Question 1

Can I set different markups for my walk in customers and my corporate accounts in the same software?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can. Travel agency software is normally built so that markup is not a single number applied to everything. You can usually create separate customer groups, such as walk in retail customers, corporate accounts and sub agents, and give each group its own markup rule. The software then looks at who is logged in or who the booking is being made for, applies the matching rule, and shows that price. This is how agencies sell the same flight or hotel at a retail price on the public site and at a reduced price to a negotiated corporate account without keeping two systems. How detailed those rules can get depends on your plan and on how your portal is configured. Simple setups allow one markup per group, either a percentage or a flat amount. More detailed setups let you vary the markup by product type, by supplier, by route or destination, by travel class, or by a particular corporate account on its own. Some suppliers also return their own net and published fares differently, so what you can mark up and what you must pass through is partly decided by the supplier rather than by the software. It is worth checking this product by product rather than assuming one rule covers flights, hotels and transfers equally. One thing to plan for is who is allowed to change these rules. Markup settings usually sit behind an admin permission so that counter staff cannot adjust pricing while making a booking. If you have branches or several people selling, decide early who holds that access. Before you go live, set up one test corporate account alongside a normal retail search and compare the two prices on the same flight and the same hotel to confirm the rules are landing the way you expect.

Question 2

Can I see a report of how much business I did last month without exporting everything into a spreadsheet?

Accepted Answer

Yes, travel agency software normally includes built in reports so you can see your sales for a period without pulling the raw data out first. The usual set covers bookings made in a date range, sales broken down by product type such as flights or hotels, your gross sales against your own margin, cancellations and refunds, and a breakdown by staff member or by branch if you run more than one. You pick the dates on screen and the figures come back, so for day to day checking you do not need a spreadsheet at all. What you can report on depends on what the software holds. Anything booked through your portal or entered manually by your staff will appear. If part of your business is arranged outside the system and never recorded there, it will not show up in the totals, so the reports are only as complete as your team's habits. Reports also reflect the booking status at the time you run them, so a trip that is later cancelled will change the numbers when you run the same report again. A fair point to be honest about is that reporting depth varies by plan, and the exact reports available differ from one setup to another. Custom reports, scheduled reports sent to you automatically, or a dashboard built around figures specific to your business are usually possible but may need to be set up for you rather than being there on day one. Export to a spreadsheet stays available for the times you want to slice the data your own way or hand it to your accountant. If you have particular numbers you look at every month, write them down and ask us to confirm which of them the standard reports already cover on your plan and which would need configuring.

Question 3

Can I put together a quote with a few different flight and hotel options for a customer before they decide to book anything?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can build a quote with several options and send it to your customer before anything is booked. The usual way it works is that you search as normal, then save the results you like into a quote instead of going straight to payment. You can put two or three flight choices and a few hotels side by side so your customer can compare, add a short note explaining why you have suggested each one, and include anything you have arranged yourself such as a transfer or a tour you booked directly. The quote normally goes out as a document or a link with your agency name and logo on it, and your customer can read it on a phone or a computer. When they pick the option they want, your staff open the quote in the software and turn the chosen item into a real booking, so nobody retypes the passenger details. Whether your customer can accept and pay for the quote themselves online, rather than coming back to you, depends on the plan you are on and on how your portal is set up. One thing to be honest about is that a saved quote does not hold the price or the seats. Airlines and hotels can change both at any time, so when you come back to a quote that is a few days old the software has to check live availability again, and the final figure may not match what you sent. That is a supplier rule, not something the software can get around. If this matters to you, ask us to show you how quotes look to a customer and how long you can sensibly leave one open before it needs refreshing.

