Standard booking terms filled in for each traveller
How a travel agency can save its booking terms once, fill in each booking's details with merge fields, and send them for e-signature.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Travel businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Every agency has booking terms. They cover deposits, final payment dates, changes, cancellations, what happens when an airline moves a flight and what the agency is and is not responsible for. And in many agencies, those terms live in a PDF attached to a confirmation e-mail that the client may or may not have opened.
When a dispute comes, "the terms were attached" is a weak position. "The client signed these terms, for this booking, on this date" is a strong one. The difference is not more paperwork; it is sending the same terms in a way that comes back signed.
Achekam's e-signing lets you keep one set of booking terms, fill in each booking's details, and get them signed without rebuilding the document every time. Here is how to set it up.
Save the terms once
Start with the wording. Take your current booking terms to whoever advises you on contracts and agree a clean version. That review is the most valuable step in the whole exercise; software only sends what you give it.
In Achekam, a document can be sent for signature in three ways: as an uploaded PDF, as a document composed from text blocks with merge fields, or as a saved template. For booking terms, compose the document from text blocks, and keep the settled version as a saved template so that every booking starts from it. Composed documents carry the logo, brand colour and company details you set under Settings, so the terms arrive on your letterhead without anyone formatting them.
Give the template a plain name such as "Booking terms – packages" and, if you sell different kinds of travel under different terms, keep one template per kind rather than one long document with clauses that do not apply.
Merge fields for the parts that change
Most of a booking terms document is the same for every client. A few parts are not: who is travelling, the trip, the dates, the deposit and when the balance is due. When you compose the template, use merge fields for the details that change, such as the client's name, so they are filled in for each booking instead of being typed into a copy of last week's document.
Check which merge fields are on offer as you compose. Any detail without a field of its own, such as a particular balance date, is completed by hand before the envelope goes, so mark those places clearly in the template.
Either way, the classic error becomes far less likely: the wrong client's name, or last month's dates, on a document someone is about to sign. Read the filled-in document before it goes all the same. A merge field can only fill in what has been recorded, and a mistyped detail is easier to fix before signature than after.
Link the traveller first
An envelope with a signer from outside the business must be linked to a client or a CRM lead before it is sent. For a returning traveller, that is their client record. For someone who enquired last week and is booking for the first time, it may be their lead.
The link is what ties the signed terms to the right person, rather than leaving them in one consultant's sent items where nobody else can find them.
Group bookings: who signs and who gets a copy
A family holiday or a team trip has one person paying and several people travelling. Decide who needs to sign before you send.
Staff can add signers, approvers and copied recipients, in order. Signers can sign one after the other or all at once, and each envelope has an expiry and reminders. Each signer signs from an e-mailed link, without needing an Achekam account, and the link lasts 30 days by default.
| Group booking | A sensible set-up |
|---|---|
| Family trip, one parent paying | The paying parent signs; the other adult is copied |
| Friends travelling together, each paying | Each traveller signs, all at once |
| Corporate trip | Your manager approves first, then the client's contact signs, then the travellers are copied |
The approver step is useful for unusual bookings: a large group, special terms, or a discount someone senior must agree to before the client sees it.
Set the expiry with the booking's own deadlines in mind. If a supplier holds the rooms only until a certain date, the envelope should expire before then, with the reminders nudging the client in between. An envelope that expires unsigned is a reason to phone the client, not to resend it and hope.
What comes back
When everyone has signed, Achekam produces the signed PDF with a completion certificate. The certificate lists each signer's e-mail address, the times, their IP address and browser, and the document's fingerprint. The signed PDF and the certificate are filed back into Documents.
That certificate is what you reach for when a client later says they never agreed to the cancellation clause. It shows who signed, when, from which browser, and the fingerprint of the document they signed.
One limit for Nigerian and Kenyan agencies: the completion certificate currently describes the signatures under South Africa's Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, whatever the workspace's country. Ask your adviser whether that matters for your terms. The UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Signatures, a basis for many national e-signature laws, sets reliability criteria for treating electronic signatures as equivalent to handwritten ones and is useful background for that conversation.
A check before every send
- The traveller is linked as a client or lead.
- The filled-in details are right: names, trip, dates, deposit.
- The right people are signers, approvers or copied.
- The expiry suits the booking's deadlines.
Getting a signature first, then taking payment, is a common pattern; order forms with internal approval, then signature shows the same sequence in another industry, and getting a client mandate signed electronically another. Compose your template this week, send it with your next booking, and keep the old PDF attachment for history only.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
