Assigning Rate Discounts to Agencies
Purpose
There are a number of different types of discounts that you can have apply to your agent bookings. These include
- Agent-specific Default Discounts
- Flexible Agency Discounts
- Web Rate Discounts
- Utilisation Rates
All of these discounts are a reduction on the total daily rate of a booking. The daily rates will generally come from the standard Web Rates, however agencies can also specific Agency Rates which are outlined here.
Each type of discount has different rules about how and when they apply, so this article will describe them each.
Agent-Specific Default Discounts
If you want a static percentage discount to apply to all bookings for a specific Agency or Branch, then you can add a Default Discount directly to the Agency or Agency Branch record. These discounts will apply to all bookings made by the Agency or Branch. These discount records can be accessed when editing any Agency or Agency Branch record.
Select the button against "Default Rate Discount". This will open a window in which you can Select an existing Default Discount or create a New Rate Discount:
These discounts can be added to both the Agencies and Branches, but only one discount can apply to a booking. So, Branch discounts override Agency ones such that the following will happen to any booking made through the Branch.
- If the Agency has a discount and the Branch does not, the Agency discount will be used
- If the Branch has a discount and the Agency does not, the Branch discount will be used
- If both the Agency and the Branch have a discount, the Branch discount will be used.
Note that these Default Discounts can be overridden by the Flexible Agency Discounts outlined in the following section. This enables you to target specific booking periods or categories for special discounts which will apply instead of the static Default Discounts.
Flexible Agency Discounts
The Default Discounts described above apply to all bookings made by that Agency or Branch. However, you may want some more flexibility in your discounts, with the ability to specify them based on location, vehicle category or campaign codes that you give out to your agents, and this is what the Agency Discount allow you to do.
They can be accessed by going to Agent Booking Setup >> Agent Discount.
This will open the following page which lists all Agency Discounts set up in your system. These can by filtered by which would apply for a booking based on its Pickup Location, Dropoff-Location, Category, Agency, or Pickup Year. You can also search them by the Discount Name. Click "Add Rate Discount" to create a new record.
These discounts are very similar to Web Rate Discount, except they can be applied to specific Agent and Branches.
Agency Branches | Select the Branch(es) the discount will apply to. This discount will only apply to bookings made through the selected Branches. You can select All Branches or specific combination of Branched by clicking on the "Show agency branches" button | |
Pickup Location | Select the pickup location(s) the agency discount will apply to. You can select All Locations or specific combination of locations by clicking on the "Show locations" button | |
Dropoff Location | Select the drop-off location(s) the agency discount will apply to. You can select All Locations or specific combination of locations by clicking on the "Show locations" button | |
Vehicle Categories | Select the vehicle category the agency discount will apply to. You can select All Categories or specific combination of categories by clicking on the "Show vehicle categories" button | |
Description | Enter a description for the agency discount. This is the name that will show when you view the booking | |
Discount Type | Select either Percentage or Dollar as the discount type. Dollar discounts are applied per each day of the booking. | |
Discount Amount | Enter the value of the discount. Depending on the discount type selected, the value of the discount is applied either as a percentage or as a dollar value (applied per day of booking) to be discounted from the total rental rate. | |
Apply Rate Discount On Bookings Over Or At | You can apply the agency discount for bookings over or at a certain number of days. Eg, 15+ Days | |
Apply Rate Discount On Bookings Under Or At | You can apply the agency discount for bookings under or at a certain number of days. Eg, 4 Days or under | |
Apply This Discount To A Booking And / Or Travel Date Range | Select Yes or No. If "Yes" is selected, read the 2 fields below in red text and their description for more information | |
Booking Date From and To (Only applies if you selected "Yes" to the "Apply This Discount To A Booking And / Or Travel Date Range" field) | You can enter a date range or just a start or end date. The agency discount will only apply to bookings that are created within this date range, after the start or before the end date.. | |
Pickup Date From and Dropoff Date To (Only applies if you selected "Yes" to the "Apply This Discount To A Booking And / Or Travel Date Range" field) | You can enter a date range or just a start or end date. The agency discount will only apply to bookings that fall within this date range, have a pickup after the start or drop-off before the end date. | |
Campaign Code | If applicable, select a campaign code from the drop down box. This agency discount will only apply to bookings that have this campaign code entered against them. This code can then be tracked for reporting purposes to monitor your sales campaigns. |
When using these, there are a number of rules to note:
- For a new Agency Booking request through the API, first it will check these discount records to see if any apply. If none apply, it will look for a Default Discount assigned to the Agency or Agency Branch record (see "Default Discount" above), and apply that discount if found. Note that these discounts will apply instead of, not as well as, the Default Discount. Make sure that this discount includes the default amount. E.g. if Agency A has a Default Discount of 10% but you would like to give them a further discount of 5% for a specific date range, make sure the date-range specific discount is 15%, not 5%.
- If you assign a discount to a particular Branch, then that will take precedence over any other discount that may apply to "All" Branches. For e.g. if you had a generic 10% discount for Branch A, this would be applied and any other discount that may apply to "All" branches would not be considered.
- If one of these discounts has a campaign code associated, this discount will only apply if the agent passes through this campaign code, and it will be given priority over non-campaign code agency discounts.
- If there is more than one discount found to match, it will apply based on the most-specific - this is based on pickup and drop off locations, categories and then date ranges.
Web Rate Discounts
If you do not want any agent specific discounts, you can choose to apply Web Rate Discount to their bookings instead. To allow this you need to located the following system parameter under System Setup >> System Parameters >> Online Booking Parameters and set it to Yes.
When this is done, Web rate discounts will apply to bookings made through the Agent API only if there are no Default Discounts or Agency Discounts that can apply. Please note that these Web Rate Discounts are not Agent specific and will apply to all bookings.
For more information on these, please see the Rate Discount article.
Important Articles
- Whats New in RCM
- Getting Started with RCM
- Standard RCM Procedures
- Card Vault Deprecation 2025 – Frequently Asked Questions
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