Question 4

Can your travel agency software connect to the accounting package my bookkeeper uses so I am not typing everything in twice?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases it can, although how neatly it connects depends on which accounting package you use and what is included in your plan. The usual aim is that once a booking is confirmed and invoiced in the travel software, the invoice, the customer record and the payment received all land in your accounts without anyone retyping them. There are normally two ways this works. The first is a direct connection, where the two systems talk to each other and new invoices and receipts flow across on their own, usually once a day or as they happen. The second is an export, where you download your invoices, credit notes and payments for a chosen period as a file and your bookkeeper imports that file into the accounts. The direct connection is tidier, but the export route works with almost any package and is often enough for an agency that reconciles weekly or monthly. Be aware of the honest limits. Not every accounting package has a ready made link, so some setups need development work before they will talk to each other, and that is something to agree before you commit. The flow is also usually one way, from the travel software into the accounts, so anything your bookkeeper changes on their side will not come back to us. Supplier costs and refunds may need a little mapping at the start so they land in the right accounts rather than all in one place. The best next step is to tell our team exactly which accounting package you use and whether your bookkeeper works in it directly, and we will tell you plainly whether a direct connection is available or whether an export is the sensible route for you.

Question 5

Can I get my customer and booking data out of the software if I decide to switch to something else?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can get your own booking and customer data out of the software if you ever decide to move on. The information you put in belongs to your agency, and the system is built so you can pull it back out rather than leaving it locked away. Most agencies do this with the reporting and export tools, which let you download bookings, passenger records, customer contact details, payments and invoice records as a spreadsheet file you can open in any ordinary office program or load into another system. How much you can export in one go, and how far back your history reaches, can depend on your plan and on how much you have built up over the years. Very large exports are usually broken into batches by date range so they complete properly. If you want one full copy of everything, including saved documents such as vouchers and invoice copies, it is better to ask our support team to prepare it for you than to try to do it yourself in a single click. There is one honest limit worth knowing about. Content that comes from a supplier, such as hotel descriptions, photos, fare rules and live availability, is not yours to carry away, so an export covers your own records rather than the supplier catalogues sitting behind the search. Your bookings will still carry the supplier reference numbers, which is the important part if you need to chase a refund, a change or a cancellation later on. If this matters to you, run a small test export now while everything is calm, check that the fields you actually rely on are all there, and ask our team what a full copy would involve so you know the answer before you need it.

Question 6

Can the software produce proper invoices with my agency details on them that my corporate clients will accept?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the software can generate an invoice for a booking with your own agency details on it, including your logo, your trading name, your address and your tax registration number where that applies. Once you have set those details up in your account, they carry across to every invoice automatically, so your staff are not rebuilding the same document in a word processor each time. You can usually issue the invoice against a company rather than the traveller, which is what most corporate clients need, and send or download it as a PDF. What the invoice can show depends partly on how you work. Things like a cost centre, a purchase order reference, an employee number or a project code can normally be captured at booking time and printed on the invoice, but the exact fields available, and how much of the layout you can change yourself, vary with your plan. If your client has a strict template of their own, it is worth sending us a sample early so we can tell you honestly what we can match and what we cannot. One limit to be clear about. This is booking and invoicing, not a full accounting system. Tax treatment of travel differs from country to country, and whether your invoice satisfies your local rules is something your accountant has to confirm, not something we can promise on your behalf. The best next step is to raise one test booking, issue an invoice from it, and show that document to your accountant and to your largest corporate client before you roll it out across the office.

Question 7

Can I manage two branch offices in the same travel agency software and keep their bookings separate?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most travel agency software can handle more than one branch in a single account and keep each branch's bookings separate. The usual setup is one main account that you control, with each office set up underneath it as its own unit. Staff are attached to a branch, so when they log in they see the bookings their own office made rather than the other office's work. How strictly the two are kept apart depends on how the software is set up and on your plan. In many cases you as the owner can see everything across both offices, a branch manager sees only their own office, and a counter staff member sees only the bookings they made themselves. Some plans also let each branch have its own markup rules, its own invoice layout and its own set of suppliers, so one office can sell something the other does not. Those finer controls are not always part of an entry level plan, so it is worth asking before you commit. There are limits worth being honest about. If your two offices are separate legal companies with different bank accounts and different trade licences, you may be better off with two separate accounts instead of two branches inside one, because payment settlement and accounting usually sit at the account level rather than the branch level. Combined reporting across branches is normally possible, but the exact breakdown you get depends on what the software records at the time of booking. Before you decide, write down what each office must be able to see and do on its own and what you want to see combined in one place, then check that list against what the software actually allows.

