Admin

Admin

Each new booking system is installed with defaults set to get up and running quickly. This allows you to test the system out with the minimum amount of time invested. This and other administration pages are available by clicking the Admin tab as shown:

Admin tab

As you can see, the Administration page simply links to the following pages:

 

We suggest just using the system to make a practice booking to start with. You could then book the flight out, record the flight details and some training notes. Once you're happy the system will work well for you, please take some time to check the settings are correct.

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Plan and payments

Plan and payments

This page is only available to users with the Owner role. It shows the payment plan the booking system is currently on, plus a history of all previous payments for bookkeeping purposes. To reach it, use the Admin tab.

Payment plan

To view each invoice, simply click the link in the Reference column.

When operating in trial mode, you will instead see the option to make your first monthly payment.

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Logo and colour scheme

Logo and colour scheme

Use the Logo and colour scheme option to change the look of your site. You can change the logo displayed in the top left corner as well as the colour scheme. If your club has its own logo or branding style, you may wish to customise your booking system.

To customise the site, click the Admin tab followed by Logo and colour scheme.

Logo and colour scheme

Changing your site logo

You can change the logo by uploading a new one using the Choose file button in the Logo section.

Use the Choose file button to upload your own logo. It is a good idea to prepare the logo first using whatever image editing software you normally use. A PNG format image with transparent background and white foreground works well, with a size of 160 x 160 pixels. For the ultimate image quality, use an SVG format image. This image format does not use pixels, instead it defines an image using vectors which can be scaled up to any size.

Changing the colour scheme

You can choose one of the built-in colour schemes, or you can manually set your own colours using either the HTML colour or the colour picker. You can do this for elements such as header, background, link and text colours.

Once changes have been made, click Save to make the changes permanent.

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Basic settings

Basic settings

Use Basic settings to set the name of your site and your email address. Note you can also change the logo displayed in the top left corner using the Logo and colour scheme option.

To reach this page, click the Admin tab followed by Basic settings.

  • School name. This is displayed next to the logo in the top banner and appears in emails sent from the system.
  • Email address. Emails are sent from the flightschoolbooking.com domain and are digitally signed (DKIM) to improve delivery rates. The address you specify here sets the "reply to" address. Anyone replying to an email from the system will send replies to this address. You may wish to use an unmanned address such as "do-not-reply@..." or you might want to have all replies delivered to an email address in your office. Since these may often be related to bookings we recommend using a real email address to ensure you receive them.
  • Website. This is displayed to your customers on vouchers. There is no need to use the full http or https://, just use your web address that your customers will recognise, for example "acmeflyingclub.com".

 

The Locale section is used to select your country and the first day of the week. This makes a difference to how numbers and currency amounts are displayed.

Location & time zone

The system takes into account your time zone when presenting flight times. For example, if you are based in UK, choose London so all times are shown in UK local time. You can also choose UTC at the bottom of the list if you refer to all times as Zulu, but note students usually prefer to deal in local time, especially when making bookings.

The location name is transferred to personal logbooks and should be used to identify the aerodrome. You can use either the name or four letter ICAO code.

There are latitude and longitude fields which are used to determine the sunrise and sunset times. These times are shown beneath the booking form and can be useful for students and members when booking weeks in advance. The system can calculate these times for any location on Earth and any date in the future.

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Bookings

Bookings

This page is used for settings that apply to bookings. The default settings for most will be adequate, but you will probably want to change the time slots available to bookings.

  • Time slots available for bookings and the length of each time slot.
  • Maximum time an aircraft can be booked without an instructor.
  • Maximum number of days in advance a booking can be made.
  • How to handle cancellations.
  • The number of days grace period before student and member accounts expire and become 'lapsed'.
  • Template emails for booking notifications (confirmation, cancellation, changes, reminders, membership expiry, revalidation and medical reminders).
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Locations

Locations

If you operate from more than one airfield, you should set up a list of your locations under Admin > Bookings > Locations.

Doing so means you can set availability of aircraft and instructors in each location.

Setting locations for your airfields

To set up Instructor availability, see Instructors > Availability. Similarly for aircraft, see Aircraft > Availability.

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Booking out

Booking out

Flights are booked out just before the start of the flight. Pilots record the aircraft, persons on board and the estimated departure and return times. If no flight details are added to book the flight back in, the system generates a notification to the person who booked the flight out. This reminder is sent some time after the estimated return time, configurable in settings.

To allow for cases where there is no network connection at the airfield, pilots can book out early up to a maximum number of hours you specify in Maximum hours early. The estimated time of departure should be changed to the best estimate of when the flight will commence.

To allow for cases where pilots may have forgotten to book out, you can allow them to book out for a time in the past. Pilots can then set the actual departure time up to your setting for Maximum hours late. It is of course not recommended, but the setting allows for mistakes to be made. You may wish to enforce a more strict setting of zero.

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Flight log and aircraft

Flight log and aircraft

The settings for the flight log define the units to use when displaying airframe and engine times in lists, the default taxiing times, home airfield location and out of hours notifications.

Pilots are responsible for ensuring the accuracy of information entered such as the flight start and stop times, engine hours and airframe hours. To aid, the system uses the engine hours together with the settings for Default taxiing time and Default time resolution to fill in the airframe duration for pilots. This only works if there is a good network connection while the pilot is filling in the flight details. Pilots should always check the times they are submitting.

The home location should be set to the name of your airfield (as you would record it in your logbook). This is used to default fields such as the place of departure when booking out.

