# Work on a customer's aircraft

> Add an aeroplane somebody else owns, record and correct its owner, and bill them for the work. It cannot be booked to fly, and it does not count toward what you pay.

Source: https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/work-on-a-customers-aircraft
Section: Maintenance and squawks. For: Owners, Admins, Dispatchers, Technicians.

On the Aircraft page, open the menu beside **Add aircraft** and choose **A customer's
aircraft**, and put its owner in the same form. It gets its own inspections, squawks and
history, it can never be booked to fly, and it does not count toward what you pay. When the
owner is on the phone and the aircraft is not on file yet, add it straight from
**Open a work order**: type the tail and choose **Add a customer aircraft**.

**Who can do this:** Owners, Admins, Dispatchers, Technicians

Dispatchers and technicians can see the shop, its aircraft and its owners. **Adding** an
aircraft or an owner is an admin job, so if you are a technician the list is yours to work
from and somebody with an admin role sets it up.

## Add the aircraft

1. **Open the Aircraft page**

   `Aircraft` (web console). Once you have a customer's aircraft, the page shows two
   tabs: **Fleet** for your own aeroplanes and **Customer aircraft** for the ones you are
   looking after.

2. **Choose A customer's aircraft**

   Click the arrow on the right of **Add aircraft**, then **A customer's aircraft**. (The main
   part of the button adds one of your own.) If you are already on the **Customer aircraft**
   tab, **Add aircraft** adds a customer's aircraft directly.

3. **Fill in the tail, make, model and meters**

   The same fields as your own aeroplanes, minus the rate and the flying day: you are not
   renting this one out. Put in the Hobbs and tach readings as they are when it arrives.
   Everything that comes due later is counted from them. Then click **Which meters?** under
   the fields and choose what the aircraft has: **Hobbs and tach**, **Tach only** (most older
   singles), **Hobbs only**, or none. The form asks before it adds the aircraft, because every
   job on it asks for the readings of the meters it has, and only those.

4. **Say who owns it**

   **Owner** lists everybody on your roster: pick them, or choose **Add a new person** and
   type their name, email and phone. They are the one billed for the work. It is optional,
   for the call where you do not know yet; co-owners go on the Owners panel afterwards. If
   the email address is already somebody's, the aircraft is added and the form asks whether
   it is the same person, as described below.

5. **Click Add aircraft**

   It appears under **Customer aircraft**, and nowhere your pilots can see.

## Add another owner

Open the aircraft, then `Owners → Add owner` (web console). **Who** lists everybody on
your roster, found by name or by email: pick them if they are already here, for example a member
who owns their own aeroplane, or one of your staff. Otherwise choose **Add a new person**. A name
is all that is required. Add an email and a phone number too: the email is where the invoices
you raise for them are sent, and the phone number is what you will reach for when the annual
turns up something. On the owner's row, the phone number is a link you can tap to call.

The owner goes on your roster, marked **Aircraft owner** and **Not signed up**. They cannot
sign in yet. If you record an email address, AerScheduler writes to them there about their
aircraft, and nothing else (no marketing):

- when a job on it is booked in, arrives, is ready, or its promised date moves;
- when you click **Send to owner** on a job;
- when an inspection on it is coming due;
- the invoices you raise for them;
- when you click **Email how to sign in** on their page (below).

Each of those emails says how to sign up with that address and join, after which they see their
aircraft and answer in AerScheduler. Every one can be turned off from the email itself. See
[See your aircraft and approve work](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/see-your-aircraft-and-approve-work).

The first owner you add is marked **Billed**: the one the work is invoiced to. If the
aeroplane is owned by a partnership, add the others too, and click the star on a row to move
who gets the bill.

For an aeroplane owned by a business or a flying club, record the business as the owner (as the
owner's name, or on the billing address under **Customer details** on their page), and add each
person you deal with as a co-owner, so they hear about the work too.

