IATA BSP Reconciliation for Travel Agencies: A Plain Guide

What BSP reconciliation is

An IATA-accredited agency is billed for its tickets through the Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP). Each period, the BSP statement lists sales, refunds, commissions, taxes and memos, and the agency remits the net amount.

Reconciliation means checking that statement against the tickets the agency itself recorded before paying it.

Where differences come from

A ticket voided in the GDS but still billed. A refund the agency recorded but BSP has not processed yet. A reissue whose difference was not captured. An agency debit memo (ADM) that nobody expected.

Each of these is small; together they decide whether the period made money.

Making it routine

Record every ticket, void, refund and reissue at the moment it happens, linked to the original ticket. Then the BSP file can be matched line by line and only the real differences remain.

Post the BSP payable in the books when tickets are issued, not when the statement arrives, so the balance sheet always shows what is owed to BSP.

In Agency Automation BD

Tickets captured from the GDS carry their BSP cost, voids and refunds stay linked to the original, and the BSP reconciliation report matches a BSP billing file against the agency's own tickets. The BSP payable sits in the general ledger, so remittance and the books agree.