What software travel agents actually use, and what it costs

Search "travel agency software" and you get two answers. Fifteen vendors, each one "built for your business." Or a forum thread telling you Excel and WhatsApp are all you need. Neither tells you what it actually costs to run a small Indian agency's software stack, seat by seat, as you grow from a one-person desk to a fifteen-person office.

That's the gap this post fills. Not which product to buy, but which layers of software your agency needs, which ones you can genuinely run free, and which two you cannot, because the law says so, not because a vendor's sales page says so. Then the real rupee numbers at three staff sizes, built bottom-up from published pricing, not a marketing bundle.

If you're staring at a WhatsApp inbox full of rate requests and wondering whether it's time to pay for something, this is the maths to do before you decide.

The six layers, in one table

Every travel agency, whatever its size, runs on six software layers. Some agencies improvise all six inside free tools. Some pay for all six. Most pay for two or three and get by on the rest.

Layer	Job it does	Do free tools ever suffice?
Inventory sourcing	Finding hotel, DMC and flight rates and availability	Yes, free B2B portal signups cover this at most agency sizes
Quoting/itinerary	Drafting the itinerary and price and sending it to the client	Yes, below a certain enquiry volume, on a spreadsheet
Client comms	Chasing leads, sending updates, confirming bookings	Mostly, at one or two staff, on the free WhatsApp app
Payment collection	Taking client advances and balances digitally	No, not once volume is real (RBI Payment Aggregator rules)
Accounting/GST	GST-compliant invoicing, books, return filing	No, not once you're GST-registered
Document storage	Storing passport/ID scans, vouchers, contracts	No, not without a security-safeguard duty attached (DPDP Act)

Two of those six carry a legal answer, not a business one. That's worth understanding before you decide anything else in this post, so we come back to it in detail further down.

What software travel agents actually use

At one or two staff, most Indian agencies quote off Excel or Google Sheets, talk to clients on the free WhatsApp Business app, and (if GST-registered) file returns through a CA using either Tally or Zoho Books. Somewhere around five staff, a payment gateway and a paid accounting seat stop being optional. By fifteen staff, WhatsApp's paid API and a proper shared storage plan usually enter the stack too.

Accounting. Two products dominate small-business accounting in India: Tally and Zoho Books. Tally prices its single-user Silver plan at ₹8,100/year (₹675/month) on the 12-month subscription, or ₹22,500 plus 18% GST as a one-time lifetime licence; the multi-user Gold plan runs ₹24,300/year (₹2,025/month), or ₹67,500 plus 18% GST lifetime (Tally pricing page, as of August 2026). Zoho Books takes a different shape: free for one user plus an accountant up to 1,000 invoices a year, then Standard at ₹749-899/month (3 users, 5,000 invoices), Professional at ₹1,499-1,799/month (5 users), and Premium at ₹2,999-3,599/month (10 users), all with GST-compliant invoicing built in (Zoho Books pricing, August 2026). A solo agency can genuinely run Zoho's free tier at ₹0. Tally's Gold licence is the more useful comparison once several people need to touch the books at once, because it's priced per network licence, not per seat.

Document storage. Google Workspace's Business Starter plan is ₹270/user/month for 30GB; Business Standard is ₹864-1,080/user/month for 2TB (Workspace pricing, August 2026). Microsoft 365 Business Basic runs ₹170/user/month (annual commitment) and includes 1TB per user plus web/mobile Office apps and business email (Microsoft 365 plans, August 2026). Per rupee of storage, Microsoft's Basic plan is the cheaper entry point for an agency whose main need is "1TB per person, GST-audit-safe, not on a personal phone."

Payment collection. Razorpay's own pricing page states a flat platform fee of roughly 2% across domestic payment instruments, with no setup fee, no AMC, and no charge for processing refunds, plus 18% GST on the fee itself (Razorpay pricing, August 2026). Treat that 2% as a headline figure rather than gospel: the exact rate differs by instrument (card, UPI, netbanking), and UPI/RuPay debit MDR rules have shifted more than once in recent years. Confirm the current rate for your instrument mix directly with your gateway before you build it into a quote.

Client communication. WhatsApp's Business Platform (the paid Cloud API, as opposed to the free app) prices messages in four categories: marketing, utility, service and authentication. Service messages aren't charged at all. Utility messages are free when sent in reply to something the customer started; beyond that, pricing runs in volume tiers. Marketing messages are charged per conversation (WhatsApp Business Platform pricing, August 2026). Meta only publishes India per-conversation INR rates inside its interactive calculator, not as a static number, so any figure you see quoted elsewhere as "the WhatsApp API rate" should be checked live before you budget against it.

Inventory sourcing. B2B portals (TBO, TripJack, TravClan, Riya and others) are typically free to sign up for and earn against a commission or net-rate margin, not a subscription. Comparing what each portal actually offers matters more here than what they cost to join.

