Software that chases unpaid travel commissions: how it works

Yes, it exists. Software that chases unpaid travel commissions works by knowing what each booking promised, reading what each remittance paid, and raising the difference with the supplier when the two do not match or the payment never arrives. The rest of this page is what that actually involves, because the phrase covers everything from a spreadsheet with conditional formatting to a system that reads your inbox.

What "chasing" has to mean for the software to be useful

A commission is unpaid in three different ways, and a tool that only handles one of them leaves money on the table.

• Short. The supplier paid, but at the wrong rate, on a smaller base than the booking, or with a deduction nobody explained. This is the easiest to catch and the most common.
• Late. The commission was due after travel or on balance and never came. Nothing in the supplier's process reminds them, and nothing on your side notices unless the due date exists somewhere and something watches it.
• Unmatched. The money arrived, but under a reference your records do not recognise, so it sits on a statement as a line nobody reconciled.

Chasing software has to do four things for all three cases: record what was promised at booking, read what was paid when the statement arrives, compare the two line by line, and produce the query to the supplier with the figures already in it. If it does the first three and leaves you to write the email, it is a tracking tool. If it does all four, it chases.

What it reads, and where the hard part is

The promised commission lives in the supplier's confirmation: the rate, the base it applies to, the currency and the due timing. The paid commission lives in a remittance advice, which for most suppliers is a PDF attached to an email with no body text. The hard part of this software is not the arithmetic, it is reading those two documents reliably across hundreds of suppliers who format them differently, and matching them by the supplier's own reference, which is rarely the one on your side.

That is why the useful tools in this category read the inbox rather than asking you to type figures in. Every confirmation and every statement arrives there anyway. A tool that depends on manual entry is a spreadsheet with a better interface, and it fails for the same reason spreadsheets fail: it is updated when there is time, which is after the money went missing.

What it cannot do

• It cannot make a supplier pay. It can make the query complete, timely and documented, which is what gets a short payment corrected on the next run and what gives you a record if it ends in dispute.
• It cannot recover commission from a supplier that has failed. Unpaid commission is an unsecured debt of the failed company, whatever software you run. Prompt chasing is the only protection, because late commission at a struggling supplier is commission you will not see.
• It cannot know a rate you never recorded. If the confirmation does not state the commission and you agreed it by phone, the software has nothing to compare against. Get the rate in writing on every booking.

What to ask before paying for it

1. Does it read confirmations and remittances itself, including PDFs, or do I type them in?
2. Does every expected commission get a due date, and does overdue become visible on its own?
3. Does it draft the query with the booking references and the figures, or just flag a row?
4. Does anything go out to a supplier without my approval? The right answer is no.
5. What happens with a host agency in the middle, where the supplier pays the host and the host pays me? Two statements, two reconciliations.
6. What does it cost against what it recovers? One short payment caught a month usually pays for it.

How Holidr does it

Holidr reads the inbox you already work in. When a confirmation arrives, the promised commission is noted on the trip with its rate, basis and due date. When a remittance arrives, even as a PDF, every line is checked against what the booking promised, to the penny. A short payment is flagged with a query already drafted, references and figures filled in, waiting for your approval. A commission that passes its due date with nothing received is flagged the same way, with the chase written. Nothing goes out without you, and everything goes out in your name.

The 90 days are free, and the first thing most agents find is a shortfall they did not know about. How to check and chase it by hand covers the manual version, if you would rather start there.