Creating New Operations Records

Operations is where passenger counts from Bookings impact Contracted Service costs from Vendor, thereby creating Accounts Payable. Operations is where you can also produce travel documents for passengers, escorts and drivers – as well as generate inventory/utilization reports.

For every Contracted Service used to build an itinerary in one or more Packages, there will be a corresponding Operations record. This record will reflect the price and inventory data as loaded back in Vendor; as well as the number of passengers using that service once there is activity in Bookings. Operations is more or less the “end of the story”, since it’s here that you will come to record payments to your vendors, as well as run a variety of reports and documents when it comes time to finalize your tour.

As you finish creating and publishing your Package, you will be asked if you want to create Operations records. If you chose not to do it at that point, you can create them at any time by going to the List View layout in Package and clicking on the “Load Ops” button.

Creating Ops Info Records

It is possible to create records right in Ops that are not truly associated with a Package element but rather are needed to create “filler” in the itinerary. These records are purely informational and have no financial component

By example, let’s say you want to include in your itinerary a remark to the effect that the group may expect to be welcomed at Hotel XYZ with a punch and cookies reception.

With the Ops record that precedes the hotel overnight open, click on the “New Info Record” button. The record that is created will be classified as an “Ops Info Rec” as opposed to “Financial” since, as mentioned, it has no financial component. Enter the “Event Name” as well as the appropriate text in the “Itinerary Notes” field.

Two things to keep in mind: The info record will appear after the record you used to create it, and will appear only on the itinerary. Be sure to double check the date and time assigned to the newly created record and delete and start again if it is sequenced incorrectly.

Cancelling One or All Ops Record(s)

If it becomes necessary to cancel the service represented in an Ops record, use the navigational button labeled “Cancel”. When you do, you will be asked if you want to cancel just the record you have open, or all of the records related to the same trip. Regardless of your reply, in the upper right corner of the Main tab, the field labeled “Type of Operations Record” will be stamped “CXL” and the “CXL Date” will reflect the date the action was taken. The cancellation date will also be reflected on the To Do tab, and on the Accounts Payable tab the sales figures will be stripped away, possibly leaving the record as “overpaid” if payments to the vendor were previously made.

As appropriate, refer to the addendum “Cancelling a Tour and Closing Out Booking/Operations Records” for instructions for zeroing out the record.

Replacing (Renaming) an Ops Record

In the eventuality a Vendor changes names—maybe a hotel that has been rebranded or a misspelling occurred when the record was created and not caught until some time later—check with TourTools™ Support for assistance. It may be possible for a developer to create a script to correct the problem, or we can step you through the “repair and replace” process.

An additional button that hasn’t been described previously is the “Tour” button. Clicking on it will assemble all Ops records related to the same tour as the record you are in.

If you have any questions that are not answered here Contact TourTools Support for assistance.