Home → Arctic Reservations → Booking Agents → Creating Booking Agents
28.4. Creating Booking Agents
Once you have finished creating your agent groups, you are ready to start adding booking agents to your installation. To create a new booking agent record, go to the "People" menu and choose "Create".
On the "Create Person" page, enter the agent's name and/or their company name and then click the "Edit" icon next to "Type" as shown here:
This will open the "Type" menu. Deselect "Customer" and select "Booking Agent".
Once you have selected "Booking Agent" for the "Type" field, you can complete the agent's contact information. When you have added all of their necessary contact information, scroll to the bottom of the "Create a New Person" page where you will find the "Booking Agent" specific fields.
Here is where you will tell Arctic the specifics about the agent. In the "Who Pays" field you can choose either "Customer" or "Agent". If you choose "Customer", when the agent books a reservation or rental with you, the invoice will be billed to their guest. The agent's commission will appear as a "Hidden Fee" on the customer's invoice. This "Hidden Fee" will never be seen by the guest, it will only be seen via the backend when the invoice is viewed. If you choose "Agent", when the agent books a reservation or rental with you, the invoice will be billed to the agent. Their commission will appear as a discount on the invoice reducing the total amount owed for the booking.
Note: Even if you are assigning agents to the same agent group, they do not all have to have the same "Who Pays" setting. You can have both types of agents in the same agent group.
The "Enable Referral Link" field is only available for booking agents where the "Customer" is the "Who Pays". If the "Who Pays" is set to "Agent", this field will not be available. If you have set the agent's "Who Pays" field to "Customer", you will be able to choose "Yes, enable referral link" or "No, disable referral link". If the "Enable Referral Link" is set to "Yes", Arctic will generate a "referral code" that can be appended to any of your guest facing site URLs once you hit "Submit" and finish the agent creation process. We will discuss the referral links in more detail in the "Referral Links" section.
The "Agent Group" field is where you will specify the agent group the booking agent should belong to. It is not required to assign a booking agent to an agent group; however, if you do not, they will be treated like normal customers with the exception that they earn commissions. This means they will be governed by whatever the payment terms are that your standard guests receive and they will be required to submit payments when making reservations online. If a booking agent is not assigned to an agent group, you will only be able to specify one commission rate for the agent. Business group specific commissions are not available for agents not assigned to an agent group. You will also not be able to specify your preference for how the order confirmations will be delivered when the agent makes a booking online. Nor, will you be able to specify how their commissions are applied to the activities they book. For these reasons, it is recommended that you assign all but your most basic agents to an agent group. Below you will find a list of the settings Arctic will use to govern agents not assigned to an agent group.
Default Settings for Agents Not Assigned an Agent Group:
If you do not put an agent in an agent group, Arctic will use the default settings found on the "Create a New Agent Group" page to manage the various aspects of the agent. Here is a list of the settings that will be used for agents that are not assigned an agent group:
Commission Type — Dollar ($): The commission will be applied per reservation guest or rental item on the agent booking.
Commission Type — Percentage (%): The commission will be applied to the cost of the main activity only.
Email Confirmations: Email confirmations for online orders will be sent to both the customer and the agent. For more information on how emails are handled for booking agent activities, see the "Email Handling for Booking Agent Activities" section.
Online Payments: The agent will be required to submit payments when reserving activities online just as though they are a normal customer.
Payment Plan: The agent will receive the same payment terms that your other customers receive when reserving a particular activity. Whatever payment plan was specified for the activity will govern their invoices just as though they are a normal customer.
If you choose an agent group for the booking agent, the "Commission Type" and "Commission" fields will be removed because the agent will be given the commission rate specified for the agent group to which they have been assigned. However, if you are not going to assign the agent to an agent group, you can specify either a "Dollar ($)" or a "Percentage (%)" commission in the "Commission Type" field. Remember, when setting commissions this way, you do not have the fine tuned controls for specifying how the commission should be applied. When creating booking agents without an agent group, Arctic will govern their commissions as detailed above. If you want to control how the commissions are applied, you will want to put the agent in an agent group with the appropriate settings.
Once you have chosen the "Commission Type", you will then be able to enter the "Commission". If you chose "Dollar ($)", you will enter the dollar amount the agent should get per reservation guest or rental item on their bookings. If you chose "Percentage (%)", you will enter the percentage the agent should get per activity they book. Again the application of the commissions will be determined by the default settings detailed above.
Once you have completed all of the fields on the "Create a New Person" page, being sure to complete all of the "Booking Agent" fields, hit "Submit" to create your new booking agent.
In the next section, we will give a brief overview of the "View Person" page for booking agents.