Orbis and TourKnife: the agency’s accounting and the group’s management, each in its place
Orbis, by Pipeline Software, is one of the most long-established management and accounting programs for travel agencies in Spain. If you use it and are weighing up TourKnife, you’ll see they aren’t rivals: they complement each other. And since Orbis includes group functions, it’s worth being precise about where each one fits, so you neither lack nor duplicate anything. That’s what we do here.
We’re writing from TourKnife, software for selling and managing group travel. What we say about Orbis is based on what its website describes and on sector knowledge. Orbis is a solid product with many years behind it; the aim of this page is to clarify how you’d work together.
What Orbis does
Orbis is a commercial management and accounting tool for agencies. Its great strength is the administrative and fiscal side: it automatically generates the accounting, issues invoices, calculates VAT, reconciles BSP, links with accounting programs and captures bookings from the main GDSs. It also includes a group-management module with group schemes, quotes and passenger lists. It’s the tool with which the agency keeps its accounts and invoicing in order.
Orbis already manages groups: so where does TourKnife fit?
It’s the right question, and the answer lies in distinguishing two planes of “the group”. Orbis manages the group from the administrative and invoicing plane: the file, the quote, the invoicing of its passengers, the accounting. TourKnife manages the group from the selling and live-operations plane: filling the departure place by place and operating it. They’re not the same, and that’s why they fit together instead of getting in each other’s way.
What TourKnife brings on that operational and sales plane:
Place-by-place selling with all the casuistry —optional extras, insurance, room arrangements including shared rooms, per-traveller payment plans— built to fill the group traveller by traveller.
Allotments per supplier and departure availability, to sell exactly the places you’ve contracted with each coach company, hotel or airline.
Communication and actions over the group or the booking, with personalised messages to each traveller, and the close-out operations: rooming lists and documentation for hotels, the airport and guides.
How they work together
The division is clean: TourKnife sells and operates the group and generates the sales and purchase orders; Orbis receives that data and handles invoicing, VAT, accounting and reconciliation. You work the selling and operations of the trip in TourKnife, and your administration and taxes stay in Orbis, without duplicating information. Each tool does what it does best.
Frequently asked questions
If Orbis already has group management, why use TourKnife?
Because Orbis’s group management is administrative and invoicing-based (file, quote, invoices, accounting), while TourKnife covers place-by-place selling and the live operations of the group (allotments per supplier, group communication, rooming, documentation). They’re different, complementary planes.
Does TourKnife replace Orbis?
No. Orbis still handles your accounting, invoicing and taxes; TourKnife sells and operates your groups and sends it the sales and purchase orders so Orbis can do its part.
Who issues the invoices and settles the taxes?
Orbis. When TourKnife works with an external invoicing software, TourKnife passes it the sales and purchase orders and it’s that software —Orbis— that invoices, applies VAT and keeps the accounting.
Can I keep Orbis and add TourKnife?
Yes, that’s exactly the approach: you keep Orbis for administration and accounting and add TourKnife to sell and operate your group travel, connected by the sales and purchase orders.
If you’d like us to look at how it would fit in your agency, get in touch with us with no commitment for an informal conversation. We can run a demo based on one of your real tours and explain the connection with your accounting software. You’ll find the detail on the features page, or go back to the group travel software comparison.