You may have noticed something new with the Merang TravelOffice system this week. We successfully launched the new version of the Merang TravelOffice system over the past weekend, and so far the feedback has been very positive. We’re very excited with the new changes as we are certain they will help you produce invoices faster, that are more professional, and that will help you manage your business better.
Apart from making the system compatible with other browsers (e.g. Firefox), we have introduced a multitude of new features and changes. The following is just a quick summary of some of the new features and changes. Over the next few weeks, and months we will be posting more details of each of the changes and how to use them, so check back often.
I. SYSTEM PROFILES:
1. Invoice Profiles: You can now specify payment titles by product type, select to display supplier names on invoices, and select to display the signature line when insurance is declined.
2. Agent Profile: You can now allow agents to create suppliers, record supplier payments, and ‘complete’ invoices for their own invoices. You can also allow/remove manager’s access to a limited version of the back-office.
3. Product Inventory: You can now create an inventory of standard products that can be quickly retrieving from an invoice, automatically filling out the relevant fields.
II. INVOICE MODULE:
1. Enhanced Search Feature: You can now search for invoices based on a number of other fields including agent, destination, invoice status, supplier, passenger last name, etc.
2. Invoice Remarks: You can add remarks to an invoice that will not display on the customer’s copy of the invoice.
3. Enhanced Product Fields: You can now select the product type, and customized fields will appear for each type. Also payment titles will change based on the product type.
4. Supplier Commission Rates: Supplier commission rates are displayed (if entered in the supplier profile) when you are recording the net cost.
5. “Card Payment (Supplier)”: When adding a customer payment received with this method of payment, the corresponding supplier payment is automatically created (previously, you had to do this separately).
6. Customer and Agency Invoices: We have enhanced the customer and agency versions of the invoices to make them more professional and customized based on the product types.
7. PDF Invoices and Vouchers: You can now generate the invoices and vouchers (for tour companies) as a PDF document that can be saved and e-mailed to customers.
III. BACK-OFFICE MODULE:
1. Updated Dashboard: The back-office dashboard has been reorganized to make it easier to understand.
2. Sales Activity Reports: The report selection has been reorganized. We added a column for number of passengers in the ‘Sales Report by Supplier’. Also, we added two new reports; ‘Sales Report by Invoice’ and ‘Sales Report by Product Type’.
3. Invoice Register: You can now generate a detailed report of all invoices in the system including many pertinent fields. We recommend you generate this report periodically and save it (in a spreadsheet) as a backup of all your invoices in the system.
4. Customer Profile – Assigned Agent: We now assign agents to every customer profile. This is done automatically from the invoice or can be done through the customer profiles section in the back-office. A report of customer profiles can be generated, including the assigned agent.
We sincerely hope that you will find these new features useful. Again, stay tuned as we post more specific details of each of these features over the coming weeks and months, as well as tips on using the system faster and better.