Included on Pro and higher — no surcharge
✈️

The Bookkeeping Workflow Travel Agents Actually Need

Cruise commissions, supplier dimensions, agent splits, and printed payout checks with a stub that lists every guest. Built specifically for cruise, tour, and package travel agencies switching from QuickBooks Desktop.

Free 30-Day Trial

What QuickBooks Made You Do

The four-step trip

A $5,000 cruise that earns you $400 commission with an 80/20 split to the agent meant: create the booking invoice, create a second fake "commission invoice," receive payment from the customer, then cut a payment to the agent. Four steps per trip. Repeat fifty times a week.

The empty check stub problem

When the end-of-month payout to your independent contractor covers twelve guests' trips, QuickBooks prints a check with a blank stub. Every month you'd handwrite or type up an attachment listing what the check covered. The accounting software left that to you.

What BizBooks Pro Does Instead

One trip, three timestamped events

1

Save the Booking

At sale time. Logs commission earned. Posts the journal entry.

2

Receive Commission

When the supplier check clears. Cash hits the bank.

3

Pay the IC

Monthly. The itemized check stub prints alongside the check.

Three separate dates, three separate journal entries

Booking date isn't pay date. Pay date isn't receipt date. BizBooks Pro keeps the three timestamps separate so your monthly reports show what actually happened when — not a smashed-together version of reality forced by software that wouldn't separate them.

What's Included

📄 Confirmation PDF Scanning

Drop the supplier's confirmation PDF or a phone photo of it into the form. AI vision extracts the supplier name, guest, travel dates, gross trip cost, commissionable amount, and commission earned. Three to six seconds. Every field stays editable for review.

  • Compatible with confirmations from any major cruise line, tour operator, or wholesaler
  • Supplier and agent names auto-match against your existing lists
  • Fast enough to scan a stack of confirmations while you make coffee

👤 IC Split Tiers (80 / 85 / 90)

Every independent contractor stores their current commission tier. New bookings pick up the agent's tier automatically. When a top performer crosses into a higher tier mid-year, one checkbox retroactively applies the new rate to all that agent's unpaid bookings — and never touches the bookings already paid.

  • Per-IC default commission percent stored on the rep record
  • Override on individual bookings when needed
  • Base + bonus breakdown on the agent payout statement
  • Tier history preserved on settled bookings (never rewritten)

🧾 Itemized Payout Stub

Click "Post Payout & Print Check." Your check prints on the pre-printed business check stock you already use, with the voucher stub printing alongside. The stub names every booking on the run: travel date, guest, supplier, commission, agent percent, and payout. Hand it to the IC. They have a complete record without a single line of typing.

  • Adjustment lines for bonuses, deductions, or prior-period corrections
  • Any prior stub can be reprinted from the payout history
  • Void or hard-delete a payout run to reissue with a corrected check number
  • Check positions configured once, used for every check thereafter

🌐 Three Travel-Specific Reports

Travel-month filtered reports built around the questions agency owners actually run every month.

  • Sales by Rep — leaderboard of agent gross sales and commissions
  • Gross Sales by Vendor — supplier roll-up grouped by category (Cruises / Tours / Insurance)
  • Monthly Commission Report — per-agent statement with base + bonus per booking
  • All three filter by the trip's travel month, not deferred payout cycles

📁 Migrating From QuickBooks Desktop

Bring 6+ years of QB history with you. Standard import phases handle the chart of accounts, customers, vendors, opening balances, and transactions. Then the travel-specific synthesis utility reconstructs proper Travel Bookings records from your imported journal entries — so historical activity shows up correctly in the new reports.

  • Sales Rep List imported from QB IIF
  • Sales-rep tagging utility: re-export with a Rep column → merge
  • Booking Synthesis: cluster commission JEs into bookings
  • Gross backfill: recover trip totals from QB invoice records

📋 1099-NEC Year-End

When you add an IC, BizBooks Pro offers to auto-create a matching 1099-NEC vendor record and link the two. Every commission check you cut through Pay Commissions then automatically lands on that vendor's transaction history. Year-end, the 1099 Summary report rolls up every IC's annual total without reconciliation work.

