Accounting Integration

This document outlines the specifications for the integration of Kaptio Travel with an accounting system. It provides a high-level overview of the business flow and the data model used in Kaptio, as well as detailed information on the accounting messages and the relevant objects used for financial reporting. The document also specifies the method of synchronization between the two systems and the different triggers for generating accounting messages.

Introduction

Once implemented, Kaptio Travel (KT) should act as the system of record for all booking-related information. KT, however, is NOT the accounting system, even though it tracks financial information of bookings (revenue and costs). To ensure proper information management, it is key the financial information from the Kaptio system is made available to the Accounting System at the right time. For each implementation project, it is important to make it clear what is the Accounting System of record that will host the data generated from the booking information within KT.

This document provides specifications of what, when and how data is made available for the Accounting System system for further processing. This document will also provide detailed insight into where key financial data is stored in the Kaptio system.

General Business Flow

The high-level business flowlw describing financial data captured in Kaptio and its generation of accounting messages is described below.

An accounting message can be synchronized with the accounting system at either regular intervals or event-based. The method of synchronization is either through an Accounting system API, through Middleware API (for example Jitterbit, Informatica or Boomi), or via one or more CSV/XML-based files transferred between systems using a file-based transfer protocol.

Kaptio’s default recommendation is a robust CSV file-based method where KT will generate a file per transaction and make it available to the customer Accounting System for pick-up and processing through an intermediary server.

The Business Flow is as follows:

Agent or direct customer contacts sales consultant to create a trip and produce one or more itineraries. None of this information will result in a message for accounting.
The sales consultant composes a trip and one or more itineraries. The sales consultant distributes the proposed itinerary(ies) to the customer.
The customer reviews the proposals and is given a number of standard options: 1. Reject proposal; 2. Get back to the sales consultant with an additional question(s) and 3. Accept the proposal and select the option to BOOK.
Kaptio provides multiple ways to convert the itinerary to a booking (manual by sales consultant or automated through the customer book option). In both cases Kaptio Travel will produce a payment schedule based on configured business rules. The customer will be requested to make a deposit payment. Receiving the payment (automated or manual) triggers the creation of accounting messages for money received:
After the itinerary is converted into a booking, the sales consultant will complete the booking steps, meaning book/allocate the inventory. Depending on the type of services and supplier contracts, supplier payments may be due at the time of booking (airline), pre-travel or post-travel start. Once pre-travel invoices are received the Sales Consultant or Operational Support Staff will register the supplier invoice in Kaptio Travel and allocate the Invoice line values to the appropriate bookings. This allocation will once again trigger the creation of an Accounting message. In this case, two message types will be created: one to report Supplier Cost and two to account for Sales Tax Credit (if applicable). Within Kaptio, an workstep is included to indicate the Invoice is complete and ready for payment. At that time the Accounting messages will be created, so the Accounting System can use the receiving of the messages as implied approval to pay.
Between booking and travel, the customer will make additional payments based on the created payment schedule. Kaptio Travel will send out notifications to the customer to remind her/him of the payments. Like the deposit payment, Kaptio Travel produces messages for the accounting system to reflect these additional payments.
If no further changes are applied to the booking, the next trigger for the accounting system is Start of Travel. The Start of Travel message is important for the accounting system as this is the trigger for a company to transfer liability revenue to actual revenue (revenue recognition) and pay agent commission (this could occur earlier, but typically occurs on the start of travel).

Kaptio Data Model

Before diving into the detail of Kaptio Financials (Itinerary, invoices, suppliers) it is useful to have a high-level understanding of the underlying Kaptio Travel data model. For detailed object descriptions and relationships see Kaptio Developer Doc (see https://docs.kaptioapis.com/ ) and the standard Salesforce Object Modeler/Schema builder.

The High-Level Entity Relationship Diagram below provides a high-level overview of the objects relevant for Financial reporting:

In context of this document, relevant objects are divided into 4 groups:

Account information: Customer (Traveler), Agent (B2B) and Supplier/Airline
Trip / Itinerary objects: Defining the actual trip at various levels of detail
Revenue objects: Defining amounts to be invoiced/paid
Cost-related objects: Supplier and Commission Payments