The people database allows the operator or agent to record detailed information about the booking agent's individual consultants as well as individual pax and users. The people database can be configured to force the res staff to pick a pax in the database when making a booking or casually type in a name in the reservation.

More relevant information on:

• Making a new booking (Tutorial)
• Searching for bookings (Tutorial)
• Modifying existing bookings

Tour Options
Each tour can be configured with its own set of tour options. A typical tour option would be breakfast, diving, snorkeling, guided tour etc. Each option has its own cost and sell pricing. The option can be configured to be non-commissionable or a commission structure can be applied for each agent.

Detailed People Database for pax/agent consultant/user information
ResPax supports an advanced people database in which you can record detailed information about users, passengers and travel agent consultants. Optionally, each tour can be configured to force usage of people database when taking a booking. The database can quickly be searched in the reservation screen and new people can quickly be added with minimum information.

As each operator may be interested in collecting different data about the people, the People db has 12 customisable fields that can be defined by the operator. Optionally these fields can then be used on manifests and reports.

Agent commission structures
The built in agent commission structure permits an advanced configuration of commissions for each agent. Each commission can be configured in currency or percentage of the tour. Commissions for an agent can be configured as:

• One commission for all tours
• Commission relating to a specific tour
• Commission for a tour for a specific date range
• Varied commissions for pax types ie. adult can be different from children for the same tour.
• Commission for a tour for a date range for a specific basis/subbasis

Commissions are automatically calculated from the commission matrix when a booking is made. Calculated commissions can be manually overridden if the user has permissions.

Audit trail and Diary
All changes to bookings are recorded in an audit trail. The audit trail is easily accessible from inside each booking or by using right-click on the booking search result. The audit trail records which fields were modified as well as time of modification and who modified the booking.

The diary enables the operator to keep internal calendar notes and set alerts. A diary entry can be associated to a reservation, organisation or individual people. The diary entry can be setup as an alert/alarm entry to help you keep track of prepayments and other time based duties. A diary entry can be allocated as a specific users responsibility and that user can be notified when the entry is due by either email or popup screen.

Realtime availability
Availability is checked as you commit a booking. If a tour does not have any availability, the booking can not be committed as a confirmed booking. It can, if required, be saved as an unconfirmed booking which does not affect the availability.

If the tour your are booking has multiple levels of tours, availability for each individual tour is checked.

If the booking has a hotel pickup selected, the availability for that busroute is checked. Availability for a booking can be controlled via either package header, component tours or busroute.... which gives the operator a high level of flexibility in configuring each tour.

This screen shows the availability grid. Click on image for a larger picture

More relevant information on:

• Checking availability
• Searching for bookings

Advanced bus routing
Each tour in a booking can have both a pickup location and a dropoff location associated with it. Pickup times and dropoff times are derived from the bus route setup and clearly displayed in the booking. Only pickups and dropoffs in busroutes associated with a particular tour are shown in the pickup/drop off list. Availability checking can be applied to each bus route in bus route maintenance.

Email/fax/print/preview reports
All reports can be emailed, printed, previewed and optionally faxed from multiple areas in the software. On committing a new booking, the res staff can optionally send out confirmations, vouchers, itineraries and notifications as part of completing the booking.* Fax option not included in Respax Operator Lite

Searching and finding bookings
Bookings can be found quickly using a criteria such as confirmation number, tour code, travel date range, voucher no, external operator reference, agent code, booked date range and pax name.

The search result list view lets you quickly sort and and access bookings directly. The listview also supports a number of direct commands using right-click without having to open the booking. Typical direct commands are sending fax/email notifications, vouchers and itineraries. Audit trail and diary can also be access directly from here.

Your most recent 20 search criteria are recorded for you to access directly and the My Bookings button returns all bookings created by you in the last 24 hours.

More relevant information on:

• Searching for bookings
• Modifying bookings

Archiving bookings
Archiving of booking is supported to 'lock' each booking or payment after it has been exported to the accounts system. Bookings can still be viewed and referenced but cannot be edited. In the case of booking a package that extends for a travel duration, individual components and payments can be archived before the package header booking. * Not included in Respax Operator Lite

More relevant information on:

• Setting up a basic tour
• Setting up a package
• Configuring agents and operators

Full tour management module includes:

• Resource/availability allocation configurable over a date range for specific departure times.
• Allotment package with automatic release-back hours for specific agents.
• Advanced price matrix configurable for date ranges, basis and subbasis.
• Tour departure schedule. Each tour can have multiple departure times.
• Tour options can be configured for each tour with individual costs and sell values.
• Tour basis and subbasis configuration to get most flexibility out of each tour. Pickups can be allocated to a tour basis and options can be automatically added when an option is chosen.
• Component management. Package can be built over a number of days which can include transport, day tours and accommodation. Detailed booking behaviour options.
• Multiple financial entities/tour owners can be configured for separate exports into accounts packages.
• Detailed tour commission rate setup for each agent includes date based commission ranges.
• Each tour can have categorised operator notification setup for each tour including email or fax.
• Easy to use pickup configuration tool. Each pickup route can have multiple schedules. Drag and drop location configuration.
• General ledger code assigned to each tour.
• Manage web content for each tour

Multiple geographical locations
ResPax can support multiple geographical office locations if your servers has terminal services type software installed. If you have several regional offices, all you need is a decent internet connection. No server hardware is required in each regional office. Thin client remote desktop software would typically be installed on each client in your network and can access the ResPax for windows software over an internet connection on the remote Respax database. By introducing Terminal server type software on your servers, multiple platforms like Linux and Mac's can also be supported.

