Every distribution channel comes with a different cost of doing business. A booking from a GDS might carry a flat per-reservation fee. An OTA booking might cost 15-20% of the reservation's revenue. Direct bookings might carry no distribution cost at all. Comparing channels on revenue alone hides all of this — a channel that produces impressive top-line revenue can be far less profitable than a quieter one once its distribution costs are factored in.
Channel cost is a data capability built into Insights: once you configure what each channel costs you, that cost becomes available everywhere channel-level data appears — in prebuilt dashboards, in workbooks and queries you build yourself, and in Insights' AI chat. The Channel Profitability Report, a pre-built dashboard template, is one way this data gets used, built specifically to answer: which channels are actually the most valuable to your business, once you account for what it costs to sell through them? But the underlying fields aren't limited to that one dashboard.
This article covers where channel cost data lives in Insights, how the underlying calculations work, how to configure it, and how to use it in your own reporting.
Where Channel Cost Data Lives
Channel cost fields are available in two topics:
Bookings — channel cost applied to confirmed, on-the-books reservations as of today, grouped by stay date. Use this for a snapshot view: "what does our channel mix look like, and what's it costing us, right now."
Pick-up — channel cost applied to reservation activity (created, updated, cancelled) over a selected period, so you can track how commission costs are moving, not just where they stand. This topic adds pace-specific measures not available in Bookings: Created Comm. Costs, Updated Comm. Costs, Cancelled Comm. Costs, and Comm. Costs Pick-up (the net of all three). Each also has an STLP (Same Time Last Period) variant for pacing comparisons.
Both topics expose the same Channel and Costs views, so the field names, the configuration, and the calculation logic described in this article apply identically in either topic — the only difference is whether you're looking at a static snapshot (Bookings) or movement over time (Pick-up).
What "Channel" actually represents: in your PMS, "channel" typically refers to the technical connection that delivered a booking (a GDS, a channel manager, a direct web booking engine) — it isn't inherently a commercial category, and it isn't guest-facing. PMS channel values are frequently inconsistent (different codes for the same real channel) or overly granular (a single channel value that bundles multiple pieces of information together). Channel Display Name and Channel Label, described below, exist specifically to turn that raw PMS value into something clean and useful for reporting — see Limitations to Be Aware Of for what this normalization can and can't do.
What Is Channel Profitability?
Channel Profitability measures how much accommodation revenue a channel actually keeps after distribution costs — commissions, GDS fees, or other per-booking charges — are removed.
Two channels can produce the same gross revenue and still be worth very different amounts to your business:
Channel A: $100,000 in revenue, 8% average commission → keeps $92,000
Channel B: $100,000 in revenue, 22% average commission → keeps $78,000
Without a profitability view, both channels look identical. This is the gap channel cost data is built to surface — across every channel, property, and time period you have data for, in whatever report you choose to build.
The Core Fields: Cost Type, Cost Value, Cost Deduction
Every configured channel cost is made up of three settings, entered per channel in Settings > Data Enrichment > Channel:
Cost Type — Fixed or Percentage. Determines whether this channel charges a flat amount or a rate applied to revenue.
Cost Value — the rate (for Percentage) or the flat amount (for Fixed), depending on the Cost Type selected.
Cost Deduction — Pre-deducted or Post-deducted. Reflects whether the rate coming from your PMS already has commission removed, or still needs it removed — covered in detail below.
A single channel can only be configured with one cost mapping — one Cost Type, one Cost Value, one Cost Deduction. You choose Percentage or Fixed for a given channel, not both. If a channel's real-world commission structure is more complex than a single rate or fee (for example, a blended arrangement), the closest single mapping should be used to represent it.
You'll still see a single combined Comm. Costs figure in reports — that's the total commission cost summed across every channel in the report, some of which may be mapped to Percentage and others to Fixed. It doesn't mean any individual channel is using both structures at once.
A note on field names in reports: if you build your own workbook or query and browse the field picker, this same configuration surfaces under Costs > Channel Commission with slightly different names:
Cost Type in Settings appears as Commission Cost Type in the field picker
Cost Deduction in Settings appears as Commission Deduction Type in the field picker
Cost Value in Settings appears as Commission Value (unified), or split into Commission Value Fixed Costs / Commission Value Percentage, in the field picker
These are the same underlying settings, just named for their context — Settings shows you what you're configuring per channel; the field picker shows you what you can query or filter by. If you're troubleshooting a number and only recognize one set of names, this is the bridge between them.
