The slow part isn't the typing
I'd assumed the hard part of loading a contract was getting the numbers in. It isn't, or not mostly.
The hard part is everything the contract leaves out. Whoever loads it types what's in front of them and does nothing wrong. The guess happens in the gaps, and it happens because there's no time to stop and ask.
In Durban, the contracts produced 602 questions. Every one was a place where the honest answer was "the contract doesn't settle this".
Seven places a lodge contract makes you guess
Which dates it actually covers
Don't trust the year on the cover. One of the Durban questions was simply whether a sheet covered all of 2027 or only January to April. Check the dates on every rate table.
The currency
If the contract doesn't print one, don't let the system default to anything. A rate in rand that should be in dollars passes every check that only looks at the number. Decide your currency by country once, and hold every contract to it.
Tax inclusive or exclusive
A rate that already includes VAT, loaded as if it doesn't, quotes fifteen percent high on every booking, and nothing on the screen says so. Settle once whether you load tax inclusive or exclusive, and check each contract against that, not against memory.
Child bands
Contracts often print a percentage against an age band, and your book may use different bands. Decide what happens when they don't line up before the first family quote, not during it.
Levies and park fees
Per person, per night or per stay? If the contract doesn't say, ask the lodge. The one that seems likely is still a guess.
Single supplement or single rate
They sit in the same place on a rate sheet and quote very differently. If it isn't obvious which one you're looking at, it's a question.
"Standard terms"
When a contract refers to its standard cancellation terms without printing them, you need the supplier's actual terms on file, or your own default agreed in advance.
Two Tourplan habits worth knowing
A rate period is replaced whole. Load a new contract that doesn't restate the child rates, and the live child rates can go with the old period. In Durban, one update that would have done exactly that was stopped before it reached the book.
A missing rate still quotes. When a rate isn't loaded, Tourplan takes the highest loaded rate and adds ten percent. So a contract sitting in someone's inbox doesn't leave a gap on the quote. It leaves a made-up price nobody agreed.
Check it against last year
Last year's contract for the same lodge is the best check you have. The same rooms, the same structure, and numbers that should move by a sensible amount. A rate that's dropped, or a room that's vanished, is worth a question before it's worth a load.
In Durban, eight loads would have lowered a live rate and eleven would have re-priced existing ones. All nineteen stopped and asked first. A lower rate is sometimes right, but somebody has to say so.
Then read it back
When it's in, open the book and read the rates out of it, not off the load screen. A system can accept a rate, return success and store nothing.
Why "success" doesn't mean the rate saved →
Write the answers down
Every answer you get is a rule for next time: which currency, which child bands, how the levy works. Write it down once, and nobody gets asked the same thing next season.
If you want a head start, the readiness checklist on the resources page lists the house rules that came up in Durban, with space for your answers. It's useful whether or not you work with me.