 Frequently Asked Pre-Sales Questions |
The Right Track is profit-maximizing software that is loaded on your personal computer.
It allows you to import data from your back-office computer and/or enter such data
manually. It then lets you track all non-ARC commissions (hotel, car, cruise and
tour), send out invoices and dunning letters, and print out hundreds of reports that can
help you make changes in your business procedures, allowing you to increase your
agency’s non-air revenues by 300% or more.
Why is your software called "Profit-Maximizing" software instead of
"Commission Tracking" software?
The Right Track does far more than just track commissions. By analyzing the reports
it generates, agency owners and managers can make changes that help them shift business to
more profitable vendors, charge fees to clients whose demands exceed the revenues they
generate, motivate both clients and agents to higher booking levels, and eliminate
non-productive work, such as billing for incorrect rates and non-commissionable bookings.
I’m getting lots of commission checks, why should I bother tracking?
Unfortunately, getting lots of commission checks doesn’t always tell the whole story.
Have you sat down to analyze what percentage of all checks due are being received?
And if those checks are for the full amount due? Are the received checks for
the accurate amounts, taking into account negotiated consortium overrides and/or specials
that properties were running? What about bookings that were never entered into the
computer—when those checks never arrive, are you aware of what is missing? And
finally, by not tracking and then analyzing your booking patterns, how can you make
changes that increase your agency’s overall productivity and
profitability—especially now, when airline revenues are capped?
Why should I choose The Right Track over using my back-office accounting
system?
Chances are your back-office system is manufactured by an airline whose main focus is with
helping you account for your airline ticket sales. Their hotel and car
commission-tracking modules are simply not as focused and feature-rich as The Right Track.
For example, they normally have no provisions to track down overrides. In
addition, back-office systems lack artificial intelligence that ensures data integrity.
Without such integrity, inaccurate billing occurs and reports become meaningless.
In addition, the lack of speed inherent with back-office commission-tracking
modules makes the task so labor- and time-intensive that no longer becomes cost-effective
to track.
Why should I choose The Right Track over using an outside tracking service?
The Right Track has been programmed to be simple enough for non-specialized personnel,
such as receptionists, to operate during their down time. Some agencies have even
assigned Right Track functions to employees home on maternity or sick leave. The
simplicity of the program, coupled with the speed of functions such as
"batch-posting" and "chain billing" significantly reduces the time and
labor required to operate the program. We’ve even removed the need to print invoices
and dunning letters, or stuff and stamp envelopes, thanks to our new Faxing function.
Now you can arrange to have bills faxed around the world at off-peak rates while
you’re home asleep. For more insight on incomes and expenses associated with
The Right Track, please look at our Profit Potential Charts.
Why should bills sent out by The Right Track carry any more clout than the
bills I send out myself?
Secondly, you’ll be able to shift business away from vendors who don’t take your right to compensation seriously. You’ll easily be able to see and compare which hotels pay, and pay promptly, in various cities. Nothing shows clout faster than taking business from those who don’t value your business and sending it to vendors who do.
Can The Right Track help me track cruise and tour commissions?
Absolutely—in fact, many users take advantage of this capability. While the program
is geared to track hotel and car commissions, it can be easily modified by users to track
any form of non-ARC revenues. Since most of these transactions are handled via credit card
with payment coming after the fact, the ability to track the bookings is a real lifesaver.
Isn’t this type of software really geared more for the mega-agencies?
Thanks to our two-tier structure (offering both a Deluxe and a Standard version), our
pricing (lease prices based on your agency’s estimated usage), and our user-friendly
format (easy enough for non-specialized personnel to operate), agencies from $1 million to
$500 million or more in revenue can affordably and effectively get on The Right Track.
How can The Right Track help me compete for corporate accounts?
By having the ability to maximize every sale, collect on every commission due, and then
analyze and revamp booking patterns, any agency can get a competitive edge. But The
Right Track does far more—allowing agencies to track and share non-ARC revenues with
clients, should they choose. The program will also let agencies analyze how much business
any particular company (or the agency as a whole) is booking in any particular location,
so they can negotiate on clients’ behalf for lower rates or higher commissions. This
transforms smaller agencies from order-takers to pro-active travel management firms, able
to compete on a more level playing field with larger agencies.
