We’ve tried to lower the time required to bill members for their monthly flight expense by using a simple 3 step process.
How do you bill monthly flight cost in an airplane shared ownership?
Step 1: Hobbs Record Form
We wanted an easy way to collect flight time by member. So we use a hobbs record form on yellow card stock (see wikiWings 2/16/2016 weblog). It’s easy to spot in the airplane, and helps pilots to remember to log their flight time. That form is used each month to update the Master Hobbs Record.
Step 2: Master Hobbs Record
We track all flight times on a Master Hobbs Record in Excel format. After entering start and end times the total hours are automatically calculated. The Excel “Move / Copy” feature is used to create a new worksheet for the month and it’s renamed for the billing month i.e. June. With a few clicks, we sort by the member’s initials to calculate the total hours flown by pilot for the month.
Sample Master Hobbs Record
| Hobbs Meter | Flight Meter | |||||||
| Date | Initials | Description | Start | End | Hrs | Start | End | Hrs |
| 06/05/15 | CW | THA/JVW/IWS | 1,048.00 | 1,052.10 | 4.10 | 838.60 | 842.50 | 3.90 |
| 06/06/15 | JB | IWS/LBX/IWS | 1,052.10 | 1,053.10 | 1.00 | 842.50 | 843.20 | 0.70 |
| 06/10/15 | X_JB | IWS/SGR (MX) | 1,053.10 | 1,053.80 | 0.70 | 843.20 | 843.50 | 0.30 |
| 06/20/15 | JB | IWS/GLS/IWS | 1,053.80 | 1,055.10 | 1.30 | 843.50 | 844.40 | 0.90 |
Step 3: Invoice Template
The same standard invoice template is used each month. The invoice amount is automatically calculated when the flight time is entered. An email is sent to each member with the Excel Master Hobbs Log and Invoice PDF attached.
We exclude maintenance flights from member billing. An “x” is placed in front of the member initials to denote a maintenance flight which drops it to the bottom of the list when sorting.
This has been a simple low-cost and time-efficient approach for our aircraft shared ownership billing.
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