Travel Agency System
Ticket records, visa file tracking and Umrah package costing — with the supplier balance and the client advance never in the same pocket.
A travel agency is three businesses sharing a counter. Ticketing is high volume and low margin, where the risk is a supplier balance and an unreconciled commission. Visa processing is slow and document-heavy, where the risk is a file sitting idle for a week and an appointment date missed. Umrah and tour packages are high value, where the risk is a group costing that looked profitable until the hotel and transport invoices came in.
What gets built has to keep those three straight and keep client money separate from agency money, because the common failure in a small agency is a client's Umrah advance spent on this week's ticket purchases. The design starts from the client file and the party account, with ticketing, visa files and packages as what sits on top.
What it fixes
- Ticket sales, refunds and reissues recorded in a book, with supplier and consolidator balances reconciled weeks later and commission unclear
- Visa files with no status, so nobody knows which case is waiting on a document, which is at the embassy and which needs an appointment booked
- Client documents — passports, CNICs, photographs, bank statements — in physical folders, with a passport once misplaced being a crisis
- Umrah and tour packages costed per head in a hurried spreadsheet, with hotel, transport, visa and ticket costs confirmed only after the group travels
- Group rooming and hotel night allocation worked out manually, with changes before departure causing errors
- Client advances taken in instalments against a package and used for general cash flow, so the real position of the agency is never clear
- Refunds pending with airlines and suppliers, forgotten until a client chases, and sometimes written off by default
What gets built
A starting point, not a fixed list. The build is scoped to your own process before anything is written.
Client and party accounts
One account per client and per sub-agent with a running balance, and separate accounts for airlines, consolidators and suppliers, so what you owe and what is owed to you are distinct and current.
Ticket records
Sales with PNR, sector, fare, tax, commission and supplier, with refunds and reissues recorded against the original. Pending supplier refunds tracked as receivables rather than as hope.
Visa file tracking
A file per applicant with a document checklist, current stage — documents pending, submitted, appointment booked, at embassy, decision — and dates, so the daily question of which file is stuck has an answer.
Document custody
A record of which passports and originals are physically with the agency, received from whom and on what date, and when they were returned. For a passport, custody is the whole liability.
Umrah and tour package costing
Package built from its components — ticket, visa, hotel nights by category, transport, ziarat, meals — with cost and selling price per head, so the margin on a group is known before it departs rather than after.
Group handling and instalments
Passenger manifest, rooming by sharing type, hotel night allocation and departure documentation, with client instalments receipted against the booking and a clear balance due before travel.
Who this is for
Travel agencies and Hajj and Umrah operators of roughly three staff upwards, especially those combining ticketing with visa processing and group packages, and those working through sub-agents who need party accounts. A one-person ticketing counter working purely on a GDS with a single consolidator does not need this — the GDS and a cash book cover it. If your business is entirely corporate ticketing on monthly credit with no visa or package work, a focused ledger and invoicing build is cheaper and fits better than this full scope.
Questions
Can it connect to the GDS or issue tickets directly?
No, and that should be clear from the start. Issuing happens in Sabre, Amadeus, Galileo or your consolidator's portal, and direct GDS integration requires their commercial approval and certification, which is not realistically available to a small agency. What this does is hold the record: ticket details entered or imported from the report your GDS or consolidator already produces, so the accounting, the commission and the client account are right. The issuing stays where it is.
Will it tell us the status of a visa application at the embassy?
Only what your staff record. There is no reliable feed from embassies or visa centres, so the status in the system is the status someone entered after checking the portal or receiving a call. What the build gives you is that nothing sits unchecked — a file with no update for several days surfaces on a list. Anyone claiming automatic embassy status updates is overselling.
Is it worth it in a season business like Umrah?
The costing and the instalment tracking usually justify it on their own, because a single group costed wrongly can wipe out the margin on several. But do not go live weeks before a major season — implement in the quiet months so staff are fluent before the pressure arrives. Scope and timeline get set against your season calendar rather than quoted generically.
Tell us how your agency runs.
We scope it first — what it takes, how long, what it costs. No obligation.