On the Flat Rate Pricing Plan? This report doesn't apply to you. Your processing cost is a single fixed rate per transaction, so there are no network costs to itemize. You can stop reading here.
What "network costs" are
Every time a guest pays with a card, the card networks charge fees for handling the transaction. These come in two parts:
Interchange fees, paid to the bank that issued the guest's card. The rate varies with the card type (credit, debit, rewards, corporate), how the payment was taken (online vs. in person), and your industry.
Scheme fees (also called assessment fees), paid to the card network itself, such as Visa or Mastercard, for operating the network.
With flat rate pricing, these costs are blended into one fixed rate and you never see them. With interchange plus pricing, you pay the actual network costs for each transaction, plus a fixed markup. The upside is transparency and often lower overall cost; the tradeoff is that your effective rate varies transaction to transaction. The Network Cost Passthrough report is the transparency part: it itemizes what the networks actually charged.
What the report shows
The report provides two views, produced for each calendar month:
Plan-level view A monthly summary of your network costs grouped by interchange plan (the rate categories the card networks assign to your transactions). This gives you the big picture: what card types your guests use and what each category costs you.
Transaction-level view The network cost attributed to each individual charge. Use this view to see which transactions carried higher costs, and how refunds and disputes affected them.
Because the data is monthly, a new month's report becomes available after the month closes, and card networks can finalize or adjust their fees after the fact, so figures for a recent month may be adjusted slightly.
How the costs are collected
You don't pay network costs as a separate bill. They are deducted from your ThinkPayments balance automatically as part of normal processing, and the report exists so you can see the detail behind those deductions.
Small "ThinkReservations" transactions: you may occasionally notice small transactions labeled ThinkReservations on your Payments page, often under a dollar. These are network-cost adjustments between ThinkReservations and your account. Card networks sometimes finalize their fees after a transaction settles, and the difference is trued up to your balance. These adjustments are included in your payouts automatically and require no action from you.
How to use this report
Reviewing your processing costs: the plan-level view is the quickest way to understand your effective rate for the month. Comparing months can reveal shifts in your card mix, such as more corporate or international cards, which carry higher interchange rates.
Investigating a specific fee: use the transaction-level view to trace a cost back to the individual charge that generated it.
Reconciliation: network costs shown here are part of the fee totals you see in your Payout Reconciliation report. This report itemizes them; the payout report shows where they were deducted.
Quick answers
Why do my fees vary from transaction to transaction? That's interchange plus working as designed. A debit card costs less than a rewards credit card; an in-person payment usually costs less than an online one. Flat rate pricing hides this variation; interchange plus shows it.
Why did last month's numbers change slightly? Card networks can adjust fees after the fact as they finalize their own billing. Adjustments flow through as small true-ups.
Can I lower my network costs? Your card mix is largely driven by your guests, but the transaction-level view can show patterns. If you have questions about whether the Lodging Interchange Plus plan is still the right fit, our team is happy to review your processing with you.
I don't see this page. Where is it? The Network Cost Passthrough page only appears for accounts on the Lodging Interchange Plus Pricing Plan. Flat rate accounts don't have network costs to report.