Flying Club software?

[Medic]

Hi All,

I'm doing some research into the software flying clubs use for logging
flights and aircraft usage.

Am really interested in understanding what software clubs are using and
what features are important?

I assume that at some basic level clubs record the flight time, engine
on time and other factors?

Any help/insights greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot,

Mark.

[James]

Medic wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm doing some research into the software flying clubs use for logging
> flights and aircraft usage.
>
> Am really interested in understanding what software clubs are using and
> what features are important?
>
> I assume that at some basic level clubs record the flight time, engine
> on time and other factors?
>
> Any help/insights greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks a lot,
>
> Mark.
>
At Penn Yan flying club we use www.tak-off.com/ as our resevation
system. We looked at myfbo.com but decided no to go with it as it did
not work well with the accounting software. It is much more
comprehensive in what it can do though, and if you were starting from
scratch may be a better for you. When we looked at it we had tak-off.com
up and running and seperate accounts software, and so it would have been
problematic to migrate to other software. Ithaca East hill flying club
uses myfbo.com though.

James.

[Paul Tomblin]

In a previous article, "Medic" > said:
>I'm doing some research into the software flying clubs use for logging
>flights and aircraft usage.
>
>Am really interested in understanding what software clubs are using and
>what features are important?
>
>I assume that at some basic level clubs record the flight time, engine
>on time and other factors?
>
>Any help/insights greatly appreciated.

The Rochester Flying Club <http://www.rochesterflyingclub.com/> uses
ScheduleMaster for booking. We don't use software for logging flights,
just paper tach slips. You can see our tach procedure at
<http://www.rochesterflyingclub.com/tach.pdf>. A club volunteer collects
the tach slips every month and enters them into Quickbooks for billing and
Quickbooks generates the bills and emails them out.

Each airplane has a maintenance coordinator (volunteer) who watches the
tach numbers for that plane to see if it is getting to be time for oil
changes and schedules annuals and takes care of squawks and the like.

--
Paul Tomblin > http://blog.xcski.com/
Did you know that "Gullible" is not in the dictionary?

[Andrew Gideon]

On Sun, 05 Nov 2006 15:23:03 +0000, Paul Tomblin wrote:

> The Rochester Flying Club <http://www.rochesterflyingclub.com/> uses
> ScheduleMaster for booking. We don't use software for logging flights,
> just paper tach slips. You can see our tach procedure at
> <http://www.rochesterflyingclub.com/tach.pdf>. A club volunteer collects
> the tach slips every month and enters them into Quickbooks for billing and
> Quickbooks generates the bills and emails them out.

My partnership <http://flyingclub.org/> also uses schedule master, but we
use the flight logging capability too. This information is imported into
Quickbooks, and this is apparently a very simple process (I've not done
that myself).

> Each airplane has a maintenance coordinator (volunteer) who watches the
> tach numbers for that plane to see if it is getting to be time for oil
> changes and schedules annuals and takes care of squawks and the like.

Since we use the flight logging in SM, and the MX scheduling capability,
SM itself notifies the MX staff when periodic MX is required. MX can be
scheduled by calendar or tach hour. The amount of warning provided can be
customized on a per-MX-task basis.

I cannot compare it to other packages, not being familiar with them. But
SM does a very nice job of helping our partnership run. We've also asked
for the odd customization occasionally, and they've been very
accommodating.

- Andrew

[Paul Tomblin]

In a previous article, Andrew Gideon > said:
>On Sun, 05 Nov 2006 15:23:03 +0000, Paul Tomblin wrote:
>> The Rochester Flying Club <http://www.rochesterflyingclub.com/> uses
>> ScheduleMaster for booking. We don't use software for logging flights,
>> just paper tach slips. You can see our tach procedure at
>> <http://www.rochesterflyingclub.com/tach.pdf>. A club volunteer collects
>> the tach slips every month and enters them into Quickbooks for billing and
>> Quickbooks generates the bills and emails them out.
>
>My partnership <http://flyingclub.org/> also uses schedule master, but we
>use the flight logging capability too. This information is imported into
>Quickbooks, and this is apparently a very simple process (I've not done
>that myself).

Interesting. The people with access to Quickbooks in our club say that
there is no import ability. Or maybe it's the fact that they're using the
web-based Quickbooks.


--
Paul Tomblin > http://blog.xcski.com/
Like the man said: "Nothing good ever goes in /opt."
-- Tim Foreman

[Paul Tomblin]

In a previous article, said:
>I would NEVER want my books held on someone else's equipment, as you
>do with a web-based financial program.

We tried running a Quickbooks server, but according to the guy running it
it had to be a Windows server, and he couldn't get it to work reliably and
some of the officers had problems connecting to it even when it was up.
(I suspect their ISPs were blocking connections to the ports required.)

The problem is that we've got 3 or 4 people who need access to the books,
and so a non-shared version wouldn't work for us.

--
Paul Tomblin > http://blog.xcski.com/
"Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: What more could you ask of life?"
-- Charles Lindbergh, writing about aviation

[Judah]

What's flight logging?

My club uses Schedue Master for booking. I was not aware that they have
flight logging capability.

Can this be used for logging Tach Time? How do you turn it on? Is it part
of the Squawk module? I couldn't find anything at all about it.

Or are you just using one of the numeric user fields to record tach time?

Thanks.

Andrew Gideon > wrote in
:

> My partnership <http://flyingclub.org/> also uses schedule master, but we
> use the flight logging capability too. This information is imported into
> Quickbooks, and this is apparently a very simple process (I've not done
> that myself).
>
>> Each airplane has a maintenance coordinator (volunteer) who watches the
>> tach numbers for that plane to see if it is getting to be time for oil
>> changes and schedules annuals and takes care of squawks and the like.
>
> Since we use the flight logging in SM, and the MX scheduling capability,
> SM itself notifies the MX staff when periodic MX is required. MX can be
> scheduled by calendar or tach hour. The amount of warning provided can
> be customized on a per-MX-task basis.
>
> I cannot compare it to other packages, not being familiar with them. But
> SM does a very nice job of helping our partnership run. We've also asked
> for the odd customization occasionally, and they've been very
> accommodating.
>
> - Andrew

[Andrew Gideon]

On Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:51:01 +0000, Judah wrote:

> What's flight logging?

[...]

> Can this be used for logging Tach Time?

You've answered your own question: "flight logging" is a way to enter tach
(or hobbs, I suppose, if you use that) time for each flight. One
schedules a flight via SM, flies the flight (w/o SM {8^), and then enters
the starting and ending tach times into SM.

> How do you turn it on? Is it part
> of the Squawk module? I couldn't find anything at all about it.

With that, I cannot help you. This has been used since before I joined
the partnership. But I'm sure SM would be happy to answer your question
by phone or email. As I wrote, we've found them to be quite helpful.

> Or are you just using one of the numeric user fields to record tach
> time?

No. SM is very aware of the meaning of the entered times, using them to
determine when hour-scheduled MX is upcoming. Since I expend my effort on
the MX side of things, I'm very happy to have that.

Those on the finance side of things are happy to have the download of
flown hours into Quickbooks, but all I know about that is that it exists.

- Andrew
http://flyingclub.org/