VAT rate you use to the corresponding VAT code in e-conomic.
Select an account for each entry type — pick from your e-conomic chart of accounts (see the table below).
Save — the integration starts posting once your configuration is complete.
You'll want the following accounts in your e-conomic chart of accounts:
Account (in Understory) | Type | What it's used for |
Revenue — with VAT | Profit & Loss | Recognised revenue for experiences sold with VAT. |
Revenue — without VAT | Profit & Loss | Recognised revenue for experiences sold without VAT. |
Customer prepayments (bookings) | Balance Sheet | The liability created when a guest pays for a booking that hasn't been delivered yet. |
Gift card liability — experience | Balance Sheet | Outstanding balance owed on experience/voucher gift cards. (Giftcards tied to a specific experience) |
Gift card liability — monetary | Balance Sheet | Outstanding balance owed on monetary (value) gift cards. (A giftcard with a value, e.g. $100) |
Gift card breakage | Profit & Loss | Revenue recognised when a gift card expires with an unused balance. |
Gift card adjustment | Balance Sheet / P&L | The contra account used when a host manually changes a gift card's balance. |
Receivables — per payment gateway | Balance Sheet | The clearing account for money collected through each gateway (e.g. Stripe, PayPal) before payout. |
Fee — per payment gateway | Profit & Loss | The transaction/processing fee charged by each payment gateway. |
Fee — Understory | Profit & Loss | Understory's booking/platform fee. |
💡Accounts are only required for the activity you actually have. For example, if you don't sell gift cards, the gift-card accounts don't need to be set up.
What gets posted, and when
The integration posts an entry for each of these events:
Sale — A guest pays for a booking or buys a gift card. The payment is booked to the gateway receivable, any gateway and Understory fees are recorded, and the amount owed is booked as a prepayment or gift-card liability.
Revenue recognition — When the experience is delivered (or the gift card is redeemed against a booking), the liability is moved into a revenue account. This is the point at which you earn the revenue.
Revenue reversal — If a recognised booking is later cancelled or corrected, the recognised revenue is reversed back out.
Refund — When a guest is refunded, the entry reverses the relevant amounts.
Breakage — When a gift card expires with a remaining balance, the leftover liability is recognised as breakage revenue.
Adjustment — When a host manually changes a gift card's balance, the change is posted against the gift card adjustment account.
🇪🇺 Gift-card VAT is handled in line with the EU VAT Directive — VAT is accounted for at the point of redemption/recognition rather than at the point of sale, where applicable.
What isn't posted
The integration covers bookkeeping where the money flows through Understory — payments collected through your connected payment gateways, and gift cards sold or redeemed in Understory. It doesn't create entries for:
Bookings from OTA integrations — bookings that come in through booking channels (OTAs), where the channel collects the payment.
Manual bookings without a payment — a booking you create yourself with no payment in Understory. (If the guest later pays through a payment link, that payment is posted.)
Payments collected outside Understory — for example when you invoice a guest yourself or take payment by bank transfer and mark the booking as paid. These need to be booked manually.
Payouts to your bank account — money is tracked on the gateway settlement account until it's paid out. The payout itself, and matching it against your bank statement, happens in e-conomic as part of your normal bank reconciliation.
VAT codes
Understory maps each VAT rate on an entry to the matching VAT code in e-conomic. This mapping is part of the setup we do with you. If an entry arrives with a VAT rate that has no corresponding e-conomic VAT code configured, that entry is held back rather than posted without VAT — so your VAT reporting stays correct.
Optional configuration
Revenue accounts per experience
By default, revenue posts to the "with VAT" or "without VAT" revenue accounts. If you'd like a specific experience to post its revenue to its own dedicated account, that can be configured per experience.
Departments per location
If you use departments in e-conomic, Understory can book each entry to a department based on the location of the booking. Provide the mapping of your Understory locations to e-conomic departments and it will be applied automatically. Entries for locations without a mapping are simply posted without a department.
Invoices and documents
Where a booking has an associated document (such as an invoice), Understory can attach that document to the corresponding e-conomic voucher, so the paperwork lives alongside the entry.
Choosing a journal (daybook)
By default, all entries are posted to the Daily Journal, which has ID number 1 in e-conomic. If you'd prefer entries to land in a different journal, let us know the journal number during setup and we'll configure it.
Did this answer your question? If not, please reach out to us in the chat window at the bottom to the right, and we'll be happy to help 🤗