All primary modules in TourTools have a Detail View. In this view, you can view all of the details related to a particular Operations record.
Feature Buttons
List View
Use this button to return to the Operations List View.
A/P List
Use this button to jump to the accounts payable list view.
Find Tour
This button will filter the found set to only Operations records related to the current Tour.
Cancel
This button will allow you to cancel services from this Vendor (for the current Tour or ALL Tours).
< Tours
All buttons with a left pointing triangle will take you to related records. In this case, use this button to jump to the Tour record related to this Operation.
< Packages
Use this button to jump to the Package related to this Ops record.
< Contracted Service
Use this button to jump to the Contracted Service related to this Ops record.
< Vendors
Use this button to jump to the Vendor related to this Ops record.
Find
You can search for one or a group of record(s) by clicking on the “Find” button. Having clicked the button, you will be asked if you want to stay on the current screen or if you want to us the “Find” screen. This second option allows you to search additional fields not available on the current screen.
Once you have entered your search criteria, you can simply hit the ENTER key to begin the Find/Search.
New Window
Clicking on the New Window allows you to open other modules within a new window so you can view 2 or 3 at the same time – this is especially helpful if you have more than one display.
Exploring the Operation Details Layout
To keep things simple, we’re going to address first of all the information seen on the top half of the Operations record. After that, we’ll go tab by tab through the bottom section.
The Vendor name and related Tour information are displayed at the top left and in the color-shaded fields. You will also see the default currency, Package related details, and confirmation/cancellation fields for tracking purposes. Use the +INFO button to add “Info Records” to your final itinerary. For more details on Info records, jump to the following section on Creating New Operations Records.
Main / Notes Tab
The fields contained on the Main / Notes tab (see example above) are pretty straightforward. Note that the “Type of Operations Record” will be “Financial” if the Contracted Service record represented has a cost loaded. If not, the Operations record will be classed as “Op Info”. If you entered a beginning and end time for the service in Contracted Service, it will be displayed. If not, you may want to load it here (doing so will not cause the Contracted Services record to be updated).
In the “print control check box” area(labeled Vendor to Appear & Print On), you will designate where you want this item to appear—whether on the Escort’s, Driver’s and Group Leader’s Notes; on the Group’s/Traveler’s Itinerary, and/or on a voucher. You can select or de-select by clicking on the check boxes.
In the portal at the bottom right of the screen, all Packages that share the Contracted Service record and that are linked to the same tour will list. If the listing is colored green, that is an indication that the Package is published. You may see additional listings colored red; those Packages are related to the same tour but are unpublished.
Inventory Tab
Moving from the left to the right, the panels you see on the Inventory screen show inventory and utilization. This is information for your reference; you will not make any changes here.
If the record represents a fixed-cost service, a motorcoach by example, the # Fixed field will reflect the number booked.
The fields Rm Rates and Rm Billing reflect the billing structure as established in the Contracted Service record.
Numbers will display in the # Drivers/STF SING/STF DBLS fields if reservations identified as those types have been made back in Bookings.
In the middle panel, you will see an indication of how many adults (# TOT PAX) and how many bookings designated “Child”(# TOT Child) are using this particular service and, if there is a room component to the service, how many single, double, triple, and quad rooms have been booked. Directly adjacent, you see an indication of how many passengers will occupy those rooms.
If everything is in order, these numbers will “balance”, as in our example where we’ve highlighted passenger numbers in yellow (notice that singles are not broken out; the number you see in the # Rooms Single field represents both the room as well as passenger count); and room counts in blue. As a reminder, triple and quad rooms are impacting the Dbl inventory loaded back in the Contracted Service record. Be on the watch for imbalances—by example you see two doubles but only three travelers. That should prompt an investigation of whether, back in Bookings, a single passenger is perhaps confirmed as a Double (Package)and should instead be a single.
To the far right, you see a reflection of whether inventory control was left off or turned on (INV OFF?) and loaded back in Vendor, the number being utilized in Bookings, and how many are still available. If inventory control was not turned on, nothing will show in this panel.
