Aircraft partnership spreadsheet: a free template for the monthly bills

An aircraft partnership spreadsheet is the sheet a group's treasurer keeps to bill the co-owners of one aircraft every month. This free template does it with live formulas for four owners, in euros or in dollars, and comes filled in with the example from our aircraft partnership agreement guide: one Cessna 172S that four owners fly 200 hours a year between them.

Short answer: an aircraft partnership spreadsheet bills every co-owner the same two things each month — their share of the fixed costs divided by twelve, and the hourly rate times the hours they flew — and adds that bill to the owner's balance until it is paid. In the example at European prices the fixed costs are €9,110 a year, so each of four equal owners pays €189.79 a month, and the hourly rate is €183: the owner who flies 20 hours pays €5,937.50 in the year and the one who flies 80 hours €16,917.50. A check row confirms that the bills add up to what the aircraft cost, €45,710.

The file opens in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice and Google Sheets. Change the owners' names, their shares, any cost line or the hours, and every bill, balance and total recalculates.

What is in the spreadsheet

• Owners — four names and each owner's share of the fixed costs in percent, with a total that must come to 100.
• Fixed costs per year — hangarage, the annual inspection, insurance, navigation data, charts, a weather service and bookkeeping: costs the group pays whether the aircraft flies or not.
• Costs per flight hour — fuel, oil, the 50- and 100-hour inspections, an avionics reserve and an engine overhaul reserve, which add up to the hourly rate the owner who flies pays.
• Monthly bills — for each owner and each month the hours flown, the bill, what the owner paid and the balance still owed (negative when the owner paid in advance).
• Check — what was billed to the owners in the year next to what the aircraft cost (fixed costs plus the hourly rate times all hours flown), and the difference, which is 0 when the shares add up to 100.

The amounts in the example come from our aircraft ownership cost calculator for a Cessna 172S at 200 hours a year. Insurance depends on what the aircraft is worth and who flies it, so the template has a line for it with the calculator's own assumption for an aircraft insured for €100,000: €2,300 a year (1.4% hull plus €900 liability), or $1,700 at US prices. That is why each owner's monthly share here is €189.79 and not the €142 of the agreement guide, which left insurance out. Replace it with your premium.

A year of bills for four owners

With equal shares, every owner pays €189.79 a month towards the fixed costs whatever they fly, and €183 for each hour on top: in the example's year that comes to €5,937.50, €9,597.50, €13,257.50 and €16,917.50 for owners who fly 20, 40, 60 and 80 hours. At US prices ($10,330 of fixed costs, $215.21 per owner per month, $154 an hour) the same four years cost $5,662.50, $8,742.50, $11,822.50 and $14,902.50.

The monthly hours in the example are invented to show a season — more flying in summer — but each owner's year adds up to the hours used in the agreement guide. Type your own logged hours over them.

Equal shares or by hours flown?

The template shares the fixed costs by the percentages in the owners' block, so it does both. Equal shares (25% each for four owners) follow the logic of ownership: the aircraft is there for every owner and the hangar costs the same. To share the fixed costs by planned hours instead, set each owner's percentage to their hours divided by the aircraft's hours — 10, 20, 30 and 40% in the example. The 20-hour owner's year then drops to €4,571 and the 80-hour owner's rises to €18,284. Why a split by hours falls short when the aircraft flies less than planned is worked out in the partnership agreement guide; whichever you choose belongs in the agreement.

Two more things to settle there before you fill in the rate: which meter the hour is — Hobbs or Tacho; AOPA puts Tach time typically 10 to 20 percent below Hobbs time (see Hobbs vs Tacho and our Tach to Hobbs converter) — and whether the engine reserve sits in the hourly rate, as it does here (€33 of the €183), or in a separate fund.

Where a spreadsheet stops

A spreadsheet adds up what someone types into it. The treasurer still collects the meter readings after every flight, types them in, works out each bill, sends it, and keeps track of who has paid; the sheet takes no bookings and sends nothing.

That is the work Pilot-Next is built for. Each pilot settles their own flight with the meter readings, and the flight becomes an invoice on their account at the hourly rate — billed on the meter set for the pilot or else for the aircraft (a flight settled as a service flight excepted). The fixed share becomes a recurring fee — monthly, quarterly or yearly, with an own amount per owner where shares differ — billed as an invoice on each owner's account in one step, or automatically each period if the group switches that on. Every owner's balance is visible to the administrator, and the group can refuse new bookings below a minimum balance. The calculator behind this sheet works out the costs for any of 33 aircraft types, and what one owner's year comes to for one to four owners is in how much it costs to own a plane.