We have now enhanced this feature further by showing invoices that have a supplier commission amount outstanding AND invoices that have a customer amount still receivable in red. Each agency has a different policy in terms of when to pay an agent, but we hope this feature will save you time by not having to check whether there are any amounts still receivable on an invoice from suppliers or customers, before paying the agent.

1. From the Back-Office module, either edit the invoice (by clicking on invoice management on the left and searching for the invoice) OR click on “Customer Receivables” to get a list of invoices for which amounts are receivable and click ‘received’ next to the amount you wish to write-off.
2. Add a customer payment (as you normally would do) by clicking on the “Add Payment” button.
3. When the small payment window opens, select “Write-Off Amount” as the method of payment, enter the date and the amount to write-off. Click on the button to save it.

This will remove the invoice from the customer receivable list in the back-office, and also generates a journal entry (part of Journal Entry 001) in the month of the write-off, as follows:

Dr. Bad Debt Expense
Cr. Accounts Receivable – Customer

We hope this quick new feature will allow you to quickly write-off old customer amounts owing that you are certain will not be collectable.

Part 1: Learn to log into the app, learn about the features of the invoice management module, navigate the home page, and get started creating a basic invoice:

Part 2: Continue creating the basic invoice by learning to add travel and insurance products, and complete the booking details page:

Part 3: In this last part, learn to add payments and complete the invoice, as well as search the system for existing invoices:

We hope you find the videos useful. I plan on adding more videos on various topics in the future. Stay tuned.

1. Customer Payments Report – This report provides a detailed listing of all previous payments received from customers, including the booking date, date received, date deposited into the bank account, and reference information.

2. Supplier Payments Report – This report provides a detailed listing of all previous payments made to suppliers.

3. Supplier Commissions Received Report – This report provides a detailed listing of all commission amounts received, whether by cheque or direct deposit, from the supplier.

One common mistake we’ve noticed users make is in the recording of dates; for example, we’ve noticed cases where the date received/paid is before the booking date, or the recorded date deposited/withdrawn is before the date the amount was received/paid. These input errors will obviously result in an incorrect journal entry; therefore, we are hoping that through the above reports, you will easily be able to identify and correct such input errors yourself.

To access these reports, simply login to the back-office and go to the reporting sections under the “Customer Receivables”, “Supplier Payables”, or “Supplier Commissions Receivables” sections. You can also access these reports under the “Management Reports” section.

Highlights of some changes include:

• The ability to further sort the payments/commissions lists based on various columns (e.g. invoice number, booking dates, date paid etc.)
• The ability to record or reconcile multiple invoices as a batch where the payment type is the same or the deposit/withdrawn date is the same. This will save a ton of time as you no longer need to record/reconcile each invoice individually.
• We’ve added a couple of fields in the lists. For example,  the “Departure Date” has been added to the list of supplier commissions  receivable which will help you better determine when to follow-up with suppliers if commissions have not been received.

The following is a more detailed explanation of the changes.

1. Supplier Payables:

When recording amounts paid to the supplier, you can now filter the listing and then sort the list based on various columns such as the invoice number, supplier, reference number, or booking date.

You can also record multiple invoices (e.g. if they were all paid together on one cheque or on one company credit card payment) as a batch. Simply click on the relevant checkboxes to select the invoices and then click on the “Record Batch Payment” button. You will then be asked to select the method of payment and date of payment and the system will automatically record this for all of the invoices selected. Please note that this should be used where the full amount of the invoices is being paid on the same cheque/company credit card payment. You still have the option of recording individual invoices and partial payments by clicking on “Payment”, as before.

When you reconcile the cash payments or company credit card payments, you can now sort the list based on the titles, and you can also reconcile multiple invoices if they were all withdrawn or paid on the same date as per your bank statement/credit card statement. As always, recording the correct withdrawn date is critical to ensure that the journal entries are accurate, and the withdrawn date should always be after the payment date.

2. Supplier Commission Receivable:

Similar to the changes made to the supplier payables sections, you can now sort the lists under the supplier commission receivable section and you can record the commissions received for multiple invoices. Sometimes suppliers send one cheque for multiple bookings and you now no longer need to record each invoice separately. Simply select the invoices for which the full commission was received and click on the “Record Batch Received”. Then select whether the commission was received as a cheque or a deposit to your account and the date.

When reconciling commissions to your bank statement, most agencies deposit multiple cheques on the same date. Therefore, you can now also select multiple invoices when reconciling as long as they have the same deposit date. As before, recording the deposit date accurately is critical to ensure that the journal entries are accurate.