### When the email address is already on your roster

If somebody on your roster already uses the address you typed for a new person, the form says
so as you type, before anything is saved, with a button to use them instead. The same name as
somebody on your roster is pointed out too; click **A different person** if it is not them. An
address the form cannot see (somebody archived) is checked when you click **Add owner**, and
the form stops and says who, instead of quietly creating a second record or merging two people.

| What it says                                             | What to click                                                                                |
| -------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| _Name_ is already a member with that email address       | **Use _Name_** if it is the same person: a member who owns an aeroplane you work on.         |
| _Name_ is already on your roster with that email address | **Use _Name_** to add the owner you already recorded, for example on their second aeroplane. |
| _Name_ used that email address and was archived          | Restore them from People, or add a new person.                                               |

If it is a different person who shares the address (a partnership's office inbox, a couple
with one email), click **Add _name_ as a new person**. They are kept as two separate people.

## Correct an owner's details

On the aircraft's **Owners** panel, click the pencil on the owner's row. For an owner who has
not signed up you can change the name, email, phone and role, and the change also updates
where Stripe sends their invoices.

If the owner is a member of your school, only the role is edited here. Their name and
contact details belong to them and are changed from their own profile.

You cannot give an owner an address that somebody else on your roster already uses. The form
says who has it.

## The owner's page

Click the owner's name, on the Owners panel or in People, to open their page. It is
deliberately short, because they have no schedule, training or permissions to manage:

- **Overview**: their contact details, and **Customer details**: the billing address,
  whether they would rather get a call, a text or an email, and the shop's notes about them.
  Owners and admins click any of these to change it; technicians can read them. The owner
  never sees the customer details.
- **Aircraft**: what they own with you, which ones they are billed for, and where each one's
  current job stands.
- **Work orders**: the jobs billed to them, open first, with **Open a work order**.
- **Files**: the papers on their account, below.
- **Invoices**.

## Files on a customer's account

The signed work authorization, their insurance certificate, a letter: open the owner's page,
then **Files → Add files**, and choose **Keep to the shop** or **Show to the owner** before you
pick the photos or PDFs (up to five at a time). Owners, admins and technicians add and remove
them; dispatchers do not see this tab.

- A file you **show to the owner** is on their home page under **Your documents** once they
  sign in. Change your mind from the file's menu: **Keep to the shop** hides it again.
- An owner who has signed in can add their own documents (their insurance, their registration)
  from **Your documents**. Those show here marked **From them**. They always stay visible to the
  owner, so the menu offers no **Keep to the shop** for them, and they can remove what they
  added.

Files on a job (the logbook entry, the 8130-3, a photo of a finding) belong on the job instead.
See [Run a work order](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/run-a-work-order).

## The aircraft's details

On a customer's aircraft (and your own), **Airframe, engine and propeller** on its Overview
keeps the airframe's total time, the engine and propeller models and serial numbers, and
notes. Enter the total time once, with the Hobbs reading it was taken at (the tach, on an
aircraft that has only a tach): it is carried forward by the hours flown since, so it stays
current without being typed again. Copy both from the same logbook entry. If the Hobbs on
record is old, the hours flown elsewhere since would otherwise be counted twice. Owners,
admins and technicians change these in place; dispatchers can read them.

## Show the aircraft's papers to the owner

On a customer's aircraft, the **Papers** tab asks **Who can open it** as **Keep to the shop** or
**Show to the owner**, instead of bookers and staff (nobody books a customer's aircraft). A paper
you show to the owner is on their aircraft's page under **Papers** once they sign in. Click
**Keep to the shop** on the paper to hide it again. See
[Aircraft papers](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/aircraft-papers).

## Record the Hobbs and tach

A customer's aircraft flies somewhere else, so its hour-based inspections are only as current
as the last time somebody read its meters. **Hobbs and tach** on the aircraft's Overview lists
every reading: the ones your people recorded, with who, when, a note and a photo of the
meter, and the ones close-outs took.

1. **Click Record a reading**

   On the aircraft's Overview, in **Hobbs and tach**. Owners, admins and technicians can
   record one; dispatchers can read the list.

2. **Enter what the meters say**

   The Hobbs, the tach, or both, in hours (for example 2461.2). Leave one empty if you only
   read the other. Change **Read** if you are entering a reading from another day, add a
   note, and attach a photo of the meter if you took one. A reading dated before the newest
   one on record goes into the list as history and leaves the aircraft's times alone.

3. **Click Record**

   The aircraft's times change to what you entered, and its hour-based due dates move with
   them.

