Question 1

When I settle with a supplier, can the system show me which bookings went into that invoice so I can check it is correct?

Accepted Answer

Yes, the system can show you the bookings that make up a supplier invoice so you can verify it before you pay. When a supplier sends you an invoice, you need to be certain that every charge is for a booking you actually made with them, that the prices match what you agreed, and that nothing has been charged twice. The system lets you pull up all the bookings you made with that supplier in a date range and see the amounts that were invoiced, so you can line them up against the supplier's paperwork and catch any mistakes or overcharges before settlement. How well this works depends on the supplier and how they send their data to the system. Some suppliers feed their invoices directly into the software, which means the matching happens almost automatically and you can see at a glance what each charge relates to. Other suppliers send invoices by email or through a portal, and you will need to do more of the matching yourself, although the system still makes it easier by letting you filter and search your bookings. If a supplier's data is incomplete or formatted in an unusual way, you may find some invoices are harder to reconcile than others. The system also keeps a record of what you actually paid the supplier for each booking, so you can compare that against the invoice line by line. This is especially useful if you have negotiated different rates for different booking types or if you have volume discounts that should apply. Check with your account manager which suppliers are already connected to send invoice data automatically, and ask whether your current plan includes the invoice reconciliation tools you need.

Question 2

If a customer cancels their trip, can the system work out how much money I should give back after the supplier charges?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the system can work the refund out for you. When a booking is cancelled it looks at the cancellation rules held against that booking, applies the supplier penalty for the date the cancellation is made, keeps back your own service fee if you charge one, and shows the net amount due to the customer before anything is sent. Your staff see the figure and the reason for it on the same screen, so nobody has to work it out on paper. How accurate that figure is depends on the supplier. Where the booking came through an API that returns live cancellation terms, the penalty is taken straight from the supplier and is reliable. Where the terms were only shown as text at the time of booking, or the booking was typed in by hand from a phone or walk in deal, someone on your team has to confirm the penalty before the refund is approved. The system will still do the arithmetic, but it can only be as right as the rule it has been given. Paying the money back is a separate step from working it out. A refund can normally go to the card the customer paid with, or be credited to an agent balance if one of your agents made the booking, and you decide which of those you want. How long it takes to reach them is set by the payment gateway and the bank rather than by the system, and you may be refunding the customer before the supplier has refunded you, so that gap is worth watching. Check which of your suppliers return cancellation terms automatically and which do not, and decide whether refunds should go out straight away or wait for your approval first.

Question 3

Can my customers pay in their own currency while I still get paid in mine?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can show prices and collect payment in the currency your customer is comfortable with, while your own books stay in your home currency. The booking site can display a converted price using a rate you control, and the payment gateway collects in whichever currencies you have enabled on your account. How far this goes depends on two things that are not really in your hands. The first is your payment provider, because it has to accept the currencies you want to take and settle them into your bank account. The second is the supplier or the API behind the product, because flights and hotels are usually priced in the supplier's own currency, and that is the amount you owe them no matter what currency your customer paid you in. Because of that gap, the safer way to run it is to keep the supplier currency as the real cost and treat the customer facing currency as a display and collection layer, with your own rate and a small buffer built into your markup. Exchange rates move between the day a customer books and the day you settle with the supplier, so without that buffer a booking that looked healthy when it was made can end up costing you by the time the supplier invoice lands. Ask your payment provider which currencies they will accept and settle for your business, then check which currency each of your suppliers bills you in, and set your display rate and your markup so that the two always leave you covered.

