Group trips: invoice the organiser or each traveller?
Whether an agency should invoice a group trip's organiser or each traveller, how each choice changes collection, and what to do when travellers drop out.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Travel businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A church organises a pilgrimage. A school takes its senior class on a tour. A running club travels to a marathon abroad. A family books a reunion at a lodge for three generations. Each is one trip with one organiser and many travellers, and each raises the same question the moment you are ready to invoice: who do we bill?
The answer decides who carries the risk when someone does not pay, how much administration you take on, and how messy it gets when a traveller drops out. There is no single right answer, but there is a right answer for each group, and it should be settled before the first deposit is taken. This article compares the two approaches and how each runs in Achekam.
One invoice to the organiser
Here the organiser, the school, the church, the club, or the person who booked the reunion, is your customer. You issue one invoice to them, with one line per traveller or one line per element of the trip, and they collect from the travellers themselves.
What it suits: organisations with their own finance function, such as schools, companies and established clubs, that are used to paying suppliers and collecting from members.
What it means for you: one debtor, one invoice, one set of reminders. If a traveller fails to pay the organiser, that is the organiser's problem, and the full invoice is still owed to you. Your contract with the organiser should say exactly that.
Create the invoice as a draft, check it, and issue it; issuing takes the next number in your sequence and posts debtors, sales and output VAT. Even when billing the organiser, a line per traveller is worth the extra typing: it makes the later steps much easier.
One invoice per traveller, each with its own pay link
Here each traveller, or each household, is your customer. You issue an invoice to each, and each pays you directly.
What it suits: informal groups, such as a reunion or a group of friends, where the "organiser" is just the person who rang you and has no intention of chasing anyone for money.
What it means for you: many small debtors, and the collection work is yours. In return, you can see exactly who has paid.
A payment link can be created for each issued invoice and e-mailed with it, and the traveller pays on a public page showing your name and branding. A link lasts 14 days by default, and an open link for the same amount is reused. For a group with a deposit and a balance, send the deposit invoice and link first, then the balance invoice and a new link nearer the date.
Part payments and who still owes
Travellers pay in stages, and sometimes one person pays for several. A business records payments against one invoice or spread across a customer's invoices; a part payment leaves the invoice part-paid, and any extra is held on the customer's account.
For per-traveller invoices, the age analysis becomes your group payment tracker. Receivables are aged into 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120 and over 120 days, with overdue totals. Before each payment deadline, check every traveller's balance and contact anyone behind. Credit control, on for new workspaces, also e-mails overdue reminders and a monthly statement to customers with a balance, which does a lot of the routine chasing for you.
When one traveller pays for their partner too, record it as two receipts, one against each traveller's invoice, so each shows as paid; do not leave the extra sitting on one traveller's account while the other invoice stays open.
Statements for the organiser
Even when you invoice each traveller, the organiser usually wants to know who has paid. Send the organiser a summary from the age analysis, never the travellers' own invoices.
When you invoice the organiser, statements are part of normal collection. The server produces a statement of account as a PDF that can be e-mailed, and the screen says whether it was sent. A statement each month, and one before each payment deadline, keeps a school bursar or club treasurer up to date.
For the hospitality side of the same problem, see group booking deposits.
Travellers who drop out
People withdraw from group trips: illness, money, a change of heart. What you can charge depends on your booking terms, and for South African consumers on the Consumer Protection Act. Acts Online sets out section 17 of the CPA, which covers when a supplier may take a reasonable deposit for a booking and what cancellation charge it may keep if the customer cancels. Nigerian and Kenyan agencies should check their own consumer protection rules.
How you adjust the books depends on how you invoiced:
- Organiser invoice, traveller line. Issue a credit note from the organiser's invoice for that traveller's line, and invoice any cancellation charge separately. A credit note is issued from the invoice it corrects, in full or for chosen lines.
- Per-traveller invoice, unpaid. An administrator can void an issued invoice that has no payments or credits, which reverses its journal; then invoice any cancellation charge.
- Per-traveller invoice, paid. Credit the invoice, keep any charge your terms allow, and refund or hold the rest for the traveller.
Group terms signed by every traveller, or by the organiser on their behalf, are covered in standard booking terms filled in for each traveller. If the group is a company's staff, the patterns in billing corporate travel clients may fit better.
Deciding for the next group
Ask the organiser one question at the first meeting: "Will you collect from the travellers and pay us, or should we bill each of them?" Write the answer into the group agreement, with what happens when someone drops out. Then set up the invoices to match, before the first deposit is due.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
