Today the invoice being the focus of both accounting and managerial reporting causes a lot of issues for the travel industry. Invoices vary based upon deposits, different parts of the reservation being billed, tracking money back from suppliers, partial pays, payment type variances etc. Management reports are a mess in such very common situations.

The fact is, invoices were never meant for nor designed to be used for management reporting. Invoices are meant to have very limited basic data related to accounting. When, how much, who is due, what is the commission and what is owed to the agent. And that is it. For management reporting on a trip, we need to look at the trip where those details really belong.

All transactions (ie: reservations), regardless of how they were transacted – flow to the Trip Manager which is where back office reports come from.  Invoices are generated from the trip manager but are for accounting purposes only – and hence more flexible and far less data.