Adding a load

1. Click the grey "Add load" button in the top left of the screen. The "Add load" box appears, with the date listed at the top, just in case you've been navigating betweeen different days.
2. Some information may already be filled in for you - aircraft have a default number of slots, and if you've already flown loads using a plane today other details might be filled in.
3. Once you're happy with the options, click the green "Add load" button at the bottom of the box.
4. The box will stay open, but in the background you should see a new load appear in the Manifest view. The box is left open in case you want to add multiple loads; click the "Add load" button as many times as you'd like to create more loads.
   • Subsequent loads in the same aircraft will be numbered sequentially.

The jump list

The blue list on the right of the screen is the jump list. This is used to see upcoming jumpers across categories of experienced, student and tandem. Depending on the jump type extra information may be shown about the jump - for tandem skydivers this includes weight and video options, for other categories this may include a specific jump description.

Many jumps in the jump list will be solos, however groups can also be shown in the list. Groups will be clearly indicated with a line drawn around the whole group, rather than just around a single name.

The jump list is ordered in order jumpers are added to the list, except for tandems where the order may be altered on the "Tandem" meny on the left.

Add solo skydivers

Ground Control considers everybody except tandem passengers as solo skydivers. It implies they have had at least minimum training to exit an aircraft not attached to another skydiver.

The normal way for a solo skydiver to be manfiested is in two stages. In the first stage they are added to the Jump List. THe second stage is moving them from the list to a load.

1. Click the green "Add skydiver" button at the top of the Jump List. The "Add skydiver" box appears.
2. Begin typing the name of the skydiver in the "Skydiver" box. Either name can be typed and the system will search for possible matches.
3. When you see the name of the skydiver you want in the list below this box, click it.
   • If you do not see the name, click "New skydiver" and see creating a new skydiver
4. A new list will appear under the current box with options for changes you can make to this skydiver.
   • Account payment
   • Edit skydiver
   • Add rig
   • One link for each current rig a skydiver owns
5. Below this list may be messages or problems relating to manifesting this skydiver
   • Items for a manifester to note are listed in black text
   • Items which will prevent a skydiver from being manifested will have red lines around them
6. Choose a type of jump. These are pre-set items which can be changed in Jump Types
   • The type of jump chosen may alter the two boxes below which list price and altitude
7. The price of the jump is the amount which will be removed from the skydiver's account once the load they are placed on has "taken off" (been set to blue)
   • Depending on your system settings a jumper might be allowed to jump if they have 0 or less money in their account. Their account will always have the jump price taken off it, even if it goes negative.
8. The altitude does not alter the jump itself, but load print-outs will be ordered in terms of altitude.
9. The section marked "Staff requirements" indicates that centre staff may be involved with the jump. This may include instructors, coaches or camera people. If necessary extra slots will be added to the skydiver once they are placed on a load.
10. The section marked "Prices" shows optional additional charges that can be applied once the jump has taken place. This could include kit hire/gear rental, a coaching fee, a repack fee, or memberships.
11. Once you're happy with the options click "Add skydiver"
12. The button will fade out and back in to indicate success and the skydiver is added to the list. The box will remain open so that you can manifest multiple skydivers - the name will be removed so you don't accidentally add the same skydiver twice.

Putting jumpers on loads

• To place a jumper on a load, simply drag & drop their name from the Jump List to the correct load. The load will highlight red when you're over it.
• If there are more loads than can fit on a screen, you can drag the load view left or right.
• To manifest one or more jumpers without using drag & drop you can click their name to highlight. Click as many jumpers as you like, each name will highlight.
  • Once you have jumpers highlighted, click on a load to move all jumpers to this load (the mouse will turn into a crosshair when you're hovering over a load)
• Either way you add jumpers to a load, once added to a load they will be hidden from the Jump List. If for any reason they are removed from the load, they will reappear on the jump list in the same order.
• As you add jumpers to a load, the number of free slots shown on the load will decrease. The system will not prevent you intentionally overloading, but will show negative slots - this can be used for fuel light loads.
• If a jumper on a load requires someone else to jump with them (instructor, coach, or camera) another slot will be shown under their name, and the free slots adjusted appropriately.
  • See adding staff to a load for more information about filling these slots.

