Business Financial Goals for Travel Agency Owners with Stephanie Cannon – Episode 22

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

If you’re running a travel agency and feel like you’re flying blind when it comes to your finances, you’re definitely not alone.

I recently had an eye-opening conversation with Stephanie Cannon, a CPA who’s also a travel entrepreneur, and wow, did she show me the light to what we really need to be tracking when it comes to finances.

Knowing your numbers isn’t just about being organized (though that helps!).

It’s about setting proper business financial goals and actually having a roadmap to achieve them.

The truth?

Most of us jump into this business because we love travel, want to help clients create amazing experiences, and yes, we want to see money start coming in.

But without tracking the right metrics, we’re basically guessing our way to profitability.

And trust me, I learned this the hard way.

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Setting Business Financial Goals That Actually Make Sense

Let me be completely transparent here—when I first went full-time with my travel business, I thought I had my business financial goals figured out.

I knew exactly how much I needed to make based on my previous full-time job salary.

Problem was, I wasn’t taking into account things like taxes, business expenses, or even planning for time off.

Yikes!

As Stephanie put it so perfectly during our chat: “At the end, we talk about profit. That’s the technical term. But it’s really what you pay yourself. It’s what you get to keep and put in your pocket at the end of the day. And that’s one of the main reasons we all went into business for ourselves.”

This hit me hard because I had this massive wake-up call about my corporate retreat business.

I thought if I could sell just one retreat per month—12 retreats a year—I’d be set.

But when I actually crunched the numbers, factoring in all my expenses and what I actually needed to take home, I realized I needed to be selling 33 retreats a year, not 12!

That realization completely changed how I approached both my marketing and business development goals.

Here’s how Stephanie recommends approaching this, and it’s genius in its simplicity: start with what you want to keep in your pocket at the end of the year.

Then add your business expenses to that number.

That gives you your true revenue goal—not your sales goal, but your commission and fee goal.

It’s all about reverse engineering from your end goal, and spoiler alert, I’ve created a free calculator that helps you figure this out 🙂

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The Numbers That Really Matter When Owning a Travel Agency

So what exactly should you be tracking?

Stephanie broke this down and it’s way more manageable than you might think.

The key metrics vary depending on whether you’re a solopreneur or working with ICs, but here are the big ones:

• Your Financial Goal (Revenue vs. Profit) This is where I see so many of us get confused. Revenue is what’s coming in, but profit is what you actually keep after expenses. You can be bringing in tons of commissions and still have low profit if your expenses are eating everything up.

• List Size and Growth Rate How big is your client list growing, and what does that need to be to hit your goals? Just having a certain number of people on your list doesn’t guarantee the same profit every month—it also depends on your close rate.

• Close Rate How good are you at converting new inquiries into actual bookings? Stephanie tracks this separately for brand new prospects versus existing clients (smart!), because existing clients already trust you and are pretty much ready to book when they reach out.

• Average Commission per Booking You might want to break this down by destination or trip type. Honeymoons, baby boomer trips, river cruises, FITs to Europe—they all have different commission structures. When you lump them all together, it’s really hard to see where your true profit is coming from.

• Cash Flow Stephanie calls this “dynamic cash flow,” and it became especially important during the pandemic. You can book all the business in the world, but if you don’t have cash in the bank to pay your bills each month, you’re in trouble.

Why Travel Agency Accounting Software Matters (And What I Actually Use)

Okay, let’s talk about the elephant in the room—actually tracking all these numbers.

Before I got my act together, my “system” was basically preparing for taxes.

That’s it.

No ongoing tracking, no monthly reviews, nothing.

Just scrambling at tax time while also trying to handle wave season bookings.

Not fun!

Here’s what has worked for me. 

Spreadsheets are your friend when you start a travel agency.

Google Sheets or Excel can handle most of what you need, and honestly, they’re pretty powerful once you get the hang of them.

Stephanie actually has spreadsheets purpose-built for travel advisors (genius!), and for my other business, I use a template from a VA course that my tax accountant absolutely loves.

For more advanced tracking, Stephanie swears by QuickBooks.

