# Transfer booking software built on routes, not on a price list

> A transfer is a route between two points. The two ends are the product — and what kind of place each end is decides what the agent has to tell you at booking.

*Source: https://itravel.cloud/transfer-booking-software*

## The kind of each end is the rule

There are three, and resisting a fourth is what keeps the whole thing simple:

- **Airport** — a fixed meeting point, and the agent must give a flight number.
- **Named place** — a hotel, a pier, a station: a fixed meeting point, no flight.
- **City or area** — no fixed point, so the agent types the address at booking.
- **No zone tables.** Endpoints an operator has already typed come back as suggestions; nothing has to be pre-created before the first sale.

## Two ways to sell the same route

A private vehicle is priced per trip: a capacity, a luggage limit, and add-ons for an extra passenger, an extra bag or an extra stop. The price is the same whether one person travels or four.

A shared departure is priced per seat, at a time, with a seat count that runs down as it sells and its own age bands. Most operators sell both on the same route, so both are first-class rather than one being a variant of the other.

## The rules that actually decide a price

A night window with a percentage surcharge, closed date ranges, a booking cut-off judged in the pickup city’s own time, and a return leg that is its own route — cloned as a draft with the same vehicles rather than inferred, because the way back is rarely the mirror of the way there.

## After the booking

The meeting instructions are snapshotted into the booking, so a voucher reprinted later still says what the agent was told. A driver can be assigned to a booking, and the agent sees it. Contracted cost sits beside the sell price on the same screen, and a tester quotes a real trip through the real engine before anything is published.

## Questions

### Do I have to set up zones before I can sell?

No. A route carries its own two endpoints; there is no lookup table to fill in first. Endpoints you have already typed are offered back as suggestions.

### Can the same route be private and shared?

Yes. Private vehicles are priced per trip and shared departures per seat, on the same route, and the agent chooses at booking.

### How are night transfers priced?

A night window with a percentage surcharge on the route. It applies by pickup time in the pickup city’s local time, not yours.

### What does the agent have to provide?

Whatever the endpoints require: a flight number when an end is an airport, an address when an end is a city or area. The form asks for exactly that and nothing more.