Question 8

Can I see which of my staff made each booking so I can work out their commission at the end of the month?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can. When each member of your team has their own login rather than everyone sharing one, the software stamps every booking with the name of the person who created it, along with the date and time. That means you can open a booking months later and still see who handled it, and you can filter or sort your booking list by staff member to see what each person sold over a chosen period. Whether the software then works out the commission for you is a different matter, and it depends on your plan and how your agency pays people. Some setups let you define a rule, such as a share of the markup or the profit on each sale, and the system totals it up per person. Others simply give you the sales figures per staff member and you apply your own commission rules outside the system, often in a spreadsheet. If commission is paid differently for flights, hotels and packages, or changes when someone hits a target, it is worth describing your exact rules to us before you assume the software can automate them. There are two things that commonly break this. The first is shared logins, because then every sale looks like it came from the same person. The second is bookings that are changed or taken over by someone else partway through, where you may want credit to sit with the original seller rather than whoever touched it last, and that is a policy decision you need to make. The next step is to decide how you want commission counted, then give every staff member their own login from day one so the history is there when you need it.

Question 9

Can the software save my regular customers' passport and frequent flyer details so my staff don't have to type them in every time?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can keep a saved profile for a regular customer and pull those details straight into a new booking instead of typing them out again. A customer profile usually holds the things you repeat on every trip, such as the name exactly as it appears on the passport, date of birth, nationality, passport number and expiry date, contact details, loyalty or frequent flyer numbers, and simple preferences like a window seat or a special meal. When your staff start a booking for that customer, they pick the profile and the fields fill themselves, which cuts down on typing mistakes in names, the kind that are slow and expensive to correct later. Exactly which fields you get, and whether you can store more than one traveller under a single customer, depends on your plan and how your portal has been set up. There are honest limits worth knowing. A saved frequent flyer number will only be attached to the ticket if the airline or supplier accepts it for that fare and route, and some suppliers simply pass seat or meal notes along as a request rather than a guarantee. Saved details also go stale, passports expire and people change phone numbers, so a stored profile should never replace a quick check against the real document at the time of booking. You are also holding personal data, so it should sit behind proper logins rather than in a shared spreadsheet. Before you rely on it, ask which profile fields are available on your plan, decide which of your staff should be allowed to view stored passport details, and agree a simple habit of confirming passport expiry with the traveller on every new booking.

Question 10

Will the software remind me before a free cancellation date or a ticketing deadline runs out?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the software can flag those dates for you, as long as the supplier gives us the date in the first place. When you book a hotel room with free cancellation, or hold an air booking that has not been ticketed yet, the deadline normally comes back together with the booking. The software keeps it with that booking and can show it as something due soon, so you are not digging through old emails trying to work out which file needs attention first. How you actually get told depends on your setup. The usual options are a list of bookings approaching their deadline on your home screen, a label or colour on the booking itself, and an alert or email to the staff member who owns the booking or to a shared office inbox. Whether all of those are switched on for you depends on your plan and on how your portal was put together, so it is worth asking what is included rather than assuming. There is an honest limit here. Not every supplier returns a clean deadline, and some send their policy as a sentence of text rather than a date the software can read and act on. For those bookings the software can remind you that a policy exists, but it cannot promise you the exact hour. Airline ticketing time limits are the riskiest of all, because an airline can shorten them with very little warning, so treat a reminder as a help and not a guarantee. Open two or three of your recent bookings in the software and see whether a cancellation or ticketing deadline is showing against them, then tell us which reminders you want switched on and who in your office should receive them.