How Commission Is Calculated
Distribution costs feed into two revenue figures, which every profitability calculation in Insights is built from. In the product these appear as Accom. Revenue Comm. Incl. and Accom. Revenue Comm. Excl.:
Pre-Deducted Net Accommodation Revenue ("Accom. Revenue Comm. Incl.") — net accommodation revenue with commission costs added back in.
Post-Deducted Net Accommodation Revenue ("Accom. Revenue Comm. Excl.") — Pre-Deducted revenue minus the channel's total commission cost. This is what the channel actually nets you.
Both are net figures throughout (excluding taxes) — distribution costs are a commercial cost, not a tax consideration, so mixing in Gross revenue figures would distort the comparison. If you're ever unsure why a channel cost figure doesn't match a Gross number elsewhere in Insights, this is why.
The Cost Deduction setting reflects the state of the rate your PMS sends over, and it works differently depending on Cost Type:
Fixed costs: for a Pre-deducted channel, the PMS rate already has the fixed fee removed, so it's added back onto net revenue to arrive at Pre-Deducted revenue. For a Post-deducted channel, the PMS rate does not yet have the fee removed, so net revenue as booked already reflects the Pre-Deducted figure, and the fee is simply subtracted afterward to get to Post-Deducted revenue.
Percentage costs: Cost Deduction changes the commission formula itself, not just which revenue figure is used as a starting point. For Pre-deducted channels, the PMS rate already has the percentage removed, so the commission is calculated as (gross revenue × rate) ÷ (1 − rate) — this "grosses up" the commission to reconstruct what was already taken out, since the rate applies to the pre-commission sale price, not the already-discounted net figure. For Post-deducted channels, the PMS rate does not yet have commission removed, so the commission is simply gross revenue × rate, applied directly and then subtracted.
In short: Pre-deducted means the commission has already been taken out of what the PMS reports, and Insights reconstructs it to calculate Pre-Deducted revenue, without deducting it again. Post-deducted means the commission has not yet been taken out of the PMS rate — it's still payable, and Insights deducts it when calculating Post-Deducted revenue. Getting this setting right for each channel matters — it's not just a display preference, it changes the actual dollar amount of commission calculated for percentage-based channels.
Putting the pieces together, here's the full chain from a raw booking to a profitability figure:
A reservation comes in through a channel (e.g., "Expedia").
FLYR looks up that channel's configuration in Data Enrichment — Cost Type, Cost Value, and Cost Deduction.
The commission amount is calculated using that configuration: a fixed lookup for Fixed channels, or (gross revenue × rate) ÷ (1 − rate) for Pre-deducted Percentage channels vs. gross revenue × rate for Post-deducted Percentage channels.
Pre-Deducted Net Accommodation Revenue is calculated: commission is added back into net revenue for Pre-deducted channels; net revenue is used as-is for Post-deducted channels.
The channel's total commission cost is subtracted from Pre-Deducted revenue, producing Post-Deducted Net Accommodation Revenue.
These two figures roll up by channel, property, or month (or by pickup activity, in the Pick-up topic), and can be compared as a ratio — the basis for Channel Contribution Margin, described next.
If a channel has no cost configured at all, Pre-Deducted and Post-Deducted revenue will be identical for that channel. This is expected — it isn't a sign the channel is being ignored, it's a sign no cost was ever entered for it. See the FAQ below for how this shows up in the Contribution Margin metric.