If you operate any flights outside airfield operational hours, your airfield operator might require a list of these flights for billing or logging purposes. If so, you can fill in the details under Out of hours and the system will notify the email address you choose just after the start of operational hours. You can edit the template email sent to this email address to suit. If you want to check the content of these emails, you could have them delivered to yourself, then forward it to your airfield operations later.

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Safety reporting

Safety reporting

This page is only available to users with the Owner or Safety Management Staff roles. It shows the settings for the safety reporting system, including the option to turn it on or off. To reach it, use the Admin tab.

Admin > Safety reporting

System availability

Normally the system will be made available to anyone who can log in, so they can report on safety related issues. We do not recommend making the system available to the public unless you need to, because despite our anti-spam technology, inevitably some gets through.

Confidentiality

First off, anyone reporting without a log in to use the system will be classed as the public. The public are treated slightly differently because the system cannot authenticate their name or email address. Any reports submitted by the public are always treated as confidential initially, meaning they are only visible by staff. They also receive no email confirmation of the submitted report.

Note: The general public cannot see any existing reports, and they can only submit a report if you explicitly allow it.

For people with a log in, you can allow them to choose between submitting their report confidentially or in the open. Confidential reports are only visible to staff, but open reports can be viewed by anyone with a log in on the system. When using this setting, be respectful of the users choice to report confidentially by leaving the report visible only to staff. If you need to add anyone to the circulation list, be aware the originator may not be expecting it to be shared in this way, you may want to check with them first!

You can also remove this choice from the user's form, forcing all reports to be submitted privately to staff only, or made in the open and visible to other users who can log in. When reports are submitted privately, the originator is not choosing to report confidentially and you can use your own judgement as to whether the report should be made visible to other users in the interests of safety.

The default setting it to send reports privately. You may decide to leave the system this way, and triage the reports, making some visible but not others.

Making reports visible to other users may improve safety by keeping people informed. For example, if a pilot checks the recent safety reports for the aircraft they have booked, they may see that someone reported low tyre pressure. This could lead them to double-check the pressure where they might only inspect visually. It could be that the tyre has a slow puncture and although not an issue for short flights, an overnight rental could lead to the pilot returning with the tyre pressure too low. It also helps pilots see patterns developing, for example one aircraft is more regularly being topped up with oil.

Recorders

There are two built-in recorders for "Injuries" and "Damage". Each recorder stores a level from this list: Unknown, None, Minor, Major and Catastrophic. You can choose the name of the recorder, change the label for each level and add a description for the recorder itself plus all the levels it supports. This allows you to tailor the form and collect more information (such as "damage to reputation") and give the user enough information to be able to choose between the options.

Reasons

When a report is submitted, the originator chooses a reason for the report from a list. This tab allows you to set up this list, and you can rearrange the order to suit.

There are some built in reasons for reporting which you can edit to suit your own system. Once a report has been submitted that uses a reason, it is no longer possible to change its name, but you can always delete a reason without affecting previous reports. You can add new reasons too, which you may need to do if people frequently choose "Other" and give their own.

Contributing factors

Each report asks the user to identify any contributing factors, such as "weather", "fatigue", "time pressure" and so on. You can edit this list yourself, adding or removing as you like.

Notifications

The system allows you to set the Reply-To field for emails to a dedicated address you might be using for safety management. If you don't have one, leave this field blank and the system setting is used.

If you like, you can add a BCC address to all emails sent by the safety reporting system. This address is not revealed to end-users, again be mindful if you are allowing people to choose to report confidentially.

The rest of this form allows you to tailor up the emails sent by the system when a report is submitted, updated or closed.

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Training notes

Training notes

This page contains settings specific to the use of training notes. If you are using the system to record student training notes, you can set the operating capacities you want your instructors to use. By default these are PUT, P1 and P1/S.

You can also change the wording on the notification email sent to students when an instructor updates their training record.

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Billing

Billing

The billing system is simple to set up, but is designed to be very flexible and powerful. There are a lot of separate settings which enable you to set up billing in different ways to suit how you want to run your business. Turn on billing at Admin > Billing.

You can accept card payments, giving your customers a quick and easy way to pay or handle this manually. Either way the system can still automate your bookkeeping.

If you want to accept card payments, you can connect your own Stripe account. Stripe handle the card payments and deposit the money into your school bank account. As part of the billing system setup, you will be guided through setting up your own Stripe account and linking it to Flight School Booking.

About Stripe

Stripe is a platform for online payments, founded in 2010. The company charges a low fee per transaction (1.4% + £0.20 in UK) and pays the balance direct to bank accounts. Stripe is now one of the most highly valued startups in the world at roughly $35 billion (September 2019). The company is now in 40 countries covering 70% of the world economy and process hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

Turning on Billing

Get started by navigating to Admin > Billing.

Admin > Configuration > Billing

Activation date

Choose a date from which you want the system to start generating invoices. This is usually either today's date or a date in the future. If an old flight is edited and saved, it will not generate an invoice if the date is before the Activation date.

Currency

This is the currency you want to use for all your invoicing. Be careful to select the correct currency because once the first invoice has been generated, it cannot be changed.

 

Once you click Connect your Stripe Account, you will be taken to Stripe's website. If you already have a Stripe account, sign in and give Flight School Booking access to request payments on your behalf. Otherwise, activate your own Stripe account by filling in details about your business and the bank details you would like your payments deposited in.

Once everything has been completed, you should be returned to your booking system and should see confirmation on the Stripe tab of which account you are linked with, and whether payments are enabled.

Note: Only the school owner (or other users with the owner role) can connect and disconnect from Stripe. This is a security measure which ensures only you can set up which bank account your payments will be sent to, while allowing office staff access to set up preferences, taxes, your price groups, invoice template and notification emails.