Ready tandem jumpers

Before a tandem is considered "ready to jump" the system requires the following things to be true:

• The tandem must not owe any money - you can see this in the field under the "Owes" heading. Click this field to open a payment box
• If your country has a national association, you may need to add an expiry date for their membership.
  • Specific to BPA DZs, tick the "P6" box to automatically give the Tandem a year's provisional membership.

You may also alter other aspects of the tandem jump directly from the dashboard:

• Use drop down menus to alter video and/or altitude. If these options carry a specific price then the price of the jump will be modified accordingly.
• The name field is a text box, so you can quickly type changes to the name. This is also true of a few other fields.
• The group field allows you to allocate a letter or number to a tandem which will appear on the jump list; this means you can tag multiple tandems with the same character to indicate to manifesters that they are part of a group - it gives the manifester a choice to try and put them together but does not force it.
• Depending on your system settings you may have boxes for age, weight, waivers or medical certificates. Where shown, a weight input may also modify the price of the jump based on the weight entered.

Once you are happy with the data entered for a specific Tandem jumper you can send them to the Jump List. Click the green "Go to jump" button to do this. The tandem will not be removed from this list, but will now be visible by clicking "On the jump list" at the top right of the box.

Switch back to Active Loads at this point to continue manifesting the tandem, or complete details and send other tandems to the Jump List.

Tandem payments

One of the most important parts of making sure a Tandem or other customer is ready to jump is ensuring that they have paid the full fee due for their jump. This fee may already have been altered when adding video or altitude options to the jump, so even customers who have paid in full before attending may need to pay more before jumping.

1. Click the amount owed under the "Owes" heading. The "Booking payment" box will appear, with the Tandem's name at the top.
2. A form will show offering a variety of options relating to the payment. This will include:
   • An amount
   • A method, such as cash, card or cheque
   • An optional card charge - if you have this configured in your system settings this will be added automatically
   • The total due - this field cannot be edited and is the sum of the amount and the card charge.
   • The date the payment should be recorded as - used to back-date payments if you have been unable to add them previously.
   • Company - most DZs will have a single company account, please contact us to set up more accounts.
   • Report - to help count your payments at the end of the day, you may add payments to different report groups.
   • Override balance check - because the system records every payment, it knows if a customer has already paid for their jump. In some cases you might still want to take a payment, e.g if the customer owes an extra fee. Tick the box and the system will not check if the payment is more than the customer owes.
3. Below the form will be a list of existing payments, along with details of when the payment was taken and which system user recorded it.
4. If you sell merchandise to customers a "Sell products" form will show below. This form does not affect the customer balance owed for the jump but will record payments to their booking. Learn more about selling products

Move tandems onto a load

Tandems are moved from the Jump List to a load in exactly the same way as solo skydivers. Either drag and drop them onto a load, or click to highlight them and then click on the load.

Once on a load, tandem jumpers will always have one empty slot for a tandem instructor - it will not be possible to ready the load without this slot being filled. They may also have a slot for a camera person, or the tandem instructor may be marked as requiring a handcam, or both.

See adding staff to a load for more information about filling these slots.

Adding staff to the list

1. Click the green "Add" button next to the title "Staff" at the top of the Staff List. The "Add staff" box appears, with the date listed at the top.
2. A list of staff names will be shown. Any staff with a rating which permits them to carry out AFF instruction, Tandem jumps, Outside camera, AFF consolidation dispatching, static line dispatching, or coaching will be shown. A summary of each individual's ratings is shown in short hand after the "Add" button.
3. Click the grey "Add" button next to a staff member's name to add them to the Staff List for the selected date.
4. The staff member name will fade out and appear in the Staff List. The "Add staff" box will remain open so that you may add more staff.

