Booking software made for tour operators in Nepal

What a Nepali tour operator needs

Most tour and trekking companies in Nepal serve two kinds of customer at once. Domestic travellers want to pay in rupees with a wallet or mobile banking. International trekkers want to see a price in dollars or euros and pay by card. Behind both sits the paperwork: tax invoices in the IRD format if you are registered, permits that depend on each trekker's nationality, and crew rules for every trek.

Doing this across a website plugin, a wallet dashboard, a billing program and spreadsheets means the same booking is entered several times. Tourtify keeps it together: one booking that takes the right payment, issues the right invoice and feeds the permit checklist and crew plan.

Rupee payments: Khalti, eSewa and Fonepay

Each gateway is a plugin that pays into your own merchant account, and Tourtify takes no commission. All three charge in Nepali rupees only, so they appear at checkout for tours with an NPR price. Khalti takes the Khalti wallet, mobile banking and cards, and every payment is confirmed with Khalti's lookup API, then checked again every few minutes for 26 hours if the traveller doesn't come back. eSewa uses a signed payment form valid for 30 minutes and confirms with eSewa's transaction status API. You can test against eSewa's UAT environment first, and live mode refuses the test merchant code.

Fonepay connects mobile banking apps and cards, and confirms the payment with its verification API when the traveller returns to your site. If a traveller pays and closes the tab, the booking stays pending, so check that payment in your Fonepay portal and record it. Refunds for all three are made in the provider's own portal, then recorded on the booking so balances and reports stay correct. Stripe or PayPal sit beside them for international cards, and the point-of-sale till takes wallets at the desk too.

Pricing in rupees and dollars

Choose NPR or USD as your main currency. To sell in both, the Currency switcher (Growth) lets you give each tour a real price in the other currency, rather than converting at checkout. A trek could carry NPR 45,000 for domestic travellers and USD 450 for international ones, two prices you set yourself. Checkout always charges the currency the tour is priced in.

For tours you haven't priced in a currency, visitors can see an approximate price, using daily reference rates or your own. Nothing is charged at those rates. Because a gateway only appears for currencies it supports, a USD booking is offered your card provider and an NPR booking is offered Khalti, eSewa or Fonepay.

IRD tax invoices and CBMS

Invoices & tax receipts is on every plan. For businesses registered in Nepal, set up Nepal tax on the Invoices page: enter your PAN or VAT number and the CBMS username and password the IRD issues to you, then check the login. From the next invoice on, numbers run per Bikram Sambat fiscal year from 1 Shrawan with no gaps, and each invoice shows BS and AD dates, the seller's and buyer's PAN and the amount in words. The first print is the original; later prints, downloads and emailed copies are marked “Copy of original”.

Foreign-currency invoices carry the NPR amount at the Nepal Rastra Bank buying rate of the invoice date. Worked example: if that rate were 136.50, a USD 1,200 trek invoice would show NPR 163,800. Changes and cancellations are handled with a credit note and a reason, never by editing an invoice. Documents sync to CBMS in real time through a queue that never holds up checkout, with retries and an email to owners if syncing keeps failing.

The Sales book (Bikri Khata), the monthly VAT summary and the register of every bill export as CSV, Excel or PDF. Till sales of tours carry the IRD invoice number on the receipt. Tourtify is built to the published IRD format; software approval and CBMS credentials are applied for with the IRD, so ask us for the current status before relying on it for filing.

Permits, crew and the trail

Trekking & expeditions (Growth) can install 14 common Nepal permits in one click, including Sagarmatha National Park, the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu municipality permit, TIMS, ACAP, MCAP and restricted-area permits such as Upper Mustang, Manaslu and Upper Dolpo. Fees follow nationality groups: Nepali nationals, other SAARC citizens and foreigners. Fees change often, so each permit shows when it was last checked and stays editable.

Crew rules are checked per departure: by default seven trekkers per licensed guide, two per porter and porter loads up to 25 kg, with licences and insurance valid through the trek. Guides carry the manifest, day plan and emergency plan in the field app offline, and send check-ins from a phone link. Booking confirmations and reminders can go by text through Sparrow SMS with the SMS plugin (Growth), and by WhatsApp.

Your team, and moving across

Each person on your team can use the console in Nepali or another of its 15 languages, without changing your website's language. Guides get their own login or a schedule link, and see only their departures and those bookings, with no customer list and no money.

To move across, import your treks from their page links or from a WordPress export, which also brings WP Travel Engine trips, pages and images with redirects. Customers and bookings come from a CSV with a dry run first, and imports send no emails. If you are VAT-registered, set up Nepal tax before your first live booking, so every invoice is numbered in the right fiscal year from the start.

Getting started

1. 1Choose your main currency. Pick NPR or USD, and turn on the Currency switcher to price tours in the other.
2. 2Test each wallet. Connect Khalti, eSewa or Fonepay in test mode and make a sandbox booking before going live.
3. 3Set up Nepal tax. Enter your PAN or VAT number and CBMS login on the Invoices page, then check the login.
4. 4Install the permits. Add Nepal's common permits, check each fee and attach them to your treks.
5. 5Add crew and turn on SMS. Enter guides and porters with licences and wages, and connect Sparrow SMS for text messages.