Sample audit report · Travel agency
Package and tailor-made tours, 7 people
This is what a company gets after the audit. The company is invented; the report was written by the AI agent. The agent wrote the report in the company's language; this is its translation, proofread by us.
Amounts in the text are the invented company's own figures and prices, not ours. All samples and how to request an audit
Yuzhny Meridian travel agency: a review of how it works
Data: enquiries created between 18 May and 16 August 2026; review as at 21 August 2026.
1. In short
- Is it the managers? These data can neither confirm nor rule that out: there is no log of calls and messages. What they do show is where sales are really being lost — and it is not the tour shortlists.
- Where sales are lost. A tour the client has paid for cannot be booked until the accountant marks the payment as received, and she is in the office on Mondays and Thursdays. In the meantime the places sell out or the price goes up. 19 enquiries that had already been paid for were lost this way.
- Why there are more enquiries but no more sales. Of the people who come in through Instagram ads, 3.2% buy; from all other sources, 16.2%.
- Will the assistant pay for itself? No. It does not remove a single payment you make, and it does not touch the point where the money is being lost.
- Can you get by with three managers? No.
- The tailor-made tours manager closes fewer deals but brings in the most commission.
- Where to start. Confirm each payment on the day it arrives.
2. How the work runs today
Over the period, 1578 enquiries came in and 169 tours were sold. The system shares package enquiries out among three managers in rotation; all tailor-made enquiries go to one manager.
According to the senior manager, a shortlist of tours takes 15–20 minutes to put together, and six or seven get done a day. Most time goes on looking after tours that have already been sold — documents, additional payments, flight changes: three to four hours a day for each manager.
Clients pay through Kaspi Pay or by bank transfer. A tour can be booked only once the enquiry is marked "Payment confirmed". That is done by the accountant, who works two days a week from 10:00 to 15:00; the online-banking software is installed on the office computer. All 189 first bookings on paid enquiries were made on a Monday or a Thursday. You believed payments were confirmed within the hour — the records say otherwise.
3. Where the firm is losing, and why
The wait between payment and booking. The typical (median) gap between the client paying and the booking being made is 1.9 days, and it can be as long as four. The tour operator itself responds within an hour and a half.
The longer the wait, the more often the operator says no. When the booking is made within a day of payment, the operator fails to confirm 4 bookings out of 59. With a wait of two to three days it is 16 out of 54, and beyond three days, 12 out of 25. In all, 43 of the 189 first bookings were not confirmed. The senior manager says the same: an operator's price "lasts a day or two".
What it led to. On 24 enquiries the tour was rebooked, usually at a higher price, with the client paying the difference. On 19 enquiries the client took their money back. The commission on those 19 bookings comes to 3 586 700 KZT over 13 weeks.
Instagram advertising. It brought in 662 enquiries, of which 21 turned into sales. According to the manager, people there ask "so how much is it?" and vanish. Even so, the advertising pays for itself: at a spend of 280 000 KZT a month, a deal costs about 40 000 KZT and leaves 100 843 KZT of commission after the manager's share.
Nobody records why clients drop out. 894 enquiries are sitting in the "On hold" status: clients who have gone quiet are moved there by hand, to avoid closing the enquiry as lost and having to give a reason.
What did not hold up:
- "Shortlists take half a day" — no: 15–20 minutes.
- "The tailor-made tours manager performs worse" — no. She has 25 deals against 37, 51 and 56 for the others, but her commission is 6 736 100 KZT out of 21 756 200 KZT — more than any of them.
- "Twice as many enquiries, the same sales" — there is nothing to check this against: there are no data from before the advertising.
4. What to change, and in what order
- Confirm payments every day. Give the senior manager read access to the bank statement and the right to mark payments as confirmed. The bank charges 3 000 KZT a month for this. Decide who does it when she is away.
- After four weeks, compare the time from payment to booking and the share of unconfirmed bookings with today's figures.
- If the daily check does not stick — link the bank to the enquiry system: a one-off 90 000 KZT plus 15 000 KZT a month. Not both solutions at once: they remove the same wait.
- Make a reason mandatory whenever an enquiry is moved to "On hold". Free.
- Request the event log from the supplier of the enquiry system.
- In the ads, show a "from" price, and ask about dates and budget in the very first message.
What not to do: do not buy the assistant at 250 000 KZT plus 60 000 KZT a month, and do not buy the automatic reminders at 40 000 KZT plus 10 000 KZT a month, until you can see whether the managers are getting back to clients.
5. How we close this
The wait after payment. We will set up the permission to mark payments as confirmed, a daily task to check the statement, and cover for days when that person is away. If that turns out not to be enough, we will connect the statement to the enquiry system (our "Link between two systems"): a payment that carries an enquiry number is then marked automatically. From you: the decision, an application to the bank for a second user, and a named person responsible. We test it for two weeks, comparing the time from payment to booking with today's 1.9 days.
Why clients drop out. We will make a reason and a follow-up date mandatory for "On hold". Once the event log is available, the Request follow-up agent can be added: it finds enquiries with no next step and prompts both the manager and the client. At present it has nothing to work from. From you: the event log, the reminder texts, and a decision on whether correspondence may be passed to an external model — so far no such consent has been given.
Unanswered enquiries. We will set up a daily list of enquiries that have been at the "New" stage for more than a day: there are 26 of them at present.
These three pieces of set-up make up a single package, "Groundwork" (preparation and set-up). We will name the price of the package, the link and the agent after the review, before any work starts. The agent's language-model costs are billed separately, on actual use.
Nothing to sell: on the advertising, the assistant and the tailor-made tours, your own decisions are all that is needed.
Not for an agent: pricing tailor-made itineraries, refunds and conversations about paying extra, booking with the operator, and payments that carry no enquiry number.
6. What this gives, and what we do not promise
- Money. None of these changes removes a payment you make today. We do not promise savings. The aim of the first step is to stop losing tours that have already been paid for; how many can be saved, the trial will show.
- Hours. The assistant would take up to 110.8 hours of shortlist work a month off the four managers. That is the time of salaried staff, not money.
- People. There is no case for cutting managers: shortlists take about 17% of their time, and the after-sales work, calls, bookings and duty shifts all remain.
7. What is missing, and how to check
- The event log from the enquiry system — to check how quickly clients get a reply and whether anyone follows up after a shortlist is sent.
- Enquiries and sales from before the advertising — to check the "twice as many" claim.
- A breakdown of the advertising spend, and a statement of the firm's outgoings.
- The rota for Saturdays and duty shifts, and the hours in the employment contracts.
- A demonstration of the assistant on your own enquiries, and the contract terms.
Two numbers to compare before and after: the time from payment to booking (1.9 days today) and unconfirmed first bookings (43 out of 189 today). Come back to the decision four weeks after the daily payment check begins.