Moving a flying club off spreadsheets in eight weeks

In a lot of clubs, the membership secretary has the member list, the chief pilot has the sign-offs, the treasurer has the balances, and the booking diary lives in a fourth file that three people edit. Each works well enough on its own. Put them side by side, though, and they rarely agree on who's actually a member. Moving to club software fixes that, but only if you move the right things once, on one date, and then stop using the old files.

Get the member list, licence and medical dates, forward bookings and balances agreed once, on a fixed cut-over date, then make the old files read-only. Give yourself eight weeks from the first audit to closing the old files.

Most clubs run on several spreadsheets: a member list, a licence and medical tracker, a booking diary, a flying log the treasurer turns into bills, and a balances sheet. Here's how the eight weeks look, counted back from a 1 April cut-over:

1. Find every spreadsheet and who owns it#

Ask each committee member, each instructor and whoever answers the club email what they keep, where they keep it and how often they update it. Then go looking for the copies nobody mentions. There's usually at least one. An instructor's own sheet of student hours, say, or the chief pilot's list of who's signed off on which aircraft, or the treasurer's notes on who owed what before the bank changed.

After the move, each record gets one owner. Members, licences and signed rules go to the membership secretary. Aircraft sign-offs go to the chief pilot. Flights, balances and prepaid hours go to the treasurer. When two sheets disagree later (and they will), the owner decides.

2. Decide what moves and what stays behind#

Move what you need to run the club from the go-live date and archive the rest. Nobody needs five years of booking history in the new system. You need every current member, their documents, their membership dates and one opening balance each.

Where privacy law applies to your club, it points the same way. The laws differ by country:

• United Kingdom and Ireland. Article 5 of the UK GDPR, and of the EU GDPR in Ireland, requires personal data to be "limited to what is necessary", "accurate and, where necessary, kept up to date", and kept in identifiable form "for no longer than is necessary". Ireland's Data Protection Commission adds that retention periods should be set.
• Australia. The OAIC's guidance for sporting clubs says a club with an annual turnover of more than 3 million Australian dollars is covered by the Australian Privacy Principles, and that many smaller clubs are covered for other reasons, for example because they're related to a larger organisation.
• New Zealand. The Privacy Act 2020 applies to social clubs as well as businesses, and its principle 9 limits how long you keep personal information.
• Canada. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner says PIPEDA generally doesn't apply to not-for-profit groups, except for commercial activities outside their core mandate. Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec have their own private-sector laws, and British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act covers not-for-profit organisations, so a club there is covered by it. Elsewhere, ask your club's adviser.
• United States. This guide doesn't cover state privacy laws. Check the rules in your state.

A member who left in 2019 doesn't belong in the new system. Nor does that column of medical notes nobody has opened for years. Archive the old files somewhere access-controlled, write down how long you'll keep them and why, and put the deletion date in the diary.

3. Pick a cut-over date and keep to it#

Choose one date on which the new system becomes the record. The start of your membership year is best, because everyone renews into the new system anyway. Failing that, a month end lets the treasurer close the balances sheet cleanly. Pick a quiet week, usually midwinter, and steer clear of holiday weekends, when the diary is busiest.

On the day, take a final copy of every spreadsheet, put the date in the file name and make the originals read-only. This is the bit we wouldn't skip. Leave one editable and someone will keep updating it out of habit, and then the club has two records again.

4. Clean the member list#

This one takes longest. Set aside more time than you think.

• One row per person. Merge duplicates and split families who share a row. Each pilot needs their own record, login and balance.
• One real email address per person. Shared family addresses and the old work address of someone who changed jobs are the usual culprits. Ask members and fix them now.
• Membership type and paid-to date on every row. Swap any "see note" entries for a real type.
• Leavers removed. Anyone who hasn't renewed and isn't coming back goes to the archive.

If the list has ever been through Excel, check it for these kinds of damage. They're quiet, and you won't spot them by scrolling.

• Leading zeros. Microsoft's documentation says "Excel automatically removes leading zeros". A mobile number entered as a number loses its first zero, and so does any membership number that started with one.
• Long numbers. A long reference number typed as a number keeps only its first 15 digits. Excel changes every digit after the 15th to zero, and it doesn't warn you. If any sheet holds members' card numbers, don't move them, and delete that column from the archive copy too.
• Dates that aren't dates. Excel stores a date as a count of days, so a date column exported without its formatting turns up as plain numbers. In the default 1900 date system, 46477 is 31 March 2027. The order varies as well. Excel's default date format follows the computer's regional setting, so 03/04/2027 is 3 April on a UK computer and 4 March on a US one. Check any date where the day is 12 or less against the document.