Two readings stop and ask first:

- **Lower than the times on record.** The form asks why. **The last reading was mistyped**
  puts the meters back to this reading and leaves the airframe's total time alone. **The
  meter was replaced** also carries the total time on from the new meter, and the activity
  log records the total before and after. Either way the list marks the reading
  **Correction** and keeps what it replaced. Pick the right one: choosing "replaced" for a
  typo adds the typo's hours to the total time.
- **Past an inspection that grounds the aircraft.** Saving it grounds the aircraft and emails
  your organization, the same as a flight that reaches the due point.

> **Careful:** When a customer's aircraft has not been read in over 30 days, the card says so. Its due
> dates are worked out from the last reading, so an aircraft that has flown 80 hours since
> can show a 100-hour inspection as comfortably in the future.

## Track the job

Open a work order for each visit: who pays, what the owner asked for, when you promised it back,
and where the job stands. Owners, admins and technicians work on jobs; dispatchers see the
aircraft and its hangar bookings but not the jobs. See
[Run a work order](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/run-a-work-order).

On the **Schedule**, a maintenance booking that holds a job says whose aircraft it is and, for
owners, admins and technicians, what they asked for, on the block itself and when you open it.
A grounded aircraft's booking carries a small grounded mark. Dispatchers see the customer and
the grounded mark but not the request. Your pilots never see these bookings at all.

Everything finished on the aircraft (inspections signed off, squawks resolved, jobs completed)
is on its **History** tab, and every bill for it on **Invoices**. See
[An aircraft's history and invoices](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/aircraft-history-and-invoices).

## Bill the owner

For a job, click **Raise invoice** on the work order: it bills the job's labor and parts to
whoever the job names. For anything else,
`Billing → New invoice` (web console), then pick the owner under **Customer**. The
list shows each person's email, so you can see where the invoice will go. Add the labour and
parts as line items and click **Create invoice**. Stripe emails it to the address you
recorded, with a link to pay, the same way it emails a guest.

Things that are different about billing an owner:

- **It is always an invoice.** At a school that uses account balances, a member's charges go
  on their account. An owner has no account they could see or top up, so their bill is
  always a Stripe invoice.
- **Reminders go to the address you recorded.** The daily sweep chases an unpaid shop bill like
  any other, at most once a week and four times in all, and **Send payment reminder** on the
  invoice sends one straight away. An owner who has not signed up is emailed at the address on
  their record, with the invoice's own payment link, which needs no account. An owner with no
  email address on file is never reminded: add one, or print the invoice and chase it yourself.
  See [Chase unpaid invoices](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/billing/chase-unpaid-invoices).
- **They are never grounded** for an unpaid bill. They do not fly with you.
- **Your service fee applies.** It goes on every invoice you raise, and the New invoice form
  shows it as its own line above the total.
- **Sales tax, if you charge it, is line by line.** Mark the labor lines as Labor and the
  parts as Parts and goods, and your school's rules tax each one (in most states, the parts
  and not the labor). An owner who is exempt, for example a nonresident whose certificate you
  hold, can be marked exempt on their page in People. See
  [Charge sales tax on an invoice](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/billing/charge-sales-tax).
- **Instructors cannot bill an owner**, even at a school that lets instructors create
  invoices. Only people who can see the shop can.

> **Note:** If the owner has no email address recorded, Stripe has nowhere to send the invoice. Add one
> on the Owners panel first, or print it from the invoice.

## When the owner signs up

To let an owner see their aircraft for themselves, open their page and click **Email how to sign
in** on **Contact** (owners and admins). AerScheduler sends a short note from your organization
to the address on their record: sign in to AerScheduler, or create an account, with that
address, then join your organization with its code. The button shows while they have not signed
up, you have an email address for them, and they have something to see: an aircraft they own
here, or a job or bill of theirs. Somebody you bill who owns no aircraft here gets a note about
their jobs and bills rather than their aircraft, and their page is marked **Customer** rather
than **Aircraft owner**.

It is not an invitation, and nothing is kept waiting on your side. If you correct their address
later, click it again: it always goes to the address on the record at that moment. One owner can
be sent it twice an hour. If they turned off the emails about their aircraft, nothing is sent and
you are told so; give them the code another way.

