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Central commission billing

TourCMS Marketplace partners (affiliates) can choose to have their commission payments sent directly by individual suppliers at a rate agreed between partner and supplier, OR they can choose to have them paid by TourCMS at a standard rate using Central commission billing.

The standard rate is 9% commission paid by suppliers of which 6% commission is paid to affiliates.

Travel UCD (TourCMS) retain value between the incoming and outgoing commission. This pays for our incurred payment fees in both directions (incoming and outbound) as well as management overhead.

For suppliers

• Open to you wherever you are in the world if you sell travel / activity related products
• You must be taking bookings online (using the TourCMS booking engine) as part of your conventional business processes
• All components on a booking are commissionable EXCEPT for local payments, booking fees, credit card fees and options that have been set to no commission (e.g. if you are using an option for a flight)
• An agent record will be created in your account for the affiliate. All bookings will be locked to that agent (if centrally billed). They will also be locked to the booking balance being payable by the customer (not the agent)
• You must have upgraded to a paying TourCMS account

For affiliates (Marketplace partners)

• Sign up for a partner / affiliate account as normal
• From within that account convert to central commission billing (if you wish)
• There are further instructions found within the Marketplace partner interface (including how we deal with self billing VAT within the UK and the European Union)

For both affiliates (Marketplace partners) and suppliers

The commission is calculated on confirmed bookings only.

The scheme operates in GBP only. Sales that are in non-GBP currency will have commission converted to GBP and charged in GBP (to the saved credit card used by suppliers to pay for their TourCMS service). Commission paid out to affiliates will be paid in GBP.

The calculation point is around the start of the month following the travel start date for the booking (i.e. after the customer has started travelling). The sale value will be taken at that point in time (bear in mind that with tailor made tours many of the sale prices flex up and down all the way upto the travel date)

If a booking is subsequently cancelled (after the travel date) then the commission is still payable.

The central billing system works for commission payments only. i.e. the customer deals with the supplier directly (and pays the supplier). Subsequently the supplier pays TourCMS the commission and most of that is then passed on to the affiliate (Marketplace partner). If an agent/affiliate wants to work on balance payments (i.e. the agent pays the supplier the balance minus their commission) then this is possible in TourCMS, and possible in the TourCMS Marketplace, however central billing is not suitable for that.