Everything You Need to Know

Running a flight school means collecting a lot of information before someone ever steps foot in an aircraft - pilot certificates, medical documents, emergency contacts, signed policies, and more. Chasing all of that down over email is slow and messy. SkySchedule's onboarding builder lets you handle all of it directly inside the platform, so everything comes in organized, signed, and stored in one place from day one.

Setting Up Onboarding

As an admin, navigate to Settings where you'll find two separate onboarding builders - one for students and one for instructors. Each one is fully customizable and independent, so you can collect exactly what you need from each group without overlap.

Start by selecting a banner image to give your onboarding a professional, on-brand look. Then build out your sequence using blocks. You can add as many blocks as you need, in whatever order makes sense for your school. The available block types are:

• File Upload - Ask the student or instructor to upload a specific document. You can give it a label and include instructions so they know exactly what you're looking for. This is perfect for things like pilot certificates, medical certificates, or a copy of their ID.
• Short Answer - A single-line text field for quick inputs like an emergency contact name and phone number, or their home address.
• Long Answer - A multi-line text field for more detailed responses, like medical history notes or any information that needs more room.
• Signature - Prompts the person to sign directly inside their dashboard. Use this for liability waivers, school policies, training agreements, or any document that requires a formal sign-off.

Every field in the onboarding sequence is required - nobody can skip past something you've asked for. If you set a form to no expiration date, that applies by default until you change it.

Sign-Up Links & Account Approval

In Settings, copy the student sign-up link or instructor sign-up link and share it with new members. Inviting someone directly works the same way: enter their full name, email, and phone number, Sky Schedule creates their account, and they receive an email to join and claim it.

We recommend putting both sign-up links on your website and connecting them to buttons so students and instructors can join from your site without hunting for a link.

Turn on Require approval for new accounts if you want every signup to create an account that waits for admin approval before they are fully active.

The Student & Instructor Experience

Once a student joins through the sign-up link, their dashboard and profile are created right away. Students start with limited permissions and cannot add reservations or edit aircraft, instructor, or admin details until your school allows it.

They are prompted to complete onboarding under Documents → Onboarding. Each upload and field saves as they go, so there is less risk of losing progress if they step away before submitting everything.

Think about what this replaces: printed packets, email threads asking for attachments, chasing down signatures, manually filing everything away. A new student signs up, gets access to their dashboard, and your entire intake process is waiting for them to complete.

Card on File

In Settings, enable Require card on file for new students when you want billing set up during intake. Students see the request under Invoices → Billing Information.

Students add a card through a secure flow that includes phone verification. Admins can also add a card on behalf of a student from their profile when needed.

Once saved, the action badge clears from the student dashboard and you can confirm card-on-file status from the student profile in the admin dashboard.

Tracking Completion

You don't have to follow up manually to find out who's done and who isn't. Inside each student's or instructor's profile, you can see their full onboarding status at a glance - what's been completed, what's still outstanding, and every response they've submitted. That includes uploaded files, written answers, and their signature, all stored securely inside their profile and accessible to you anytime.

You can mark onboarding as completed manually or send a reminder if someone still needs to finish. Uploaded documents appear under Documents as unverified until you view and verify them.

This makes it easy to spot who needs a nudge before their first flight and ensures that no one slips through without the proper documentation on file.

Onboarding is one of those features that sounds simple on the surface but makes a dramatic difference in how organized and professional your school operates from day one. Every document is where it should be, every policy is signed, and every new member of your school is properly set up before they ever get near an aircraft.