Affiliate marketing via TradeTracker

Booking Boosters use TradeTracker to connect Booking Experts clients (advertisers) with affiliates for the purpose of affiliate marketing. Affiliates actively promote advertisers' products and services online, by creating content about your product or service on their website, blog, or social media. This is on a no cure no pay basis; meaning that affiliate marketing does not cost you anything if it does not also create actual revenue for you.

Approving sales transactions in TradeTracker

In the TradeTracker portal, all transactions (bookings) made in your benefit through an affiliate need to be approved. Doing this in a timely and fair manner ensures that the affiliate receives their commission, and is incentivized to keep creating content about your business. It is also possible to edit the amount of the transaction if the guest has updated their booking in the meantime.

If you do not review transactions within 30 days, they will automatically be approved.

How to review sales transactions in TradeTracker

  1. Login at the TradeTracker portal, with the username and password you set up.

  2. On the right, click 'Review sales transactions' under 'To-do list'.

  3. Any new transactions will be listed here, under 'Under review'.

  4. The 'Attribute' of these transactions is a booking number; use this reference to look up the reservation in BEX PMS.

    Review the transaction amount and edit it if necessary, taking into account how the commission basis is calculated.

  5. If the reservation is confirmed, approve the transaction in TradeTracker. If not, select the red tick in TradeTracker and enter the reason for cancellation.

How is the commission basis calculated?

The commission paid out to the affiliate is a percentage of the commission basis. This commission basis is the basic rent, after deduction of any discounts used, and exclusive of VAT. For this reason and the additional reasons below, the amount presented in TradeTracker is usually less than the total booking amount as shown in BEX PMS.

  • If you have cost items set up that 'count as rent', are 'not included in all-in prices', and have a negative price: this lowers the basic rent amount, and thus also lowers the calculation basis for the affiliate’s commission.

  • If the affiliate promotes to potential guests abroad, the transaction amount may also have been subject to a currency exchange rate before being presented in TradeTracker.

  • For the Netherlands, the amount of VAT deducted from the commission basis is 21%.

  • The booker may have made changes to their reservation after using the affiliate link, which have been processed in BEX PMS but did not affect the transaction amount presented in TradeTracker.

How to change the order amount of the transaction

Editing the transaction amount in TradeTracker is usually done to compensate for the effect of negative price cost items (see above) or for changes the booker made afterwards.

Editing the amount is only possible during review, before approving the transaction.

  1. Go to the transactions under review in TradeTracker (see 'How to review sales transactions' above).

  2. The icon showing a grey square with a pencil is the edit button for the transaction. Click this button.

  3. Change the amount to the correct amount, under the heading 'New order amount'. Then click 'Accept'.

  4. Approve the transaction to complete the process.