Booking Module

Submitted by admin on Sun, 02/05/2012 - 07:46

The booking module is essentially a copy of the quote module, but it would actually take supplier block allocation. It is created by copying a quote into a set of shadow tables. At this point the quote is turned off, and the booking is all that is remaining.

The booking would have the concept of passengers and these passengers are all linked to client/prospects. There is a lead client and an agent that can be associated with the booking.

Passengers can be assigned to products and trips to tell the system which items that the passengers are doing. This will enable the documentation to be produced, the accounting is correct and supplier requests can be generated.

The booking would be an option, then confirmed, then ready to depart. There could be other statuses along the way as well. Bookings if they are not confirmed are automatically expired based on system rules.

Bookings would be attached to internal users, and they would also be attached to agent consultants. The bookings will also be attached to the user group which is synonymous with the selling agent (the company/organisation selling the trip to the travel agent).

There will be an document archive which stores all the documentation which has been sent out of the system for the particular booking. It will also have an upload section to store all the files which have been uploaded for the given booking.

Using the documentation module the system will be able to produce the documentation which is sent out from the system.

Using the roll back tables the history for the changes in the booking can be tracked.

Bookings will also generate the accounts. The pricing engine does automatic price calculations by default, however this can be configured on a per-booking or per-partition basis as required.

The quote module is really a heavy-weight version of the quote module. Specifically the booking module should have the following features:

  • Be able to link the booking to a prospect.
  • Be able to the link the booking to an agent.
  • Be able to link the booking to an agent consultant.
  • Be able to change the owner of the booking (the user)
  • Be able have a list of passengers which are linked to prospects.
  • Be able to map the passengers to products and trips on the booking.
  • Be able to add and remove trips to the booking (as many as you like). There should be a check to see that the trip departure is not yet on the booking (when adding), and not allow you to link the same trip departure twice (if you do this, then you just allocate more passengers to the trip departure).
  • Be able to add and remove products to the booking (as many as you like)
  • Be able to generate and store pricing (sales accounts). This is used for sales purposes. These accounts will be used for the financial accounts module below.
  • Be able to copy a booking.
  • Be able to cancel a booking.
  • Be able to convert a quote to a booking (as an option).
  • Be able to send documents for the booking.
  • Be able to store notes against the booking.
  • Bookings do take any block allocation, and do take places on trips. As soon as a quote is converted to a booking, that quote no longer takes places on the trip.
  • Have a field to store the booking source. This is inherited from the quote source, or enquiry source, but can be overwritten.
  • Passengers can have a status, and components can have a status as well.
  • Be able to link to other bookings so that individual bookings can be combined as a group.
  • Manage forward bookings for which prices do not yet exist. This should be allowed as there will be zero accounts generated until pricing information is entered.
  • There should be a “continuity check” for the booking to ensure there are no gaps. The user can then be prompted to ask how they would like this to be handled by the system – for instance they might want “own arrangements” inserted automatically, or it could be a reminder to make sure they have got the whole booking loaded.

When the quote is converted to the booking, the system will make copies of the similar tables for the quote into the booking. This will save a lot of time for the users.

The system will store for auditing purposes the changes in the bookings as a history. This is covered off in the undo function above. In addition the system will store a previous value/next value table for easy integration.

Documents will be stored using the documentation module. There should be notes in the booking which can appear in the documentation. These can be re-used, or used only a few times based on an active/inactive flag.

There should be the ability to book retrospective trip departures. This is used for selling on trips and products after the trip or product has departed. By default this would not be allowed, but there should be an override to allow you to do this.

Bookings need to Incorporate FOC (Free of charge if a group booking, for group leader, etc) somehow.

There should be the facility to mange booking price based on changes to FX rate over the course of the booking.