We’re very excited about these changes (and something that has been on our roadmap for a while). We certainly hope these changes will make your back-office tasks even faster.

Here’s what you need to do to create multiple invoices for a group:

1. Create the first invoice completely for the first couple/passenger in the group, including all the itinerary details.
2. Once completed, to create a duplicate or clone of this invoice, simply open this initial invoice, scroll to the bottom and click on the “Save as New Invoice” button. This will generate a new invoice with the same itinerary details, selling price, net cost etc. as the original (but will leave the customer and supplier payments blank so that you can complete it as needed).
3. In this new duplicated invoice, just change the customer name/address (if needed; just remember to click on the ‘create’ button for a new customer, and not the ‘update’ button). Also change the passengers listed that is relevant to this new invoice. You can also change the selling price/net cost as required for this invoice by editing the travel product. Scroll down and click on the “Save Invoice” button.

Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each additional invoice you require for this group. Don’t forget to add how you received customer payments and made payments to supplier on each invoice, as applicable.

Here’s a tip: If you do a lot of group bookings, you may wish to assign some unique group id to each group (e.g. #GR001 – use a # sign so that we know it is a group). We recommend entering this as part of the Booking Reference field. For example, if you have added a ‘vacation package’ travel product and the supplier locator number/booking reference number is LGHFY, then you could enter ‘LGHFT/#GR001’ in the booking reference field for that product. Then,  in the future, if you wanted to search for all invoices related to that particular group booking, you simply go to the search feature and enter ‘GR001’ in the booking reference field to search for. The system will automatically show you all invoices related to that group booking.

The feedback we’ve received from users to date is that this feature has saved a lot of time when doing groups, and so we wanted to share this with you.

The Invoice Register is available to all “Premium” or “Enterprise” accounts from the Back-Office accounting module. Here’s how to generate your Invoice Register for your travel agency:

1.  Login to the Back-Office accounting system.
2. Click on “Management Reporting” in the left-side menu.

   

3. You will immediately see the “Invoice Register” report filter screen where you can choose which fields you wish to include. By default, all fields are selected. As you will see, there are a number of fields that are included. You can also select the period of time (based on the “booking date”) to generate the report for.
4. After you have selected the fields and time period, click on the “Generate Invoice Register” button. The Invoice Register report will open in a new separate window.
5. To cut-and-paste the report into a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel), click on CTRL-A (to highlight everything, then click on CTRL-C (to copy everything). Open your spreadsheet, and click CTRL-P to paste all the information. All of the fields should paste into separate columns in the spreadsheet.

You can then save the spreadsheet as a back-up of all your invoices in the system. We highly recommend doing this periodically as an extra precaution (in addition to keeping a hard-copy of your invoices filed).

In this customer portrait section we look at how our customers are using the TravelOffice app in their business.

Meet Michele Montgomery. Michele is a manager and a travel consultant with Centre Holidays, a large travel agency and host-agency based in Canada.

As a host-agency with a large number of agents, what were the challenges you faced with invoicing?

At present, our agency consists of 160 home based agents. Like anyone using an invoicing system, our concerns were how complex or simple a system is to use.

A complicated system takes too much of your time to learn and complete accurately.

We have been using the Merang TravelOffice for two full years. Merang TravelOffice is very simple yet has all the features that our agency requires.  Within 20-30 minutes, I can train our new agents how to use the system.

Once you realize that the first step is creating the client profile and then you proceed to the actual invoicing of the product, it all makes sense.

Each of our agents has their own login and can only see their invoices.  With an accountant access, I am able to see all agents’ invoices which makes it easy for me to assist if they are having difficulty.

What are some of the features of the TravelOffice app that have benefited your agency?

Some features that I personally like:

1. Searching for past client’s profile, saves time filling in all the address details. You put in the client’s last name, click on search. If you have created an invoice for them previously, you simply click on the name and your details fill in.

2. Save as new invoice feature. If you have a group, this feature saves you a lot of time. It simply copies your invoice with a new invoice number. All the travel details are there, you just need to change the passenger’s name, any specific details and payment details.

3. If you simply tab through the fields, it makes your input quicker.

4. I apply the commissions received from suppliers as well as the payroll runs. There are situations where an agent may have received more or less commission from the supplier. The TravelOffice app makes if very easy to adjust this before applying commission’s received. Agents are not always aware of the % of commissions for each supplier and there could also be bonus commission they are not aware of.

5. Each agent’s commission levels can be set up as a percentage or rate.  This makes it easier when completing a payroll run. The TravelOffice app figures all that out automatically.

