Episode Overview:
David Shull, Molly Johnson, and Brad Turner dig into what may be the biggest agency back office feature Tern has shipped: AI commission reconciliation. The team walks through how it works, what it actually means for the accounting teams and agency owners who spend hours on statement matching every month, and why Tern is uniquely positioned to build this kind of end-to-end flow. They also cover a wave of AI chat upgrades, including email search, form response reading, and contact creation, plus major Chrome extension improvements and a quality of life section covering smarter trip search and task page fixes. A big reveal is coming in June.
Episode Topics:
(00:00) Week in Review David, Molly, and Brad share highlights from the week, including a listener who built a $20,000 FIT proposal in under 20 minutes using Tern, and Brad's call with a major cruise line that revealed how little suppliers understand about how advisors actually work day to day.
(06:20) AI Commission Reconciliation Molly walks through the new AI-powered reconciliation feature, explaining how it reads supplier statements in any format, auto-matches line items to bookings, and surfaces partial matches for human review. The team discusses what "training the AI" actually means, how data privacy works, and why Tern's vertical integration makes this flow possible in a way no other tool can replicate.
(17:57) AI Chat Updates Brad runs through a full list of new capabilities added to the AI chat this week: reading trip request form responses, creating detailed contact profiles from notes or emails, and searching connected email inboxes to pull context into conversations and draft replies. David notes that full-body email search is also coming early next week.
(27:00) Chrome Extension Updates Molly covers the latest Chrome extension release, which now supports importing full itineraries to existing trips or creating new ones directly from any website. She also highlights small loading screen touches added by engineer Gaal that have become a fan favorite.
(31:56) Quality of Life Brad covers two improvements: trip search now surfaces results by confirmation number, traveler email, and traveler phone, not just trip title. The task page overflow bug that advisor Walter flagged has also been fixed.
(34:30) Week Ahead Molly teases workflow task assignment coming next week, group subtrip syncing getting underway, and new agency supplier capabilities. Brad previews insurance in package pricing and canceled booking visibility on itineraries. David flags early previews of agentic AI features at Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum and ASTA.
Show Highlights:
A travel advisor built a $20,000 FIT proposal from idea to full proposal in under 20 minutes using Tern's Chrome extension and AI tools.
AI commission reconciliation reads supplier statements in any format, auto-matches bookings, and flags partials for one-click review, cutting what used to be hours of manual work down to minutes.
Your payout data is never shared or used to train external models. When Tern says "training the AI," it means building supplier-specific context so the model reads statements more accurately over time.
The AI chat can now search your connected email inbox, read trip request form responses, and create fully detailed contact profiles from a note or an email thread.
AI-drafted email replies in Tern are different because the AI actually knows the trip details, the contact history, and the context. It is not a generic response you have to rewrite.
Chrome extension now imports full itineraries, not just activities, directly to new or existing trips.
Trip search now works across confirmation numbers, traveler emails, and traveler phone numbers, not just trip titles.
A big AI reveal is coming in June, with early previews at Las Vegas Travel Agent Forum and ASTA.