If you have more than 50 staff a search box will be shown instead of a list. As you type in the search box the system will automatically list staff names which match your search.

Adding staff to a load

Staff can be added directly to a load in the event that they are only dispatching or acting as a jump master. However the normal use case of the staff list is to add staff members to existing slots left open for Tandem, Camera, AFF instructors or Coaches. There are two ways to add a staff member to a slot:

• Drag the staff member from the Staff List. Hover over a slot; the slot will highlight grey. Release the button to add the staff member to the highlighted slot.
• OR click the staff member in the Staff List to highlight them. Now click the slot you wish to add them to.

In both cases, the name of the staff member should appear in the slot. If you try to add a staff member who lacks a required rating (e.g. adding a camera person to a tandem slot) then the name will not appear and a warning message will be shown.

Staff jump counts

The counts shown in columns next to the staff names reflect the number of loads on the current date which the staff member is manifested on. This will count any loads which are: grey, yellow, green, blue or black status. Therefore if at the end of the day there are loads which have not flown, the count will show more jumps than the staff member did.

This is not a problem; this list is not intended to track staff jumps or aid in paying staff. For a full report of the jump types that each staff member carried out for one date or over a date range, click the "Staff jumps report" button at the bottom right of the Staff List.

Booking availability

Click "Booking availability" (in the blue list on the left)

At the top of the page will be shown tabs for each jump type that can be booked through your system. Usually this will be "Tandem", "AFF" and "Static line" but your system may have been customsied differently. Each of the tabs will work in the same way, so it doesn't matter which you use to follow this guide.

Availability is determined in blocks of time between two dates. This matches with how many centres will have a main season, where they might open during daylight every day, and then off-seasons where the centre is open for shorter hours on a few days a week. Therefore each block of availability allows you to specify how many bookings can be taken per day of the week, and per time slot on this day.

To give an example let's say that from 1st March to 30th September the centre will open every day except Monday. Mid-week we can do 20 tandems in a day, and we only want them to arrive in the morning. On weekends we can do 50 tandems and they can arrive any time, but we only want 10 at a time.

1. Click the "From this date" input and use the calendar that appears to select 1st March. (for date selections how the date appears depends on your country)
2. Click the "To this date" input and use the calendar that appears to select 30th September.
3. Leave all the boxes in the "Monday" row blank. Any day with blank or 0 in the "Total" input will be marked as "Closed"
4. For Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday we type "20" into the first input, under the heading "Total"
5. For each of these days we also want to type "20" into the input for each time in the morning (check the headings) because we don't mind when customers will arrive.
6. For Saturday and Sunday type "50" into the "Total" input.
7. For each of these days we also want to type "15" into the input for each time for the whole day.
8. Click the green "Save changes" button

At this point it might look like our maths doesn't add up. If we allow 20 bookings for a day, how can we also allow 20 each hour? However the system will stop new bookings at whichever limit is hit first. This means you can choose the maximum for any one time (which may be based on the capacity of your office staff or training room) and the maximum for a day (which may be based on the number of loads it is possible to fly or number of instructors/tandem rigs you have available).

Once you have created an availability block you may edit it on this page using the same techniques. If you get a block wrong and want to start again, click the black "delete" link below the grid for the block. Once a block is deleted it cannot be retrieved, but this will not alter any current bookings.

Booking times

1. From the "Booking availability" page, click the green "Booking times" link in the top right corner. The "Booking times" box will appear.
2. A long list of pre-set times will be shown, from 6am through to 7:30pm.
3. The first column of tick boxes indicates if this time will be available for setting Availability or for staff members to create bookings for.
4. The second column allows an optional title. This may depend on your country - some countries use "1pm" whilst others would use "13:00". You could also use this column to add clarifications, such as "8am solo training".
5. The final column lets you prevent a specific time from being made available for customers booking through your website. This can be useful to allow early bookings for large group who book with you directly, but preventing regular customers from adding themselves to this time.