At the bottom left, you will see simple totals of people and rooms. Under “Comps Calculated & Manual”, you see the number of comps being backed out, based on the ratio loaded in the Contracted Service record and present booking activity. If you don’t achieve the ratio but the vendor still allows a comp, load a 1 in the appropriate Manual Adj field: PP, RM S(ingle) or RM Dbl fields. The same fields appear on the Accounts Payable layout, meaning adjustments for comps can be made on that screen as well.
Accounts Payable Tab
The Accounts Payable screen reflects what you owe the Vendor, based on current booking activity. Again, the first thing you want to do when coming to Ops is click on the “Update A/P” button to refresh the room and passenger totals, and thereby the balance due, based on up-to-the-minute counts. Glance to the top left to see the last time the record was updated and also whether the account is Open or Closed. To change the status, click on the green button to the left of the status indicator. Records should be closed once all payment activity is finalized; probably at the point the tour has operated, and financial records have all been tied out.
Posting Payments
Begin by clicking on the button labeled “New Payment”, which will open up this window. Today’s date will drop into the Payment Date field and your name or initials will load to the Entered By field.
Pick a Payment Method from the value list that presents; Check, CC (credit card)or Transfer. Check and CC are obvious; Transfer denotes an electronic payment.
The values available to pick from in the “Expense Label” are Amt, Adj and Credit, respectively.
“Amt” will be used most often; it identifies an ordinary payment.
“Adj” might be used if a payment check sent previously was voided. Do not enter the Amount Paid as a negative as TourTools™ recognizes it for what it is when you select Adj as the label and Adjustment in the “Transaction Description” field.
“Credit” will be used when posting a refund or a credit memo. In the Transaction Description field choose Refund Rec’d or Credit Rec’d, respectively. The amount goes in as a positive number.
The Transaction Description field also displays a value list, the values being Deposit, Final Payment, Credit Rec’d, Refund Rec’d, Adjustment and CC Passthru. CC Passthru will be used to identify a payment made using a traveler’s credit card, the best example being…you made a deposit to Viking Cruises on behalf of passengers Smith using their card. When such a transaction occurs, there should always be a corresponding payment entry in the related booking record, in this case, giving the Smiths credit for the amount of the deposit made to Viking.
In the Amount Paid field, enter the amount of the payment being made. Clicking on the “Total” button will auto-load the total balance due.
The Expense Account field contains a value list identifying the expense account to which the payment should be credited (for systems interfaced to QuickBooks).
When all entries are complete, click on the “Post” button.
If your system is not interfaced to QuickBooks, deselect the “QB Post?” checkbox and manually make entries in the Check # and the Paid Date fields.
More about Manual Adjustments
Manual Adjustments might include forcing a comp (briefly addressed earlier), or perhaps adding an extra guest for dinner. If the vendor has agreed to a comp policy that is more lenient than what was first agreed upon and which is reflected in the Contracted Service record, use the Manual Adj fields on the Rooms Expense tab or the Adjust field on the Per Person Expenses tab to adjust as appropriate.
The field labeled Misc Cost, which can accommodate positive or negative amounts, is generally used to make adjustments which are “random”. As an example, the aunt of one of your travelers is going to join the group for dinner. In the Ops record representative of the restaurant meal, enter $25 in the cost field and in the Misc Cost Description type “Smith Dinner Guest”.
Clicking on the “$ Update Tots” button will adjust the A/P amount being calculated, to include these kinds of miscellaneous adjustments.
A Note About Foreign Currencies: If the vendor will be paid in a currency other than US Dollars, the exchange rate in effect when the Ops record was created will be reflected in the Current Rate, the Base Rate and the Transaction Rate fields. In this example, the rate was set at $1 USD = .80 CAD.
At the point you are ready to make a payment, you want to consider whether the rate is still accurate or if it needs to be adjusted; this in order that the record will capture the true cost of the payment to the Vendor, which—of course—is critical if expenses are to be properly reflected on the P/L that you will eventually run.
If the rate needs to be updated, enter it into the “Current Rate” field, then click on the “Adjust Rate” button. Doing so will reset the “Transaction Rate”. The “Base Rate” will reflect what was in place originally.