Once Stripe is connected, you should see the additional tabs:

Billing tabs
  • Preferences. General billing preferences such as the number of days credit to offer on invoices, whether to offer to remember customer card details for future billing and tax rates.
  • Price groups. A standard price group is created automatically as a guide for setting your own prices. You can edit these fall-back prices and add your own price groups.
  • Invoice template. This tab allows you to customise the way your invoices look, including your address and logo. You can also set the next invoice number the system should use, which can be useful if you are moving from another system.
  • Notifications. As well as email templates for new invoices, payments received or failed, you can define a custom sender and/or have all billing emails blind-copied to another email address.
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Preferences

Preferences

The Payments & tax tab contains preferences and settings that define whether the system is available for certain customers only, or for everyone. It also defines the minimum payment amount you will accept and some suggested top up amounts.

After linking your Stripe account, use this tab to tailor the system to how you want to take payments.

Pay special attention to the following.

Billing system availability

You can enable the billing system for everyone or just for specific users.

When the system is only enabled for specific users, each user's Settings tab will allow billing to be turned on or off. This option should be used if you want to bill some users with this system, and other users on your own system. Turning the billing system off removes the user's Bills & payments tab. It also prevents users from making any payments.

You might decide to roll out billing using this system on a gradual basis, perhaps limiting it to specific users to start with. When you become familiar with the system, you can enable billing for everyone.

Remember card details

Card details are maintained in Stripe, and neither you nor Flight School Booking have any access to view the full card number, expiry date or CVC. Although this might seem like it prevents billing cards automatically, the system can obtain a token from Stripe which represents the customer's card and is only meaningful to your own Stripe account. This is a highly secure method of "storing" card details, since the token is not useful to anyone else should it become known. The token is not visible in the booking system, but it is maintained in the database and linked to your customer.

By default the system is not set to store the token against the customer. This means your customer will need their card number each time they pay money in or pay an invoice.

You can give your customer the option to store their card details (although indirectly), or you can require card details be stored. In both cases, the system will collect due payments automatically on the due date using the stored card. If you choose either of these two options, there is a requirement from Stripe that you explain to your customers the following:

  • The customer’s permission to you initiating a payment or a series of payments on their behalf
  • The anticipated frequency of payments
  • How the payment amount will be determined

 

We suggest something like the following, although you will need to change it to suit your own business.

"You grant XYZ permission to retain access to your card through Stripe for the purpose of taking payments for future invoices for flying, training and any regular payments you have agreed with us. You will be notified about each invoice and can review them before the due date. Payment will only be attempted on or after the due date of any invoice. Invoices for aircraft hire, flight training and any ground school will be issued on the day of the flight or training. If you have agreed a regular payment amount with XYZ, invoices will be generated according to the schedule listed in your Price Group, shown on your Bills & payments tab."

When customers click or tap the Pay Now button on an invoice, or pay money into their account from their Bills & payments tab, they will see the option to store their card for next time and the text you specify. As an example, you can see the text appears above the mandatory text included by Flight School Booking:

Remember card details

Tax settings

If you are required to charge VAT (also known as GST in some countries), make sure the option to include tax on your invoices is turned on. Check the default tax codes, and remove or add others as necessary. You can choose a tax code that your bookkeeping system will recognise, and a name for the tax rate that your customers will see on their invoices.

All prices for aircraft hire, training and regular payments are defined gross (inclusive of VAT), and a breakdown of the tax content is shown on invoices and available for export in CSV format.

If you are not registered for VAT, turn off the option completely.

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Account codes

Account codes

Account codes allow you to keep track of income from different streams. For example, you might want to record your income from training separately from merchandise sales.

Set account codes in Admin > Billing > Account codes.

The codes do not need to match your bookkeeping software.

The following are system accounts which are presented in the Accounting summary report and do not have an account code. These can be mapped to your bookkeeping software on the Bookkeeping tab.

  • FSB Adjustments
    This account acts as a failsafe, and records opening balances and cash movements where no account code was selected.
     
  • FSB Ledger
    This account represents the unpaid balance you are owed by your customers.
     
  • FSB Stripe receipts
    This account represents the payments you have received from Stripe after their fees have been taken off, in other words the net to bank figure.
     
  • FSB Stripe fees
    This account represents the fees taken by Stripe for your card payments.
     
  • Sales
    This default account is used for any sales that do not have their own sales account selected.
     

Depending on how you want to manage your accounts you may have many sales accounts, or just a single sales account. You can set Flight School Booking to track sales in more categories than you use in your accounts package, then map several of them to a single account in your bookkeeping software.

Adding a new account

If you want to categorise your sales, or record payments outside Stripe, add a new account.

When adding an account, pick an account code that makes sense. They do not need to match your books, and do not need to be numeric. But if you're familiar with the account codes in your books you should pick the same codes.

If you are adding a sales account, the name appears in selection boxes when setting up Price groups, Shop products or when creating a custom invoice. Therefore pick a name that is meaningful to people who might be creating custom invoices or setting up these other areas of the billing system.

If you accept payment outside Stripe, you should add an "adjustment" account. For example, if you accept one or more of the following, you should create accounts in Flight School Booking to keep track of them.

  • Cash
  • Bank transfer
  • POS Terminal (card machine)

 

When customers pay using one of these methods see Entering cash payments for details about how to record them.

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Price groups

Price groups

A price group defines your prices for aircraft hire, flight training, ground school and any regular payments such as membership fees or hangarage.

You can define any number of price groups, so for example you might have standard prices defined for walk-ins who you fly with only once or twice. These prices are defined in the price group with the reference DEFAULT and should be your fall-back (highest) prices. Click the DEFAULT link to set these prices first.

