Adjust Bookings for Payment Errors, Agent Collection Errors and Rounding Multi Currencies
Index
Where the Payment is Different Due to Rounding/Currency Conversion...
Where the Payment is Different Due to Agent Collecting the Wrong Amount
Finding Bookings That Need Adjusting Due to Rounding/Currency Conversion
Overview
Normally the Pax Total amount in any booking is equal to the total collected as shown by the payment lines in the booking. If this is not the case the booking cannot be committed until the payment line sum total matches the Pax Total.
However, there are times when an incorrect payment is taken in error, or due to currency conversions, the exact amount cannot be taken to balance the booking. In these cases the truth needs to be able to be recorded accurately by the reservations staff dealing with the payment in the booking and accounts need to be able to adjust the booking to reflect the correct revenue and show where a true loss or gain has been made in the booking.
The following process is one method that could be implemented to reflect such adjustments.
All tour codes to be booked in the header booking screen must have an option set up in maintenance to use as the adjustment method. (Options can only be added to the booking and cannot be added to individual components/ticket types under an adhoc.)
Setting Up Maintenance To Add Options for Adjustment
In the Maintenance screen, click on the Edit/Add Tours button to view the list of tours then click on the chosen tour, this will open the Edit Tour screen for that tour...
Click on the Options button...
Click on the Add New button to add a new option...
Type in an appropriate option description and include a reference to currency where appropriate... It is necessary to make an option for each currency if bookings are made in multi-currencies.
Do not select ‘Commissionable’ for booking correction options as it is not desirable for these adjustment to affect agent commissions.
Type in Cost and Sell of $0 .. this will allow an adhoc adjustment amount to be added into the booking.
Select the appropriate currency.
Click on OK to save the Option onto the tour code...
If the bookings are made in more than once currency then repeat this process for the other currencies that can be booked.
This is all that is required in Maintenance to set up the mechanism for adjustments.
Entering Correct Payment Lines in a Booking in Reservations
It is important that the process for reservations dealing with payments in bookings is simple to avoid mistakes. For this reason it is advisable to create a process that the reservations staff can follow at all times regardless of whether the booking ultimately needs an adjustment for errors/rounding. It should be left to the accounts department to manage any revenue adjustment.
Where the Payment is Different Due to Rounding/Currency Conversion...
Open a booking to apply a Reservation payment (or a Second Agent payment where another agent/driver is collecting the money directly from the pax)...
Click on the POB/On Account payment line (which is the amount outstanding to be collected)...
In this example the money is taken by a Second Agent (Driver) in cash and is also taken in a different currency (NZD) from the booking currency (AUD) so the payment must be made in the true cash currency. Select the currency of the payment by selecting NZD New Zealand Dollars in the current combo box...
This automatically converts the Payment Amount to the selected currency using the most recent conversion rate set in lookup tables in maintenance.
Enter the Payment Amount actually taken from the pax. In this case it would be reasonable to expect that the Second Agent (Driver) would take a round NZD$46 as this would be the most convenient amount to deal with from a change perspective...
Select the appropriate Collect By/Paid Date/Type data for the payment being taken. In this case Second Agent - 10/12/2010 – TUTAGE - On Account...
Click on Save Changes/Exit to save the payment in the booking...
Normally, at this point, if the correct payment have been taken, the reservations staff would expect to be able to commit the booking immediately...
As expected, the Pax Total and the payment total in the booking do not match so the Validation message will come up saying Payment Total does not match Gross Tour Value. The calculation ResPax has done is this ..
Pax Total AUD $240.00
Agent On Account AUD $204.00 + Second Agent On Account AUD $35.69 = AUD $239.69
Therefore $240 does not equal $239.69 so the booking cannot be committed.
The ‘truth’ is that there is a balance still uncollected. This must be allowed for in the payment lines before ResPax will allow the booking to be committed. The correct way to indicate this uncollected amount is to add another POB On Account payment to the booking for the difference as this is genuinely what has not yet been collected.
Click on the Add New payment button, select POB/On Account and use the Get Diff button to get ResPax to calculate the exact difference still to be collected...
Click on the Save Changes/Exit button to save the payment into the booking. The booking can now be successfully committed.
WORD OF CAUTION: The reservations staff need to be aware that an outstanding POB amount of, say, up to a dollar or two dollars is probably acceptable as a rounding error for currency conversion. Any amount greater than is indicates that significant losses have been incurred in the booking due to an incorrect collection of payments and these need to be collected from the pax if possible.
