Airline revenue accounting system overview airline revenue accounting system overview

AIRLINE REVENUE ACCOUNTING SYSTEM OVERVIEW
This is an outline of generic passenger revenue accounting processes as used by many airline revenue accounting systems. It is intended only as a guideline to the principal processes, and does not represent any particular system, however it may be useful when considering possible revenue accounting system choices. Equally, out-sourced revenue accountingservice providers are likely to have or need a similar system as the basis of their services. The modular structure of individual revenue accounting systems will vary, as will their coverage of the various processes within them.

The basic purpose of an airline revenue accounting system is to manage the control, reporting, use and accounting of tickets, MCOs, excess baggage tickets and other‘accountable’ documents. In doing so, it should be accurate and flexible, and provide maximum efficiency in processing ticket data, and posting and billing accurate values. It should validate all transactions, and initiate recoveries where under-collections or errors have occurred. It should minimise opportunities for fraud, and identify circumstances in which a fraud may have taken place. It mustdeliver fast, accurate passenger revenue and segment data to management and management information systems.



PRINCIPAL PROCESSES IN AN AIRLINE REVENUE ACCOUNTING SYSTEM




Ticket stock control

This is the process that maintains details of the current status of accountable documents, from the time they leave the printer. It will require stock to be received by the head office or otherdistribution centre, and will allow each distribution centre to re-distribute to General Sales Agents, offices and agencies. A link to the sales reporting process will confirm whether the sales point is correctly reporting the sale, or whether there is an input error, or stock control error. Identification of the stockholder for a flown coupon for which no sale has been reported assists inattributing a temporary value to the coupon for management reporting, and enables the sales point to be chased should a sale not be reported within an acceptable time. A link to the ticket blacklist service will allow logging and reporting of missing or stolen stock.

Sales register and calendar

This process identifies the reporting calendar for every sales point and BSP, whether manual orautomated, in-house or agency. As sales reports are received, the calendar is updated to show it has arrived, and that processing has started. The calendar will highlight missing and overdue returns, and either send out chasers, or report to the user for further follow-up. Account postings may take place to record the value of the sales return.

Sales input

This covers the capture of sales and refundreports, whether as manual returns, or as tape or file loads from BSPs and in-house ticketing systems. Each will be checked for errors and inconsistencies, such as bad data, out-of-sequence tickets and internal/batch total errors. Anything that will fail the next process input will be corrected here.

The system may well incorporate, or link to, an image database, allowing ticket records to beprocessed, stored and retrieved at will. This aids any validation, enhancement and correction activities in any process, which might otherwise require access to the paper ticket or to a printed facsimile.

Refunds and exchanges will be recorded, and the uplifted coupon data passed to the Uplifts process to be accounted for and cleared from the database.

Additionally TCN data for the airline’ssales may be received and processed to assist with valuation of flown coupons for which no sale has been reported. Data for other airline sales containing one of your own segments may also be stored, to allow for automated generation of billing values to that airline, or for use as part of the IATA First and Final Billing process.

Commission and discount control

This will check any...