Other price groups

You might offer student packages, in which case you can define a new price group for them. The reference is for you to use internally, but it's a good idea to keep it short. For a student package you might give it the reference STUDENT and the name "Flight Training (student package)".

As another example, you might offer a membership scheme to qualified pilots. For these customers, you could link them to a price group that defines cheaper amounts for aircraft hire and an annual or monthly membership fee. The system is very powerful yet (hopefully) easy to set up.

To add a new price group, you can either duplicate an existing one or create a new one from scratch. If you want to create a new price group from scratch, click Add price group shown above the Price groups tab. Or if you have another price group already defined that is close to what you want, click the price group in the list first, then click the Duplicate button. Once done, you should fill in the reference and the price group name.
 

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Revising prices

Revising prices

A customer is linked to a price group (or uses the DEFAULT group). This doesn't mean their prices are fixed forever. Once a price group is in use, you can no longer make changes to it, but you can change prices without moving everyone to a new group. Revising the prices of an existing group keeps the same reference (hence the customers) but allows you to set up a new name and set of prices.

To revise prices, first communicate with the customers about the change in pricing and when it is going to take effect from. Then find the price group in your list and click to view it. Click the Revise button and set up the new pricing structure. When you are finished, click the Activate button to activate the prices from the date you choose.

The system will continue to use the current prices until the planned changeover date. From then, aircraft hire, training and ground school will be billed at the new prices. For regular payments the situation is more complicated, since the changeover date might not be the normal billing date for the regular payment. In these cases, the system will bill the previous as normal, then issue a pro-rated credit and a new invoice for the period to the next billing date.

Here is a worked example of a change in standard pricing we've planned and have already informed everyone about. The new prices take effect in about a month's time from 1st February 2020. Aircraft hire is changing from £120 per hour to £130 and circuit fees are increasing from £5 to £5.50 per circuit. Flight training and ground school are not changing.

The default prices are shown in the list of Price groups. Click DEFAULT to view and make changes. The price group may have been used to create invoices, in which case you can no longer edit the prices and will need to Revise prices instead.

Revise prices

Once the new name is set appropriately, click Save to create the new revision. Existing prices are copied across, but the new price group remains inactive until you activate it.

New revision has inactive prices until you activate the group

To edit the prices of aircraft hire, click the link shown in the Prices table. The new prices can be set. In this example, all our aircraft have the same hourly rate. But you can define prices depending on the aircraft type or for specific aircraft. Each uses a fall-back price which is used if the price field is not set, or if you add a new aircraft and forget to revise the prices to add it to the list.

Prices revised

Once all the prices have been defined, click the Activate button and choose which date to make the prices effective from.

 

 

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Shop

Shop

If you sell things other than flights and training, you can create a price list for these under Admin > Billing > Shop.

Shop products are available when creating an invoice for a customer, see manual entries.

Shop products

To add a product you will need to choose the applicable account and tax code. Therefore, if these have not been set up already, do that first!

Defining a product in this way reduces coding mistakes, ensuring the correct account code and tax code are recorded for each sale. When adding a product, you can choose whether the price can be changed when selling the product or whether it is fixed. This can be useful for prices that are constantly changing like fuel or when you have a special arrangement with certain customers for agreed prices.

When setting up shop products, note the description appears on the customer's invoice. The "item" is used to identify the product internally. If you have a lot of products available, it is a good idea to prefix the item with a code (if you use them) or a category such as "Book", "Gear" and so on. Doing this will save time when invoicing because you can type "book" to show a list of all the books you sell.

If you sell to the public, you might not want to record each customer's details. There is a "quick sale" option which you can turn on under Admin > Billing > Preferences. Once enabled, a new Quick sale tab appears in the primary links area. By default any sales are recorded against a special "CASH SALE" user account.

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Invoice template

Invoice template

Customise the invoices created by the billing system, setting your own logo, address, terms and footer.

You can also set the invoice number to be next used. Every financial transaction (invoice, credit, payment, refund, opening balance and adjustment) has its own reference so you can identify it.

Invoices can be viewed by clicking the link in the email, or by the customer logging in and clicking their Bills & payments tab. An example invoice is shown below.

Example invoice (created manually)

When printed, the header, navigation tabs, logo etc are not displayed.

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Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping

Flight School Booking's billing system integrates with the most popular bookkeeping packages. Configure the link at Admin > Billing > Bookkeeping. If you use another package, you can use the Accounting summary report under Billing > Reports, which provides the same information in a form you or your accountant can manually enter.

People tend to think their bookkeeping software needs to keep track of all transactions in case the tax authority asks to see their records in detail. But it's perfectly acceptable to show summary transactions in the books and individual transactions in Flight School Booking. Tax authorities may ask to see your top ten highest invoices over a particular period. This information will be available in the booking system. Likewise, if they ask to see a full list of transactions, these are all available for inspection too.

Flight School Booking can link directly with the accounting packages below, posting a manual journal every day summarising your financial transactions.

Note: this is appropriate for businesses using the accrual method of accounting for VAT, if your business uses a cash scheme you will need to adjust for unpaid balances using the balance on FSB Ledger at the start and end of the period.

Whose software do you use?

Xero logo

Xero
You can add Stripe as a bank feed, meaning it will import gross payments, fees and payouts daily. Bookkeeping with Stripe set up like this adds another account to the list, making the system seem more complicated, but using Bank Rules the actual process is simplified.
Find out how to integrate with Xero.