6. The invoices have all the details required by TICO [Travel Industry Council of Ontario], with the option to add other comments or requirements. You have the capability to email the invoice directly to your clients. I personally like the look of the PDF version of the invoice. This is what I print or save and send to my clients, either by email or the postal system.

7.  You have several options when searching for invoice; by invoice number, client’s last name, date of travel, supplier, booking agent, locator number and more.  Using one or more of these details makes it easier to pinpoint the invoice you are looking for.

8.  The feature on the home page “who owes me” is a great tool. When you have a client that has put a deposit on a product, it reminds you that you need to apply final payment.

9.  Most of all, the support offered by Merang has been great. There is a link directly on the site and you get a response in a timely manner. Merang is always working to tweak the system to make it as simple yet with sufficient features you require.

Apart from making the system compatible with other browsers (e.g. Firefox), we have introduced a multitude of new features and changes. The following is just a quick summary of some of the new features and changes. Over the next few weeks, and months we will be posting more details of each of the changes and how to use them, so check back often.

I. SYSTEM PROFILES:
1. Invoice Profiles: You can now specify payment titles by product type, select to display supplier names on invoices, and select to display the signature line when insurance is declined.
2. Agent Profile: You can now allow agents to create suppliers, record supplier payments, and ‘complete’ invoices for their own invoices. You can also allow/remove manager’s access to a limited version of the back-office.
3. Product Inventory: You can now create an inventory of standard products that can be quickly retrieving from an invoice, automatically filling out the relevant fields.

II. INVOICE MODULE:
1. Enhanced Search Feature: You can now search for invoices based on a number of other fields including agent, destination, invoice status, supplier, passenger last name, etc.
2. Invoice Remarks: You can add remarks to an invoice that will not display on the customer’s copy of the invoice.
3. Enhanced Product Fields: You can now select the product type, and customized fields will appear for each type. Also payment titles will change based on the product type.
4. Supplier Commission Rates: Supplier commission rates are displayed (if entered in the supplier profile) when you are recording the net cost.
5. “Card Payment (Supplier)”: When adding a customer payment received with this method of payment, the corresponding supplier payment is automatically created (previously, you had to do this separately).
6. Customer and Agency Invoices: We have enhanced the customer and agency versions of the invoices to make them more professional and customized based on the product types.
7. PDF Invoices and Vouchers: You can now generate the invoices and vouchers (for tour companies) as a PDF document that can be saved and e-mailed to customers.

III. BACK-OFFICE MODULE:
1. Updated Dashboard: The back-office dashboard has been reorganized to make it easier to understand.
2. Sales Activity Reports: The report selection has been reorganized. We added a column for number of passengers in the ‘Sales Report by Supplier’. Also, we added two new reports; ‘Sales Report by Invoice’ and ‘Sales Report by Product Type’.
3. Invoice Register: You can now generate a detailed report of all invoices in the system including many pertinent fields. We recommend you generate this report periodically and save it (in a spreadsheet) as a backup of all your invoices in the system.
4. Customer Profile – Assigned Agent: We now assign agents to every customer profile. This is done automatically from the invoice or can be done through the customer profiles section in the back-office. A report of customer profiles can be generated, including the assigned agent.

We sincerely hope that you will find these new features useful. Again, stay tuned as we post more specific details of each of these features over the coming weeks and months, as well as tips on using the system faster and better.

Answer:
Let’s look at this by going through an example:

Example: Assume you had a booking with Air Canada (AC) with a net cost of $600. You paid Air Canada by cheque (or company credit card etc.). The customer then cancelled the booking and instead of receiving a refund back from AC, they gave you a credit of $600.

In this case, on the invoice (let’s call it invoice 76001), you would change the supplier net cost to 0 since the booking was cancelled. In the Supplier Payment section, you would leave the $600 already paid to AC (since you are not getting a refund). So the remaining balance due now shows as -$600 (i.e. they owe you).

Now, let’s say a month or two later, you do another booking with AC which has a net cost of $1000, and you want to use the $600 credit owing to you from AC on this booking and you paid AC a cheque of $400 for the remaining. To record this, create the new invoice (76002) with a net cost of $1000. In the Supplier Payment section, you would record the payment (method: Cash/Company Cheque) of $400 that you made. You would also record a second payment (Method: Applied Supplier Credit) for $600. So the remaining balance due will be 0.

One last thing you must do (which is the important part that people miss) is to go back to invoice 76001 (which still has a remaining balance due from supplier of -$600) and you need to record a payment (Method: Applied Supplier Credit) for -$600 (notice the negative sign). This will bring the remaining balance due on this invoice also down to 0.

So basically, the two “Applied Supplier Credit” payment under both invoices 76001 (-$600) and 76002 ($600) net each other out.