Author: Team Merang

You may have noticed something different with the TravelOffice system. Last week we successfully upgraded everyone to version 4.0. This upgrade was a significant enhancement in the evolution of the TravelOffice system, with the migration to a much more powerful database and the introduction of other design and feature enhancements. The following is a quick summary of what’s new or enhanced with the new version:

1.   Move to a more powerful database (MySQL): As part of our commitment to continuously improving our technology, we have successfully migrated all of our customers’ databases to a much more powerful and robust database (MySQL). This new database will enhance the TravelOffice system performance and help us plan for future expansions.

2.  Better Invoice Design and Options: You may have noticed some changes in the look-and-feel of the invoices. We’ve designed the new invoices with more consistent colours and fonts, and a cleaner more efficient design.

In addition, we have introduced a second more modern design layout. For customers that do not already have a customized invoice, you can view a sample of the two invoice designs and choose which design to use for your agency. You can also change and upload your own agency logo directly to the TravelOffice system, which will be reflected in the invoices and reports. To make either of these changes, here’s what you need to do:

• Login to the “Back-office Management” module.
• From the dashboard, click on “Manage Profiles” in the left-side menu.
• To change your invoice and report logos: Click on “Company Profile”, and click on “edit” besides the company location you wish to modify. In the “Company Profile” window that opens, select your logo file on your computer (by clicking on the “Browse…” button) and then click on the “Upload Logo” button.
• To change your invoice design: Click on the “Invoice Profile” option in the left side menu. For the company location you wish to modify, click on “Edit”. This will open up a new window with details of the invoice profile for that company location. In the “Invoice Profile” window, select an invoice theme, and click on the “Edit Profile” button to save the details. 

Over time, we hope to introduce other invoice designs for you to select from.

3.  Sales Report for Prior Years: You can now generate the “Monthly Sales Activity” report for prior years. Before, you could only generate the report for the previous year only (e.g. for 2007 only). Now, you can go further back in time.

4.  Second Billing Address for Suppliers: You now have the option of including a second address for suppliers, such as a billing address which may be different from the mailing address.

5.  Change Agent Status: Sometimes agents leave. In order to de-activate the agent, so that they cannot login to the system, edit the “Agent Profile” from the “Manage Profiles” section and change the agent’s status from “Active” to “De-Active (Closed)” status. If you need to re-activate the agent at a later date, simply change the status back to “Active”.

6.  Agent payroll where commissions not received: Some of our customers needed us to highlight agent commissions owing where the company had not yet received their commission from the supplier. Now, when you display the list of agent commissions owing from the “Payroll” section in the “Back-Office Management” module, invoices in the list for which the supplier commission has not yet been received will be highlighted in red.

7.  Insurance Product Net Cost: We have added two new fields in the Supplier Net Cost section when adding an Insurance Product. You can now enter the “Exchange Rate” and “Other Charges” when calculating the net cost of insurance products.

8.  Overall Design and Feel: We enhanced the design and colours of many pages, with a cleaner look and easy to understand input field labels.

Our design and development team and advisors have been working diligently through the past couple of months to bring these changes to you. We would also like to thank our numerous customers who brought us their ideas and requirements which were incorporated into this version. We’re excited with the new development and would love your feedback on the updates.

Author: Team Merang

We successfully launched version 3.0 of the TravelOffice system in October. Since then, many of you asked us to summarize the changes/enhancements and highlight new features added. So here goes:

• Simplified Login Page:
  The login pages for both modules (invoice and back-office) has been simplified with a single login page. Also, we created a quick link to switch between the Invoice Module and Back-office Module quickly without logging out (for users assigned with Administrator, Accountant, or Manager roles).  
• Invoice Module Enhancements:
  We changed the layout of the customer invoices generated through the system. In addition, we added two more payment options under the customer and supplier payments sections:
   - Supplier Coupon: for customers that redeem supplier coupons
  - Cash (Non-Trust Account): For payments made to suppliers not through the Trust account.(Both of these also affect the Trust Account calculations and the Journal Entries, which have also been modified to accept these).
• Back-office Module Enhancements:
  Travel Document Requirements Profile: You can create ’standard travel document requirements’ profiles for various destinations. Then, on the invoice, simply select the ‘travel document requirements’ statement for the destination to display on the invoice (This is for your compliance to travel industry requirements in various jurisdictions).Invoice Profile: You can now customize the various “Payment Titles” – the standard are ‘Adult Price’, ‘Child Price’, ‘Single Supplement’, ‘Surcharge’,'Taxes’, and ‘Other’. You can now customize these to meet your company’s requirements.

  Marketing Reports: We have now added a customer profiles marketing report which lets you print a list of your customers contact information (e.g. address, phone, fax, e-mail address) which can be used to create labels, send e-newsletters or bulk marketing e-mails etc.

Our team is currently working on some more minor modifications, which we hope to release within the next few weeks (release 3.1).