QuickBooks Online logo QuickBooks
Flight School Booking will post daily journal entries, separating Stripe receipts and fees into two clearing accounts. When reconciling the bank feed, pick the Stripe (receipts) account for incoming payments from Stripe. When Stripe invoice for their fees, make payments from the Stripe (fees) clearing account.
Find out how to integrate with QuickBooks.
Sage logo Sage
If you use Sage Business Cloud Accounting, Flight School Booking will post daily journal entries in the same was as described for QuickBooks.
Find out how to integrate with Sage.

 

Lastly, if you use another bookkeeping package, find out how to use summary reporting manually.

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Xero integration

Xero integration

This method below is recommended because it most accurately accounts for Stripe fees and minimised the amount of work reconciling transactions. However, there is an alternative method of accounting using Xero, in which you can use Stripe as a bank feed. If you have set up Xero in this way you will need to handle the process differently. See Xero integration(alternative method).

Before you start

Decide on an activation date, from which you will start using summary reporting. All bookkeeping for transactions dated before this date should be handled manually as you're doing now. The balance in the FSB Ledger account should match the balance shown in the full list of transactions in Flight School Booking for the day before. It represents the total amount of money you are owed by your customers; in other words your Accounts Receivable. If you currently have all your customers listed in your bookkeeping package with non-zero balances, transfer their balance to FSB Ledger before you start.

The diagram below shows the standard accounts in light blue and some new accounts in dark blue. These accounts act as clearing accounts for money in transit. This is either from invoices raised and not yet paid by your customers, Stripe fees deducted from payments but not yet invoiced, or payments from Stripe due but not yet paid into your bank account. The "Other clearing" account(s) are shown faintly on the diagram because these are optional, if you only accept Stripe payments you do not need them.

Bookkeeping process using Xero

These clearing accounts can be created by Flight School Booking during set up at Admin > Billing > Bookkeeping or you can create them yourself. If you do, create the accounts as current assets.

If you create FSB Stripe fees, make sure you enable payments to be made from it. This account receives the fees that Stripe will charge when they send their invoice. Use this account to pay the invoice from Stripe (step 2).

Once the required accounts have been mapped to Xero, you should see something similar to the following. You can map any other accounts you want to. If you have created "adjustment" accounts in Flight School Booking for payments made outside Stripe, it is a good idea to prefix these with "FSB" such as "FSB BACS Payments" so you can readily identify them.

Mapping Flight School Booking accounts to Xero

Once all the required accounts and tax rates have been mapped, the export system can be turned on. Any transactions dated before the activation date will not be exported.

A useful feature of Xero is the option to create manual journals as drafts. This will allow you to try out the process and to check the entries without affecting your accounts.

Flight School Booking runs a process overnight to creates manual journals, one for each day's transactions. You can view these on Billing > Bookkeeping.

Billing > Bookkeeping shows the list of batches exported to Xero

The manual journal can be viewed from the link, and also from Xero using the link in the journal as shown below.

Manual journal in Xero includes a link back to view the list of transactions

The link opens the relevant page in Flight School Booking containing the transactions that make up the summary manual journal. This is useful if you need to track down a specific entry contained in a summary transaction in Xero.

The process runs fully automatically, but there are some simple jobs you still need to do, labelled STEP 1 and 2 in the flow diagram at the top of this page.

  1. Reconcile your bank feed.
    If you receive payments outside Stripe you recorded in Flight School Booking, reconcile your bank feed with the other clearing accounts (for example, FSB BACS Payments, FSB Cash and so on). As an example, if you receive cash for a sale, you will deposit this into the bank and reconcile the deposit to FSB Cash.
    Reconcile your deposits from Stripe to the FSB Stripe receipts account.
     
  2. Account for Stripe fees
    Stripe produce tax invoices for their fees each month. Log in to Stripe and you'll find them under Settings > Documents.

    Tax documents from Stripe

    Once you have downloaded the bill, enter it into your bookkeeping package like you would for any supplier invoice. Make a payment from the FSB Stripe fees account. If this is not listed, you may need to enable payments for the account.

 

 

Mathew Waters

QuickBooks integration

QuickBooks integration

Before you start

Decide on an activation date, from which you will start using summary reporting. All bookkeeping for transactions dated before this date should be handled manually as you're doing now. The balance in the FSB Ledger account should match the balance shown in the full list of transactions in Flight School Booking for the day before. It represents the total amount of money you are owed by your customers; in other words your Accounts Receivable. If you currently have all your customers listed in your bookkeeping package with non-zero balances, transfer their balance to FSB Ledger before you start.

The diagram below shows the standard accounts in light blue and some new accounts in dark blue. These accounts act as clearing accounts for money in transit. This is either from invoices raised and not yet paid by your customers, Stripe fees deducted from payments but not yet invoiced, or payments from Stripe due but not yet paid into your bank account. The "Other clearing" account(s) are shown faintly on the diagram because these are optional, if you only accept Stripe payments you do not need them.

Bookkeeping process using QuickBooks Online

These clearing accounts can be created by Flight School Booking during set up at Admin > Billing > Bookkeeping or you can create them yourself. If you do, create the accounts as current assets apart from FSB Stripe fees. This account should be created as a type of bank/cash account because QuickBooks only allows invoices to be paid from this type of account.

Once the required accounts have been mapped to QuickBooks, you should see something similar to the following. You can map any other accounts you want to. If you have created "adjustment" accounts in Flight School Booking for payments made outside Stripe, it is a good idea to prefix these with "FSB" such as "FSB BACS Payments" so you can readily identify them.

Mapping Flight School Booking accounts to QuickBooks Online

Once all the required accounts and tax rates have been mapped, the export system can be turned on. Any transactions dated before the activation date will not be exported.

