While you resell somebody else's programme you are a retailer. The moment you put the course, the host family, the flight and the transfer together yourself, you are the organiser of that package: the obligations change, the liability changes and the tax treatment changes. DBJOY gives you the back office that second trade needs.
The Package Travel Directive (EU) 2015/2302 separates the trader who combines travel services and offers them as a package from the trader who sells a programme put together by somebody else. In Italy the Directive was transposed into the Tourism Code (Legislative Decree 79/2011). Which role you are in does not depend on the sign above the door: it depends on what you did on that particular file.
| Aspect | You resell someone else's programme | You put the package together |
|---|---|---|
| Role | Retailer: you bring the family and the organiser together. | Organiser: you combine at least two travel services and sell them as a package. |
| Liability for performance | Stays with the organiser who built the programme. | Yours: you answer for the performance of the services in the package. |
| Information duties | You pass on the information the organiser gave you. | You prepare it yourself, before the contract is concluded. |
| What you earn | Commission on the sale you intermediated. | The margin between the selling price and the cost of bought-in services. |
| VAT treatment | Ordinary VAT rules applied to the commission. | The margin scheme of art. 74-ter of Presidential Decree 633/1972, VAT code N5. |
| The tool you need | A front office: takings, sales files, relationships with tour operators. | A tour operator back office: partner schools, allotments, students, margin. |
This page describes how DBJOY supports both activities. It is not legal or tax advice: how a single transaction should be classified is a question for your own adviser.
Agency software records the sale and the commission on it. When you are the one buying the course, the accommodation and the flight, you need seasonal rates, places per session, options and release dates: information that software was never designed to hold.
On the July session you have thirty students, thirty deposits and the host family matching. If they live in a separate spreadsheet, the file in the agency system is a single line and all the real work sits outside it.
Commission on the programmes you resell and margin on the departure you organise follow different rules. Keeping them together by hand makes closing the books slow and makes it hard to see what each of the two channels actually returns.
You build the package line by line: weeks of tuition, a host family or a residence, the flight, the transfer, student insurance. Every line carries its supplier, the net purchase cost and the mark-up, so the selling price and the margin form while you build rather than afterwards.
On confirmation the quote becomes a booking file: partner school deadlines, places committed on the session, students enrolled, documents to hand over and documents to collect. It is the same flow a tour operator uses, sized for the way an agency works.
When you organise, the pre-contractual information, the contract terms and the travel information are yours to prepare, before the family concludes the contract. DBJOY generates those documents from the booking file and keeps a record of what was handed over and when.
The booking file keeps the history of the relationship: quotes sent, enrolment confirmed, parental consents collected, changes notified. If somebody asks about a step a year later, the answer is in the system rather than in the memory of whoever was on duty.
On the packages you organise, DBJOY applies the VAT margin scheme of art. 74-ter of Presidential Decree 633/1972 — the Italian implementation of the EU special scheme for travel agents in Articles 306 to 310 of VAT Directive 2006/112/EC, known in the United Kingdom as TOMS. VAT falls on the margin over services bought in from third parties for the direct benefit of the traveller, invoices carry the VAT code N5, and the electronic invoice for the SDI is built from data already held on the file.
Files where you stay a retailer remain what they are: what you earn is the commission the operator allows you, and it stays distinct from the margin on your own departures. Two channels with different margins, one archive: at the end of the year you know what reselling returned and what organising returned.
On the programme you resell, the operator decides your margin. On the departure you build yourself, you decide it. The constraint is not appetite: it is having the tools to carry the administrative and operational work that comes with it.
Local schools, the teachers who call you, families who have already sent you a child. The CRM holds the history and the student records, so next year's session is built on last year's data.
Partner school contracts, places per session and release dates sit in the system. You know how many places you committed, how many you sold and when you have to decide. That is how you avoid paying for beds nobody took.
Margin by booking file and by destination tells you which sessions to repeat and which to drop. It is the same figure you want in your hand when you renew with the partner school.
One client record, the history of the programmes they bought and the deals still open. The family enrolling a child and the school contact sit in the same archive.
Multi-service quotes with net, gross and mark-up per line. Once confirmed, a quote becomes an organiser booking file with deadlines, partner schools and documents already in place.
The art. 74-ter margin scheme on the packages you organise, VAT code N5, per-booking cost and revenue records, and electronic invoicing through the SDI.
The July session, the school group, the individual enrolment: students, fees, family instalments and rooming lists without a new spreadsheet for every departure.
Vouchers, info sheets, student lists and pre-contractual paperwork generated from the booking file, with a record of what you handed over.
What reselling returns and what your own production returns. Two different channels, measured with the same yardstick on the same database.
They are different things in tax terms too, and DBJOY keeps them apart. On a retailed file the agency sells another operator’s programme and earns a commission. On a study trip organised in-house the agency buys course, accommodation and transport from its suppliers, combines them and earns a margin. The sales document and the VAT treatment follow from that.
On retailed files the agency works on commission, and the expected commission is a figure to be checked against what the operator actually allowed. In DBJOY that value stays attached to the booking file, alongside the family’s payments and what is still open towards the supplier. The commercial result of the retail channel reads without being rebuilt at the end of the quarter.
Not necessarily. Even a few departures organised in-house carry partner school contracts, places per session, students who are minors, travel documents and the VAT margin scheme of art. 74-ter of Presidential Decree 633/1972: the same obligations as a tour operator, on smaller numbers. DBJOY can be started on exactly that narrow perimeter and widened only if the business grows.
Combining course, accommodation, flight and transfer into a package makes you the organiser under Directive (EU) 2015/2302 and the Italian Tourism Code (Legislative Decree 79/2011): pre-contractual information, a package travel contract, liability for performance, insolvency protection. The VAT treatment changes too, following the margin scheme of art. 74-ter of Presidential Decree 633/1972 instead of commission on an intermediated sale.
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We set the system up together on your own rates, partner schools and destinations. At the end of the three months the decision is yours, with no strings attached.
No credit card. No automatic renewal. Your data stays yours and stays exportable.