How much will The Right Track cost me to own and operate?
There are two separate versions, each with a multi-tier price structure, which is related
to the size of the agency and the number of non-ARC bookings they might track each year.
In all cases, the potential revenue far exceeds the lease and labor costs involved.
For more detailed information, please view our Profit
Potential Charts and Price Lists.
My problem is getting my agents to actually book hotels and cars. How
can The Right Track help?
Many agencies use The Right Track’s data to structure incentive contests that reward
agents on total non-ARC bookings or on incremental non-ARC bookings. The additional
revenues exceed the cost of the payouts. Agencies have found that by rewarding those
who book hotels, cars, cruises and tours, overall non-ARC bookings can double or triple.
It’s difficult to expect individual agents to keep current with all the specials
being offered by various vendors, over and above the special override commissions you
might earn as a consortium member. Often, these specials might overlap or apply only for
specific room or car types, and only during particular periods. How can any agent or
accounting employee be expected to keep on top of all of that? Luckily, agents on
The Right Track don’t have to. Those using the Standard Version can track up to
20 special deals per property and another 20 special deals per chain. Those using
the Deluxe Version can store an unlimited number special deals. The beauty of The Right
Track is that the program will compare overlapping deals and always bill for the highest
amount. In fact, if a booking falls over two different rate periods, the program will take
both deals into account and pro-rate the commission accordingly. You can bill for every
penny you are owed, and even for often-overlooked supplemental service commissions, such
as those due for meal plans and car drop-off charges!
Bookings entered erroneously are filtered into The Right Track’s error log, so they
can be corrected prior to billing. Those operating the system can easily print out
the error and hand it to the offending agent or the supervisor, so re-education can occur
and such errors won’t be repeated. Some agencies find that by linking incentive
compensation to error count (for example, not rewarding any non-ARC booking that is
entered incorrectly), error rates begin to fall dramatically.
Now that airline commissions are capped, many agencies are offering to share non-ARC
commissions as a way to compete. The Right Track can help you track revenues earned per
client as well as for the agency as a whole. By entering in the percentage of rebate
you might have negotiated with a particular account, you can easily print out reports
detailing all customer activity as well as the accurate amount of earned commissions and
refundable commissions. If desired, reports can be based on received commissions
only, as opposed to commissions owed and received. That way, agencies don’t
have to pay out on bookings where commission receipts are still pending. The system
can also divide out revenues that are owed to clients where commission agents also get a
share—a once complicated function now simplified by The Right Track.
How much additional commission should I count on receiving?
We offer Profit Potential Charts based on the experiences of
current customers. However, you can easily exceed these figures by taking advantage
of the data analysis offered by the program. We estimate that an agency could
actually triple overall non-ARC bookings and commission receipts by
running incentive contests (for agents and clients), shifting business to vendors
who pay, and a number of other sales-boosting techniques made possible thanks to Right
Track data.
How much time can your software save my employees over their current
procedures?
Agencies ranging from $3 million to $700 million use The Right Track and have done so
successfully for several years. In fact, many of the industry’s top 50 agencies
are on The Right Track. We gladly share these names and contact information of these
references with agencies seriously considering leasing the software.
How long have you marketed the software?
The Right Track has been available to agencies since 1992. The 2.00 Versions (Deluxe and
Standard) were introduced fourth quarter 1997 to the rave reviews of its users.
Customer service is a big issue for us. What sort of support programs
do you offer?
Automated Travel Solutions, Inc. prides itself on our exceptional reputation for customer
service. We maintain a separate Customer Service Department that is available for
questions during normal working hours (9:00am-5:30pm EST). Support Questions can
also be sent to us via E-Mail (our
support e-mail address is support@automatedtravel.com)
24 hours a day. A very extensive list of frequently asked support questions and
their answers can be found within the Support area of our web
site. Between the E-Mail, FAQ, and our Support Department, all of your Right Track
problems should get solved in the quickest possible time frame.
Will you come to our office to install the software and train our staff?
We use Pegasus Commission Processing (formally HCC). Why should we use
The Right Track?