Booking prices

Click "Booking prices" (in the blue list on the left)

The Booking prices page allows you to configure prices for different jump types across a variety of configurations. It allows setting discounts on specific days of the week or for specific group sizes.

Like the Booking availability page, there is a list of tabs along the top with different jump types. There will also be an extra tab called "Video, Altitude & Instructors", which has a unique set of options (see below).

The top section of each Booking tab will show:

• The name of the Booking type, which you can change. For example some centres may edit the default "AFF" to "AFP" or "TDS"
• The "course type" drop down allows you to choose between tandem or solo training, and this will affect how Bookings are handled on the day they attend the centre.
• Low slots is for your online and internal staff calendar, which will highlight a day yellow if it is considered to have a "low" number of slots. This can be useful to encourage customers to book quickly in case a day fills up, and to inform staff which days are good to fill.
• License shows a default license added to skydivers created by this Booking if it is a Solo course.

Below these settings is the "Prices" form which has four main input options:

• Price per person is the main setting to determine the price of a jump. The simplest price configuration would be a single setting for 1 person. All prices in Ground Control are listed per-person
  • To encourage groups many centres will wish to discount a jump at a certain size of group. Click the "+" at the end of a price row to add a new row below. Then enter how many people this price applies to. For example, if you wanted to charge $200 for a tandem, but give a $20 discount for groups of 4 or more you would have rows like:
    • 1: 200
    • 4: 180
  • This would mean groups of 1, 2, or 3 would be charged $200 each. Groups of 4 or more would be charged $180 each (so each person has $10 discount). If you then wanted to offer a further $10 off for groups of 10 or more:
    • 10: 170
  • Would now give a price of $170 per person if booking 10 or more people at the same time.
• To encourage customers to book on less popular days you may want to offer a lower price on a specific day. The second form lets you do this, by selecting a day from the drop down menu and adding a price just for that day.
  • So if we want a $10 discount on a Monday:
    • Monday: $190
  • It is important to note that the customer will be charged the lowest possible price. If we mixed together our two examples then a customer booking for 4 people on a Monday would still be charged $180 as the group price is lower than the day price.
• Deposit allows you to require that customers booking online pay part of the cost for their jump when making the booking, and will also prompt your staff to take this fee if a customer books direct with them.
  • The deposit is not an extra to the prices above, it is taken out of the jump price. So if you set deposit to $50 with a price of $200, the customer must pay $50 when they book and a further $150 before they are allowed to jump - so $200 in total.
• The discount field allows you to offer customers a fixed amount of money off their jump price when paying in full whilst booking online.

Video, Altitude & Instructors

This form is split into four blocks and shows additional fees that may be charged to customers, credited to skydivers, paid to jumping staff or applied to aircraft slots.

• Video and altitude extra prices will be automatically added to a customers owing total when selected. Depending on settings elsewhere customers may be able to add these items when booking online, and the fee will be shown to them on booking.
  • The fee for a specific video option or altitude option does not change depending on size of group or day of the week, and does not affect the deposit required for the customer to make a booking.
• "Initial credit" is added to the account of a skydiver who is booked for solo training. This amount does not have to be related to the price paid for the training, but should cover the cost of any jumps included in the training.
  • For example you might offer a 7-level AFF package. The cost of the package may be $1500, but levels 1-3 cost $200 each and 4-7 cost $100 each. This would require the customer to have $1000 in "Initial credit". (Prices for all jumps can be found on the Jump types page)
• Instructor prices allow the system to add credit to an instructor's account as they carry out jumps. This can be used as an extra track to an existing payroll, where the instructor's pay is subsequently deducted from their account, or can be used to give part time staff or fun jumping coaches funds to jump with themselves.
  • If an instructor price is set for a jump type, each time an instructor takes-off on a load where they are assigned to that jump type they will be credited with that value.
  • E.g. setting the "Tandem jump" value to "30" will mean that if an instructor is placed in a tandem slot and then that load is set to "take off" (blue) the skydiver account for that instructor will received a $30 credit.
  • If you intend to pay staff separately you may leave these values blank, and use the staff jumps report to track jumps for the purpose of pay.
  • Where the payment name is "Altitude payment" the tandem instructor will receive an extra payment of that value on top of the regular payment. This can be used to add additional compensation for undertaking higher jumps.
  • For handcam payments the fee is again in addition to the regular payment for the tandem jump.
• "Slot" values can be used to assess a price per load to carry jumpers. This is an internal measure and will not affect what any jumps are charged at. These slot values will be used to calculate the numbers in the revenue report which tells you how much each load costs.

