Pastel Integration

Pastel Integration

The book a flight system is able to export invoice information in a format that can be imported into the Pastel accounting package.

SETUP : Correct Pastel Codes

There are several types of codes that have to exist on one or both systems for the integration to work.

These are:

• Member / student code

Every member in the Book A Flight system must have their specific Pastel code loaded. When we extract details about an invoice for a pilot the extract used this pastel code to indicate which pilot the invoice belongs to. The pastel code needs to be saved in the field called “Pastel Account Number” on the member record. This field, within Book A Flight, is only visible to administrators or people holding the “FINANCE_ADMIN” security key. Additionally, every member record indicates a “Membership Type”. This is used to indicate which price a given member will pay for a certain aircraft. The idea here is that you could have one price for “student” pilots, a different price for “hire and fly” pilots and a third price for “employees” of your school or club. You can create any number of membership types by using the

• Flight codes

These are set using the “Maintain Aircraft Prices and Account Codes“ section. Every aircraft in the system needs to have a pastel code and a price for each of the membership types created in the above section. So, for example, “students flying ZS-KBK” would have a certain pastel code, and would pay price X per hour, while a “hire and fly flying ZS-KBK” would have a different pastel code and would pay a price of Y per hour. You can thus have different prices for the same aircraft, for different groups of pilots, and each combination of aircraft and group would have a unique pastel code.

• Instruction codes

These are set using the “Maintain Instruction Prices and Account Codes“ section. There also needs to be a unique pastel code (and a price) loaded for each instructor, for each type of instruction that can be given. So, for example Alan Shepard, for Dual instruction has a certain pastel code and price, while Chuck Yeager has a different pastel code and (perhaps different) price for this same type of instruction. Alan Shepard has a different code for Solo instruction.

• APL - this is the code for Approach and Landing on the club/school runway.

• Other codes

There must be corresponding Pastel codes for any special invoice items that have been created for the system using the "Invoice Items List" screen (accessible to admin logins only)

EXPORT: How to get information out of the booking system

Before you export any information you need to ensure that the system knows the email address that the Pastel export file must be sent to. This is defined under "System Configuration" by specifying a valid entry for the configuration item "EXPORTPASTELTO"

Then you need to click on the toolbar item "Flights". This will present you with a list of all flights that have not been exported yet. You need to tick the box next to the entries you are wanting to export, and then press the button at the bottom of the page "Export to Pastel"

The system will generate an export file for the ticked flights and send it to the configured email address.

IMPORT: How to get information into Pastel

Save the file from your email into a temporary location on your local computer.

On the Pastel menu, select "Process", "Customers" and get to the "Tax Invoice" screen.

On this screen, click on the "Batch" button and select "Import". Then navigate to the file you saved from your email address, and press the "Process" button.