Flight School Booking runs a process overnight to creates manual journals, one for each day's transactions. You can view these on Billing > Bookkeeping.

Billing > Bookkeeping shows the list of batches exported to QuickBooks Online

Unlike Xero, QuickBooks has no facility to store a web address against a journal, but the Memo field is used by Flight School Booking to store an address that you can copy and paste into a browser.

Manual journal in QuickBooks Online includes a link in the Notes field to view the list of transactions

The address in the memo field opens the relevant page in Flight School Booking containing the transactions that make up the summary manual journal. This is useful if you need to track down a specific entry contained in a summary transaction in QuickBooks.

The process runs fully automatically, but there are some simple jobs you still need to do, labelled STEP 1 and 2 in the flow diagram at the top of this page.

  1. Reconcile the bank feed.
    If you receive payments outside Stripe, reconcile your bank feed with the other clearing accounts (for example, FSB BACS Payments, FSB Cash and so on). As an example, if you receive cash for a sale, you will deposit this into the bank. The total cash waiting to be reconciled builds up in the FSB Cash clearing account as you record payments. Reconciling reduces the balance on this account as it is now in the bank account.
    Payments received from Stripe will need to be reconciled against the FSB Stripe receipts clearing account.
     
  2. Account for Stripe fees
    Stripe produce tax invoices for their fees each month. Log in to Stripe and you'll find them under Settings > Documents.

    Tax documents from Stripe

    Once you have downloaded the bill, enter it into QuickBooks like you would for any supplier invoice. Make a payment from the FSB Stripe fees account.

 

Mathew Waters

Sage integration

Sage integration

* Sage Business Cloud Accounting

Before you start

Decide on an activation date, from which you will start using summary reporting. All bookkeeping for transactions dated before this date should be handled manually as you're doing now. The balance in the FSB Ledger account should match the balance shown in the full list of transactions in Flight School Booking for the day before. It represents the total amount of money you are owed by your customers; in other words your Accounts Receivable. If you currently have all your customers listed in your bookkeeping package with non-zero balances, transfer their balance to FSB Ledger before you start.

The diagram below shows the standard accounts in light blue and some new accounts in dark blue. These accounts act as clearing accounts for money in transit. This is either from invoices raised and not yet paid by your customers, Stripe fees deducted from payments but not yet invoiced, or payments from Stripe due but not yet paid into your bank account. The "Other clearing" account(s) are shown faintly on the diagram because these are optional, if you only accept Stripe payments you do not need them.

Bookkeeping process using Sage

Most of these clearing accounts can be created by Flight School Booking during set up at Admin > Billing > Bookkeeping or you can create them yourself.

Please note FSB Stripe fees should be created via Banking as a "Cash In Hand" account because Sage only allows Stripe invoices to be paid from this type of account. We cannot create this kind of account automatically. To create this account yourself, open Sage and use the Banking tab to add a new Bank Account and set the type to "Cash In Hand".

Add a bank account in Sage

Once the required accounts have been mapped to Sage, you should see something similar to the following. You can map any other accounts you want to. If you have created "adjustment" accounts in Flight School Booking for payments made outside Stripe, it is a good idea to prefix these with "FSB" (e.g. "FSB BACS Payments") so you can readily identify them.

Mapping Flight School Booking accounts to Sage

Once all the required accounts and tax rates have been mapped, the export system can be turned on. Any transactions dated before the activation date will not be exported.

Flight School Booking runs a process overnight to creates manual journals, one for each day's transactions. You can view these on Billing > Bookkeeping.

Billing > Bookkeeping shows the list of batches exported to Sage

Unlike Xero, Sage has no facility to store a web address against a journal, but the Description field is used by Flight School Booking to store an address that you can copy and paste into a browser.

Manual journal in Sage includes a link in the Description field to view the list of transactions

The address in the description field opens the relevant page in Flight School Booking containing the transactions that make up the summary manual journal. This is useful if you need to track down a specific entry contained in a summary transaction.

The process runs fully automatically, but there are some simple jobs you still need to do, labelled STEP 1 and 2 in the flow diagram at the top of this page.

  1. Reconcile your bank feed.
    If you receive payments outside Stripe you recorded in Flight School Booking, reconcile your bank feed with the other clearing accounts (for example, FSB BACS Payments, FSB Cash and so on). As an example, if you receive cash for a sale, you will deposit this into the bank and reconcile the deposit to FSB Cash.
    Reconcile your deposits from Stripe to the FSB Stripe receipts account.
     
  2. Account for Stripe fees.
    When you receive an invoice from Stripe for their fees, enter it in Sage in the usual way. Then record the payment from FSB Stripe fees. This is the reason the account should be set up as cash / bank.

 

Mathew Waters

Manual data entry

Manual data entry

Before you start

Decide on an activation date, from which you will start using summary reporting. All bookkeeping for transactions dated before this date should be handled manually as you're doing now. The balance in the FSB Ledger account should match the balance shown in the full list of transactions in Flight School Booking for the day before. It represents the total amount of money you are owed by your customers; in other words your Accounts Receivable. If you currently have all your customers listed in your bookkeeping package with non-zero balances, transfer their balance to FSB Ledger before you start.

In your bookkeeping package, create the following accounts (ledgers).

