With the ongoing pilot shortage, we understand that more and more flight schools are offering accelerated flight training options to their student pilots.

In efforts to support the uplift in accelerated training programs, our team has developed a way for flight school operators to sell instruction hours, aircraft hours, as well as products and services in bulk that will entice new student pilots, while delighting the ones you already have by allowing them to focus on the flying, not the finances!

Introducing – Billing Packages

‘Billing Packages’ is the solution to bundled pilot program offerings that are customized specific to your operational needs and billed directly within Flight Schedule Pro. From Private Pilot to Career Pilot, students can purchase a package that fits their training goals. The payment(s) will then be treated as credits on their Account Balance and subsequent invoices for items included in the package deduct funds from that account balance. This simplifies the invoices customers are concerned about and focuses them instead on their usage of hours and overall training progress. Your school as well as your student pilots can track the usage of package items, with clear visibility into what was purchased vs what is remaining.

Billing Packages Features

• Ability to create new billing packages and view the details of created packages.
• Ability to invoice for a package as a whole, as well as line items included in the package. Item invoices utilize the specialized package rate.
• Ability to view a list of customers who have purchased a package, the details behind the purchase, and the remaining balance.
• Dashboard widget for customer accounts that shows the hours purchased vs hours remaining.
• Ability to transfer hours from one “bucket” into another if a customer is running short and needs additional hours to complete their training.
• Reporting for packages that can be joined to other reporting analysis grids.

How Can Billing Packages Accelerate Your Flight Operation?

Imagine a world where you didn’t have to chase students for payment. Billing Packages can take you there! Predictable income is a huge stress-reliever and should be a priority for any healthy flight ops. By offering pilot training packages, you not only better understand your operation’s overall revenue goals, but student aviators are also committing to your training program long-term. This ultimately helps you escape the trap of moving from one student who doesn’t complete their flight training to the next and when students are committed to a package, they’re likewise less likely to no-show: even if they do, you’ve ideally already been paid.

How Can Billing Packages Help Your Staff?

Revenue will always be your most important metric when running a business, but you can’t improve your bottom line without the people who are there every day keeping the wheels turning. Billing packages make it so much easier for your scheduling staff and CFIs to do their job efficiently and effectively. By utilizing this new feature within your billing processes, flight school operators unlock the ability to drill down and gain clear insight into how many customers have purchased a specific package, view the details behind each purchase, plus uncover the remaining balance each customer has left within their purchased pilot program in one view!

How Can Billing Packages Improve the Student Pilot Experience?

As we have already mentioned above, your students need to be fully focused on flying, not finances. Fixed and predictable pricing means no surprises on their end. Just like your flight op prefers predictable income, students don’t want to deal with any surprises when it comes time to pay for training. They know exactly what they’re paying for with no add-ons or hidden fees related to flight training and that brings peace of mind, which is something we can all use.

Packages and upfront charges guarantee just that. Additionally, this gives your students some much-needed flexibility based on their personal needs. Offering multiple packages and different pricing tiers means that you can appeal to a variety of student pilots regardless of their budgets.

Next Steps

If you are actively subscribed to Flight Schedule Pro’s Billing Hub, jump over to our  Billing Packages Help Center Article. This will walk you through how to build your custom pilot packages step by step!

Do you need Billing Hub turned on for your company? Let us know by emailing fsp.support@flightschedulepro.com