Question 4

Can I charge different markups to different agents instead of the same one for everyone?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can. Most travel booking systems let you set markups by agent group rather than one flat rate for the whole network, so the agents who send you steady volume can sit on a thinner margin while everyone else stays on your standard one. You put each agent into a group when you approve them, set the rule once for that group, and every booking they make picks it up automatically. Markups can usually be set at more than one level as well. You can keep a general rule that covers everything, then add a sharper one for a particular product such as hotels or flights, or for a particular supplier, and the system applies the most specific rule that matches the booking. The markup is normally either a percentage or a fixed amount, and you can usually choose whether the agent sees only the selling price or also sees what the booking cost you. There are limits worth knowing before you plan around this. How finely you can slice the rules depends on the system you are on, and what the supplier sends you matters too. Some supplier connections return a net rate that you are free to mark up, while others send a gross price with commission already inside it, and there you are really sharing commission rather than adding a markup. Currency conversion and local taxes can also change what the customer sees at the end. Before you commit to a structure, write down the agent groups you actually want, take one sample booking for each, and ask your provider to show you those exact rules running in a test account so you can see both your figure and what the agent sees on their screen.

Question 5

If my customer pays by card, can I add the card charge on top instead of paying it myself?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can pass a card charge on to the customer, but whether you are allowed to depends on your payment gateway and on the rules in your country. The booking system can add a fee on top of the total at checkout, either as a fixed amount or as a percentage, and show it as a separate line so the customer can see what it is for. It can also be tied to one payment method only, so a customer paying by bank transfer is not charged extra while a customer paying by card is. Where this gets restricted is not the software, it is the card schemes and the local law. Some countries do not allow a surcharge on debit or credit card payments at all, and some gateways say plainly in their terms that you may not add one. In those places most agencies build the cost into their markup instead, so the price the customer sees already covers it and nothing extra appears at the end. That is quieter, and it usually sells better, because a fee that turns up on the last screen is a common reason people walk away from a booking. It also helps to keep two things separate. The fee you are charged and the money that actually lands in your bank are not the same number, because the gateway normally takes its cut before it settles with you. Your reports should show the gross amount the customer paid, the fee, and the net you received, otherwise your accounts will never tie back to your statements. Before you switch a surcharge on, read your gateway agreement and check the rules where your customers are, then decide whether you would rather show the charge openly or fold it into your price.

Question 6

Can I see which customer payments have actually reached my bank account and which are still sitting with the payment gateway?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Most travel booking systems keep a record of every payment taken on your website and show whether it is still sitting with the payment gateway or has already been paid out to your bank. That matters, because the moment a customer pays is not the moment you have the money. The gateway holds it for a settlement period and then sends it over in a batch that usually covers several bookings at once. The usual way to see this is a payments report that lists each transaction with its booking reference, the amount taken, the fee deducted and the payout it belongs to. When your bank statement shows one lump sum, you can open that payout and see the individual bookings inside it. That is what lets your accounts person tie the money in the bank back to the trips you sold instead of guessing. How much of that detail you get depends on your payment provider, not on the booking system. Some gateways send back a full payout file with fees and reference numbers, and those details flow straight into your reports. Others only confirm that a payment succeeded, so the system can show you what was taken but not when it left the gateway. Money you take by bank transfer or in cash still has to be marked as received by someone on your team. Ask your payment provider what settlement information they pass back, and ask whoever builds your portal whether it is read into your reports. Knowing that before you go live saves a lot of manual reconciliation later.

Question 7

Can I sell to my customers in their own currency when my supplier charges me in a different one?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most setups you can show prices and take payment in the currency your customer is used to, even when your supplier bills you in a different one. The system applies a conversion rate to the supplier fare and shows the customer a single amount in their own money, which they pay through your normal payment gateway. The part that needs care is the rate itself. Exchange rates move, and the rate you showed at the moment of booking is not always the rate your bank or your supplier settles at later. Most travel businesses handle this by building a margin into the rate they publish, so an ordinary daily movement does not eat into their profit. Whether that rate refreshes automatically or is one you set by hand depends on your plan and on the rate source connected to your account. Settlement is a separate matter from display. Your gateway pays out in the currency of your merchant account, and if that is not the currency the customer paid in, the gateway takes its own conversion and its own fee before the money reaches you. Your supplier still invoices you in their currency on their own cycle. Those two conversions are why the amount landing in your bank rarely matches the invoice exactly. Before you turn on a new selling currency, check with your payment provider which currencies your merchant account can actually settle in, and agree with your supplier which currency your invoices will arrive in, so your accounts team has something predictable to reconcile against.