She says “it’s not super intuitive for the more complicated things. But as just a basic bookkeeping software, it’s very easy to enter in your revenue, your expenses, pull in your credit card transactions, and do your bank account reconciliation.”

I’m still working on making my process less manual, but I’ve found some great tools.

For Take the Helm, I use systems like Honeybook and Membervault that help me stay on top of revenue.

For my travel agency, TravelJoy has really improved their numbers tracking, which should make monthly reviews so much easier.

The Bank Account Strategy That Make Sense

One thing Stephanie mentioned that travel advisors need to implement immediately is having separate bank accounts.

I have a checking account set up for each business, and it makes organizing the numbers so much easier!

Money from my businesses gets moved into my personal account to pay expenses like my mortgage, but keeping business funds separate has made life so much easier.

Stephanie recommends at least three accounts: an operating account for day-to-day transactions, a separate account for taxes (because you don’t want to get hit with a huge tax bill and realize you already spent that money—been there!), and what she calls a “slush account” for debt payments or future investments.

“When I see money in the bank account, I’m like, oh, I can go do this, this, this, and don’t remember that I’ve already said I wanted to do something else.”

Same, Stephanie. Same!

How Often Should You Actually Look at These Numbers?

This is where I’m still a work in progress, and I bet many of you are too.

Stephanie recommends monthly at a minimum, even if you’re part-time or just starting out. It’s about creating the habit more than anything else.

“Even if you’re a newer agent and you don’t have a lot of volume, or you’re part time and it’s kinda fluctuating; it creates a habit. And to me, when you don’t have that habit, that’s when things kind of start falling off and you focus on other areas.”

She makes such a good point about timing too.

Many of us put bookkeeping last on our to-do list, and then we end up trying to catch up during tax season, which also happens to be wave season.

Talk about adding stress when you least need it!

Setting Realistic Profit Goals and Marketing Financial Objectives

“It really is a numbers game, even though we love what we’re doing.”

Once you figure out your financial planning objectives, you need to know what you’re working toward and whether you’re on track.

The revelation about my retreat numbers completely shifted my marketing financial objectives.

Instead of casually promoting one retreat here and there, I realized I needed to be much more aggressive about marketing cruise retreats specifically to hit my profit goals.

Example of a Smart Financial Goal in Action

Let me give you a concrete example of how this plays out.

Say you want to take home $80,000 a year (your profit goal).

Add your business expenses—let’s say $20,000.

Now you need $100,000 in commission revenue.

If your average commission per booking is $500, you need 200 bookings per year, or about 17 bookings per month.

If your close rate is 30%, you need about 56 inquiries per month to get those 17 bookings.

See how the numbers start telling a story?

Now you know exactly what your marketing and lead generation efforts need to achieve.

The Cash Flow Reality Check

Stephanie emphasized… cash flow forecasting is crucial.

You might have $50,000 in bookings on the books, but if those commissions won’t hit your account for six months, you still need cash to pay this month’s bills.

This became super clear during the pandemic when so many bookings got postponed or canceled.

Having that cash flow visibility helps you make better decisions about when to invest in marketing, when to hire help, or when to maybe tighten the belt a little.

I’m still working on perfecting this system myself, but having this conversation with Stephanie made it clear that we can’t afford to keep flying blind with our finances.

Whether you’re just starting to set up systems or you’re looking to improve what you already have, the key is starting somewhere and being consistent.

The numbers really do tell a story about the health of your business.

They show you what’s working, what’s not, and most importantly, they give you a clear path to achieve your goals instead of just hoping things work out.

Your travel business deserves the same level of financial planning and attention that you give your clients’ trips.

After all, if you’re not profitable and sustainable, you can’t keep helping people create those amazing travel experiences we all love so much.

Start with one metric—maybe your average commission per booking or your monthly close rate.

Track it consistently for a few months, and I guarantee you’ll start seeing patterns that will help you make better business decisions.

Remember, as Stephanie said, “knowing your numbers can transform your business from inside out.”

And honestly?

After this conversation, I’m more convinced than ever that she’s absolutely right.

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