If the reason for the uncollected difference is due to, say, an incorrect credit card payment being taken, or even an incorrect payment amount being entered in a previous payment, then the staff need to be aware and make an effort to correct the payment or take the correct money.
No more needs to be done by the reservations staff.
Where the Payment is Different Due to Agent Collecting the Wrong Amount
Open a booking to apply a Reservation payment (or a Second Agent payment where another agent/driver is collecting the money directly from the pax)...
Click on the POB/On Account payment line (which is the amount outstanding to be collected)...
In this example the money is taken by Reservations in Cash in the same currency as the booking. However, the amount taken by the agent (should have been NZD$105.75) was NZD$110... This amount is incorrect but the pax has a voucher stating that they should be paying the difference between the pax total $705 and the amount the agent took $110 leaving a balance to pay of $595. This amount is not correct but the pax has already paid the agent the wrong amount so you will have to accept that he will only pay $595 balance.
Enter the Payment Amount actually taken from the pax. In this case reservations must take a round NZD$595...
Select the appropriate Collect By/Paid Date/Type data for the payment being taken. In this case Reservation - 14/12/2007 – Cash...
Click on Save Changes/Exit to save the payment in the booking...
Normally, at this point, if the correct payment have been taken, the reservations staff would expect to be able to commit the booking immediately...
As expected, the Pax Total and the payment total in the booking do not match so the Validation message will come up saying Payment Total does not match Gross Tour Value. The calculation ResPax has done is this ..
Pax Total NZD $705.00
Agent On Account NZD $105.75 + Reservations Cash NZD $595.00 = NZD $700.75
Therefore $705.00 does not equal $700.75 so the booking cannot be committed.
The ‘truth’ is that Agent On Account payment line is still wrong. This must be corrected by clicking on the Agent On Account line to edit the payment...
Click on the Add Get Diff button to get ResPax to calculate the exact amount that was collected by the agent...
Click on the Save Changes/Exit button to save the payment into the booking. The booking can now be successfully committed.
WORD OF CAUTION: The reservations staff need to be aware of the information on the voucher in order to put in the ‘truth’ in the booking. If the staff have entered a reservations payment and the booking does not commit they need to be sure that the payment amount they have entered is correct BEFORE they correct the Agent payment line. This method can only be correct if the payment entered by the staff for the cash collection is correct.
No more needs to be done by the reservations staff.
Adjusting the Booking for Correct Revenue Reporting in Accounts
Finding Bookings That Need Adjusting Due to Rounding/Currency Conversion
The bookings that need these adjustment made will have POB payments still uncollected or owing. For example, the POB amount uncollected may be an odd amount .. $0.82 or -$0.79 .. making them easy to spot as being incorrect and needing adjustment.
The most dynamic screen to use for finding these payments is the POB export screen. Normally the POB screen should have no payments in for travelled bookings because all the money should have been collected. Any money outstanding in this screen is not yet collected and may represent a revenue loss.
In Accounts - Financial Archive - POB screen select the date range to be checked and refresh the screen to view the bookings...
The example shown has only one outstanding booking with POB money uncollected .. and this amount is also an odd amount, AUD$0.75, which would immediately need to be analysed and adjusted.
Double click on the booking in the POB screen to edit the booking to make adjustments...
Analyse the payments to see what has been collected .. normally you should expect to be able to open a Diary Note left by the reservations staff as an explanation of the difference still to be collected but in this case it is obvious, especially as the Second Agent Cash reconciliation process should have confirmed that the NZD$545 amount was indeed what was collected on the day.
This booking is showing a genuine uncollected amount of AUD$0.75 .. this represents a loss of revenue and the booking must be adjusted to reduce the sale value by this amount in order to reflect true revenue in the sales reports.
To adjust the booking, click on Tour Options (F7 function key)...
Click on Add New Option...
Select the appropriate Option using the combo box – in this case the AUD Adjust option has been set up especially for this purpose...
Untick the Calc Cost/Sell box to allow a manual adjustment to be added as the Option Sell amount...
Type the amount to be adjusted in the booking into the Sell field – in this case we need to reduce the value of the booking by AUD$0.75 as this is how much has not been collected from the pax...
Click the OK button to save the option into the booking...
The value and details of the option are displayed in the Option view.
Click on the Tour Value/Payment/Collection tab (F3 function key) to view the new totals in the booking...
