Billing & finance
CFI earnings and payouts
How instruction billed to a member becomes instructor pay, and how approvals and payouts work.
InstructorsBilling managersAdmins
Billed rate versus pay rate
The member is billed the club's instruction rate. The instructor is paid their own pay rate, and the club keeps the difference. The two numbers are tracked separately and never have to match.
| Example | Amount |
|---|---|
| Billed to the student (1.0 hr instruction) | $75.00 |
| Instructor pay rate | $40.00 / hr |
| Earning created for the instructor | $40.00 |
| Retained by the club | $35.00 |
- Each instructor has an hourly pay rate, and optionally a separate ground rate.
- If no pay rate is on file, earnings accrue at $0.00 until an admin sets one — set rates before billing instruction.
- Changing a pay rate updates existing earnings that are still pending or payable; approved and paid lines are frozen at the rate in force when they were locked.
Earning lifecycle
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pending | Instruction is invoiced but the member has not paid yet. Not payable. |
| Payable | The member's invoice is paid, so the club now owes the instructor. |
| Approved | A billing admin approved the payable. The line is locked and an invoice raised on the CFI's behalf has been emailed to invoices@a4flight.com to queue the Mercury payment. |
| Paid | A payout has been recorded against the earning. |
| Void | Cancelled — no longer owed. |
Club policy: an earning only becomes payable once the member has actually paid. Instructors are never paid ahead of collection.
How earnings stay in sync with billing
- Earnings are rebuilt from instruction invoice lines — one earning per line, so re-syncing never double-pays.
- Hours, rate and amount are refreshed from the current pay rate while a line is pending or payable.
- Status follows the parent invoice: paid invoice becomes payable, anything else stays pending.
- Approved, paid and void lines are never rewritten by a sync.
- An instruction line with no instructor tagged produces no earning — fix the tag in the billing queue and re-sync.
Managing earnings (Finance → CFI Comp)
- Filter the ledger by instructor and status to see exactly what is owed.
- Add a bonus, or a negative correction, as a manual adjustment with a note.
- Edit an unpaid earning's date, hours, amount, status or note.
- Delete manual adjustments. Earnings already paid out stay locked for audit.
- Approve a single line or every payable line for one instructor at once — approval sends the Mercury invoice email and notifies the instructor.
Payouts
Payables (/portal/payables) groups what each instructor is owed. Both payable and approved earnings are eligible for a payout.
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Approve (Finance → CFI Comp) | Locks the lines as Approved and emails an invoice on the CFI's behalf to invoices@a4flight.com so the payment can be queued in Mercury. |
| Pay (Payables) | Records a manual payout — check, ACH, Zelle or cash — with a reference and date, and marks the covered earnings Paid. It does not send the Mercury invoice email. |
The two actions are deliberately separate: Approve queues the money, Pay records that it left the bank.
What an instructor sees
- Their own earnings only, grouped by status, with the flight or lesson each line came from.
- Pending totals — flown and invoiced, waiting on the student to pay.
- Payable and approved totals — what the club owes right now.
- Payout history with dates, references and the earnings each payout covered.