Name Category Comments
FSB Ledger Current asset This clearing account represents the Flight School Booking billing system in your books. Any balance on this account represents money you are owed by your customers. It should match the balance shown in the Billing > Transactions on a particular date.
FSB Stripe Current asset This clearing account contains fees and net payments due to you from Stripe. The receipt and fee amounts are known by Flight School Booking at the time of payment, before payments appear in your bank or they issue you with a tax invoice. You will receive a tax invoice from Stripe monthly which reduces the balance of this account, transferring to your Cost of Sales expense account. Depending on your bookkeeping package, you may need to set FSB Stripe to allow payments or change the type to a cash or bank account.
FSB XYZ Current asset Create clearing accounts for your other payment methods you have set up for adjustments such as Cash, BACS or Card Terminals. Reconcile cash deposits, bank transfers etc at your bank to the appropriate clearing account.
Stripe Supplier You may need to add Stripe as a contact if your bookkeeping package only allows bills to be created on suppliers. Bills from Stripe will be linked to your Cost of Sales and an appropriate VAT account. When "paying" the bill, pay from the FSB Stripe account.

The diagram below shows your standard accounts in light blue and the new accounts you've added in dark blue. These accounts act as clearing accounts for money in transit. This is either from invoices raised and not yet paid by your customers, Stripe fees deducted from payments but not yet invoiced, or payments from Stripe due but not yet paid into you bank account.

Diagram showing flow of money from sales to bank account via Flight School Booking's billing system

Once set up, the bookkeeping process should be very much faster than entering the transactions manually.

  1. Add a manual journal
    Once a month, run the Accounting summary report from the Billing tab for the previous month. The report lists the lines to enter into your books as a manual journal entry. If you enter adjustments for cash sales, these are also listed alongside the accounts code you set up under Admin > Billing > Adjustments. Any adjustments should also be to clearing accounts, later reconciled with the bank.

    The following is an example of the report in action, and you will see later how the manual journal is created from it.

    Accounting summary report

    It doesn't matter which date you choose to enter the summary transaction under, but be consistent.

    Example manual journal
     
  2. Account for bank payments from Stripe
    Stripe will pay into your bank account using the schedule you have set with them. Most bookkeeping packages automatically import from your bank account. Reconcile the payments to your bank from Stripe to the FSB Stripe account.
     
  3. Account for Stripe fees
    Stripe produce tax invoices for their fees each month. Log in to Stripe and you'll find them under Settings > Documents.

    Once you have downloaded the bill, enter it into your bookkeeping package like you would for any supplier invoice. Make a payment from the FSB Stripe account.

 

For one cycle, if all invoices have been paid by your customers, and payments from Stripe, and their fees have all been entered, you will find the balance of the clearing accounts are zero. These accounts allow you to record all your sales, tax, fees and payments received into the right places in your books without needing to account for every single one.

What about cash or direct to bank payments?

If you receive cash or bank transfers, you will have updated your customer's account under Bills & payments with an adjustment. Using account codes, you can distinguish how payments were made and you can create clearing accounts for these and reconcile the bank statement with the relevant clearing account.

If you need to refer to an individual invoice, or a customer's account, you can do this from Flight School Booking.

Mathew Waters

Notifications

Notifications

As well as template emails, this tab also allows you to customise which email is used as the sender (reply-to) and which email should receive all outgoing billing emails.

Billing notification settings

Sender (Reply-to)

If you use a separate email address for your accounts, you can specify it here. When invoices and payment notifications are sent to your customers, the reply-to address will be set to whatever you choose here.

This means if a customer replies to an invoice email - perhaps with a query - it will be routed to this email address. This can be useful if you want to keep the accounting side of your business separate from your inbox.

Blind Carbon Copy

By setting your email address here, it's possible to keep copies of all billing emails sent to customers. If (as before) you use a separate accounts email, you might want to put it here at least initially to keep track of the emails being sent by the billing system.

But don't worry that you'll lose visibility into the invoices and payments: you have a dedicated Billing tab at the top of the system which tracks all customer balances, and when customers have overdue invoices they have not paid. From there it is easy to click into the customer's account to view the situation in more detail.

Notification templates

There are email templates which can be used for the following. You can customise these email templates to suit, and use the placeholders such as [invoice:total] to fill in the details specific to the invoice.

  • Invoice was created. When an invoice is finalised, the system sends a notification email to the customer with a link to view the invoice. It does not matter if the customer is logged in or not, the link provides access to view just the invoice and make payment.
  • Payment was received. When payment is received for a customer's account, a confirmation email is sent to the customer showing the amount received.
  • Payment failed. When a payment using stored card details fails, an email is immediately sent to the customer. They can visit a link to make a manual payment, perhaps using a different card. Often a payment will fail because card details have expired, or when a card issuer requires on-screen authentication.

 

There is also an unpaid balance follow-up email, which is part of the follow-up and reminders system. This is triggered when an invoice is overdue and is configured to re-send a number of times. You could add a separate follow-up email after these have finished, perhaps with stronger wording.

Mathew Waters

Vouchers

Vouchers

The system integrates with Stripe for voucher sales. By creating an account with Stripe, you can collect online payments into your school bank account. Stripe fees are the lowest we could find. At the time of writing, if your business and customer is based in UK, Stripe charge a low fee of £0.20 + 1.4%. We think this compares well with the fees charged for using credit card terminals.

Vouchers contain custom fields for the customer to fill in. This makes them ideal presents for family and friends. As an example, the standard design looks like this:

Example voucher showing custom fields filled in by a customer

How to set up vouchers

To configure vouchers, open your booking system and navigate to Admin > Vouchers.

Your address and phone number appear on the voucher, so for these fields, use the airport address and a phone number you would accept bookings on.

Setting up your own voucher products to sell online

Next, the table shows a list of your voucher products. Each one is defined with a unique code called a SKU which is how you identify which vouchers you want to sell from a "purchase" button on your web site.

Voucher products have their own name, flight duration (minutes), selling price and a short description to use when giving the customer a choice of products to buy.