  • One-click "Create matching vendor" when adding a sales rep
  • Payout JEs tagged with the linked vendor entity
  • 1099 Summary report picks up everything automatically
  • No spreadsheet reconciliation between accounting and HR

Designed Alongside an Actual Travel Agency

This vertical wasn't built in isolation. It was designed in active conversation with a small agency owner who'd been running QuickBooks Desktop for 6.5 years and was tired of the workarounds. Every workflow on this page came out of a real complaint about QB — and stayed in the product only after she ran her live books through it for a quarter and confirmed it operated the way she does.

Full Accounting Behind the Vertical

BizBooks Pro's complete feature set sits under the travel-specific front door: multi-currency, bank-feed reconciliation, AI-assisted transaction categorization, a custom report builder, batch invoicing, audit logs, and everything else a serious small-business accounting platform needs. The Travel Agency Vertical is a focused workflow shell on top — not a stripped-down version of the app.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a separate app from BizBooks Pro?

No. The Travel Agency Vertical is a feature flag inside the standard BizBooks Pro application that turns on travel-specific screens. Pro tier and above ship with it active by default. There's no separate installer, no separate subscription, and no separate data store.

What journal entries get posted when I save a booking?

Four lines at the booking save: Debit Commissions Receivable for the full commission amount, Credit Commission Income for the same amount, Debit Agent Commissions Expense for the IC's share, and Credit Commissions Payable for the IC's share. Receiving commission posts a second JE (Debit Bank or Undeposited Funds, Credit Commissions Receivable). Paying the IC posts a third JE (Debit Commissions Payable, Credit Bank). Clean three-event double-entry.

What if my agency also charges service fees outside the commission model?

Those go through standard BizBooks Pro invoicing exactly like any other small business. The Travel Bookings module is purely for the commission side of the operation — fees, retainers, and any other revenue stream uses the regular invoice flow.

One supplier sent me one check covering several bookings. What do I do?

Receive each booking individually with the deposit account set to Undeposited Funds. Then on the dashboard, click Deposit Undeposited Funds and pick the receipts that came in on the same supplier check. One bank deposit posts equal to the supplier's check total. Each individual booking still tracks separately for the agent payout report. Your bank statement reconciles cleanly.

Can I import my QuickBooks Desktop history?

Yes — that's a first-class workflow, not an afterthought. Standard QB Desktop migration handles chart of accounts, customers, vendors, opening balances, and transactions. Then the travel-specific synthesis utility reconstructs Travel Bookings records from imported commission JEs so historical activity surfaces in the new reports.

What about ICs I already paid through QuickBooks before cutover?

The migration flow lets you bulk-mark synthesized historical bookings as Paid, which removes them from the Pay Commissions outstanding list. Going forward, all commission payouts run through BizBooks Pro and build the proper payout-run history.

Will my accountant or CPA need to learn anything new?

Not really. The General Ledger, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, AR Aging, and 1099 reports all behave the way every standard accounting platform produces them. The travel-specific screens are operational conveniences for you, the agency owner — not new financial statement structures your CPA has to figure out.

Can checks print on the pre-printed stock I already buy?

Yes. Check printing supports the three standard US business check stock layouts (top, middle, bottom) with adjustable field positions. The Print Alignment Test page lets you calibrate to your specific stock in one pass. After that, every check — including IC commission payouts — lines up correctly.

What does it cost?

The Travel Agency Vertical is included free on BizBooks Pro's Pro tier and higher. There is no per-booking fee, no add-on subscription, and no separate license. You pay the standard Pro annual price and the entire vertical is unlocked.

Switch From QuickBooks the Smart Way

Free for 30 days. Full Travel Agency Vertical. Bring your QB Desktop history along.

Download Free Trial Read the Docs