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New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Mon Apr 29, 2019 5:53 pm
by VegasTim
I was just thinking about the new parking fee system and how it could possibly be streamlined. It appears we have seen a first test run and the amounts are so minor, couldn't we just make it an "expense" in the PIREP along with fuel and crew catering? The system should know when the aircraft arrived and when it departed, I would think tacking on the parking fee inside the PIREP would be far less stressful regarding the shear volume of transactions that are going to be required with the new system billing out by location and date.

Another option would be to just have landing fee's - a one time charge within the PIREP but that defeats the purpose of charging for aircraft that sit parked.

Either/or, the way the new system is being rolled out, owners are going to see a MOUNTAIN of transactions and if their virtual airline tracks every expense like we do, that is going to become a huge time consuming task just to log all the parking fee transactions to the correct aircraft.

I am not against having landing/parking fee's, I just think they should bill out within each PIREP along with other flight expenses.

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Tue Apr 30, 2019 2:10 am
by joefremont
Humm, the issue I forsee with adding it to the pirep is that then pilots will be reluctant to use planes that have been parked for a while and also what to do with aircraft that have not been flown for a month. We tried to limit it to one transaction per fleet/airport and if that proves too much we could reduce it to one per fleet, at least give the option for VA's to select. Right now you can select between airport/fleet or break it out by airport/aircraft, adding a third level won't be too much.

It's coming up on the end of the month so transactions should be generated soon.

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 5:46 am
by Cat
104 billing transactions on the parking fee rollout and some are billed more than once. Any logic or reasoning behind double/triple billings of same aircraft/same airport? I'm trying to sort it all out now .... will add more data when I have it.

Billing Nightmare is right.... wow!

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 7:08 am
by joefremont
We will be doing a deep dive to figure out what the issues are, if major problems are found we will wipe out this months parking fees. If you can point out some specifics that will be greatly appreciated.

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 7:55 am
by Cat
I've got two hours in on it tonight and nothing balances.... there are transactions on planes that have sold and some double billings as well in the transactions section vs the individual aircraft pages. I'll have more complete documentation tomorrow after some sleep.

Some planes that have been parked have no fee's at all - it appears to be more of a landing fee than a parking fee as planes flown the most have the most transactions. It is billing out per airplane and airport ... if individual billing is selected. But I did this so I can cross check all the numbers. As of the last flight we balanced to the dollar before the parking fee dump. Then after all the parking fee data was entered from the aircraft pages, we are off by almost $97,000......

I messaged our CFO, hopefully he can take a swing at it in the morning before his rl job.

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 2:24 pm
by Tilo
Ich wäre auch dafür, wie VegasTim beschrieben hat. Dass das Flugzeug Parken in dem PIREP aufgeführt wird. Dies wäre übersichtlicher und erspart eine separate Abrechnung.

Ach so, sind bei FSA die Parkgebühren gleichzusetzen mit den Landegebühren die reale Flugzeuge bei den Flughäfen zahlen müssen?

Gruß Tilo

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 3:31 pm
by Cat
OK, here's the gory details:

The charges in each aircraft page do not match charges in airline transactions.

104 parking fee transactions in our airline finances/transactions section
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29 overcharges (duplicate transactions) where only 1 transaction is in the aircraft page - $71,453
25 undercharges (fee listed in aircraft page but not in transactions) - $19,522
7 aircraft with no charges at all

It's a mess and almost impossible for us to balance using individual aircraft finances and I have gone through every transaction line by line - 4 pages of them...... red marks are overcharges / duplicates that are charged again in the same period.
In one case, one of our 777's was billed 3 times for $22,278 and it only shows once in the aircraft page N772FV/KLAS parking fee

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Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 4:53 pm
by flugkapitan
I was under the impression I had opted out of this for my airline. Got hit with a massive amount of fees today.

If this keeps up I'm pulling my subscription from FSA...after being with them since around 2006.

Scott

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 5:07 pm
by Cat
Hi Scott,

I wouldn't get too upset too quickly, this has major bugs and I expect a rollback right out of it along with a rethink of the whole plan. :wink:

Looking at the edit VA settings, I don't see any option in Advanced Finance to say NO so that needs addressing too for owners who want to keep things simple.

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 5:29 pm
by joefremont
Cat wrote:
Wed May 01, 2019 5:07 pm
Hi Scott,

I wouldn't get too upset too quickly, this has major bugs and I expect a rollback right out of it along with a rethink of the whole plan. :wink:

Looking at the edit VA settings, I don't see any option in Advanced Finance to say NO so that needs addressing too for owners who want to keep things simple.
I did do some checking into this today, The system is supposed to keep track of when you transfer aircraft between fleets so if you transfer an aircraft from fleet a to fleet b in the middle of the month, each fleet gets billed appropriately, so Cat I took a look at the parking transactions for Fly Vegas any duplicate transactions for the same aircraft/airport/fleet combination. That does not mean the numbers are right, still researching.

As far as turning off Advanced finance you should be able to do so unless you have used one of the features that require advanced finance, like building a maintenance center or leasing out an aircraft. But I see to keep long time members happy I am going to have to have a way to grandfather out of parking some select airlines.

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 6:13 pm
by Cat
Aircraft in question B77L - N772FV was indeed moved to FV Holdings a day or so ago, but it has been billed out 3 times at 22,278 for KLAS parking. What would really help is some sort of transaction # attached to each billing. It is hard to determine if the duplicate postings are actually duplicate billings to the account. I have made the assumption if they are listed in Finances/transactions, they are indeed posted against the general airline account balance. Assumptions however, as we all know, can be dangerous :shock:
From the Aircraft page
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From Finances/Transactions pages
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PS (edit add) - Time I have plenty of so if I can help with additional audits, screenshots, please let me know.... this is not an attempt to discourage the parking fee idea, I'm just showing obvious bugs on rollout 1.

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 9:33 pm
by flugkapitan
Joe,

I have advanced finance and parking set to "no" in the airline settings.

I do not have maintenance centers and I do not lease aircraft.

Scott

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 11:09 pm
by joefremont
flugkapitan wrote:
Wed May 01, 2019 9:33 pm
Joe,

I have advanced finance and parking set to "no" in the airline settings.

I do not have maintenance centers and I do not lease aircraft.

Scott
I have already deleted all your parking transactions and am looking into these other issues.

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Wed May 01, 2019 11:10 pm
by flugkapitan
Thank you!

Scott

Re: New Parking Fee's - Billing Nightmare?

Posted: Thu May 02, 2019 4:35 am
by Cat
I've been working the numbers all day .... the transactions section refers some charges to aircraft no longer owned and has many duplicate charges, yet when I compare the fleet charges (aircraft pages), they come out on top - they do not correspond as one would think they should line for line.

total transaction fee's: $195,760

total fleet parking fee's: $200,611

Number needed to balance the books with FSA overall cash on hand: $201,146

So our only solution at this point is to make a separate spreadsheet for the parking fee's and then add an "adjustment" (fudge factor) to balance the books as the FSA numbers do not add up.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

So going forward, we will turn off individual aircraft parking fee's and just see what FSA charges as a whole and then add whatever fudge factor we need to balance the cash books again. Somewhere, somehow transactions are disappearing into a black hole and not showing up yet still hitting the overall account balance.