A default product is created automatically when + Add a voucher product is clicked the first time. This product cannot be sold online and contains no duration or price. Instead, this product is designed to allow you to add a voucher manually. You might need this if someone wants a custom number of hours and you agree your own price.

Once at least one voucher product is available, a new tab appears as a Primary Link labelled Vouchers. To view all vouchers sold or to add a voucher manually, use this tab.

To sell online, use the Link maker, which is shown under the list of products if you have already set up Stripe as part of the Billing system configuration. The link shows what you would use as the target URL (for an anchor tag or button on your web site). To focus the link on one product specifically, just remove the other products from the URL. (Each one is separated by a dash -).

Mathew Waters

Reminders and follow-ups

Reminders and follow-ups

The system can be programmed and customised to send reminders and follow-up emails for various jobs:

  • Voucher not used. A voucher was created but has not been used or booked. Typically this reminder would be sent to the purchaser to remind them to pass on the voucher details to the recipient so they could book their flight.
  • Flight details not added. When a flight is booked out, the system expects a flight or an aborted flight to be added. A follow-up email is sent if no flight details have been added after a certain time.
  • Missing training notes. This is sent to instructors with training notes to fill in.
  • Trial flight follow-up. This is sent to users with the "Air Experience" role after their first flight. Most people take a trial flight for pleasure and have not really thought about taking it further to obtain their license.
  • Student flight follow-up. The aim is to keep students engaged and to not leave it too long before making their next booking. Students learn most efficiently when they take regular lessons.
  • Member flight follow-up. Members who fly regularly represent a lower risk to any aircraft hire damage. The follow-up email is designed to remind members to make their next booking to keep everyone current.
  • Next newsletter overdue. If a newsletter is sent, a reminder can be set up to email the author a certain time after. The intention is to keep a regular newsletter being sent to users.
  • Newsletter created but not sent. If a newsletter is created but not sent, this reminder draws attention to it.
  • Membership renewal. Shortly before the user's renewal date they can receive a reminder to contact the office to pay their membership fees. In response, the office should then edit the user's record and set a revised renewal date.
  • Medical renewal. Shortly before a user's medical renewal date, they can receive a reminder.
  • Revalidation. Shortly before a user's revalidation date, they can receive a reminder. This should be set far enough in advance that the user can book any training they need to complete in advance of the revalidation.
  • Overdue balance reminder. A customer has an overdue amount. This is an amount that has been invoiced, and the due date has passed without a payment.
  • Document expiry (user, aircraft or shared). A document's expiry date is approaching. Reminders for user documents are sent to the user, and aircraft and shared document reminders are sent to the office staff.
Mathew Waters

Document storage

Document storage

This page is only available to users with the Owner or Office staff roles. It shows the settings for document storage, including the option to turn it on or off. To reach it, use the Admin tab.

Admin > Document storage

All documents have a "type" and a "class". The classes are already defined and are displayed in Admin as separate tabs as shown above.

  • User documents
  • Aircraft documents
  • Shared documents

 

You can define your own types within a class. So for example under user types you might have "Proof of ID", "Medical certificate", "Pilot licence" and so on. This means when uploading a document to a user's account, you pick the type of document in order to organise the documents.

In addition to organising, the type defines when the document is flagged as nearing expiry.

Edit document type

You can tell the system how many days before a document's expiry you want the highlight colour to change (amber and red).

As the date approaches, the colour changes from green to amber and then to red. Members can book out as PIC if their required documents for the aircraft type are valid, meaning not red. If you hire for overnight stays, you might want to set the point at which the status turns red a few days before expiry. This can help you when making sure a pilot is still legal to fly for the whole period of their trip away. If you do not hire overnight, you might want to set the red status to start on expiry (set to zero days before).

The system will continue to store the document after expiry for a period you specify, up to two years. By default the system will store the documents for 3 months after expiry, by which time any replacement document should have been uploaded (eg new scan of the pilot's licence, medical and so on).

After setting up the document types, you may want to schedule email reminders based on some of the types. To do this, see Reminders.

Mathew Waters

Reminders

Reminders

After you have created document types, such as Licence, Medical, Agreement and so on, you might want to schedule a reminder to your customers so they can plan to get their rating revalidated, medical renewed etc.

You can choose when reminders are sent, the subject and wording.

To do this, use Admin > Reminders and follow-ups.

Add a reminder based on one of the document classes, for example "User document".

When filling in the reminder form, choose the document type from the dropdown list at the top. You may then like to customise the name of the reminder to help you identify it later, for example "Medical renewal". Then pick the number of days before expiry and tailor the subject and email text to suit.

Document reminder and follow-up

You can set the first reminder early, say 60 days. Then set up a few follow-up messages, perhaps once every two weeks until near expiry. You can also create a separate follow-up with different wording to send after expiry. This could be used to let the customer know they can no longer book out your aircraft as PIC, and must submit your required documents to the office.

Mathew Waters

Content

Content

The Content page displays a list of all aircraft and newsletters added to the system. Newsletters are not stored long-term, but Aircraft are only deleted manually and only then if there are no flights associated.

Content page

If you cannot find the aircraft or newsletter in the list, you can narrow down the search using the Title field.

In the example above, you can see a newsletter that has been started but has not been sent (Status is "Unpublished"). This page is a simple way of finding a newsletter you started work on but did not finish.

Likewise, when an aircraft is made permanently unavailable, it will disappear from the list on the Aircraft tab, but you will still find it listed under Content. You could use this to view the log of an old aircraft that is no longer available for future bookings, or to re-activate an old aircraft in the system via its Availability tab.

Mathew Waters