Setting up Financial information in SkyManager is a two-step process. First, charges are created for Aircraft, Instructors, merchandise, etc, then those charges are associated with one or more persons or objects. This guide will take you through the creation of charges, the grouping of charges, and the assigning of charges to people and aircraft.
1. Creating Financial Charges
From the logged-in Home Screen, you the Administrator will first click on “Financial Tools” under the Administrative Tools on the right side of this screen:
You will then see this next screen:
This screen is the default view of the Financial tools page. On the top left is a “Credit Card Transactions” button. If an organization wishes to process Credit cards, paying members can enter there data and it will be recorded here. If you wish to actually process Credit cards thru SkyManager, contact us about setting up your payment gateway.
The next button down on the left is “Process Dues”. This button is set to work monthly, and the schedule can be set with reminders.
Then comes the main body:
Default items are listed: A Parent Category of “Deposit” and 3 child categories: “Cash”, “Check” and “Credit Card”. The amounts are shown in negative as is standard accounting practice. Negatives are to the individuals credit, and positive numbers are charges to the organization’s credit.
Now lets build 3 common examples that any organization will need: Rental charges, Item charges, and instruction charges. Click the “add” link on the screen:
On this template we will add a new charge to SkyManager. First we must decide if this charge will be a standalone charge, or if we need to create a “Parent Charge” category. Lets assume for this example that this is a standalone item, and it will be aircraft rental charge for a sole PA-44 Seminole in an organization. As you can see we’ve added data for the Seminole rental: its chargeable, $250.00 per hr, no tax, and no to inventory. Click “Save Category”.
Now the PA-44 Rental charge appears for use in SkyManager.
Important note:
This charge MUST be associated with the Seminole aircraft asset in order for the accounting function to work. This is discussed below.
Now lets add an item for sale: A Sectional chart.
Again click on “add”
Here we’ve entered the Description, clicked “Chargeable”, the cost, some sales tax, and then by clicking the Inventory drop-down over to “yes” weve have two additional fields: one for quantity on hand, and another reorder reminder amount. Click on “Save Category”.
And now our Sectional chart appears including applicable tax.
Now lets add some Instructor charges, and tie them together under a Parent Category. Lets create a financial Parent Category for Instructor Bob Jones.
Click “add” and then the first step is to UNCHECK the “Chargeable” box, as seen in the images above. That will give us this reduced field view:
If you have different instructors, with multiple rates, it is recommended to make a Parent category for each instructor, or entity, you wish to have charges for. Here we have entered “Bob Jones Instruction”. Click “Save Category”
Now “Bob Jones Instruction” is added as a category, no no charges are associated with it yet. Click on “add” to add a charge under Bob Jones Instruction:
Like before with the Seminole rental, or the Sectional chart, we have added our data. But the key difference here is that we selected “Bob Jones Instruction” under the “Parent Charge” and then saved it. Below is the result:
Now lets repeat the above, and add Flight Instruction, $40, and Instrument Instruction, $45. Below is the result:
To review, to create a group of charges under one heading, you first “add” a charge as Parent Charge Category by unchecking the “chargeable” check box, then saving the name. Then you “add” again and add your charge items, but also select the name of the Parent Charge Category that you created.
Member Dues Note: If your organization will charge dues, we recommend creating the dues in the same format as the above “Bob Jones” example. Create a Parent category called “Dues” then put each dues level in as a subcategory, unless your organization has only 1 dues level
2. Associating charges made in Financial tools to Instructors or Aircraft in SkyManager:
Now that you have created your charges in SkyManager, they must be associated to their respective counterparts within the system. With the above examples of Bob Jones, and the Piper Seminole, let review how to associate these new charges with the Instructor, and the aircraft.
From the home screen, click on “System Configuration”, then click next on “Aircrafts”. We will next see the below screen of all the aircraft on this particular SkyManager site, including groups of aircraft:
Click on “edit” next to the PA-44 Seminole in the Ungrouped Aircraft area to bring up the individual aircraft’s window. Scroll down to the drop down field that says “Rental Charge”:
Your field should now be populated with the newly-entered Rental charge we established in Financial Tools:
Select the appropriate charge, then scroll to the bottom of the menu, and click “Save Aircraft”. Now when the PA-44 Seminole is scheduled for flight, the appropriate rental charge that was established will be charged.
Now lets associate the Bob Jones Instruction charges that we entered above. From the Home Screen, go to the “Administrative Tools”, and click on “System Configuration”. On the next screen, click on “Instructors”.
The following screen should appear. Click on “edit” next to Bob Jones’ name:
The following Instructor Charge window will appear. Use the “Instruction Charge” drop down to select the “Bob Jones Instruction” Parent Category. By selecting the Parent Charge Category, SkyManager will know to provide the choice of any of Bob Jones’ Instruction charges. This is presented at “check in” of the aircraft, or ground instruction, not at the reservation process. Be sure to click “Save Instructor”.
Now that we have 1) created and associated a Rental charge for the PA-44 Seminole, and 2) created and associated a flight Instruction charge for Bob Jones, lets take a 1 hour flight that also had 30 total minutes of ground instruction (pre and post flight time). The flight was dispatched, and checking back in. Here is what that screen might look like:
First, you can see that SkyManager knows to offer all of Bob Jones’ flight charges that are possible, by providing multiple drop down boxes. Here we have entered 1 hour of regular flight instruction, but also ½ hour of ground instruction. Then we will click on “Complete Check in” and be taken immediately to our Account Statement:
Here on our Account Statement, we now see that we have a 1 hour PA-44 rental charge, 1 hour of flight instruction, and 30 minutes of Ground Instruction. The aircraft and Instructor are both named, and a total for the flight is tallied up. The account running balance is then displayed on the far right.
Finally, you may wish to add an item that was purchased from your organization, like a flight bag, log book, or a sectional chart. Since we added a sectional chart, lets add that purchase to this invoice. Click on “add” to the far left of the “Invoice 44” entry, next to the date.
The following window will appear:
On this page you simply select the item from your drop down list of charges previously entered. In this case we select the Sectional Chart. The price self-populates, then we just need to enter a quantity, and Comment, if any. Click “Add Transaction”
Now when we look at the final invoice, we see all associated parts of the flight: Aircraft, instructor, purchase(s), and associated charges. The final running balance is on the far right (-$638.69). Links are provided to print a receipt (receipt set up for standard receipt printer), and if you are an Admin user, the “edit” link will also appear.