Blog

This is our general news and announcements page.

Flying "other" aircraft

Submitted by Mathew Waters on

Instructors sometimes train in a student's own aircraft. The system supports this by using a special aircraft with the registration "Other" and the type to "Various".

These aircraft are treated as a special case. When booking out, the actual registration and type are collected and confirmed when entering flight details. It is then these details that are transferred to the personal logbooks and training record.

Attach files to training records and safety reports

Submitted by Mathew Waters on

Our document attachments feature allows you to upload images, PDFs and other files and associate them with a user or aircraft. Schools use it to upload the insurance certificates for each aircraft and have set reminders to warn them as the expiry date approaches.

But there are other places where you might want to attach files, down at a record level:

  • Training records
  • Safety reporting

More flexibility in billing

Submitted by Mathew Waters on

Notifications

After a suggestion we received from one of the schools, we've added some options under Admin > Billing > Notifications.

These allow you to turn off the notification emails sent to customers when a new invoice is added to their account. You can also choose a delay of up to 7 days.

Feedback we received was that students on a land-away were surprised at receiving an invoice so quickly after their first flight and by adding a longer delay (e.g. 5 hours) the student would receive them at home.

Prevent stale contact information!

Submitted by Mathew Waters on

Customer information becomes outdated when people move house, or change their phone number or email address. When you give your customers access to the system, they can maintain this information themselves. But it's easy to forget.

User summary tabs now include a Contact information section, which displays a warning if the user is missing an email address, postal address, phone number or next of kin.

Booking system changes

Submitted by Mathew Waters on

You'll find new settings under Admin > Bookings.

Sunrise / Sunset

The orginal setting to add time slots if sunset is later than office hours has been extended to allow for removing slots and for an allowance (in minutes). The system can be set to remove slots from the booking form if the slot is during sunset (+ the allowance).

Cash sales

Submitted by Mathew Waters on

Someone recently pointed out how time-consuming it was to use the system for cash sales.

We suspect most flying schools are not handling a lot of cash, and not putting through large numbers of cash transactions.