Quoting and itinerary drafting. No dedicated itinerary builder has a fixed, sourced Indian price worth quoting here; most agencies below a certain size run this entirely on a spreadsheet, and it holds up longer than people expect, until it doesn't.

The budget table: ₹ per seat per month at 1, 5 and 15 staff

Here's the deliverable: what a working stack actually costs a year, at three staff sizes, using the published prices above plus reasoned estimates for the two layers (WhatsApp API, inventory sourcing) that don't have a fixed public rate.

Layer	1 staff (₹/year)	5 staff (₹/year)	15 staff (₹/year)
Accounting/GST (Tally)	₹8,100 (Silver)	₹24,300 (Gold)	₹24,300 (Gold)
Payment gateway (fixed cost)	₹0*	₹0*	₹0*
Client comms (WhatsApp API)	₹0 (free app)	₹48,000 (est.)	₹1,80,000 (est.)
Document storage (MS365 Basic)	₹2,040	₹10,200	₹30,600
Inventory sourcing (B2B portals)	₹0	₹0	₹0
Quoting/itinerary (spreadsheet)	₹0	₹0	₹0
Annual total	~₹10,000	~₹82,500	~₹2,35,000

* Gateway fees are transactional (roughly 2% of the amount processed, plus 18% GST on the fee), not a flat annual cost. Budget them as a percentage of collections, not a line item here. See the next section.

A quick note on the methodology, because this table is arithmetic, not a single verified source: the Tally and Microsoft 365 rows are exact published prices as of August 2026. The WhatsApp API rows are the writer's own planning estimates (₹4,000/month at 5 staff, ₹15,000/month at 15 staff), since Meta doesn't publish a fixed India rate; confirm current rates with your BSP before you commit to them. Tally's Gold licence is priced per network, not per seat, which is why the accounting row doesn't grow between 5 and 15 staff. Inventory sourcing and quoting show ₹0 because, at every size covered here, they typically still run on commission-based portals and spreadsheets rather than a paid subscription.

Build your own number in ten minutes

Copy this into a sheet and fill in what your agency actually pays today, or would pay to close each gap.

Layer	What you use today	₹/month	₹/year
Inventory sourcing		₹	₹
Quoting/itinerary		₹	₹
Client comms		₹	₹
Payment collection		₹	₹
Accounting/GST		₹	₹
Document storage		₹	₹
Total			₹

Where free tools genuinely work

Quoting and itinerary drafts, internal comms, and early-stage inventory sourcing hold up on free tools for longer than most agencies assume. The layer that breaks first, almost always, is version control: the moment two people are editing the same client's quote, or a lead needs to be visible to whoever picks up the phone next, a spreadsheet stops being "simple" and starts being a source of errors.

Excel and Google Sheets genuinely work for quoting and itinerary drafts at one or two staff, where the owner also builds every quote. Seven signs your tour business has outgrown Excel is worth reading before you assume you're still in that window, and a simple four-sheet workbook structure most small agencies converge on is a reasonable place to stabilise first.

The free WhatsApp Business app (not the paid API) covers internal and client comms for the same one-or-two-staff agency: catalogue, quick replies and labels are enough when one person is answering every chat. It starts to strain once you need more than one number answering on the same account, or once a lead needs to be handed cleanly from one staff member to another without the context living only in that person's phone.

Inventory sourcing on free B2B portal logins works at almost any size, because the portals are free to join; what changes with scale is the time spent comparing rates across four or five logins, not the cost of having them.

The two layers that never run on free tools

Payment collection and passport/ID document storage are the two layers where "free" isn't a savings, it's an exposure. Both carry a real legal duty, not just a workflow inconvenience, and both attach a real penalty if you get them wrong.

Payment collection. RBI classifies any entity that pools and transfers customer payments to a merchant as a Payment Aggregator, and requires such entities to be RBI-authorised, hold minimum net worth, maintain escrow accounts, and follow PCI-DSS security standards; a PA also cannot store customer card credentials. Simple, non-fund-handling payment gateways face lighter, largely recommended standards by comparison (RBI Payment Aggregator/Payment Gateway guidelines). What that means for you, in plain terms: collecting client advances through a personal UPI ID, a personal bank account, or an unregulated "payment link" tool sidesteps a framework built specifically to protect the money moving between your client and your suppliers. Running collections through a registered, RBI-compliant gateway isn't a nice-to-have upgrade. It's the difference between your client's money sitting in a regulated escrow flow and it sitting nowhere in particular. A working payment gateway playbook for a travel-classified "high risk" business is worth reading before you pick one.

