Travel Agency Edition

An end-to-end reference for cruise, tour, and package-travel bookkeeping. Covers everything from logging a single booking to mailing the contractor's check, plus a clean lift-and-shift from QuickBooks Desktop so you don't lose any history.

Turning On the Edition

This edition ships with the Pro license tier and any higher tier — there's no extra download or add-on charge. The capability is gated behind a license feature flag, so it appears automatically once your tier supports it.

Once active, look for ✈️ Travel Bookings in the sidebar of the desktop app. Don't see it on a Starter plan? Head to Settings → License Management to bump the tier.

Suppliers and Independent Contractors

Suppliers (who pays you)

Treat each cruise line, tour operator, or wholesaler as a Supplier. They go under Settings → Tracking Dimensions → Supplier. Nest them inside parent buckets — Cruises, Land Packages, Travel Insurance, and so on — and the Gross Sales by Vendor report will summarize neatly under those headings.

Independent Contractor Agents (who you pay)

Every IC is set up as a Sales Rep at Settings → Sales Reps. Three required fields: Name, Initials, and Default Commission Percent (commonly 80, 85, or 90, depending on the tier you offer).

Logging a New Booking

Open ✈️ Travel Bookings, confirm the New Booking tab is selected, and fill the form top-down:

1. Supplier (required) — pick from the list; if a default commission rate exists for that supplier, the calculation begins automatically.
2. Agent / IC (required) — the contractor who closed the sale; their tier determines the default split percentage.
3. Guest name — last name then first name. New clients get created on the fly when you type a name not on file.
4. Booking reference — the supplier's confirmation number. Helps with lookups later.
5. Travel date — the departure date of the trip.
6. Commission period (optional) — useful only if you group payouts by an arbitrary cycle. Reporting filters use travel date, so leaving this blank is fine.
7. Gross trip cost — full ticket value. Treated as a sales metric, not posted to revenue.
8. Commissionable amount — the portion of gross the supplier pays commission on. Frequently matches gross.
9. Commission earned — pre-fills from supplier rate × commissionable. You can overwrite it to match whatever the confirmation actually states.
10. Agent split % — pre-fills from the rep's tier, overridable per booking.

Press Save Booking & Post Commission. BizBooks Pro writes one four-line journal entry behind the scenes — Dr Commissions Receivable, Cr Commission Income, Dr Agent Commissions Expense, Cr Commissions Payable — leaving your AR and AP accurate from the moment the booking lands.

Auto-Parsing a Supplier PDF

At the top of the New Booking tab sits a 📄 Scan a confirmation drop zone. Drag the supplier's confirmation PDF (or a photo of it) in, then press Scan & pre-fill. Within 3–6 seconds the form is populated with supplier, guest, travel dates, gross, commissionable amount, and commission.

Supplier and agent names are matched against your existing lists when possible. Nothing is locked — every field stays editable so you can correct anything before saving.

Posting a Commission Receipt

When the supplier's commission arrives (by check or ACH):

1. Travel Bookings → Bookings tab.
2. Locate the booking the payment relates to. Filter Status = Booked to narrow the list quickly.
3. On that row, hit 💰 Receive. Set deposit account, receipt date, amount, payment method, and reference.
4. Confirm with Record Receipt.

Status moves to Received and BizBooks Pro records a JE — Dr Bank (or Undeposited Funds), Cr Commissions Receivable — for the exact amount.

When One Check Covers Many Bookings

Suppliers often consolidate commissions for several of your guests into one check. To keep the bank deposit clean while preserving per-booking detail, route each receipt through Undeposited Funds:

1. Receive each booking one by one. In the deposit account field, select Undeposited Funds rather than your operating bank account.
2. When all the receipts that share a single check are entered, jump to 🏠 Dashboard → Deposit Undeposited Funds.
3. Tick the rows that belong to the same check, choose the bank account, set the deposit date, and press Make Deposit.

The result: one bank deposit on your books equal to the supplier's check total, yet every individual booking still rolls into the agent payout report independently. Month-end reconciliation matches the bank statement line for line.

Cutting IC Payout Checks

Open Travel Bookings → Pay Commissions.