If an owner creates an AerScheduler account with **the email address you recorded**,
confirms it, and joins your organization, their record becomes theirs: the aircraft, the
invoices and the history move with them, and the **Not signed up** mark goes away. Nothing to
do on your side, and nobody has to approve them, even if your organization approves the people
who join with its code.

Signed in, they see their own aircraft, the jobs on them and their bills, and nothing else of
yours: not the schedule, your people or your fleet. They can answer what you found, ask for
work, update a customer aircraft's times, attach photos, and pay. They never see your shop
notes, your costs or your markups. See
[See your aircraft and approve work](https://www.aerscheduler.com/docs/maintenance/see-your-aircraft-and-approve-work).
An answer they give shows on the job as a call from them, recorded by AerScheduler.

When yours is the only record at that address, the name on their account does not matter
("Walt" for "Walter Brenner" is fine): you chose the address, and you write to it. When you
recorded two or more people at one address (a family inbox, say), **the name on their account
has to match the name you recorded**, exactly (capital letters and extra spaces aside), so one
of them cannot take over another's aircraft and invoices. Archived owners at that address count
too, and an archived record is never handed over: restore it first.

> **Careful:** If the address is shared and the names differ, nothing is handed over. They join with nothing of
> yours to see, your record of them stays separate, and you will see the same person twice in
> People. Before they sign up, correct the name on your record to match theirs, or ask them to
> sign up with the name you have.

If the owner used to be one of your organization's people, left, and was recorded as an owner
while they were away, joining with the code is a return, not a claim: if your organization
approves the people who join, they wait for approval like anybody else. Rejoining brings back
their old membership with its flying history, and when the name on their account matches the
name you recorded, the aircraft and invoices move onto it. If the record you kept for them holds
anything more than aircraft and invoices, the two are left side by side, exactly as before.

## What is different about a customer's aircraft

|                             |                                                                                                                                                                                                                  |
| --------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Scheduling**              | It takes maintenance bookings and nothing else. Nobody can rent it, train in it, or put a checkride on it, and the server refuses those even if somebody has an old page open.                                   |
| **Your bill**               | It is not counted. Your plan is priced per aircraft you operate, and this one is not yours. A hundred customer aeroplanes in a year changes nothing about what you pay.                                          |
| **Inspections and squawks** | Exactly the same as your own fleet. Annuals, 100-hours, ADs, transponder and static checks: all of it tracks, and all of it reminds.                                                                             |
| **Your pilots**             | They never see it. Not on the schedule, not in the booking form, not in search, not on the People page, and not on the phone. Students, renters and instructors get nothing back for it, including from the API. |

## Aircraft you own but somebody else paid for

A leaseback is one of yours: it flies, it is booked, and it is billed like the rest of the
fleet. Add it with **Add aircraft** as usual, and add the owner on the Owners panel anyway.
That records who owns it without changing anything about how it is scheduled or billed.

## When the aeroplane goes home

Nothing to do. Its history, inspections and invoices stay attached to it, so when the same
tail comes back next year, everything you did last time is still there.

## Common questions

**Will AerScheduler email my customer?**

Only about their aircraft, at the address you recorded: when a job on it is booked in, arrives, is ready or its promised date moves, the findings you send them, inspections coming due, the invoices you raise, and the note on how to sign in when you click Email how to sign in. Every one can be turned off from the email itself, and none of it is marketing.

**What happens when the owner signs up for an account?**

If they sign up with the email address you recorded, confirm it, and join your organization with its code, they are handed your record: the aircraft, the invoices and the history. They then see their own aircraft, jobs and bills, and nothing else of yours. Any name will do when yours is the only record at that address; when you recorded several people at one address, the name on their account has to match the one you recorded, or the records stay separate.

**Why is my customer not getting payment reminders?**

Check that they have an email address on file. An owner who has not signed up is emailed at the address you recorded, with a link to pay that needs no account: by the daily sweep, at most once a week and four times in all, and whenever you click Send payment reminder on the invoice. An owner with no email address is never reminded, and neither is one who turned those emails off; print the invoice and chase it yourself.

**How do I keep a customer's aircraft's Hobbs and tach current?**

Record a reading whenever it comes in: Record a reading under Hobbs and tach on the aircraft's Overview. Hour-based due dates are worked out from the last reading, and the card warns you when a customer's aircraft has not been read in over 30 days.