Document storage. Under the DPDP Act 2023, your agency is a data fiduciary the moment it holds a client's passport scan or Aadhaar copy, and the law requires you to build reasonable security safeguards to prevent a personal data breach, and to report any breach to the Data Protection Board and to affected individuals. Failing to take adequate security measures carries penalties that can run into the hundreds of crores (PRS Legislative Research summary of the DPDP Act, reported, as of August 2026; DPDP rules and timelines have kept evolving, so confirm the current position with your CA). A passport scan sitting in a WhatsApp media folder or a personal Google Drive isn't a convenience shortcut anymore. It's an unmanaged liability with your agency's name on it. What the DPDP Act actually requires of the way you store passport data walks through what "reasonable security safeguards" looks like in practice.

Careful: Neither of these is a future problem you can defer until you're bigger. A one-staff agency taking its first advance payment on a personal UPI ID, or its first passport scan into a personal phone's gallery, is already inside both frameworks. Size doesn't create the exposure. Handling the money or the document does.

The sequencing rule: what to pay for first with ₹30,000 a year

If you have roughly ₹30,000 a year to spend and nothing paid yet, the order that protects you fastest is accounting first, then payment collection, then storage, then comms.

1. GST-compliant accounting and invoicing, once you're GST-registered. This one isn't optional the day your registration goes through; every invoice you cut after that needs to be correct. A free tier (Zoho Books) or a low-cost single-user plan (Tally Silver) covers this at ₹0-8,100/year.
2. A registered payment gateway, once you're collecting client advances at any real, repeating volume. The trigger to watch for is your own behaviour: if you're sending UPI payment links or asking for screenshots more than a handful of times a week, you've already crossed the point where a proper gateway is cheaper than the risk of not having one.
3. Shared, secure document storage, once more than one person handles client documents. The trigger is headcount, not turnover: the moment a second person needs access to a client's passport scan, a personal phone or personal Drive folder stops being a private convenience and becomes a shared, unmanaged risk.
4. A paid WhatsApp API, once broadcast and confirmation volume outgrows what one person can answer manually. This is usually the last upgrade, not the first, and it's the one most agencies reach for too early, before the first three are settled.

Accounting comes first because it's the one with a filing deadline attached to it, not a judgement call. The other three follow your actual volume, not your ambition.

Common questions

What software do travel agents use?

At one or two staff: Excel or Google Sheets for quoting, the free WhatsApp Business app for client comms, and free B2B portal logins for sourcing. Once GST-registered, accounting moves onto Tally or Zoho Books, at least on the free or lowest paid tier. Payment collection and document storage are the two layers most agencies underinvest in relative to what the law actually requires of them.

Is there free travel agency software that actually works?

Yes, for four of the six layers: inventory sourcing, quoting, internal comms and (below the 1,000-invoice threshold) even basic GST accounting on Zoho's free tier. It stops working reliably once more than one person needs to see the same version of a quote or lead at the same time, or once you're handling client money or client documents at any real volume. What the free version of travel agency software actually costs you is worth working out before you decide where your own line sits.

How much does travel agency software cost per month in India?

Based on published pricing plus reasoned estimates for volume-based layers, a workable stack runs roughly ₹850/month for a solo agency, roughly ₹6,900/month at 5 staff, and roughly ₹19,600/month at 15 staff, excluding transactional payment-gateway fees, which scale with how much you collect rather than how many people you employ. The full breakdown, layer by layer, is in the budget table above.

Do I need a CRM before I need accounting software?

No. Accounting comes first, because GST invoicing carries a legal filing deadline the day you're registered, while a shared pipeline tool for leads and quotes is a productivity upgrade you choose the timing of. Whatever you use for that shared pipeline, it needs to let more than one person see the same lead's status without asking around on WhatsApp first; when a spreadsheet can no longer do that reliably for your team, that's the actual trigger to look further, not a specific staff count. What that kind of software actually costs in India, by pricing model, is a separate question worth answering once you're at that point.

The short version

• Every agency runs on six software layers: inventory sourcing, quoting/itinerary, client comms, payment collection, accounting/GST, and document storage.
• Four of those six genuinely work on free tools for a while: sourcing, quoting, comms, and (below 1,000 invoices/year) basic accounting.
• Two never should run free: payment collection (RBI's Payment Aggregator rules exist to protect that money) and passport/ID storage (the DPDP Act's security-safeguard duty attaches real penalties).
• Rough annual totals for a paid stack: ~₹10,000/year solo, ~₹82,500/year at 5 staff, ~₹2,35,000/year at 15 staff, excluding transactional gateway fees.
• Sequence spend as accounting first (legal deadline), then payment collection (money exposure), then storage (document exposure), then a paid WhatsApp API last.
• Payment gateway fees are a percentage of what you collect, not a subscription; budget them separately from the fixed-cost table above.
• Rates and thresholds move. Confirm current gateway fees, WhatsApp API rates and DPDP requirements directly with the provider or your CA before you build them into a live budget.