Question 8

Can I charge a different markup to different customers for the same hotel or flight?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most systems you can. Rather than one markup applied to everything, you keep a set of rules and the system decides which one applies at the moment the price is shown, based on who is looking at it. A walk in customer, a sub agent in your network and a corporate account can all see the same hotel at a different final price, without you touching the booking by hand. Markups are usually set as either a percentage or a flat amount, and you can normally narrow them down further, by supplier, by product type such as flights or hotels, by country or by the group the customer belongs to. The part that trips people up is what happens when a customer matches two rules at once, for example a corporate client who is also in a promotional group. Decide the order of priority when you set the rules up, because the system will follow whatever order it is given rather than what you meant. There are limits and they usually come from the supplier rather than from the software. Some fares and rates reach you as net rates, which you are free to mark up as you like. Others arrive as published or agreed prices where your contract does not allow you to change what the customer sees, and in those cases your earning is the commission rather than a markup you set. It is also worth deciding early whether your markup is refunded when a customer cancels, because that affects both your refund wording and what you eventually settle with the supplier. Before you go live, write down the customer groups you actually sell to, check your supplier agreements for which rates permit a markup, then run one test booking for each group all the way through to the invoice and a cancellation, so you can see the markup behaving the same way at every step.

Question 9

If a customer's card payment fails halfway through checkout, does their money get stuck somewhere?

Accepted Answer

No, in almost every case the money comes back to the customer on its own, but it can sit in limbo for a few days first and it helps to know why. When someone pays on your website, the bank first puts a hold on the amount rather than handing it straight over. If the payment then fails, or the page drops out before the booking is finished, that hold is never turned into a real charge. The customer often still sees the amount missing from their available balance, which is why they ring you in a panic, but their bank releases it by itself after a few working days. Nothing has reached you, so there is nothing for you to refund. On your side the booking is not confirmed and is kept as a failed or incomplete attempt rather than being thrown away. Your staff can see it, see the reason the payment provider gave, and either send the customer a fresh payment link or ask them to try again. That record matters, because it lets you tell a worried customer exactly what happened instead of guessing. The part that is out of everyone's hands is timing. How quickly the hold disappears depends on the customer's own bank, and no software can speed that up. It is also worth remembering that a failed payment does not hold the seat or the room, so the price may have moved by the time they try again. If a customer calls about this, check the payment status on the booking first, then ask them to look at their statement rather than their available balance.

Question 10

When a customer cancels a booking, how long does it take before the refund actually reaches their card?

Accepted Answer

It is rarely immediate, and the honest answer is that it usually takes a few weeks rather than a few days. A refund has to travel back along the same chain the money came down. The supplier or airline has to accept the cancellation and release the amount to you, your payment gateway then has to push the refund out, and the customer's own bank decides when it appears on their statement. Each of those steps has its own timetable and none of them is under your control. The part that catches most agencies out is the middle one. If you have already paid the supplier, you cannot refund the customer out of thin air without carrying the cost yourself until the supplier settles. Airline refunds in particular can sit for a long time, and some fares are not refundable at all, only changeable. Whether you refund the customer first and wait for the supplier, or wait and then pay, is a business decision about your own cash, and it is worth deciding it before it happens rather than during an argument. A booking system helps by making the position visible. It can hold the cancellation, the amount due back, any charge you are keeping, and the date the supplier confirmed, so anyone picking up the file can tell the customer where the money is instead of guessing. What it cannot do is make a bank move faster. Set a plain refund timeline in your terms and repeat it in the cancellation email, and check with your gateway how long its own refunds take to settle, because that is the number your customers will judge you on.