Airlines have call centres and sales offices based in different countries issuing tickets against cash receipts or invoices. Such ticket sales need to be reflected in the airline’s financial system.  Megabyte’s Airline Reservation Invoicing Application (ARIA) was developed specifically to achieve this and allow for better tracking of such sales transactions.

In general, ARIA retrieves data from the Computer Reservation System (CRS), issues the necessary invoice or receipt and posts the related transactions to the financial system. Thus, ARIA bridges the gap between the airline’s CRS and the financial system.

ARIA was originally designed to interface with the financial modules of Oracle Applications and with two Computer Reservation Systems - KAMA and SABRE.  However, Megabyte can also customise the system to interface with other financial systems and CRSs.

ARIA supports automatic retrieval of reservations data based on a Passenger Name Record (PNR) or ticket number.  This avoids duplicate entry of ticket data. Should the CRS be unavailable, the sales agent may still proceed with the invoicing by entering the ticket details manually through an easy-to-use function.

As a web based application, running on an Oracle Database, the application is implemented at one site such as the Airline’s Head Office but can be easily accessed from all the sales offices via the Internet.  This makes administration and maintenance easier.

Functional Overview

Maintenance and Administration

Users with the necessary privileges can carry out system administration through the system’s standard maintenance forms that include:

• Sales Offices

• Handling Agents

• Chart of Accounts

• Credit Card Companies

• Currencies

• Countries of Sale

Every sales office can have its own handling agents/users, chart of accounts, credit card companies, currencies and countries of sale. The chart of accounts can also be set for a particular sales office, currency and if need be even a country of sale. Therefore, transactions for different countries of sale, currencies, and sales offices can be transferred to different accounts with different analysis to the financial system.

The account details, credit card companies and currencies are not maintained in ARIA but read directly from the financial system through a seamless interface.

Invoicing & Cash Receipts

If the invoicing module is accessed through a sales office or call centre that handles invoices from multiple counties of sale the user will be provided with the option to select the country of sale he/she is dealing with. The system will apply tax rates and accounting related to the selected country of sale.

The invoicing module can process various forms of payment such as cash, cheques, invoices and credit cards. It can also handle different types of flights such as international and domestic flights.

Customer details are also retrieved from the financial system. This will ensure that any activities on the customer account are immediately reflected in ARIA.  The customer’s credit limit is also validated online.

On confirmation of transactions, an invoice or cash receipt can either be printed or displayed for preview, and the invoice details are saved for future reference.

The system also allows the agent to search for past invoices and cash receipts, and required reprint them through the reprint option.  An existing invoice or cash receipt can also be cancelled or reactivated through the cancel/re-activate option.

End of Day Process

At the end of each shift, the sales agent must run a process to close his/her shift.  Through this process the transactions for the shift are reconciled and once confirmed assigned a batch id.  Following this the sales office supervisor will invoke the transfer function. This function retrieves a list of closed batches which have not yet been transferred for the sales office and transfer them to the financial system.

Reports

A number of standard reports are available.  ARIA provides the sales agent with the facility to view a list of transactions produced during his/her shift facilitating reconciliation with the CRS.

The supervisor is able to produce an overall sales office report were transactions for a particular transfer are group according to sales agent. This allows for an overall reconciliation and verification of correct operation.

The system also includes other reports such as:

• A transaction report categorized by the various forms of payment – usually passed on to the accounting department

• An EPOS report - displaying EPOS transactions and related accounts

• A “manually entered credit cards numbers” report - which can be sent to the credit card company concerned.

Automation

In its effort to further enhance the system, Megabyte has now implemented an automated process that works hand in hand with ARIA.  This allows for easier tracking of sales transactions and a overall reduction in the work needed to be carried out by the sales agents.  The Automated process has been designed to retrieve data from the Reservation System, issue the necessary invoices and receipts that have not yet been issued by the sales agents, validate issued sales agent invoices and receipts, post the related transactions to the financial system, and issue an overall log. Thus, the automated process helps eliminate the need for any manual intervention.

Invoice/Receipt Emailing

Another process which has been included in ARIA is an Invoice/Receipt e-mailing feature. This functionality can email invoices/receipts issued by the sales agents and/or by the automated process. The Invoice/Receipt Emailing process comes in handy in the case of customers such as tour operators who do not need to receive a receipt/invoice instantly but can afford to wait untill the end of the day.