Pegasus Commission Processing is a clearinghouse for commissions—they
consolidate them and then mail them to your office, less their percentage. Tracking down
missing commissions is not part of their regular service. They also do not offer the
ability to customize reports, or include commissions from hotels that are unaffiliated
with the service. Many agencies use The Right Track in conjunction with Pegasus
Commission Processing. They obtain their Pegasus data on disk and then use our HCC
Electronic Reconciliation Module to import the data and post the receipts without human
intervention. They are also able to incorporate the Pegasus data into their Right
Track customized reports. Some agencies claim the having The Right Track actually makes
subscribing to the Pegasus Commission Processing service worthwhile!
Won’t we be wasting time and energy tracking when so many of our
bookings are non-commissionable?
The Right Track allows you to tag non-commissionable hotels (even if those deals apply
only when booked for specific accounts) and exclude them from your billings.
However, you retain the ability to include these bookings in all other reports, should you
wish to charge service fees to clients for extra (non-compensated) work, or wish to use
the revenues or room nights when negotiating with properties for better rates or higher
commissions.
We don’t want to bill for commissions under $5.00. How can your
software accommodate us?
Many agencies don’t feel it’s worth the effort to bill for commissions under a
certain amount. You can indicate the minimum amount you wish to bill for when customizing
your invoicing. You can also designate bills for specific chains or properties to print,
or even destinations you wish to bill (dividing up domestic from international billings,
for example). Finally, you can go so far as to generate bills only for specific
accounts, agents, or agency branches.
We’re just a $1 million dollar agency; we don’t want a program
with so many bells and whistles.
No problem. Just order our Standard Version in Windows with the minimum
capacity. In this way, The Right Track will be priced as low as $100 per
month if prepaid annually.
The problem is many of our clients book their hotels and cars
themselves. How can we change this?
By using a Right Track Booking report run by client, you should be able to easily identify
those accounts whose number of hotel and car bookings seem to be drastically less than
their ARC totals. This would directly point to the fact that they are booking hotels
and cars themselves. At that point, you could use the information gathered from The
Right Track to inform your clients that your agency is full-service, and can easily handle
making these hotel and car bookings for them. Since these bookings are normally
commissionable to you and not to your accounts, this represents a great way of increasing
revenues and profits, even if you have to share the revenue with the account to gain the
business!
Not only will you be able to bill for every penny, but you can track cancellations and
no-shows per client as well as earned commissions per client. Should you determine that
any particular account is not generating enough revenue to compensate you for the amount
of work involved, The Right Track provides you with the tools to set up and impose service
charges for such an account. These capabilities are essential for maximizing profits in
this era of capped airline revenues.
We have a lot of outside sales people. Can your software make our
accounting go any easier?
The Right Track makes it simple to track and compensate the activity of outside agents.
You can tie certain accounts to specific outside commission persons so they get credited
with bookings, no matter who books the actual reservation. You can also indicate what
percentage of the commission is owed to each agent and easily print out reports at the end
of any particular time period. You can base payments on overall bookings or only on
received receipts (so you’re not paying out more than you’ve received) and you
can easily divide out amounts that constitute revenues that are jointly shared with
clients by both the agency and outside sales persons. In addition, you can set up
and impose hotel and car booking service fees on any and all outside sales agents if this
is part of their employment agreement.
Thanks to our Intelligent Billing System, you can have The Right Track automatically
generate vendor invoices in their local currency (with accurate currency symbols and
decimal formats), even if all of the bookings were originally made in USD! Also,
dunning letters can be customized to appear in the language of the hotel or chain in
question. In addition, you can separate international billings from domestic
billings, to ensure that correct postage is applied. The experiences of current
users prove that such capabilities make a tremendous difference when collecting from
foreign vendors.
Lots of hotels only pay us a part of what we’re owed. What can we
do to go after the rest?
The Right Track includes the ability to mark commissions as "Partially Posted,"
leaving the remainder to be billed during the next billing cycle. However, should
the missing amount be attributed to specific factors such as currency conversion,
shortened stay, or differing room rates, you can easily adjust the booking so that it
reads as fully paid and does not re-bill the vendor.
How many people can use The Right Track at the same time?
