Agent commission (article)

Susana Moleón
Susana Moleón
  • Updated

TourCMS allows the following granular control over commission levels paid for your products:

  • Different products can have different commission levels
  • Different agents can receive different commission levels for each of those products
  • Group similarly commissioned products / agents together to allow for quick change

Example

Step 1 - Creating Commission types to group products by commission level

Commission type does not have any value or percentage associated, it is purely for grouping products of the same commission level together. If all of your products have the same commission level you will only need to create one Commission type.

For the purposes of this example we will create two Commission types: "Standard commission" and "High commission", the latter of which we will use for some products that should have an extra incentive attached to a sale.

  1. Log into TourCMS then go to Configuration / System & setup then Commission types under Your Travel Agent Partners section.
  2. Enter each commission level in turn using the "CREATE A NEW COMMISSION TYPE" form.

As you can see in the screenshot below we don't have any products grouped in either type as both the "Options" and "Tours" columns are showing 0. Let's move onto that now...

1.png

Step 2 - Applying the Commission types to our Products

To set the Commission type for a Tour:

  1. From the homepage go to Products / Tours
  2. Click on Setup for the Tour
  3. Under the Money tab select the Agent Commission type and save your changes.

To set the Commission type for an Option:

  1. From the homepage go to Products / Options
  2. Click on Setup for the Option
  3. Click on the Money tab, select the Agent Commission type and save your changes

Non-commissionable items

Any products without a Commission type will be considered non-commissionable ([Not used]).

Changing commission types

You can change the commission type of a product at any time, this change will only affect new bookings.

Step 3 - Creating Commission schemes to group Agents by commission

Each Commission scheme defines the amount of commission an Agent will receive for products of each Commission type. If all of your Agents receive the same amount of commission then you will only need one Commission scheme.

For the purposes of this example we will presume that the majority of our Agents receive a standard commission percentage, with a select few "preferred agents" receiving a few percent extra.

1. From the homepage go to Configuration / System & setup then Commission schemes

2. Use the CREATE A NEW COMMISSION SCHEME form to create your Commission schemes. For our example we have two: "Most agents" and "Preferred agents"

3. Click the Edit link for the "Most agents" scheme

4. You should see something like the screenshot below, with a row for each of our product types (Commission types). Here we have entered 7% for our "Standard commission" products and 9% for our "Higher commission" products. 

2.png

5. Once you have entered your values click "Save changes"

6. Now complete steps 3-5 for your other Commission schemes. In our example we also have our "Preferred agent" scheme, agents on this scheme receive 10% regardless of product type - we configure this as per the screenshot below:

3.png

Step 4 - Applying the Commission schemes to our Agents

All that remains now is to edit our Agents to configure which Commission scheme they come under.

To set the Commission scheme for an Agent

  1. From the TourCMS Homepage / Partners / Local Agents for Travel agent manager
  2. Click "Setup" under Actions column for the Agent that you wish to edit
  3. Select the Commission scheme under section Net Rates / Commission and save your changes

Agents who should not receive commission

Any agent who does not have a Commission scheme set will not have any commission applied to their bookings automatically.

Changing the commission an agent / group of agents receive

You can edit the values in a Commission scheme at any time, you can also edit an Agent to move them onto a different Commission scheme. Both of these changes will only affect new bookings.

Deposits

There are two approaches to calculating travel agent deposits. The settings can be found in channel manager - deposits

Take into account travel agent commission
If the total sale price is 100 GBP, the deposit is set to 20%, the commission is 10% then the deposit will be 20% of 90 GBP NOT 20% of 100 GBP

Ignore travel agent commission
If the total sale price is 100 GBP, the deposit is set to 20%, the commission is 10% then the deposit will be 20% of the 100 GBP.

Finally

That's really all that's required, your new bookings should now have the correct commission amounts calculated automatically. You can also edit the commission on individual bookings by going into the booking then clicking on the EDIT / RECALCULATE link under Marketing tab.