Best Accounting Systems for Travel Agents in 2025

The Best Accounting Systems for Travel Agents

If you're a travel agent trying to manage your financial accounts, you've probably discovered that most generic accounting tools aren't designed with the travel industry in mind. From reconciling commissions to tracking supplier payments and dealing with multi-currency issues, the financial side of running a travel business is far from easy. Add in the challenges of working under a host agency or tracking gross booking value versus net revenue, and the picture gets even more complex.

This guide is not sponsored. It’s not written by someone who’s never seen a travel P&L. It’s written for real travel agents, based on actual Antravia financial experience.

Here's what you need to know:

What makes travel accounting so difficult?

Most accounting software is designed for businesses with simple income and expenses. But travel agents deal with:

• Gross bookings that include costs paid out to third parties like airlines or hotels

• Net commissions received weeks or months later

• Partial payments, deposits, and final balances

• FX exposure when booking or paying suppliers in other currencies

• Multiple systems - booking tools, CRM, payment processors - none of which talk to each other

• Host agency setups, where reporting and income flows through someone else’s platform

This makes it hard to track what you actually earn per booking, and even harder to match income to costs.

If you don’t account for gross vs. net properly, you can’t see your true margin. If you can’t track each trip’s profitability, you’ll always be guessing.

What features should you look for in an accounting system?

Here’s what we recommend travel agents prioritize:

• Ability to track income by booking or trip

• Easy multi-currency handling (especially if you’re working with international suppliers)

• Clear separation between gross bookings, commission income, and cost of sales

• Flexibility to record planning fees, retainers, and consulting income

• Strong reporting, so you can see margin by trip, customer, or product

• Integration with Stripe, Wise, PayPal or your payment processor

• The option to tag or categorize bookings by client, travel date, or type

Hosted agents should also look for the ability to enter host agency commission statements manually and break them down by trip or supplier.

What are the most used accounting systems by travel agents?

Here’s how the most common options compare based on real-world travel business experience:

QuickBooks Online

• The most widely used small business accounting software in the U.S.

• Pros: Great for general ledger, expenses, reports, and integration with banks and Stripe.

• Cons: Not designed for travel, so you need to build a workaround to match bookings to income. Doesn’t handle commissions natively. Can be clunky for multi-currency.

• Best for: Independent agents or agencies with a bookkeeper or accountant who understands the travel industry.
  

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Xero

• A strong contender for international or multi-currency travel agents.

• Pros: Clean interface, real-time currency conversion, good reporting, Stripe and Wise integration.

• Cons: Also not travel-specific. Gross-to-net needs to be set up manually. Some agents find reporting limited compared to QuickBooks.

• Best for: Global agents, especially if you deal with multiple currencies or are based outside the U.S.
  

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Travel-specific tools (Travefy, TESS, ClientBase, TravelJoy)

• Pros: Designed for itinerary building, CRM, invoicing, and trip management. Some tools like TESS allow host agency reconciliation.

• Cons: Most are not true accounting systems. They help you invoice and track sales, but you’ll still need QuickBooks or Xero for bookkeeping.

• Best for: Day-to-day sales and trip management, but not necessarily for financial reporting.

Manual spreadsheet systems

• Pros: Full control, no monthly fee, fully customizable.

• Cons: Time-consuming, error-prone, hard to scale, easy to miss FX or fee deductions.

• Best for: New agents or side-hustlers who are not ready for a full system.

Hosted agents have extra complexity

If you work under a host agency, your commission payments usually come via consolidated monthly reports or lump-sum deposits, which can make it hard to match income to specific trips.

Some travel-specific tools like TESS are designed to help with this. They allow you to import host statements, allocate commission to each booking, and see what you’re really earning. But these travel specific systems don’t help much with cost tracking, especially if you’re running Facebook ads, hiring a VA, or paying DMCs directly for private tours. That’s why at Antravia we often recommend pairing these tools with proper accounting software like Xero or QuickBooks.

We go into this in detail in our separate blog on host agencies and your finances, which you can read for a full breakdown.

Based on our previous conversation, I've created a section that combines the implementation advice for both QuickBooks and Xero. You can insert this section into your blog post to give readers a glimpse of how to get started, reinforcing your expertise and the value of a full, professional setup.

Here is the new section:

A quick look especially for Travel Agents: Setting up a Workaround in QuickBooks and Xero

As mentioned previously, while generic accounting systems aren’t designed for our industry, you can still set up powerful workarounds to track your finances accurately. These basic methods are a great starting point for any travel agent.

• For QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks requires a specific setup to make sense of your travel business. The key is to use a structured Chart of Accounts combined with its tagging feature.

• Create a "Sales: Travel Commissions" Income account for all commissions you earn.

• Create a "Cost of Sales: Commissions" Expense account to record commissions paid to your host agency or sub-agents.

• Use "Tags" for each trip or booking. This is crucial for tracking profitability. By assigning a unique tag for each trip (e.g., "#HawaiiTrip2025" or "#JonesFamilyAlaska"), you can easily run a report filtered by that tag to see the total income and costs for that specific booking.

• For Xero

Xero’s built-in features, particularly its multi-currency functionality, are a great fit for global travel agents. Its "Tracking Categories" are the most effective way to manage your bookings.

• Create a "Sales: Travel Commissions" Income account for all commissions.

• Create separate Income accounts for other revenue streams, such as "Sales: Planning Fees" or "Sales: Retainers."

• Use "Tracking Categories" to track profit per trip. Create a tracking category called "Trips" or "Bookings." When you record any income or expense, assign it to the relevant booking (e.g., "Paris_Honeymoon"). This allows you to generate a Profit and Loss report filtered by the booking, giving you a crystal-clear view of your net margin.

While these workarounds are effective for basic tracking, setting up a robust, scalable system that handles complex host agency statements and ensures accurate multi-currency reconciliation requires expert knowledge. If you’re ready to move beyond these initial steps, a professional setup will ensure your books are perfect from day one.

Our financial advice to travel agents

Here’s what at Antravia, we tell our clients:

• Set up a system where you can track commission per trip and compare it to total cost.

• Record gross booking value for reference, even if you only earn a percentage.

• Use a tagging system so you can see margin per destination or customer type.

• Always factor in Stripe, PayPal, and FX fees as these erode profit fast.

• Don’t rely solely on a host agency’s reports. You need your own books.

• Reconcile at least once per month. Once a year is not enough.

The Antravia view

Your accounting system isn’t just about taxes, it is the foundation for your business. If you don’t track the accounting side of what you’re earning, what each trip costs you, and where you’re wasting time, you can’t grow.

At Antravia we help travel agents build proper financial systems from the start. Whether you’re hosted, independent, or somewhere in between, we’ll help you track real profit and set up a system that grows with your business.

Need help picking the right tools or fixing a messy setup? Talk to us.

You may also like:

• Host Agencies and Your Finances

• How to Price Your Packages Profitably

• Selling Cruises: What Travel Agents Need to Know