Home → Arctic Reservations → Booking Agents → Creating Agent Groups
28.2. Creating Agent Groups
As mentioned in the last section, agent groups allow you to more finely control how an agent is handled in the system and create a general setup that will apply to multiple booking agents. For example, you might have a "Local Hotel" agent group that defines your standard relationship with all local booking agents so you can easily make adjustments without having to edit each booking agent.
With an agent group, you can set the type of commission, how to handle email confirmations, whether the agent can skip payment when booking online, as well as override commissions on per business group basis. Agent groups are, in concept, similar to business groups. With business groups, you set tax rates, item templates, email templates and miscellaneous other settings that will be available to or govern every trip or rental item that belongs in that business group. Agent groups work on the same principal.
You do not need to create a unique agent group for every booking agent you work with. If you offer the same terms and commission rates to multiple agents, you only need to create a single agent group with those terms and rates specified and then when you create the individual booking agent records, you can assign each individual agent to the same group. Most likely, you probably have a few standard sets of terms that you offer booking agents based on the type of agent they are and your relationship with them. These "standards" are what the agent groups represent. For instance, you may offer some agents a 15% commission and allow them 30 day payment terms whereas for others you offer a 5% commission and 15 day payment terms. Each of these examples would be an agent group. You can create as many agent groups as you need; so if you negotiate individual terms and commission rates with each agent you work with and their terms do not fall into a previously defined agent group, you can then create an agent group specifically for that agent, but remember, the goal is to have less not more to simplify organization. This is especially helpful if you need to make changes to your agent groups.
For instance, let's say, that you created an agent group for each agent that you work with and that you now have 30+ agent groups defined on your installation. Now, you decide that you want to make a change and offer all of the agents who earn a 20% commission with you a 60 day payment plan. To make this change, you must first open every agent group to see who is getting the 20% commission and therefore qualifies for the new payment plan. This is time consuming and could potentially lead to mistakes. Whereas, if you had a single 20% commission agent group, you could easily make this update to one group and all 10 of the agents who belong to that group would immediately receive the change and get the new payment terms applied to their next booking. This reduces the time it takes to manage your agents and reduces the margin of error or oversight involved in making these types of changes.
With these concepts in mind, you are now ready to create your agent groups. To create agent groups, go to the "Settings" page under "Booking Agents" and click the "Pencil" icon next to "Manage Booking Agent Groups".
On the "Browse Agent Groups" page, click the green "+Create Agent Group" button as shown here:
On the "Create a New Agent Group" page, you will be presented with the following form:
In the "Name" field, enter a name for the agent group that will allow you to identify the group and differentiate it from the other groups that you will create. We recommend a name that either describes what booking agents the group applies to (e.g., "local hotels") or contains the commission and payment terms (.e.g., "17% Commission — 30 Day Terms" or "15% Commission — Std. Terms"). Or perhaps, if you have an in-house grouping system in place for your agents that you use to determine their commissions and payment terms, you can use your existing rating names for your agent groups (e.g., "Platinum", "Gold", "Silver", etc). You can choose whatever naming convention that works for you. These names are never seen by the agent or the guest. They are only for your use via the backend.
In the "Commission Type" field, you will be able to specify the type of commission the agent group will get. You can choose "Dollar ($)" or "Percentage (%)". Depending on your selection, Arctic will provide you with fields that will allow you to specify the exact commission rate and how the commissions should be applied.
If you choose "Dollar ($)", you will be presented with the following fields.
In the "Commission" field, you will enter the dollar amount of the commission, i.e. $5.00, $10.00, $25.00. In the "Commission Per" field, you can choose either "Reservation Guest or Rental Item" or "Activity". If you choose "Reservation Guest or Rental Item", Arctic will give the agent the dollar amount specified for the commission for each guest or rental item on the booking. For instance, if the commission rate is $5.00 and there are 4 guests or items on the booking then the agent will get a total commission of $20.00.
If you choose "Percentage (%)" for the "Commission Type", you will see the following:
In the "Commission" field you will enter the percentage rate for the commission, i.e. 5%, 10% 25%. In the "Percent Of" field you can choose between "Activity Cost" and "Activity and Add-on Cost". If you choose "Activity", the agent's commission will only be figured off of the main activity cost and will not be calculated on any additional add-on charges for the booking. If you choose "Activity and Add-on Cost", the agent's commission will be figured off of the main activity cost and any additional add-on charges associated with the booking. (Note: With the "Activity and Add-on Cost" setting, the commissions will not be calculated to include any charges manually added to the invoice. Only charges that are associated with the main activity and any add-ons specified for that activity will be used to calculate the commission for the agent.)
In the "Send Confirmation to Customer" field, you can specify whether you want both the agent and the customer to receive a confirmation email when the agent makes a booking online or if you want only the agent to receive the confirmation. This setting only effects the order confirmation emails sent when booking agent activities are made online. By default, Arctic is set to send both the agent and the customer a confirmation. In the "Email Handling for Booking Agent Activities" section, we will explain how this setting and the "Who Pays" interact and effect the order confirmation emails and any manually sent email templates when emails are sent to your agents and their guests.
The next two fields determine whether an agent must pay when making reservations through your guest facing site and if they should get different payment terms than those you have specified for your normal guests to get. The "Can Skip Payment" field allows you to specify whether the agent can skip payment when making reservations online through your guest facing site. The "Override Payment Plan" field allows you to choose a different payment plan that will be applied to all of the agent's bookings regardless of the payment plans specified for the trips or rental items they book with you.
The last portion of the page is where you can specify business group specific commission rates. These rates will supersede the rate specified at the top of the form when an agent books an activity in any of the business groups for which a business group specific commission has been specified. If your agent group does not require any business group specific commissions, then you are finished with your agent group and you can click "Submit" to complete its creation.
In the next section, we will provide step by step instructions for setting up the business group specific commission rates.