My meeting with Rob provided insights around newly released features on TurnStay:

• Wallets for up to 4 currencies

• The ability to pay suppliers directly from our TurnStay wallets

• Free access to API so that we can possibly integrate with Sage for automated bookkeeping

I’ll spend some time to familiarise with these features and implement integrations with our system where possible. I’ll also chat to Mari about compliance and accounting considerations.

As our top priority, I'd like to see this project implemented and live sometime in August.

Since we'll need to coordinate with Mari on the tax and bookkeeping implications of the multicurrency payout feature above, this is the logical next step.

In Sage, we can link bank transactions to tours so a summary of tour costs can be generated automatically once a tour is completed. This significantly simplifies our Tour Expenses workflow and lets us easily flag expenses that exceed budget. Financial performance can then be monitored in real time on dashboards, so we're proactively aware if we’re running at a loss, with enough time to act.

However, for any of this to work, we need to adapt the quote calculation process in two ways:

• All anticipated costs need to be VAT-exclusive, with the supplier's VAT logged in a separate column. This means requesting that suppliers clearly indicate their VAT number and amount at the quoting stage already.

• Tours should be priced based on actual tour costs only, i.e. transactions that will actually happen from the bank account. Overhead allowances (salaries, subscriptions, vehicle costs, etc.) will instead be monitored and accounted for in new markups that replicate the amounts from our historical markups but suited to the new pricing structure.

A note on the pricing change: this isn't a change in how much we quote for tours but rather a change in how that amount is calculated. Tours won't become cheaper or more expensive; they'll simply be calculated in a way that supports automation and real-time financial tracking. I’d be more than happy to take all the time it needs to guide you through that mindset shift.

***PS You mentioned the AI-based feature where we provide invoices from our suppliers and the agent extracts and populates that data to our quote calculations sheet. I’d be so keen to experiment with this using Make AI Agents. This project would be a great time to do this while we’re working on the quote calculations template.***

Suggested month: September

My initial plan was a simple build: flights, car rental, and other details entered into our Fillout forms or Airtable, auto-populating the Tour Overview sheet. That could've been tested on Tours Hübner and Janßen by mid-August.

But since flight details are already captured in Wetu, direct API integration makes more sense — not only for flight and car rental details, but I also learnt from Susi that vouchers can be printed via Wetu.

The last thing we want is to rebuild features Wetu (or any of our other tools) already does well. Where they don't do it well, we can use their approach as inspiration and build it our way. For the voucher feature, for instance, we could design our own template and just pull the data structure Wetu already exports.

I'd like to propose you both spend the next month or two exploring other Wetu features that might be useful. I've requested API access from them: if granted, we could build automations linking Wetu data to email, OneDrive, Excel, Airtable, Sage, and more. That’s super exciting!

PS Flight details would ideally be requested when we remind guests of their 2nd payment, 70 days before the tour.

Suggested month: October

Once we've adapted the quote calculation process, implemented multicurrency payouts, and gained deeper insight into Wetu's integrations, we'll be in a good position to submit a special feature request to Wetu: letting guests select different accommodation alternatives and see the price impact in real time.

We'd set a base itinerary cost plus add-on costs per alternative; the "Book Now" button would send us the selected alternatives and total, so we can compile the invoice in Sage and send payment instructions (possibly automated, though multicurrency tours may complicate that).

This feature would have considerable effects on our backend, but the amount of back-and-forth we can save with guests during the quoting phase would certainly make it worth it.

I don't yet know how long Wetu would take to build this or how much coordination it'd need from me, but I'll initiate the discussion and assess.

Suggested month: November

The supplier list has been ready to upload to Airtable for a while, I just haven’t gotten around to that and reactivating the “Link Suppliers” task for each tour. It'll also be nice once the guides are listed in the supplier database, so their info is consolidated and auto-prefilled in the guest info email to suppliers.

Our supplier database more broadly deserves more attention than I've given it, though. WildPlanner was a great source of inspiration here, though I think it's best suited to operators with standardised, repeat tour packages who rely on the same suppliers regularly. Its core value is a centralised rates database that quotes are compiled from directly. Given our custom, non-repeating tour model and wide supplier base, maintaining a rates database accurate enough to quote from directly would take more upkeep than it's worth.

However, Wetu (and soon TurnStay) already has an excellent, current supplier database. Via API, we could pull whatever details are useful into Airtable. We could also steal inspiration from WildPlanner to import rates by dropping in the invoice PDFs. This wouldn’t be to quote from directly, but to build a history of STO rates and a quick-reference directory for comparing ballpark rates when choosing suppliers for a tour.

If this interests you, it's worth spending time to figure out the data structure that would serve us best. Rates databases get complicated fast once you factor in room types, sleeping configurations, catering, activities, and so on.

Suggested month: December