Owner & admin FAQ
For the people who run the school. If you're setting up for the first time, start with Set up your school — this page is the detail behind it.
Getting started
The first week, and where things live.
Where do I start?
Work through Set up your school — it's the same order most schools follow: add your people, import your flight logs and student roster, then watch test results and run the Part 141 report. If you're on the 30-day trial, that walkthrough is the trial: it puts your own data in front of you instead of a demo.
How is the app laid out?
A top bar (Dashboard, Users, Account) sits above module tabs, and each tab has its own sub-navigation:
- Logbook — your own flying, plus Student Logs for everyone else's.
- Test Prep — exams, student records, and flagged questions.
- School Stats — roster, courses, reports, and imports. Owners and admins only.
- School Settings — Users, Org Settings, and Billing.
Do I have to set anything up before adding people?
No. Accounts work immediately. Branding (School Settings → Org Settings) and your course catalog (School Stats → Course Settings) can be done whenever — though it's worth checking course codes before a roster import, since your spreadsheet should use the same ones.
Users, roles & seats
Adding people, what each role can do, and what a seat is.
What's the difference between creating an account and sending an invite?
Both are on School Settings → Users, and you can mix them.
- Create the account — it exists straight away with a temporary password that you hand over. The person is required to set their own password the first time they sign in, so the temporary one stops working. Best when email isn't configured yet, or you're sitting with someone.
- Invite by email — they follow a link and choose their own password, so no password is ever shared. Invites expire after 14 days, and you can copy or revoke a pending invite from the same page.
What can each role do?
- Owner — everything, including billing. The account that signed the school up. You can't remove the last owner.
- Admin — users, school settings, and School Stats. No billing.
- Instructor — any student's logbook and Test Prep records; can review endorsement exams. No School Stats, no user management.
- Student — their own logbook and their own exams.
Who counts toward my seat limit?
A seat is a login, and each role draws on its own allowance — so the number in your plan's name only ever means students who sign in:
- Students — the headline number (10, 25, 50).
- Instructors and admins — their own separate allowances, which grow with the plan. They never consume a student seat, but they aren't unlimited either; the per-plan numbers are on the pricing page.
- Owner — always exactly one, never counted.
- School Stats student records — never counted, and never limited. A record on the School Stats roster is not an account: nobody signs in with it, so it costs no seat. A school on the smallest plan can hold hundreds of student records and report on all of them in Part 141. Only give a student a login when they need the Logbook or Test Prep themselves.
What happens when I hit a seat limit?
Adding another member in that role is blocked, with a prompt to upgrade — running out of instructor seats doesn't stop you adding students, and vice versa. Seats are checked when you add someone, so you're never cut off mid-month for growing: you simply can't add the next person in that role until you upgrade or free a seat by graduating someone.
Someone can't sign in — what do I check?
In order:
- They're using your school's address (yourschool.flightschooltoolbox.com/login), not the main site.
- If you invited them by email and email isn't configured for your school yet, no message was delivered — copy the invite link from the Users page and send it yourself.
- If you created the account, they need the temporary password and will be asked to change it on first sign-in.
Graduating & removing students
Freeing a seat without losing the record.
How do I free up a seat when a student finishes?
Mark them for graduation from the Users page. The seat is freed immediately and they drop off your active rosters, but nothing is finalized for 30 days — you can reinstate them within that window if they come back for another rating.
What happens to their records at the end of that window?
Their school-tagged flights are written to a CSV archive your school keeps, their Test Prep attempts are snapshotted, and the membership is closed. Their flights then return to being their own personal logbook — a graduate keeps their flying history, and your school keeps its exit record. The archive is downloadable from the same Users page.
Does removing a student delete their School Stats record?
No, and this is worth understanding: the School Stats roster is made of school records, which are separate from login accounts. Removing an account doesn't remove the student from your reporting — which is what you want, because a graduate still counts toward Part 141 numbers. To stop seeing a former student in day-to-day lists, use the Status filter on School Stats → Students rather than deleting the record.
Importing & exporting data
Getting your history in, and taking it back out.
Can you import our data for us?
Yes — this is part of the guided trial. Send your files to support@flightschooltoolbox.com and we'll load them: logbook CSVs (one per pilot, named or listed so we know whose is whose, and say which app they came from) and your student roster spreadsheet. The roster doesn't have to match our template — if your format is close, we'll map it.
Which logbook apps can we import from?
ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot, LogTen Pro, and Logbook Pro are detected automatically; any other CSV can be imported as a generic file, with a column-mapping step so you can point each column at the right field. Files are parsed in the browser and previewed — with the detected source, flight and aircraft counts, and any warnings — before anything is saved.
Can I import a student's logbook for them?
No — and it's a real limit rather than an oversight. A flight belongs to whoever is signed in, so importing from your account would put the student's flights in your logbook. Either have each pilot import their own file (Logbook → Import/Export → Import), or send the files to us and we'll load them against the right accounts. You can always view any student's logbook from Logbook → Student Logs.
Is it safe to import the same file twice?
Yes, in both modules. Logbook imports skip duplicate flights. School Stats matches students and enrollments on Student ID, then driver's license, then email — so a re-import updates the record instead of creating a second one. That means you can keep maintaining your spreadsheet and re-import whenever it changes.
What does the roster import need?
Download the CSV template from School Stats → Import/Export — it has the exact headers and an example row. Only First Name and Last Name are required; everything else is filled in where you have it: student ID, contact details, course code, enrollment status, ground/flight FAR part, start and graduation dates, and the milestones (knowledge exam, FOI, pre-solo check, first solo, mock checkride, checkride) each with date, result, score, and examiner. CSV or Excel (.xlsx), up to 5 MB.
What does Preview actually do?
It's a dry run — nothing is written. You get the counts that would be created or updated, plus every row that would be skipped and why. Fix those in your spreadsheet, preview again, and only then commit. Warnings are different from errors: a warning row still imports.
How do we get our data back out?
- Logbook — a generic CSV with every field, or a LogTen Pro CSV (the page carries LogTen's own import steps). Each pilot exports their own from Logbook → Import/Export → Export.
- School Stats — Download roster CSV on School Stats → Reports: one row per student, course, and test attempt, honoring the date range you've set. (It lives on Reports, not on the Import page.)
- Print / PDF — experience summary, printable logbook, insurance snapshot, and the IACRA / 8710 grid, under Logbook → Reports.
Do simulator and training-device hours count as flight time?
No, and the Logbook is deliberate about this: FFS / FTD / ATD time is logged in its own fields and is excluded from every flight-time total. Device hours are reported separately, in the same columns FAA Form 8710-1 asks for. If your previous logbook rolled sim time into totals, expect your totals here to be lower — and correct.
Test Prep records
Watching student progress and endorsements.
Where do I see how students are doing?
The Test Prep page itself is your student roster: every student with their practice and endorsement exams, the endorsements they've earned, and when they last logged in. Open a student for their endorsement report per course, every completed exam, and a link into the exam itself, question by question, exactly as they saw it.
How do I add Instrument or Commercial for a student?
You don't need to — every student already has all three courses: Private Pilot, Instrument Rating, and Commercial (SEL). There's nothing to assign or switch on. Students pick a course with the buttons at the top of their Test Prep page, and each course keeps its own practice history and endorsement progress. You won't see those buttons yourself, because staff don't take exams — your Test Prep page shows the roster instead. To follow a student's Instrument or Commercial work, open them from the roster and pick the course on their record.
How does a student become endorsement-eligible?
Their most recent 3 endorsement exams in a course must all be at 80% or better. An endorsement exam is 100 questions. Because it's the most recent 3 that count, a later failure moves a student back out of eligibility — it isn't a badge they keep. You don't have to track it by hand: every time a student completes an endorsement exam, you and your instructors get an email with the score and their standing; the Students table lists the endorsements each student has earned; and their record opens with an “Endorsements passed” banner once they qualify. The endorsement report is printable for your records.
How is a practice exam different?
Practice is study: 100 questions by default, with 70% as the guide mark, and students can resume or discard an unfinished one. Practice attempts never make anyone endorsement-eligible — only endorsement exams do.
Who gets the endorsement exam emails?
You, every admin, and every instructor at your school — one email each time any student completes an endorsement exam, passed or failed. There is no per-person setting and no way to route them to one instructor: the app doesn't assign students to a particular CFI in Test Prep, which is the same reason all staff can see all student results.
Practice exams never email. If a busy school finds the volume heavy, say so — narrowing it (only passes, say, or only the exam that makes a student eligible) is a small change, but the default is to tell you about the failures too, since those are the ones worth catching early.
Can staff review the actual questions a student got wrong?
Yes. Staff can open any student's endorsement exam and review it question by question. Students themselves can review their practice exams but not their endorsement exams — an endorsement is FAA-facing, and letting a student study the exact exam that endorses them would undermine it.
A question looks wrong.
