Trave — Travel Booking Ops + Ledger System
Trave is an admin-first operations platform to manage end-to-end travel bookings for air/rail/bus tickets and hotels, along with customers, vendors, payments, receivables/payables, refunds, and audit-ready history. The product is built around a non-negotiable constraint that most systems fail at: zero hard-mandatory booking fields. Operators can capture the minimum on Day 1, and refine later — without breaking the workflow. The second pillar is financial correctness: a structured ledger that supports real travel-agency reality (advances, partial refunds, vendor credits, over/under payments) with clear invariants — not “random payment notes in a booking record.”
System Architecture Designed for Real Operators
This MVP is designed for speed under pressure. Operators don’t have time for perfect data entry; they need a system that lets them act now and correct later. Key decision: Bookings can be saved as Draft with no mandatory fields, while still supporting: • Customer selection or inline minimal customer creation (name-only) • AI extraction from uploaded tickets/vouchers with manual override • Duplicate warnings without blocking work • Status-based workflow across tickets and hotels • Audit logging on every edit This isn’t “nice UX.” It’s operational survival.
Zero mandatory booking fields (without chaos)
Most products force structured forms too early and operators invent junk data to bypass validation. Trave avoids that trap: • Save drafts with minimal input • Allow edits later, fully audit-logged • Support “Repeat booking” and “Return booking” shortcuts • Keep the workflow moving even when docs are missing
AI extract → human confirm (not AI autopilot)
Uploads (PDF/JPG/PNG) run through extraction, but the UI is designed to force human review: • extracted fields shown in a unified form • confidence-aware highlighting • manual overrides always allowed • duplicate detection using file hash + key business identifiers (PNR/ticket no/date/customer)
Booking Engine That Supports Tickets, Hotels, and Packages
Trave supports two major booking families — tickets and hotels — plus combined journeys/packages (flight + hotel in one order). Core capabilities: • Ticket workflows: Draft → Confirmed/Ticketed → Completed/Travelled → Cancelled → Refunded → Closed • Hotel workflows: Draft → Booked → Checked-in → Checked-out → Cancelled → Refunded → Closed • Multi-leg support (optional): outbound/return under one booking • Inline customer creation + customer booking history • Remarks everywhere (booking, customer, vendor, transactions) This is the stuff that turns a booking tool into an operating system.
Repeatable workflows, not one-off bookings
The system includes operator-grade shortcuts: • Repeat Booking (copy a previous booking into a new draft) • Return Booking (tickets only: swap From/To to create the return journey) • Hotel “nights” derived automatically from check-in/check-out when available • Draft-first capture ensures operators don’t get blocked
Ledger-Driven Finance With Real Invariants
This is where the product stops being “a bookings app” and becomes serious. Trave’s ledger design supports: • To Receive (customer owes you) • To Pay (you owe vendor) • Expense (actual cost basis) • Payments In/Out • Refunds Inbound/Outbound (direction is mandatory) • Advances on both sides (customer/vendor) • Optional vendor credits (credit-shell) Key invariants enforced: • Receivable = ToReceive + PaymentIn – OutboundRefund – WriteOffs • Payable = ToPay + PaymentOut – InboundRefund – VendorCredits • Selling price is independent of expense; Margin = Selling – Expense • Over/under-payments become advances until settled This is what prevents finance from becoming a spreadsheet nightmare.