5. Check licences, ratings and medicals against the documents#

Take expiry dates from the documents themselves, not from the old tracker. In the month before go-live, ask every flying member for a photo or scan of their current licence and medical, and check each one as you enter it. It's a slog, but it usually turns up dates the spreadsheet had wrong.

Enter one expiry date per document, not one per member. A pilot whose medical runs out in June and whose rating or flight review falls due in September has two dates, and both matter.

In Volanti, licences, ratings and medicals sit on the member record with their expiry dates and a photo of the licence. Staff enter them. Pilots uploading their own licences and medicals Coming soon will follow. Booking rules check licence, medical and membership at the point of booking, so where a rule requires a valid medical, a member whose medical has lapsed can't book until it's updated.

6. Set up aircraft, rates and instructors, and move forward bookings#

Before members can book, the system needs each aircraft with its hire rate and each instructor with the hours they're available. Take the rates from the committee's last decision, not from a price list pinned up somewhere that may have gone stale. If the two differ, the committee settles it before go-live.

Then list every booking already in the diary for a date after the cut-over, and re-enter each one in the new system in the week before go-live. Tell the members concerned. Nobody wants to turn up for a Saturday slot and find the new diary has given their aircraft to someone else.

7. Write the booking rules down before anyone configures them#

Before go-live, the chief pilot and committee should agree a list in plain words, one line per aircraft or type. Something like this:

• Any member with a valid licence and medical and current membership may book the two-seat trainers.
• The four-seat tourer also needs a checkout with a club instructor and one hour on type in the last 90 days.
• Students may book only with an instructor on the booking.

The 90 days is a club rule for the example, not a legal minimum, so set your own. Written down like this, a rule can be checked when the booking is made, rather than by whoever happens to be in the clubhouse. Booking rules for licences, medicals and recent flying covers how to write them and what a booking system can check.

8. Agree one opening balance per member#

Move one figure per member, not the transaction history. That figure is what they owe the club, or what the club holds for them, at close of business on the day before cut-over.

1. The treasurer closes the balances sheet.
2. Prepaid hours, block-hour accounts and account credit are listed separately from money owed.
3. The total of all opening balances is checked against the club's accounts. If they don't agree, find out why before anyone sees a figure.
4. Each member is told their opening balance in writing on the cut-over date, with a date in the first week by which to query it.

That last step matters more than it looks. Talking about money with members is awkward enough already. A wrong figure raised in the first week is far easier to sort out than one a member spots three months later.

9. Collect signatures on the current club rules#

The file of signed rules usually holds several versions and has gaps in it. At go-live, have everyone sign the current version of each document members must sign before they fly (club rules, a hire agreement, a waiver), and keep the old signed copies in the archive.

10. Invite members in waves#

We'd invite members in three waves rather than all on one morning:

1. The committee and instructors, two weeks before go-live. Members will ask them how it works, so they want a head start.
2. A test group of ten to fifteen members, a week before. Include at least one person who dislikes computers. They'll find the confusing bits faster than anyone.
3. Everyone else, on the cut-over date.

Send members a note when you tell them the date. Say what changes, what they need to do and by when, and keep it to one screen. For example:

From 1 April the club's bookings, accounts and membership move to our new system. You will receive an invitation on 1 April. Follow it to set up your login, check your details and sign the current club rules. After 1 April all bookings are made there; the old diary is closed. On 1 April the treasurer will send you your opening balance at close of business on 31 March. If it does not look right, tell the treasurer by 8 April.

11. Close the old files#

Two weeks after go-live, check that nobody is still quietly keeping anything in the spreadsheets. Move the dated copies to the archive, note the deletion date you chose in step 2, and tell the committee where they are.

Going live with Volanti#

In Volanti, each member is invited to the portal, and a guided onboarding wizard takes them through their personal details, so the waves in step 10 come down to whom you invite when. The portal stays closed until they've signed your outstanding agreements, so step 9 happens as part of joining rather than as one more thing to chase. Member management covers member records, membership plans with renewal reminders, licences and medicals, and the audit trail of who changed what.

Once they're in, members use the pilot portal from any device to book and cancel, join a waiting list, see their flight history, and check their balance and statements, with the option to settle the balance online.

If you'd like to talk through your cut-over plan before you start, get in touch.