We recommend ADSL connection as it is the best quality connection for the buck. This is an affordable connection for even small businesses. If uptime is important to your business, simply subscribe to more than one ISP provider to create redundancy in internet connectivity. If one connection goes down, the second connection is available.

The multiple geographical feature allows you to distribute the reservation system into the most remote regional offices with a single common respax database and reporting source. The thin client remote desktop solutions is also tolerant to lesser pc hardware and supports multiple platforms including Linux, Mac and even direct desktop access over webbrowsers.

Typical reports include:

Using robust MSDE database.
ResPax uses a Microsoft MSDE royalty-free database which is essentially the same thing as Microsoft's SQL server. This database can only be installed on a Intel-based server. Client software is installed on each PC which connects to the database over the LAN using OLEDB.

Interact with web NetWizard to seamlessly integrate with your website
ResPax NetWizard is a web based, step-by-step booking wizard for the web. It allows your agents to book tours directly from your website. The NetWizard supports real time availability, real time credit card authentication and returns instant confirmation numbers. NetWizard fits inside your existing website and can be completely customised to suit your existing colour theme. NetWizard connects directly to the ResPax reservations database.

Our implementation consultants have extensive experience with installing reservations systems into various tour operations in Australia, New Zealand and around the world. We offer 2 basic models to assist you to go live with Respax in your Operation as quickly as possible.

OPTION 1 - Complete Setup
If you need to get Respax into your operation rapidly and have limted resources available within your operation to setup Respax, we can setup your tours for you. This option has the following steps to get you Live with Respax.

• Initial discussion - One of our senior implementation consultants will have a phone or email dicussion with key people in your operations to get an idea of how many tours need to be setup and what type of tours they are. Discussions will also include how you will manage the bookings and invoice agents at the end of the day. We will then be able to give you and estimate of time and cost. Please note, that the Respax Remote Hosting model includes a free 10-hour support block which can be used towards this setup.
• Subscribe - You will then need to subscribe to or purchase Respax. See Pricing Options. We will setup your Respax database and logins for you normally within 24-48 hours.
• Setup Plan - We will outline a setup plan for you which you will need to approve. It is a good idea to keep the initial tour to a minum both to control costs but also to reduce time-to-go-live.
• Tour Setup - We will setup the tours for you. This normally takes 5-10 days depending on our workload at the time and how many tours we need to setup.
• Tour Setup Complete - We will demonstrate the setup for your keypeople, take comment from them and amend the setup. We will mutally decide on a suitable Respax go-live date for your operation and a date to train your key person/people.
• Train Staff - Online Training day for your staff
• Go Live - Your system goes live in your operation.

OPTION 2 - Interactive Workshop
The interactive workshop focuses on training your key people like res supervisors and res managers in how to use Respax and then leaving them to do most of the setup (guided by our implementation staff). Traditionally, it takes an operator longer to live under this option as the key people in the operation has to make time to get both trained and find the time to setup the tours. The upside is that they will be more independant and trained when they go live.

• Initial discussion - One of our senior implementation consultants will have a phone or email dicussion with key people in your operations to get an idea of how your operation works so that the following workshop training is a relevant as possible to your operation. We will then be able to give you and estimate of time and cost for training workshops. Please note, that the Respax Remote Hosting model includes a free 10-hour support block which can be used towards this training.
• Subscribe - You will then need to subscribe to or purchase Respax. See Pricing Options. We will setup your Respax database and logins for you normally within 24-48 hours.
• Initial Workshop training - Online Training workshop commences with your key people. This is normally done in 3-4 hour sessions working directly in your new Respax environment. Some of your tours will be setup as part of these sessions.
• Setup Period - Your staff will work independantly to complete the setup guided by our implementation consultants. Normally, a few more workshop sessions are scheduled through this setup period. How quickly this section is completed, depends entirely on how many resources and time you allocate to this project.
• Train Staff - Your key people are responsible for training your res staff.
• Go Live - Your system goes live in your operation.

Online Documentation of your Setup
As part of your subscription/purchase of Respax, we create a password-protected online documentation environment for our consultants to use and your key people to document all procedures and setups. This over and above the standard online user guides, references and howto's available for Respax. The documentation site specifically reflects your setups and procedures and is a very valuable tool to see you through staff changes and to refer to when using the Respax.

Remote reservation system hosting is offered by Trinity Software Australia (developers of ResPax). We use Microsoft's Terminal Services to offer remotely hosted ResPax Enterprise reservations systems to our clients. Terminal services enables you to see the remote desktop screen using Remote Desktop Connection. This software normally comes pre-installed with later versions of Windows such as Windows 2000 and XP.

ResPax Enterprise licence can either be purchased outright and installed on your servers or your reservation system can be entirely hosted by us using Terminal Services.