1. Select the Agent you're paying.
2. Enter Travel month from and Travel month to — these refer to when the guests actually travel, not the cycle in which you're writing the check.
3. Press Show eligible bookings. A grid populates with every Received booking for that agent in the window, with the amount you owe the IC per row. All rows are pre-selected.
4. Uncheck anything you'd rather hold for a later cycle.
5. Optional: append manual adjustment rows for bonuses, deductions, or catch-ups from prior periods.
6. At the bottom: pick bank account, payment date, payment method, check number, and any memo notes.
7. Finish with Post Payout & Print Check.

Printing the Check and Itemized Stub

A confirmation dialog displays the payee, total, check number, and date — press OK to launch the printable check, pre-filled and aligned to your check stock. Your browser's print dialog appears automatically.

Roughly 800 ms later, a second tab opens with the itemized voucher stub: every booking on this check (departure date, guest, supplier, commission earned, agent %, payout amount) plus any adjustment lines and the final total. Print it, then mail or hand both to the contractor.

The Reporting Suite

Travel Bookings → Reports. Choose a date range (or leave it open for all-time) and apply.

• Sales by Rep — per-agent scoreboard over the window. Gross sold, commission earned, amount owed to agent.
• Gross Sales by Vendor — supplier breakdown grouped under your parent vendor categories with subtotals.
• Monthly Commission Report — per-agent statement showing base earnings plus any bonus / adjustment lines, broken out by booking.

Each one filters by the booking's travel month, so a May trip lives under May regardless of when the check was actually cut.

Travel Activity Inside a Client Card

Open any customer in the Client Center and a ✈️ Travel Activity panel appears whenever that client has bookings logged. It shows gross trip totals, commission earned, the agent's share, and your retained margin — plus a per-booking grid.

If a customer has no travel bookings (your non-travel vendors, for instance), the panel quietly stays hidden. On a Starter license the panel never renders.

Adjusting a Booking After the Fact

Press ✏️ Edit on any row in the Bookings tab. The modal allows changes to Supplier, Agent, Commission amount, Agent split %, Gross trip cost, Commissionable amount, Travel date, Commission period, Booking reference, Status, and Notes.

Undoing Each Step in the Workflow

BizBooks Pro reverses things in the reverse order they happened — and refuses to skip a step. That's by design: it keeps your ledger consistent at every layer.

• Wrong booking, nothing received yet: delete it. The original commission JE rolls back cleanly.
• Wrong receipt amount, contractor not yet paid: click ↩ Reverse on the row, then re-run 💰 Receive with the correct figure.
• Wrong receipt amount, contractor already paid: Pay Commissions → History → Void or 🗑 Delete the payout run, reverse the receipt, post the corrected receipt, then run Pay Commissions again.
• Wrong check number on a payout you just posted: Pay Commissions → History → 🗑 Delete that run (it removes the history row, unwinds the bank entry, and re-floats the bookings as eligible), then rerun Pay Commissions with the right check #.

Bringing QuickBooks Desktop Over

Moving from QB Desktop? Start with the regular import phases first — chart of accounts, customers, vendors, opening balances, transactions — then add the travel-specific layer:

1. Utilities → Import Sales Reps from QuickBooks. Upload your Sales Rep List (IIF or CSV). Tick "Also create matching 1099-NEC vendors" to spawn paired vendor records in the same pass.
2. Utilities → Travel: Backfill Sales Reps & Synthesize Bookings:
   • Step 1 — upload your QB Custom Transaction Detail Report (with the Rep column included). BizBooks Pro tags each transaction with the corresponding sales rep.
   • Step 2 — press Preview Bookings. The system clusters tagged transactions into proposed booking rows. Review, then Commit when satisfied.
3. Utilities → Travel: Backfill Gross Trip Cost from QB Invoices. Recovers gross trip values from existing QB invoice totals onto the synthesized bookings.

1099-NEC Year-End Reporting

Every payout that runs through Pay Commissions is automatically tagged to the IC's paired vendor record. Come tax time, open Reports Studio → 1099 Summary and each contractor's annual total is already calculated, sourced, and ready to file.

If you skipped the "create matching vendor" step when first setting up a rep, go back to the rep record and create the vendor link now. BizBooks Pro re-attaches past payouts as soon as the link exists.