Limitations to Be Aware Of
Channel cost in Insights is a deliberately simple model — one configuration per channel, calculated consistently across every booking that comes through it. That simplicity is what makes it usable: you can set it up in minutes and trust the numbers to be consistent everywhere they appear. It also means a few real-world pricing nuances aren't captured. Worth knowing these going in:
One cost per channel, not per rate plan, agency, or origin. In practice, what a channel actually costs you can vary below the channel level — a wholesale rate plan sold through the same OTA might carry a different commission than a retail rate plan, or a specific corporate account or travel agency might have its own negotiated terms. FLYR's model doesn't currently split cost by rate plan, agency, or origin — it's one Cost Type / Cost Value / Cost Deduction per channel, applied uniformly to every booking on that channel. If your real commission structure varies meaningfully below the channel level, the configured cost represents a best single approximation for that channel as a whole, not an exact per-booking cost. If this is a gap that affects your reporting, let your FLYR contact know — it helps prioritize future enhancements to the model.
Channel itself is a normalization, not a raw PMS field. As noted above, the "channel" your PMS reports is a technical value — often inconsistent, sometimes a concatenation of several underlying codes — and not a clean commercial category on its own. Channel Display Name and Channel Label are how you turn that raw value into something usable, but they're still working from whatever granularity the PMS actually provides. If your PMS doesn't distinguish two channels you consider meaningfully different, Insights can't recover that distinction after the fact.
Cost changes apply retroactively — there's no point-in-time history. If you update a channel's Cost Value (say, a commission rate changes from 15% to 18%), that new rate is applied to all revenue for that channel, including past bookings — not just bookings going forward. There's no historical record of "this channel was 15% until this date, then 18% after." If a channel's commission rate has changed over time and you need to preserve the accuracy of past reporting, keep your own record of when rates changed outside of Insights.
How Is Channel Contribution Margin Calculated?
Channel Contribution Margin is one of the clearest ways to put the fields above to work — the headline metric on the Channel Profitability Report. It expresses, as a percentage, how much of a channel's revenue survives after distribution costs are deducted.
Channel Contribution Margin = Post-Deducted Net Accommodation Revenue ÷ Pre-Deducted Net Accommodation Revenue
A margin of 99.8% means that channel's distribution costs are negligible relative to its revenue. A margin of 80% means roughly a fifth of that channel's revenue is absorbed by distribution costs before it reaches you. A channel with no cost configured will show 100% — see the FAQ if you see this unexpectedly.
This is a ratio, not a dollar figure — it's designed to let you compare channels of very different sizes on equal footing. A small channel with a 95% contribution margin is outperforming a large channel at 82%, even if the large channel produces more total revenue.
Understanding Net Adjusted ADR
Alongside Contribution Margin, the Channel Profitability Report also surfaces Net Adjusted ADR — an ADR (average daily rate) figure that reflects distribution cost, not just room revenue.
Net Adjusted ADR = Accom. Revenue Comm. Excl. (Post-Deducted Net Accommodation Revenue) ÷ Units
This is different from the standard ADR you'll see elsewhere in Insights, which divides accommodation revenue by units sold without removing distribution cost. Net Adjusted ADR answers a more specific question: "once I've paid this channel's commission, what am I really earning per room, per night?"
Two channels can post nearly identical standard ADRs and still diverge sharply on Net Adjusted ADR once their respective distribution costs are applied — this is often the clearest single number for comparing channels rate-for-rate.
Both of these are calculated fields defined on the Channel Profitability Report template — you can recreate them the same way in your own workbook using the fields described above (see Building Your Own Reports below).
How to Configure Channel Costs
Every calculation above is entirely dependent on your channel cost configuration being complete and accurate. If a channel's cost isn't entered, FLYR has no way to know it exists — and that channel will be treated as cost-free everywhere in Insights.
Step 1: Navigate to Data Enrichment
Go to Settings in your left-hand menu
Click Data Enrichment
Select the Channel tab
Step 2: Set up the channel's identity fields
Each channel has two separate labeling fields, which serve different purposes:
Channel Display Name — a free-text field for cleaning up inconsistent names coming from your PMS (e.g., standardizing "Expedia Group" to "Expedia"). This does not group anything — it only relabels.
Channel Label — your grouping field, for rolling multiple channels into a shared category (e.g., grouping Expedia, Hotels.com, and Orbitz under "OTA"). Use this when you want channel-level detail to disappear into a broader bucket for reporting.
Step 3: Configure the channel's cost
Each channel appears as a row in the Data Enrichment table. Set Cost Type, Cost Value, and Cost Deduction as described above.
