Flight school revenue reporting

Billed, collected, outstanding — all three, always

These three move independently, and watching any one of them alone will mislead you. Billing up and collections flat means a payment problem, not a sales problem. Collections up and billing flat means you are working through a backlog, and next month will look worse through no fault of anyone. Outstanding climbing while both look healthy is the one that ends badly.

Then cut it by the thing you are deciding about

The same revenue report regroups on demand, because the useful breakdown depends entirely on the question:

By aircraft

Is this tail worth its hangar, insurance, and note?

By instructor

Who is full, who has room, and who needs students?

By customer

Who are your best students — and who has quietly stopped flying?

By lesson type

Does primary training or checkout work actually pay better?

By location

Is the second base carrying itself?

The two leaks worth checking every week

Flown but never invoiced. A flight that never got closed out has unknown hours, so nobody billed it. The aircraft still burned fuel and the instructor was still paid. This is the most expensive report in the building and the one nobody thinks to run.

Invoiced but never paid. Ordinary accounts receivable, except that at a flight school the customer keeps showing up and flying. Overdue invoices sit on the dashboard as a count that opens the list, so the conversation happens at the desk rather than ninety days later.

Close the month without rebuilding it

• Save your month-end configuration as a named view and reuse it
• Share it so the whole school reads one definition of the number
• Pin it to your dashboard as a tile with its own date range
• Export to CSV for the accountant, filters and columns intact
• Or sync paid invoices to QuickBooks Online automatically

Related: the QuickBooks integration, aircraft utilization, and the full reporting guide.

FAQ

How should a flight school track revenue?

Track three figures over the same window, never one: billed (what you invoiced), collected (what actually arrived), and outstanding (what is still owed). A school that watches only collected revenue cannot tell a slow month from a slow payer.

Can I see revenue by aircraft or by instructor?

Yes. AerScheduler groups revenue by aircraft, instructor, customer, lesson type, reservation type, or location — the same report, cut whichever way answers the question in front of you.

How do I find revenue my flight school is losing?

Two places, both invisible on a bank statement: flights that flew but were never invoiced, and invoices that were sent but never paid. AerScheduler surfaces both as counts on the dashboard that open into the exact list of flights or invoices.

Does it handle sales tax?

There is a dedicated tax report showing tax collected by rate and period, so filing does not mean re-deriving it from invoices by hand.

Can my accountant get the numbers out?

Every report exports to CSV with the filters and columns you configured. Paid invoices can also sync automatically to QuickBooks Online as Sales Receipts, so the books stay current without an export step at all.

Who can see revenue reports?

Owners and admins only. Dispatchers, instructors, technicians, students, and renters have no access to financial reports — enforced on the server, not merely hidden in the interface.