All versions of The Right Track can be sold as either single-user or multi-user. The
base price of the lease is for the single-user version of the software, and an additional
charge is levied for each simultaneous user desired. This way, you can tailor your
Right Track system to have the capability to handle up to 99 simultaneous users.
Please look at our Price Lists to find out the specific charges
associated with adding simultaneous users to the system.
How much space will The Right Track take up on our computer?
That depends on the size of your agency and the number of non-ARC bookings you track each
year. We estimate that the program takes up 10MB of diskspace, and the
data will take 1MB for each 2,000 bookings tracked.
On average, an agency should have about 1,300-1,400
bookings per million dollars in total volume. To determine the space needed in
megabytes for your system, just multiply your annual revenue (in millions) by 1400, then
divide that number by 2000 and finally add 10. For example, if you are a 20 million
dollar agency, the amount of diskspace needed for The Right Track would be (20 x
1400)/2000 + 10 = 24MB.
Will we need a new computer to use The Right Track? Will it run over
our LAN?
What sort of printer will we need?
The Right Track is programmed to work with hundreds of printers, including laser printers,
which allow users to easily customize bills, dunning letters and reports using fonts of
their choice. The Windows version of The Right Track uses the printer drivers
already set up in Windows, so it should work with any PC printer you might have. As
a general rule of thumb, a nice laser printer (such as an Hewlett Packard LaserJet
5 or 6) would be preferable for sending out vendor invoices, as they will look
much more professional and will be far easier to read than those generated using a
dot-matrix printer.
Will I have to enter all my hotel and car data over again? It’s
already in the CRS.
As long as The Right Track has an import module for your specific back-office accounting
system, all of the hotel and car data can be transferred from CRS to The Right Track
through your back-office system. In this case, not only will it alleviate the need
for you to re-key data, but it will also cleanse your hotel and car data, identifying any
errors in the bookings for you to easily correct.
If you do not have a back-office accounting system, all of the bookings must be entered by hand into The Right Track. Considering that only small agencies do not have back-office systems, there should not be a tremendous amount of data to enter, and our easy-to-use interface will minimize your data entry time.
What front-office computer should I have in order to run The Right Track?
What back-office computer should I have in order to run The Right Track?
The Right Track currently has specific import modules for the following back-office
accounting systems: ADS, MAX, TS2000, GlobalWare,
World Ledger 4000, TravelBase and Alpha.
Modules for other popular systems such as TRAMS are already in development, and
should be available in the near future. In addition, import modules for proprietary
back-office systems can be created by Automated Travel Solutions, Inc. on a consulting
basis. Please contact us for further information on this type of customized
programming, including pricing.
Who created The Right Track? What was the creator’s experience
and background?
The Right Track was created by Gordon Barclay, president of Automated Travel Solutions,
Inc. In order to find out more about his experience and his goals for the company and this
product in-particular, please visit the About Us area of the web
site.
How quickly can I get on The Right Track?
As quickly as you can fill out our order form, sign the contracts that will then be mailed
out and forward payment. The process normally takes up to two weeks. To expedite the
process, you can order The Right Track immediately on-line by using our electronic Order Form.
How can I get updates to The Right Track?
All minor updates or modifications mandated by changes in a vendor's system are included in the lease price and will be available free of charge. Major enhancements are released as part of a new version, which you will be able to upgrade to for a small fee. Upgrading from the current system will be optional, as the current versions will continue to work as effectively as before.
The 2.00 Deluxe version of The Right Track contains 54 additional features over the standard version, making it the state-of-the-art in commission tracking technology. It is specifically geared to the larger travel agency, because many of the new features are designed to minimize the labor effort while at the same time increase the functionality. Among the most notable new features of the 2.00 Deluxe version of The Right Track are Batch Posting, Service Fees, Faxing of Invoices, Roll-up Sets for Reporting (i.e. Stackers), Dunning in Foreign Languages, AutoCorrection of Error Log Items, and Expanded Reporting Capabilities.
To get a more detailed description of the features of both the 2.00 Standard and 2.00 Deluxe versions of The Right Track, please view the Features Summary area of this web site.
Are there different payment plans?
Can I bill for last years’ commissions?
What should I do if I have a question that isn’t answered here?
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