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How do I connect bnbills to Smoobu?

  • Updated

bnbills is a partner service for hosts renting in Germany. It creates a legally compliant invoice for every booking, handles city tax, and sends the results to your accounting software. You connect it from inside bnbills, not from Smoobu: you copy an API key from Smoobu's Marketplace and paste it into your bnbills account. Smoobu Support cannot see your bnbills account, so anything that happens inside bnbills is a question for bnbills.

Before you start

You need all of these before you connect:

  • Two-factor authentication switched on in Smoobu. bnbills requires it. Click your avatar in the top right, open Manage Account, and under Settings switch on 2 Factor.
  • A bnbills account. You create it on bnbills' website, not in Smoobu.
  • Your properties set up in Smoobu. bnbills reads your bookings and properties from Smoobu once connected.

What bnbills costs

bnbills is a paid service with its own subscription, separate from your Smoobu plan. Current prices are on bnbills' website.

Steps

  1. In Smoobu, open the Marketplace and go to Accounting & Legal. On bnbills, click Learn more, then click Connect. Copy the API key that Smoobu shows you.
  2. Log in to bnbills. Go to Connections and choose Source Platform: Add.
  3. Select Smoobu from the list of platforms, paste your API key, and follow the guided setup in bnbills.
  4. To create invoices for bookings from before the connection, for example the previous tax year, go to Bookings and use Retroactive Import in bnbills. This step is optional.
  5. Back in Smoobu, go to Experience > Communication and open the message template your guests receive before arrival. Click Messages, then Placeholders. In the list's section for integrations, choose [bnbillsCheckinUrl], then save the template.

The bnbills placeholder

Use [bnbillsCheckinUrl] in your guest messages. It gives the guest a link to bnbills' online form, where they enter their check-in details, their company billing details for a formal invoice, and pay the city tax.

Put it in the message your guests get before arrival, so they can submit their billing details and settle the city tax beforehand.

Check it worked

  • In bnbills, Smoobu is listed as a connected source platform and your properties and bookings appear.
  • In Smoobu, open a booking with an upcoming arrival and preview the template that carries [bnbillsCheckinUrl]. The placeholder resolves to a link to bnbills' form.
  • One day after a guest checks out, or once the guest has filled out the bnbills form, bnbills creates the invoice for that booking. A new booking has no invoice yet, and that is expected.

Common problems

bnbills rejects the API key or says the API address is invalid

bnbills refuses the connection and shows an error such as "API address invalid". Check these three things in order:

  1. Two-factor authentication is switched on in Smoobu (Manage Account, then 2 Factor under Settings). Switch it on, then try the connection again.
  2. The key you pasted is the one from the bnbills page in Smoobu's Marketplace, copied after clicking Connect. A key from another integration does not work.
  3. The key was pasted without spaces before or after it.

If bnbills still refuses the key, contact bnbills support. The connection is created inside bnbills, and Smoobu Support cannot see what bnbills received.

No invoice was created for a recent booking

First check the timing. bnbills creates an invoice one day after checkout, or once the guest has filled out the bnbills form, not when the booking arrives. If neither has happened yet, the invoice is not due.

If the checkout was more than a day ago and there is still no invoice, the connection may need a first booking before it receives bookings from Smoobu reliably. Create a small test booking in Smoobu. If the test booking appears in bnbills, the connection is healthy and you can cancel the test booking.

The link comes from the [bnbillsCheckinUrl] placeholder. Open the template your guests receive before arrival and check that the placeholder is in the message body. A template that does not contain it sends no link.

You need help with something inside bnbills

Invoices, city tax settings, the online form and your bnbills subscription are all managed by bnbills. Contact bnbills support for them. Contact Smoobu Support only for the Smoobu side: two-factor authentication, the API key, and the placeholders in your message templates.

Still stuck?

If these steps didn't fix it, contact the Smoobu team: open the Help menu to open a ticket or book a call slot, or use the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner. To get the fastest answer, please include:

  • Your Smoobu User ID (in the profile-icon menu, top right).
  • The property name or ID, if it's about one property.
  • The Booking ID, if it's about one booking (Bookings, then View more).
  • The channel name, if it's about channel sync (Booking.com, Airbnb, Vrbo, and so on).
  • A short step-by-step: what you did, what you expected, and what happened.
  • Screenshots or a short screen recording of the problem.
  • Your browser and operating system, if something looks wrong on screen.

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