Jacob Archer Contact
B2B SaaS / Travel technology — Case study Live for founding client

TravelIQ.

One platform. The whole travel agency.

Software I created for travel agencies. Built around an established agency founded in 1991, TravelIQ connects advisor websites, CRM, leads, bookings, commissions, marketing, and agency management in one system.

Created by
Jacob Archer
Category
B2B software for travel agencies
Founding client
Ticket-To-Ride, Inc.
Status
Live for founding client · Multi-agency in development
Approved screenshot — TravelIQ admin dashboard (sample agency data only)
TravelIQ
The agency dashboard, shown on a fictional sample agency — never a real client's data
(01)Founding client
Built around a real agency Est. 1991
Ticket-To-Ride logo — only with approval

Ticket-To-Ride, Inc.

An established, independent travel agency founded in 1991. TravelIQ was designed around how Ticket-To-Ride actually operates—its owner, its advisors, its clients, and its suppliers—and that software runs the agency's site and dashboards today.

Visit ticket2ride.co
Relationship
TravelIQ's founding client—the first agency running on the software.
Partnership
Ticket-To-Ride's owners are founding partners in TravelIQ.
Two businesses
Ticket-To-Ride is an independent travel agency. TravelIQ is a separate software company.
Approved screenshot — ticket2ride.co, the agency's live site
ticket2ride.co — running on the software todayIn production
Why it matters

Most industry software is designed from the outside. TravelIQ was designed from inside a working agency—against real bookings, real commissions, and real deadlines.

(02)Origin

Built inside a working agency.

TravelIQ didn't begin as a SaaS idea. It began as the software for one agency.

Working with Ticket-To-Ride, I saw how much of a travel agency happens after the sale. Requests arrive from websites and referrals. Each advisor needs a presence of their own. Every supplier has its own payment schedule. And commission—the agency's actual revenue—arrives weeks or months later, sometimes split between advisors, sometimes short.

The tools that usually cover that work don't talk to each other. So I built one system that does.

  1. 01 /

    Requests arrive without context

    A lead is only useful if the advisor sees the whole brief.

  2. 02 /

    Every supplier keeps its own deadlines

    Final-payment dates differ by supplier and by product.

  3. 03 /

    Commission arrives late, split, or short

    And someone has to reconcile every dollar of it.

  4. 04 /

    The owner needs the whole picture

    Without exposing the agency's economics to every advisor.

(03)Product

Six areas.
One system.

Each area shares the same records, so a lead becomes a client, a client becomes a booking, and a booking becomes a commission without being re-entered.

  • 01 — WebsitesLive

    Agency & advisor websites

    Edit the live site in place—click a headline, paragraph, or photo and publish. Advisors can have their own fully editable sites, with their own blog, reviews, and destinations.

  • 02 — LeadsLive

    Leads & routing

    Every request arrives with the full brief attached. Requests from an advisor's own site go straight to them, and a 24-business-hour first-contact clock shows what's on track, due soon, or overdue.

  • 03 — ClientsLive

    Travel CRM

    A durable household record—dietary needs, mobility, celebrations, room preferences—with a running note timeline and full trip history. Owner-approved client transfers between advisors.

  • 04 — BookingsLive

    Bookings & deadlines

    Every trip is a full record with an automatic change log. Pick the supplier product and the final-payment deadline fills in—along with the date to collect from the client, five days earlier.

  • 05 — CommissionsLive

    Commissions & payouts

    Expected versus actual commission, splits and referrals between advisors, clawbacks, and weekly payout batches with one statement per advisor.

  • 06 — AgencyLive

    Marketing & management

    Advisor blogs with owner approval, invitation-only reviews, an email campaign builder, annual certifications, and revenue targets each advisor sees for themselves.

Live = running in production for the founding client

(04)Engineering depth

Follow
the money.

Recording a booking is easy. Making sure every dollar of commission is accounted for—across splits, referrals, late payments, and reversals—is where most of the engineering went.

Each booking carries what the advisor expects to earn. When the supplier pays, the actual amount is recorded against it, and a shortfall is flagged for the owner alone. From there, the system resolves who is owed what, to the cent, and batches it into weekly statements.

  1. 01
    Booking recordedTravelers, dates, supplier, value, confirmation, and the commission the advisor expects.
  2. 02
    Actual commission receivedRecorded against the booking. Any shortfall is flagged for the owner.
  3. 03
    Split, referral, or clawbackUp to four ways, resolved to the exact cent. A clawback nets against the next payout.
  4. 04
    Weekly batch & statementMonday-to-Sunday batches. Each advisor's statement lists only their own share.
  • Confidential by construction

    The agency's cut, the gross, the supplier rate, and the shortfall flag are never sent to an advisor's browser—not hidden in it, never sent.

  • Settled stays settled

    A late supplier payment rolls into a future payout instead of changing a statement that has already been issued.

  • Deadlines from rules

    Supplier-specific final-payment rules for major theme-park and cruise suppliers, with 72-, 48-, and 24-hour alerts that each fire at most once.

How it's built Next.js · TypeScript (strict) · Supabase · Vercel Every change: typecheck · lint · 1,750+ automated tests · production build Test count from Sept 2026 ledger — refresh
(05)From one client to SaaS

One agency→
many.

One codebase now serves two brands: Ticket-To-Ride's live site and dashboards, and TravelIQ, the multi-agency platform built on top of them. The work is finding every place the software assumed it was one agency—and turning it into a setting.

Built Built Planned
  1. Built

    White-label core

    Each agency resolves its own brand and settings. A second agency gets its own branding and genuinely empty dashboards—nothing belonging to Ticket-To-Ride is read or shown.

  2. Built

    Live product sandbox

    The real dashboards, running on an isolated, fictional sample agency—fenced off from production data.

  3. Built

    Agency provisioning

    An eleven-step, resumable launch sequence with live progress and a retry that picks up exactly where it failed. Runs in demo mode today.

  4. Built

    Mission Control

    One operator console across client agencies: lifecycle, support, provisioning, onboarding, announcements, and an append-only audit log. Demo mode.

  5. Built

    Per-agency data & billing

    Routing each agency to its own database, plus subscription billing.

Where it stands today

The software serving Ticket-To-Ride is live. TravelIQ's broader, multi-agency commercialization is still in development, and Ticket-To-Ride is currently the only agency running on it.

(06)Founder perspective

What it
taught me.

01 /

Build inside the business.

Working next to a real agency surfaced problems no requirements document would have: the late remittance, the split booking, the supplier with a different deadline.

02 /

The edge cases are the product.

Anyone can store a booking. Getting a clawback, a referral, and a settled statement to agree with each other is the actual work.

03 /

Say only what the code does.

Before writing TravelIQ's marketing, I audited every capability against the code and kept only the claims it supports. Where a design and the truth disagreed, the truth won.

(07)The software

As it
runs.

Real screens from the product. Dashboards are shown on a fictional sample agency, so no client's data appears here.

Capture from the /demo sandbox
Approved screenshot — owner dashboard (sample agency)
Owner dashboardSample agency
Approved screenshot — advisor dashboard (sample agency)
Advisor dashboardSample agency
Approved screenshot — commissions & payouts (sample agency)
Commissions & payoutsSample agency
Founding client · ExternalTicket-To-Ride, Inc. DirectoryAll work AboutMy story

TravelIQ's site: gettraveliq.co ↗

Next projectMemberIQ
(08)Contact

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something
huge.

I'm always interested in conversations with people building ambitious technology, improving cities, or solving difficult problems.

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