Note that the Pax Total has been adjust down from AUD$580 to AUD$579.25 which is the actual total amount in all that was collected .. Agent took AUD116 and Second Agent (Driver) collected AUD463.25 (NZD$545). This is now correct. The adjustment amount is showing in the O/BF field (Options/BusFare) with no commission in the adjacent field to the right. It is important that the agent commission remains unchanged.
Finally, click on the POB On Account payment (AUD$0.75)...
Click the Delete button to remove this payment line .. this will make the actual takings equal the new Pax Total...
The booking can now be successfully committed. Click on the Refresh button in the POB export screen to refresh the view...
Note that this booking is no longer showing in this screen because there are now no uncollected payments left in the booking.
The sales reporting for this booking will now reflect the true revenue earned for this booking.
Finding Bookings That Need Adjusting Due to Invoice Errors
The bookings that need these adjustment made will have invoice amounts due/owed where there should be none. For example, any deposit only agent booking should have a $0 invoice amount showing in the agent export screen. These are usually easily spotted as having very small invoice amounts .. $1.20 or -$0.75.
The most dynamic screen to use for finding these payments is the Agent export screen. The Invoice Summary report will also show any odd invoice amounts for deposit only agents which is also a good indicator that there is an error in a booking.
In Accounts - Financial Archive - Agent screen select the date range to be checked and refresh the screen to view the bookings...
A good way to find these odd invoice balances is to click on the column heading ‘Balance’ which will order the column by balance amount .. the screen will then show all the $0 balances together (hopefully all the deposit only agents) and then show any small balance amounts, in this case an invoice balance of AUD$35.69 .. definitely a booking to be investigated.
Invoice Summary report for this booking...
Double click on the booking in the Agent screen to edit the booking to make adjustments...
Again, it is assumed here that the cash amount is correct as it was reconciled on the day of collection and the banking balance was correct.
Again, it would be normal to expect to be able to read a Diary Note explaining why the Agent amount has been adjusted to be different from the commission owed .. in this case Commission = NZD$105.75 and Agent On Account payment = NZD$110. Respax is showing what has been entered into the booking but the reservations staff should put in a Diary Note explaining WHY.
This booking is showing a genuine over collection by the agent of NZD$4.25 ($110-$105.75). In order to reflect the truth it is necessary to EITHER invoice the agent for the extra amount taken in error OR accept the loss and adjust the booking accordingly.
If this agent has taken too much commission continuously over a period of time then it would be advisable to leave the invoices in the system, archive them as a separate archive number, and sent the agent an invoice from ResPax directly to try and recover the revenue.
If this is just a one off error that needs to be adjusted then the booking must be altered so as not to create an invoice and the sale adjusted for the loss of revenue.
To adjust the payment to create a $0 invoice click on the Agent On Account payment line to edit it...
Edit the payment amount to be equal to the agent commission (NZD$105.75)...
Click on the Save Changes/Exit (F8 function key) to save the payment changes...
The booking cannot be committed like this as the Pax Total NZD$705 does not equal the sum of the payment lines in the booking, Agent On Account NZD$105.75 + Reservation Cash NZD$595.00 = NZD$700.75 .. there is a genuine revenue loss of NZD$4.25 in the booking and the booking sale value must be reduced by this amount.
To adjust the booking, click on Tour Options (F7 function key)...
Click on Add New Option...
Select the appropriate Option using the combo box – in this case the NZD Adjust option has been set up especially for this purpose...
Untick the Calc Cost/Sell box to allow a manual adjustment to be added as the Option Sell amount...
Type the amount to be adjusted in the booking into the Sell field – in this case we need to reduce the value of the booking by NZD$4.25 as this is how much has been taken extra by the agent...
Click the OK button to save the option into the booking...
The value and details of the option are displayed in the Option view.
Click on the Tour Value/Payment/Collection tab (F3 function key) to view the new totals in the booking...
Note that the Pax Total has been adjust down from NZD$705 to NZD $700.75 which is the actual total amount in all that was collected .. Agent payment show as having taken NZD105.75 (so no invoice) and Reservations collected NZD$595. This is now correct. The adjustment amount is showing in the O/BF field (Options/BusFare) with no commission in the adjacent field to the right. It is important that the agent commission remains unchanged.
The booking can now be successfully committed.
Click on the Refresh button in the Agent export screen to refresh the view...
Note that this booking is now showing a zero invoice Balance in this screen because the agent payment line was adjusted to be the same as the commission.
Invoice Summary report after adjustment...
The sales reporting for this booking will now reflect the true revenue earned for this booking.