Students flag it while reviewing; flags collect on Test Prep → Flagged questions for your staff, and we review them against the canonical question bank. Flagging doesn't change anyone's score.
School Stats & Part 141
Records, pass rates, and the report an inspector asks for.
How is the School Stats roster different from my user list?
The user list is accounts — people who sign in. The School Stats roster is school records — everyone your school trains and reports on, whether or not they ever had a login. That separation is what lets you report on historical students you've imported from a spreadsheet.
What does the FAA Part 141 report show?
Two first-attempt pass rates and a headcount:
- §141.5(d) — an 80% first-attempt pass rate, required for knowledge tests and practical tests. They are judged separately, so both bars must clear; a course with a rate for one and nothing for the other simply hasn't been tested there yet.
- §141.5(e) — at least 10 different people graduated in the window (distinct students, not enrollments).
What period does the report cover?
Your reporting start date, which you set once and which then sticks for your school — a 141 school reports from a fixed certificate date, not a rolling window. The window selects graduations, not test dates: a student who graduated inside the window has their first attempts counted whenever those tests happened.
Why are ground and flight tracked separately?
Because a student can be Part 141 for one and Part 61 for the other, and mixing them misreports both. Each enrollment carries its own ground FAR part and flight FAR part plus its own graduation date — the knowledge test is judged by the ground part, the checkride by the flight part. FAR part lives on the enrollment, not on the student, so a student can be 141 on one course and 61 on another.
A student is missing from the report.
The likeliest cause is a missing graduation date: an enrollment with no graduation date and no passed terminal test for that part is out of scope, so a student mid-course doesn't appear. Where a graduation date is blank, the report falls back to the earliest pass of that part's terminal test (checkride for flight, knowledge exam for ground) and marks the row so you can see it was inferred. Filling in the real dates is always better than relying on that.
We run a course that isn't a Part 141 approved curriculum.
Mark it as not FAA-reportable in School Stats → Course Settings and its tests stay out of the 141.5(d) rate. Sport Pilot ships this way by default — Part 141's approved-curriculum appendices don't include a Sport Pilot certification course.
Are end-of-course tests included?
Not currently. The report covers the knowledge-test and practical-test halves of §141.5(d); end-of-course and special-curricula end-of-course tests aren't tracked, and the report says so in a footnote.
Trial, plans & billing
What you're on, what it costs, and what happens if you stop.
What's in the trial?
30 days at 50 student seats, with no card on file — there is nothing to auto-charge, because we never took a payment method. Every module is on: Logbook, Test Prep, and School Stats.
What happens on day 31?
Access pauses until you choose a plan. It does not silently drop to the free plan — a school that trialled with 40 students would then be running 40 students on a 1-student plan, which helps nobody. Nothing is deleted: choosing a plan restores everything exactly as it was. Export your School Stats roster before the trial lapses if you want a copy in hand — the logbook export stays reachable after a lock, but the roster CSV doesn't.
What do plans cost?
Plans are sized by student seats, with instructors and admins always included on top. Current amounts are on the pricing page. There's also a free plan with a single student seat, which never expires — useful for keeping the school open while you decide.
Who can buy or change the plan?
Only the Owner, from School Settings → Billing. Admins manage people and records but never the subscription. There is no personal or individual plan — FlightSchool Toolbox is sold to schools, and every account belongs to one.
What if we cancel?
Your data is never deleted. A cancellation starts a 15-day grace period — you keep working, with a countdown shown in the app, and the owner can export everything. After that the suite locks with the data preserved; re-subscribing restores full access.
Email, privacy & support
Delivery, isolation, and how to reach us.
Our invites don't seem to send.
Email delivery is configured per deployment, and until it's switched on nothing goes out — that's a configuration state, not a broken invite. The invite itself is still valid: copy its link from the Users page and send it however you like. Same for the temporary passwords, which you hand over directly anyway.
Can another school see our data?
No. Every query is scoped to your school, and staff drill-ins check both the role and that the student belongs to your school. Your students, logbooks, and records are visible only to your own staff.
Who at our school can see a student's logbook?
Any staff member — owner, admin, or instructor — can view any student's logbook and test records. That's deliberate: a student shouldn't have their progress hidden from the instructor covering for someone else. Students see only their own.
How do we get help?
support@flightschooltoolbox.com — including for data imports, which we're happy to run for you. For your own students and instructors, you're the first line: you can reset roles, re-issue invites, and see everything they see.
Still need help?
For account or access questions, your school administrator can help fastest. For anything else — including data imports — reach the platform team.