Let Dolphin support your accounting processes

Every time a booking is loaded in the BMM, the following information is also recorded:

• the cost you owe to the supplier and the supplier's name
• the price your customer owes you and by when you expect them to pay you
• your estimated margin
• your estimated commission earned on referral bookings
• any applicable VAT

If all this data is timely and correctly loaded in the BMM, you can run the 3 core processes listed below (referred to as the Enhanced Dolphin Accounting Methodology or EDAM) to capture the travel related accounting figures for your business:

• Customer payment reconciliation
• Vendor payment reconciliation
• Accounts posting

Each process is independent from the others and can be run at a frequency appropriate for your business. This will also depend on your accounting periods.

The suggestion is to:

1. Perform the customer payment reconciliation on a daily basis or as often as you bank your takings and run the Receipts and Refunds Report to check that the banking total figures are correct.
2. Perform the vendor payment reconciliation each time you pay a supplier and run the Vendor Payments Made Report to check that the supplier payment amount is correct. Perform accounts posting when you are ready to close an accounting period and run the Accounting Report - Accounting Journals to check the total sales and cost of sales for the accounting period in question.

You can extract the accounting figures generated during each process by running the reports above which can be saved locally and/or emailed. Customisation (creating your own versions) of reports is also very helpful.  For more information on the Dolphin accounting reports, read this article. 

Moreover, Dolphin allows you to keep track of your customers' and suppliers' outstanding payments and spotting issues that might result in incorrect accounting figures by running at regular intervals these reports:

Folder balance Report – Type 1

Customer Statement Report – Type 2

Folder/Invoice difference Report - Type 3

Receipts and Refunds Report – Type 3

Vendor Payment Due Report – Type 4

If you make referral bookings and struggle to collect commissions, run the Vendor Commission Chaser Letter Report. This report generates a list of statements per supplier that owes you referral commission.

Additional modules are also available to aide the accounting process including vendor auto reconciliation, accounts export and vendor commission invoicing.

Some of these processes can also be automated (for more information, see here), reducing the amount of time it takes to generate and extract accounting figures from Dolphin.

Following and adhering to the EDAM offers several benefits: