If you are moving to Flight School Booking from another system and have customers who have already paid membership fees, setting up their billing account involves a few more steps than for new customers.
We'll assume you have already defined a price group for students and have created a student user in the system. If you have not set up a price group for students yet, see Admin > Billing > Price groups.
All new users are created on the DEFAULT price group, so the student will not have any membership fees so far.
Click Change price group to choose which price group this customer will be using.
When choosing a price group you can set the date at which the prices are effective. Typically you would leave this set to "Today".
What are the other options for?
- Today
Strictly speaking this is also a backdated change, and any invoices for flights taken today are credited and re-invoiced at the new rate. - A date in the future
If the customer can be safely left on your standard prices until the future date you can choose it here. This is suitable for a defined "go live" date that coincides with when membership fees are normally collected, or when you agree with a customer they will become a member on a specific date in the future and start paying fees from then. - A date in the past (backdated change)
Normally not used. If a customer has been on the wrong price group for a number of days, you can back-date the change and the system will credit any flights, training sessions and so on before re-invoicing at the rates defined by the price group you choose.
The system offers an option to set the customer's opening balance within the first six months of using the billing system. This automates the process of onboarding existing customers who may have an outstanding or pre-paid balance with you.
When a price group includes membership fees, an invoice is created to cover the remainder of the period until the next due date. (Due dates are defined in the price group under Admin > Billing > Price groups).
Opening balance
The system offers a simple way to migrate the customer's balance. This option is only available when first setting the customer's price group and only for a few months after the billing system is turned on.
When setting up an existing customer, you will need to know their up to date balance. Therefore you should make sure you have already accounted for this in your existing system, whether it be a simple spreadsheet or a full bookkeeping package. If the customer has recently made payment, check this has already been accounted for to ensure you have an accurate balance.
In this example, the customer has pre-paid for a block of flying lessons. For people with an agreed number of hours, work out the balance as:
balance = (flying rate on the price group) x (number of hours remaining)
When the price group is assigned, the system invoices the customer (silently) and applies a credit for the same amount. The invoice allows the system to keep track of the period the customer has paid membership fees for, and the credit reverses this transaction financially. The opening balance hides these previous entries from your customer's bills & payments tab.
