Global Travel Network (GTN) is a platform for independent travel agents who, by joining GTN, are able to access the advantage of being part of a larger buying group. GTN operates in a fast-paced, high volume complex pricing environment and in order to be successful need a reliable pricing engine with accurate reporting and reconciliation methods.
GTN operations were limited by a legacy ticketing system in which airline ticket adjustments were labour-intensive and often inaccurate. The pricing engine was inadequate at handling ticket variations and all ticket refunds had to be processed manually. It was commonplace for a ticket that required adjustment to be amended manually a number of times, often meaning the end ticket had incorrect admin/card fees applied.
This error-prone time-consuming ticketing process was inefficient resulting in significant revenue leakage. Sandfield was tasked with the two-pronged project of overhauling GTN’s ticketing process and financial reconciliation process with their various airline partners.
Allen Bell, Director of Global Travel Network
Sandfield’s solution to this complex business model was to implement a suite of Sandfield products using established frameworks specifically designed to integrate seamlessly. Our Crossfire integration platform mapped notoriously complex and disparate airline ticketing file formats into Sandfield’s On Ticket solution, which applied a robust pricing engine to generate invoices for Agents. Completed booking sales and cost information was then seamlessly integrated into our On Account product.
During our discovery phase, GTN quickly realised On Account had the ability to fully manage receivables more efficiently than their main financial management system, providing a complete solution for debtors' control. We were also able to configure statementing and reporting to more closely match GTN’s business processes. Custom CSV statement formatting was also achievable for GTN’s larger clients looking to import ticket information into their financial systems.
On Account took on the job of managing GTN’s sales and direct cost information as well as Agent debtor control and reconciling wholesale ticket payments using our custom-built BSP (Bank Settlement Process) reconciliation module.
Airlines use a BSP system to process payments with ticket wholesalers. Reconciling the BSP data files to the ticketing system was a manual process and managing exceptions was particularly laborious. Thousands of ticket transactions a week were checked one by one. On Account’s BSP reconciliation module resolved this labour-intensive task by automatically clearing matched items and presenting exceptions in a dedicated reconciliation portal. By selecting from a group of predefined clearing actions, GTN could quickly resolve unreconciled items in a fraction of the time it used to take.
Allen Bell, Director of Global Travel Network
In an industry where thousands of dollars of ticket sales are coming through thick and fast, credit was more tightly managed with On Account generating hourly scheduled credit limit reports and configurable credit limit emails to Agents.
On the collection side, On Account scheduled weekly Statement generation and automated the creation of a direct debit file. At the same time, at an agent account level, statement items were receipted and matched, completing the collection process.
Instead of duplicating data in another system, summarised sales, receivables and general ledger data are integrated into GTN’s main financial management system. Detailed transactional data remains in On Account which can also be traced back to source ticket data.
The end result is a highly integrated robust ticket invoicing, reconciliation and debtors management system which saves GTN hundreds of hours a month.
Allen Bell, Director of Global Travel Network