The calendar

The calendar offers an overview of all your bookings. At the top of the page is a form with a drop down select box to search by month. Next to this are two input fields, "Starting date" which lets you choose a date to view the weeks search from and "Weeks" which will show X weeks ahead of the starting date in the calendar. E.g. for starting date 14th Jan and 4 weeks you'd expect to see roughly half of January and half of February, depending on which day exactly the 14th falls on.

The calendar will show a grid of dates, with each date box labelled in the bottom right corner. For the month view, boxes for the current month will just show the date number, whilst boxes for other months will also show the short form of the month name. For week view, every box will show both date number and a short version of the month.

Each box will show one line describing how many bookings are currently on that day. The next will show how many slots are available on the day. If the day was never configured to have slots it will be shown as closed instead of 0 slots. Staff are not prevented from booking customers onto dates with no slots, but customers booking online can only book on days with available slots.

On dates with slots, a list will be shown to the right of the box listing times for that date, in the format: "bookings" / "total slots". E.g. for a day where there are 10 slots at 8am and 3 people booked for that time it would show "8am: 3/10"

The final line in each box will be an "Add booking" button. This is shown on every day, and opens a form to add a new booking to that day. When a booking is added this way the page will switch from the calendar to the Date search page for that date, so that the new booking can be seen.

Modifying a single day

Clicking anywhere inside a box for a date (except on the "Add booking" button) will open the "Tandem day settings" form for that date.

The main form has the following options:

• Closed tick this box to indicate the day as closed, preventing online bookings and advising staff not to book customers for this day.
• Follow-up tick this box to highlight the day on the calendar. This can be used to indicate to staff that this day requires their attention - maybe an aircraft is offline or not enough instructors are available and staff need to phone bookings to reschedule them. The "Remarks" (see below) feature for a date can be used to aid this communication.
• Price per group size this is the same as the group size pricing on booking prices and will be applied to just this day, for both bookings made by staff and online bookings.
• Slots similar to the booking availability page this allows determination of the total number of slots and slots per time for this date. Important: Leaving "total slots" blank will mean that the day is unaffected, even if other times are entered.

Reservations

Also on the "Day settings" form is a section marked "Reservations". This allows a specific number of slots to be held on a date, with contact details of the person or organisation who is reserving them. Reservations can have an expiry date set, so that if the expiry date passes and the slots have not been confirmed (and often, paid for) they will be released allowing staff or customers booking online to take those slots.

The reservations section shows a form for adding a new reservation as well as a table of existing reservations for the date, listing how many slots they have reserved and how many (if at all) have so far been confirmed as bookings. The number of slots taken can be modified, or the reservation can be deleted entirely from the table.

Remarks

Enter a text remark in the input box to add a new remark. Press the green "Add" button or hit enter to save. Remarks cannot be edited or deleted. Each remark is logged with the date, time and user name of the staff member who added it, so can be used as part of a reliable audit trail.

Searching bookings

There are two ways to search through your database of bookings, "Book search" and "Date search". Each search has a different configuration, but both display their results in a "Bookings table" with options to manage your bookings.

