Start from the size of your agency
Software for tour operators with fifty staff is built around teams: lead assignment, approvals, supplier contracts, inventory. A small agency pays for all of it and uses little. If one or two people do everything from the first message to the last payment, choose software built around that day, not around a team you do not have.
Ten questions to ask in a demo
| Question | What to check |
|---|---|
| Reply speed | How long from a WhatsApp enquiry to a priced, branded quote on the customer's phone? Time it in the demo with a real trip of yours. |
| Your own rates | Can you keep your hotel, car and activity rates, with seasonal prices, and reuse them without retyping? |
| Markup your way | Can you mark up each line differently, in rupees or a percentage, and see your margin before you send? |
| What the customer sees | Does the PDF look like your agency, in your logo and colour, and never show your cost? |
| Phone and laptop | Does every screen work on a phone, or only the dashboard? |
| Payments | Can you set your own payment schedule, record payments as they come and give numbered receipts? |
| GST and TCS | Does it make a GST tax invoice with CGST and SGST or IGST, and TCS on overseas packages, with rates you type? |
| Your accountant | Can you export invoices and receipts for a date range in one file? |
| Price and limits | A monthly price in rupees, and what is capped: documents, photos, items. |
| Setup | Can you send a first quote on day one, or does it need weeks of configuration? |
Test it with your own trip
A demo on the vendor's sample data always looks fast. Bring a trip you sold last month, with its real hotels and rates, and build the quote yourself, on your phone, during the demo. Note how long it takes and how many things you had to type twice. That number is the one that decides whether you reply before the other agencies do.
Watch where the money shows
Two tests catch most problems. First, download the customer's PDF and look for your cost or margin anywhere on it; it should not be there. Second, look for numbers the software fills in for you: a default markup, a suggested price, a fixed advance percentage. Every number on a quote should be one you typed.
What Triplli does not do
Triplli is built for a small Indian agency that quotes on WhatsApp. So that you can judge the fit honestly, here is what it does not do:
| Book flights or hotels | There is no booking engine and no GDS. You book with your suppliers as you do now. |
| Message your customers | It never sends a WhatsApp or an SMS. It opens the chat; you write and send. |
| Track supplier payouts | It records what customers pay you, not what you pay suppliers. |
| Replace your accounts | It makes invoices and receipts and exports them for your accountant. The books stay with your CA's software. |
| Run a large team | It is built for an agency where one person, or a few, do everything: no per-user permissions or lead assignment. |
What it does: one ticket per enquiry from the first message to the last payment, a day-wise itinerary from your templates and catalogue, an estimate with markup per line, branded PDFs, payment schedules with numbered receipts and a UPI QR, and GST invoices with TCS, on phone and laptop. See Triplli as a travel CRM, fixed departures or the plans.