Note: The content of the “Current Rate” field, is directly linked to the field labeled “USD (Payments)” back in the Currency Support File. In other words, updating one will update the other. So, if we were to change the .80value in the previous record to .85, that is what you’d see back in the Currency Support File. What is important to note, however, is that the “Transaction Rate”—the one that really matters when it comes to payments calculating properly here in Ops— will not update unless you make that happen. Rest assured, that exchange rates in effect when Contracted Service records became part of the itinerary back in Package are not affected by anything done here. Those rates are pulled from the “USD (Costing)” field and remain in effect until you update them (as described in Chapter 5).
Glancing to the bottom right, click on the “Recalculate” button to update the A/P total in “real time”; taking into account the current exchange rate as well as the current number of whatever services represented in the record have been sold. On the left, the field labeled “AP Tot Native” will reflect the current amount owing in the local currency. On the right, the AP total in USD will be reflected in the “AP Total $”.
As payments are made, those will likewise be reflected in local currency as well as US Dollars in the fields labeled Pmts.
In the TOTALS pane, the value of any manual adjustments made (explained earlier) will be reflected in the Adj fields; and any payments identified as “CR (credits)” when posted will populate the CR fields.
Itinerary Notes Tab
If you entered notes in the Itinerary, Escort or Driver notes fields when you created your Contracted Service records back in Vendor, those notes will flow to the Ops records, where they can be edited one last time. Notes can otherwise be entered right here in Ops. The beginning and end times of your service also appear—and can be altered—on this screen. The field labeled “Event or Place Name” reflects the description given to the Contracted Service and can be edited as you might wish to become the “header” for the service as included on the final itinerary.
Vouchers Tab
If you plan to generate group vouchers from the system, do your set-up here. “Voucher” must be checked in the print control list and you can embellish the description as appears in the “Services on Voucher” field if you wish. If additional remarks on the voucher are desired, enter them in the field labeled “Voucher Remarks.”
When your input is complete, run a group voucher from the Operations Reports menu. Once that is done, the “Voucher Issue Date” will fill in. If you make changes and run it a second time, the “Voucher Change Date” will display. To void a voucher, click in the “VOID?” field and select the number one that appears.
Vendor Contact Info Tab
You can reference the contact and address information from Vendor, as well as a number of other fields of information, here on this layout.
A/P Summary Tab
It might be advisable to get an overview of what is owed to a particular vendor for all services before issuing a check for the one item you are looking at. The Vendor A/P Summary layout will display other services booked with the same vendor for the same tour; and corresponding balance due amounts.
In this example, there are four separate services booked with the Howard Johnson by Wyndham Quincy Hotel. Two things happen if you click on the buttons labeled “Tot” at the end of each portal row. First, the total (reflected in the column labeled “Bal Due” will be swept to the Summary portal below. Secondly, that balance will be loaded as a pending payment on the Accounts Payable tab. If you want to proceed with actually processing that payment, you will want to—as usual—enter a check number (unless the payment is being made by another method) and the pay date. For the sake of clarity, the record highlighted in pink is the record that you have open.
The last button to note is “Connect”. In instances where you had a service attached to a Package—for which you had posted a payment here in Ops—which you replace in Package because of a date change, the original Ops record will be replaced when you finish with the substitution. In such a situation, the payment posted to the original record will in a sense be “orphaned” but is recognized in the “Summary of All Ops Records …” area.
When you click on the “Connect” button related to that payment, it will be queued up on the Account Payable tab, after which you will make the usual entries (check number, payment date, etc.) to complete the transaction. Note that the original payment date will be reflected on the far left in the “Post Date” field; you may want that to again be the date you enter in the “Paid Date” field.
Email Log Tab
This tab contains a log of emails sent to the Vendor out of TourTools. Hover over the various sections to see additional details. If an attachment was included (and if it was selected to be saved to the Ops record at the time it was sent) you will find that attachment in the Document Library on the Tasks / Docs tab.
Tasks / Docs Tab
On either tab, click on the “+” button to create a new task or add a new document to the library. As in all modules, the tasks will come find you on your dashboard when the due date approaches.
Reports Tab
There are several reports included in the Operations database. Note that many, like the notes for the tour personnel, display first in Browse mode, meaning you are able to make final edits just before previewing and printing. For details, see the Operations Reports & Docs topic.
If you have any questions that are not answered here Contact TourTools Support for assistance.
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