Book search

This section can be used to find a specific booking with known details or to examine ranges of bookings, e.g. all females who chose camera, online between two dates. The form is split into two parts, with the most often used inputs on one line, and a "More options" section with a larger variety of options. Note all text search fields will match as wildcards. E.g. "John" will find customers named "John Smith" as well as "Sarah Johnson"

• ID every booking is given a unique ID which will always be shown when managing their information. Customers can be safely told their ID as it is not a security item. Vouchers will have a separate ID from a customer who uses a voucher.
• Name the name of the customer or the name of the person who made their booking
• Email the email address of the customer or of the person who made their booking
• Booking made the date that a booking was added to the system, either online or by a staff member. This search allows a range of dates. If the second field is left blank it will just search for a single date.
• Source the entered Source of the booking, which may be added by a staff member or be set to a default value for online bookings. Staff members often use this feature to record agency or charity names.
• Jumped a simple select for whether the customer is recorded as having completed their jump yet.
• Paid for online bookings, indicates if payment has been received.
• Show deleted for protection of data the system never completely deletes a booking, though it will free the slots and hide it on the Manifest system for a date. Tick this box to allow searching for deleted bookings.

Click "More options" for a second set of inputs:

• Phone the phone number of the customer or of the person who made their booking
• Age the exact age of a customer
• Staff a list of staff members, select to search for bookings added by a specific staff member
• Video a list of video options, select to search for bookings which have chosen this video option
• Scheduled the date a customer is next scheduled to jump (always in the future). This search allows a range of dates. If the second field is left blank it will just search for a single date.
• Course the first date a customer attended the DZ (always in the past). A range of dates.
• Last attended the most recent date a customer attended the DZ (always in the past). A range of dates.
• Follow up customers who have been specifically marked to be followed up by a member of staff. Customers with this setting switched on will also show in light blue if they appear in amongst regular searches.
• Reference an optional reference such as a coupon value, Groupon reference or other applicable code added by a member of staff
• Sex the customer's gender
• BPA specific to UK DZs, choose to filter customers with or without a BPA number
• Number specific to UK DZs, a text search for part of or a specific BPA number

Click the green Search button at any time to carry out a search

Date search

The date search is primarily a search based on the dates that customers are scheduled to jump. The main search allows either a single date or a range of dates. Note When searching over a range of dates it is possible for a single customer to appear multiple times, if they have multiple dates booked during that range. This can often happen when searching between a date in the past and one in the future, where customers may have had to book a new date due to bad weather

The other filters are equivalent to their counterparts in the "Book search" form.

Bookings table

Either search form will load the same format table for managing bookings. Each row begins with an ID value, which is unique to a single booking. If the same ID appears multiple times then you are looking at a range of dates as part of the "Date search" and that customer is booked multiple times during that range.

By default the following columns will be shown, along with a set of option buttons to access more settings for a booking:

• Name the customer's name, or the name of their group leader if part of a block booked group. Click to quickly edit - press Enter to save
• Jump if the customer has jumped this will show "Jumped"; otherwise it will show the next date the customer is scheduled to jump. If the customer is not scheduled it will show "No jump"
• Time the time that the customer is next scheduled for. If the customer is not scheduled it will show the last time the customer was scheduled for, or be blank
• Phone the customer's phone number. Click to quickly edit - press Enter to save
• Price the total price of the customer's jump including any fees for video, altitude or weight charges
• Owes the previous price, minus any payments made so far
• Source an optional field to list an agency, charity or other source of a booking. Click to quickly edit - press Enter to save
• Video the chosen video option for the customer's jump

• Mailer this field will show "Email" if the customer has not yet received an email about their booking, or "Sent" if they have been sent at least one. This is also a button - click it to open the booking email form

  After the columns of details are a set of option buttons, which can be found detailed below.

  The final, smallest, button is a delete button (with the text "x"). Clicking this will prompt to confirm that the booking should be deleted. The booking will fade out once deleted. Use the "Deleted bookings" options in either search to show previously deleted bookings in a search - no data is ever lost.

Add a booking

To book one or more new customers, click the green "New booking" button at the top of the page, towards the right. The "New booking" form will appear.

Note The "Edit booking" form is very similar to the "Add booking" form, except that it does not allow choice of dates.

