How an inbound agency works today
A UK tour operator sends you the October programme in an Excel file. Another emails you three separate groups. A third changes the PAX for a service on WhatsApp the night before. You copy each line into your spreadsheet, look for a guide who speaks the right language, message them and wait for a reply.
That system holds as long as you are the one keeping it all in your head. The day you go on holiday, someone new joins the office or the season takes off, the gaps appear: a service with no guide discovered at eight in the morning, a time change that never reached anyone, an invoice that does not match what was actually done.
Five inbound agency problems, solved
- Every tour operator uses a different channel. Every request is logged with reference, tour operator, date, PAX, language, country of origin, tour leader, meeting point and tickets. If the programme arrives in Excel, you load it in one go with bulk requests or the import.
- Guide availability changes every day. When you assign, Partners suggests guides from your team by language, availability and history, and tells you who already has a service that day. You assign one or more guides, and each one accepts or declines separately.
- Last-minute changes do not reach everyone. If you change the time, the PAX or the meeting point, the request moves to Modified and the guides involved get an email. The change stays in the service history.
- Reconciling invoices for dozens of services. Every completed service is marked as ready to invoice. The guide picks their services and uploads their invoice with VAT shown separately, then you mark it as paid.
- Freelance guides with different habits. Each guide gets free access to their own area from their phone or computer, with nothing to install. From there they accept services, check their schedule, talk to you inside each request and invoice.
The statuses an inbound agency needs, not a CRM's
A service with two guides is not confirmed until both have confirmed. That is why Partners has the Partially accepted status, which tells you one has said yes and the other has not replied yet. A generic CRM does not have it, and in Excel you end up marking it with a colour only you understand.
The full sequence is Draft, Pending, Partially accepted, Accepted, Completed and Invoiced, plus Modified, Declined and Cancelled for the unexpected. You see it in the list, in the guide schedule and on each guide's profile, and you can filter what is unassigned this week before it becomes a problem. In the app, these statuses are shown in Spanish.
Everything about the service, in one record
As well as the group details, each request stores the main rate and any extra rates, audio guides, interpreter and transport if there are any, the end time and place, and the ticket type and time. Questions are settled in the request's own chat, not in a WhatsApp group with forty conversations mixed together.
Data that repeats is set up once in the master lists: tour operators, languages, rates, tour types, ticket types, tour leaders and meeting points. After that, creating a new request takes seconds.
- Users with role-based permissions so each person in the office sees what is relevant to them.
- Global search by reference, tour operator or guide, plus an archive of everything closed.
- Analytics per guide: services, PAX, languages and the groups' countries of origin.
Moving from Excel to Partners mid-season
You do not have to change everything at once. During the trial, we import your services, guides and tour operators from the spreadsheet you already use, and we train your team and your guides. In about two weeks, the agency is working in Partners. To prepare the ground first, start with the method for managing your agency's tour guides or take your time comparing Partners and Excel.
The first 25 agencies get the founder price: the Pro plan at €49 a month (excl. VAT), fixed for as long as you keep your subscription, after a 30-day trial with no card required. Up to 5 guides it is free, with no commission per service, and your guides never pay. The app interface is in Spanish; demos and support are in Spanish or English.
Updated on October 20, 2026