Step 4: Repeat for every channel that carries a cost
Costs are configured per channel, not globally — a channel with no cost entered will be treated as free of charge everywhere in Insights. If you manage multiple properties with the same channel mix, you can replicate a completed configuration across properties instead of re-entering it — see Copy Data Enrichment Configurations Between Properties.
Step 5: Confirm it's reflected in Insights
Data Enrichment changes refresh into Insights roughly every hour. Give it up to an hour, then check your report — a channel's cost fields should be populated once entered correctly.
Building Your Own Reports & Using AI Chat with These Fields
The Channel Profitability Report is one way to use this data, not the only way. Because Channel and Costs are standard views in both the Bookings and Pick-up topics, you can:
Build your own workbook — pull any combination of Channel Display Name, Channel Label, Commission Cost Type, Commission Value, Commission Deduction Type, and the Pre-/Post-Deducted revenue measures into a query, and recreate metrics like Channel Contribution Margin or Net Adjusted ADR as calculated fields for your own dashboards.
Use the Pick-up topic for pace — if you want to see how commission costs are trending (new bookings, cancellations, or updates), the Pick-up topic's Created/Updated/Cancelled Comm. Costs measures let you track that movement, with STLP variants for period-over-period comparison — something the static Bookings view can't show.
Ask Insights' AI chat directly — you can ask a natural-language question like "what's our channel contribution margin by channel this month" or "which channels have the highest commission cost" and the agent will build the query using these same underlying fields, as long as channel costs are configured. If a channel comes back at 100% contribution margin or $0 commission cost unexpectedly, the AI is reporting the data as configured — check Data Enrichment first, per the FAQ below.
Common Questions (FAQ)
Q: A channel is showing a 100% Contribution Margin, but I know it charges a commission. What's wrong?
A: This almost always means no cost has been configured for that channel in Data Enrichment yet. Check Settings > Data Enrichment > Channel and confirm a Cost Type and Cost Value are entered for it.
Q: What's the difference between Channel Display Name and Channel Label?
A: Display Name relabels an individual channel (cosmetic cleanup only). Label groups multiple channels into one shared reporting category. You can use either, both, or neither — they're independent fields.
Q: Can I have both a percentage and a fixed cost on the same channel?
A: No. Each channel takes a single cost mapping — one Cost Type (Fixed or Percentage), one Cost Value, one Cost Deduction. If a channel needs a different structure, use the mapping that comes closest.
Q: Does channel cost use Net or Gross revenue?
A: Net only (excluding taxes). Distribution costs are a commercial cost, not a tax consideration, so mixing in Gross figures would produce a misleading comparison.
Q: How is Net Adjusted ADR different from the standard ADR shown elsewhere in Insights?
A: Standard ADR is accommodation revenue ÷ units sold, with no distribution cost removed. Net Adjusted ADR uses Post-Deducted (cost-adjusted) revenue instead, so it reflects what a room is actually worth to you after paying the channel.
Q: How long does it take for a cost change to show up in Insights?
A: Up to an hour. Also worth knowing: when you change a cost value, the new rate is applied retroactively to that channel's entire revenue history, not just to bookings going forward — see Limitations to Be Aware Of.
Q: Can I set up channel costs once and apply them to other properties?
A: Yes — use the Copy Data Enrichment Configuration feature to replicate Channel settings (including Costs) across your portfolio instead of re-entering them per property.
Q: I see "Commission Cost Type" and "Commission Value" in the field picker when building a query — are these different from the Settings fields?
A: No, same underlying configuration, different context. Settings > Data Enrichment shows "Cost Type," "Cost Value," and "Cost Deduction" as what you configure per channel. The field picker (under Costs > Channel Commission) shows "Commission Cost Type," "Commission Value" (or the split "Commission Value Fixed Costs" / "Commission Value Percentage"), and "Commission Deduction Type" as what you can pull into a report.
Q: Is channel cost data available outside the Bookings topic?
A: Yes — it's also available in the Pick-up topic, which adds pace-specific measures (Created/Updated/Cancelled Comm. Costs) so you can track how commission costs are moving over time, not just where they stand today.
Questions about setting this up for your property? Reach out through the chat — click the ? icon at the bottom of the left-hand menu.