The first set of options is titled "Jump day":

• Booking type will be set by default to the booking type of the current page (e.g. Tandem) but can be changed
• Date the date that the customer will come to jump. Click the input box to open a mini-calendar - this will display availability just like the main Calendar.
• Time the time that the customer will come to jump.

The "Booker details" are intended for whoever is contacting the DZ about the booking. In many cases this will be the same person jumping. In some cases a person will book multiple other people, and on occasion the person booking might not be jumping - in which case untick the "Is jumping" tick box.

"Group size" is a rarely used option, usually used for charities, agencies or companies making a large booking where the names and details are not known at the time of booking.

The "Individual jumpers" section allows you to set up one or more people to jump, with each having their own pricing settings and optional altitude and video orders.

• Total the total cost of the booking including deposit, video, altitude and any other fees
• Deposit an amount often required to secure the slot. Is part of the total price rather than added to it. E.g. if the "Jump price" is $200 and the "Deposit" is $50 the "Total" will be $200.
• Invoice often used for charities or agencies, where the customer may not pay part or any of their jump fee, and instead an organisation will be sent an invoice for the cost.
• Discount the booking prices section allows customising "Jump price" values per day. In some cases an additional discount may be required, such as military, student, group organiser or friends discount.
• Voucher use to search the name or ID of a voucher to attach to this individual, reducing the amount they will owe for the jump.
• Value the value, if any, of the Voucher being added

+1 jumper press to add another person to the booking. Press multiple times to add multiple people. If there are prices specific to certain group sizes these will be applied when the group reaches the correct size.

The "Payment" section lists options applied to all people in the booking.

• Jump price the basic price for the jump, excluding any altitude, video or other extras. May be changed by the group size or day of the week.
• Discount amount same as "Discount" above, a quick way to add a discount to all jumpers. Will be split between all jumpers.
• Total cost cannot be edited. Shows the total price for all jumpers, often useful for people booking over the phone who want to confirm the price.
• _Initial deposit cannot be edited. Shows the sum of all deposit values, similar to the field above.

• Pay by invoice same as "Invoice" above, a quick way to add invoice payments to all jumpers. Will be split between all jumpers.

  "Emergency contact" is optional and will often be added on the day of the jump.

  The "Extra details" are a set of optional items that may be useful to record. The "Remark" field will add the booking(s) with this remark to begin with - each booking may have future remarks added either by a member of staff or automatically by the system if important details are changed.

  Click the green "Add booking" button to create the booking(s) on the system. One booking will be created per person in the "Individual jumpers" section. Contact information will be saved to all bookings.

  Once the booking(s) are added the "Booking payment" form will open automatically.

Booking payments

In normal usage it's intended that a booking will pay in full before they carry out their jump. There is no requirement for this to be one or even two payments - any number of payments can be recorded against a booking to bring their total balance to zero.

Once a booking has been created the "Booking payment" window will appear; for the first payment the form will be automatically filled with the value of the deposit for the jump. On subsequent visits the form will be automatically filled with the remaining balance, but you may over-type this with whatever amount the customer wishes to pay. The payment form also includes other details about the payment:

• Method a drop-down list with pre-set options to indicate how the customer is paying. If a payment option that you require is missing from the list please let us know by email.
• Card charge you may charge a fee for using a debit or credit card. The fee can be entered as a whole value in this field. To add a percentage default for a specific card type open Admin -> Settings -> Accounts
• Total the value to charge the customer, including card charge. This field cannot be edited.
• Date the date the payment was taken on. Defaults to "today" but can be altered in case a payment was missed on a previous date.
• Company by default Ground Control sets up a single company called "Main". If your business processes payments through multiple companies please let us know by email.
• Report end-of-day reports give an overview of payments received during a day. Multiple reports allow this to be split by different cash registers or locations. Payments are also recorded and can be reconciled against the signed in user.
• Override balance check to prevent customers being overcharged the system by default will not allow payments for a value greater than the customer owes. In some cases there might be a legitimate reason for over charging, so this box can be ticked to allow this.

