Agents

Agents


Rental Car Manager (RCM) provides extensive functionality for those operators who take bookings from Agents.  

An Agent is considered to be a third party who takes a booking on behalf of a rental car operator and in doing so takes either a partial or a full payment from the customer. Note that this is different from a Referral who merely refers a booking to you and then expects a referral commission after the rental has been completed.

Following is a high-level overview of the Agent Function within RCM -  Agent Bookings Overview

Agent Direct Vs Agent API Bookings

RCM offers two avenues for Agents to enter bookings directly into RCM. One is using the Agent Direct function, the other is for the Agent to interact with RCM using the Agent API.

The Agent Direct function has been designed for Agents who need the capability to log into RCM and create an allocated booking.  An example of this is a Hotel who may have access to part of your fleet and rent them out to guests.

The Agent Direct function does not suit Portal Agents; they will need to use the Agent API. The Agent API allows Agents to query the availability and costs associated with vehicles and allow them to create unallocated bookings.

If you do not wish to use either of these two functions, then the alternative is for the Agent to contact the Rental Car Company directly and for one of the operators to enter the booking into RCM. Following is a link to the Knowledge Base article which explains how the operator can manually enter an Agent Booking,  Creating Agent Bookings

There is also the following Knowledge Base article, Q: What do I do when an agent calls up and wants to make a booking?

Agent Direct

The Agent Direct function allows the Rental Car Company to create a user within RCM for the Agent. 
The Agents can then log directly into a scaled down version of your RCM system to make bookings.  The agent will have restricted access to:
  1. Make a Booking / Check Vehicle Availability using the Quick Reservation Screen
  2. View Vehicle Categories available to be booked by Agents
  3. See a list of their Bookings
Following is a link to the Knowledge Base Article that gives more information on the Agent Direct Function - Agent Direct 

Agent API

Using the Agent API allows the Agent to make a booking request which ends up as an unallocated booking within RCM. The Agent API is recommended for Portal Agents.

This method allows for direct server-side calls to the Agent API to perform the following actions:
  1. Check availability of vehicles for a location and booking date range.
  2. The listing of available vehicles also includes information about the rental rates, any mandatory fees, insurance options, and any other optional extra fees.
  3. Make a booking request for a vehicle category passing all of the relevant extra fees and insurance for the booking.
  4. The Agent will be responsible for writing the code that interacts with the Agent API.
Following is a link to a Knowledge Base article which gives more details on the Agent API - Agent API

Agent Setup within RCM

The setup within RCM for Agents can be broken into two main areas.
  1. Maintaining the agent details, rates, and any discounts.
  2. The setup for online Agent bookings.

When you setup an Agent within RCM, there are several areas that you may need to take into account. 
  1. Agencies and Agency Branches,
  2. Agency Discounts,
  3. Agency Rate Types,
  4. Agency Rates, and
  5. Agency Regions.

Following is a link to a Knowledge Base articles which gives more details on setting up for Agents -  Setting up your Agency Database.

When you create an extra fee within RCM, you can decide whether or not the Agent’s commission will include this fee or not. The following article explains this in more detail - Agency Commission Setting.

It is possible to create a template that will be used when sending confirmations to Agents. Following is a link to the Knowledge Base article which describes this in more detail - Agent Confirmation Template.

Wholesale Agents
When you create an Agent, you can state whether or not they are a Wholesale Agent. If they are a Wholesale Agent, then any documents sent to the customers for bookings for this agent will not have any rate information printed on them.

There are also two other settings for the Agent which impact what information is printed on documents. You can choose whether you would like both extra fees and insurance information printed on documents.



Amount Collected by Agents

RCM is capable of determining the amount of money that the Agent has collected at the time of entering a booking into RCM. This is recorded against the booking.

When you create an Agent, you can also create Branches for this Agent.

You set how the commission is collected and the amount of commission at the Agent Branch level.

The following settings at the Agency Branch level determine the amount of commission that is collected for each Agency booking.

  1. Agent Collects – There are five options available here, Commission Items, Commission Only, Full Payment, Zero Payment, and Rates Only. Commission Items means that the amount collected will be the rental rate plus the value of any extra fees that have the flag Apply Agency Commission set to Yes. Commission Only is the amount that is set up by the two fields Commission Type and Commission Value discussed below. Full Payment means that the Agent collects the full amount of the booking. Zero Payment means that the Agent does not collect anything. Rates Only means the agent will only collect the rate amount, not any extra fees.
  2. Commission Type – You can either set this to be Percentage or Dollars.
  3. Commission Value – This value combined with the Commission Type determines the amount the Agent Collects. For example, if the Commission value is 20 and the Commission Type is percent, then the Agent will collect 20% of the booking value.



At any point in time if you wish to check the status of Agent Booking with regards to how much money has been collected by the Agent and whether they owe you money or you owe them money, you can run the Agency Commission Report. You are able invoices and receipts to Agents from this report.

Following is the Knowledge Base article which explains this report in more detail  -  Agencies Commission Report.

Online Agent Bookings Setup

When you create an Agent within your system you can decide whether they are going to be able to have access into your RCM system using the Agent API. You can also choose to update existing Agents to give them this access. Following is a Knowledge Base article which details the process required to enable an Agent to have access via the Agent API,   Configuring the Agent Web Service for use with Rental Car Manager 

There are several areas within RCM that will need to be configured to decide what is available to the Agent via the Agent API. This is a similar process that you go through to setup your Web Booking module.

The following settings are all available either under the Agent Bookings Setup or the Web Site Interface menus.  Further information on all these areas can be found in the Working with Agents> Agent Setup  Knowledge base articles. 
  1. Agent Locations
  2. Agent Categories
  3. Agent Category Availability
  4. Agent Extra Fees 
  5. Agent Insurance 

System Parameters for Agent API

Following is a list of system settings that can be changed to affect the way the Agent API works. If you would like to know what your current settings are for any of these parameters or if you want to change them, contact RCM Support support@rentalcarmanager.com.

  1. Apply Web Rate Discount to Agent API
  2. Save After Hours bookings as On Request for Agent API
  3. Use Pickup Date rate for Agent API
  4. Apply Free Day Special to Agent API
  5. Agent API email notification cc back

Common Questions about Agents/Agent Bookings

Below are some commonly asked questions about Agent Bookings and the relevant Knowledge Base article that answers them.


There is also the following Knowledge Base article which lists commonly asked questions about online bookings in general-  Configuring the RCM Web Booking Module.


Agent Reports

Quite a large number of the reports available within RCM can be run to be Agent specific.

Below are some of the reports within RCM which are specific to Agents.


 

    Important Articles


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