Previous payments

If there are already payments for a booking they will be shown in this table. An additional column "Staff" records the name of the signed in user when the payment was added.

Refunds

There is no ability to delete payments as this could compromise accounting and auditing. Instead to refund a payment a negative payment should be created. This also allows refunds to be indicated via a different payment method, e.g. a card payment may be refunded in cash.

These negative payments will also show in the previous payments section.

Sell products

Products may be added to the system on the product stock page. If any products are added a form will appear on booking payment windows to sell these products to a customer.

Payments for products will be recorded along with the booking but will not alter the amount they owe for their jump.

The product form is the same as the payment form, but adds a drop-down list to select products and an optional tax field for recording sales taxes.

Booking dates

Clicking the white "Dates" button on either the bookings table or on Manifest will open the "Dates" window for that booking.

A booking may have multiple dates, which will usually indicate that on earlier attempts they were unable to jump due to weather or some other factor. However it may also be that they chose to rearrange, and the previous date was left as a record.

Important multiple dates are not intended for a customer to jump multiple times, as settings such as video, altitude and payments are linked to a booking, not a date. See below for the "Book again" option for customers who wish to jump again or change to a different course (e.g. customer does a tandem and decides to complete an AFF course).

Existing dates table

Dates which have previously been added to the customer are shown in the first table.

The date and time can be edited; any edits will be recorded in the "Remarks & history" section below. You must click the green "Save" button after making any changes.

Following this are 4 check boxes. All the check

• Arrived this will automatically be checked if there is any activity on the booking on Manifest for their jump day. This helps track if a customer attended the DZ when booked, which might be necessary information if they are requesting a refund.
• Jumped this will automatically be ticked if the customer was placed on a load which was marked as "take off" (blue)
• Hidden on Manifest customers can be hidden, e.g. if they leave the centre for the day
• Removed dates can not be deleted but can be marked as removed to make slots available and remove customers entirely from Manifest for that day. A date cannot be removed if the customer is manifested on that date. Date removals are logged in the "Remarks & history" section below.

There are two date boxes for "Check in" and "Hidden" which records when in the day these actions took place, in case it is needed during communication with the customer or debriefing staff.

Add a new date

The form below the able allows addition of a new date. Clicking the date will show the mini-calendar to give an idea of availability.

Often when adding a new date it means the customer is rescheduling. If the "Remove dates" box is ticked other dates from now will be deleted when adding this new date.

Book again

This form allows a customer to be booked for another jump of the same or different type. Please remember that customers carrying out AFF or other training jumps will be registered as a Skydiver before their first jump, and no longer need to be booked in order to jump.

Booking emails

As part of a booking process it is good practice to email customers a confirmation of booking details. It might be necessary to send future emails to a customer, informing them of changes to their jump or just to remind them of important details closer to the date of their jump.

Ground Control has the ability to create email templates which are filled out with details of the customer booking, similar to how a mail merge might work, but a lot easier to use.

Emails can be sent to a single booking using the "Email" button on their row in the Search forms, or can be sent to all bookings in a search using the green "Send emails" button at the top of the bookings table.

The email form

The email form will be titled either with the name of the single booking that is being emailed or with a count of how many bookings will be emailed.

If sending an email to a single booking the email address will also be shown.

• The subject line will be pre-populated from the template but can be edited.
• The text is also pre-populated from the template and can be edited.
• For emails to a single booking the subject line and text placeholders will have been automatically replaced with relevant details from the booking.
• For emails to multiple bookings the placeholders will remain and will be filled in correctly for each booking as the emails are sent.

At the base of the form is a drop-down list to allow choice of different email templates. Templates can be created or edited from Admin -> Email templates, or by clicking the green "Edit template" button at the top of the email form.

Sent emails

The date and subject line of all sent emails is recorded. If any emails have been sent to a customer either by a staff member or automatically for customers booking online they will be listed below the email form under the title "Sent emails"

The sent emails box is populated based on the email address in question. If multiple customers have the same email address it may show that the same email has been sent multiple times.