Balance Forward Entries

Often you will have data from existing paper logbooks that you'd like to enter into LogTen Pro, without having to manually enter all the individual flights. The best way to do this in LogTen Pro is to enter a balance forward. This is the fastest way to enter all your previous data into LogTen. Airlines often require pilots to provide their last three months of logbook entries when applying for jobs, so we often recommend entering the last three pages of your most recent paper logbook line-by-line and the rest as a balance forward. 

Getting Started

Depending on the detail of data you have for your flying before LogTen Pro, you can enter a balance forward of your total flight time, or SEL and MEL ... or (and this is our recommended way to do it if you have the data) you can enter it for each of the aircraft you fly. The main idea behind it is that you're just going to enter your time as one, or a number of, abnormally long flight entries.

Your Current Totals

The first consideration is how you currently have your totals available; maybe you know your time in each Aircraft Type you've flown, or maybe you only have an overall Total Time --- either is fine, but if you have options we recommend going with whichever method provides the most detail. Here are the most common options:

1. If you know how much time you've logged in each Aircraft Type you've flown, create one logbook entry for each: e.g. one for B747. time, one for C152. time, etc.
2. If you know how much time you've logged in SEL vs MEL aircraft, create one logbook entry for each (and be sure to create generic SEL and MEL Aircraft Types, and assign them to those entries).
3. If you only have a single overall total, simply create one entry to contain all of your time.

Logbook Reports

The second factor is what type of logbook reports you would like to use in LogTen Pro.

• If you plan on using a logbook report that separates time into Multi-Engine and Single-Engine sections (like the Canadian, British, South African, Australian reports) it will be important to create at least two balance forward entries; one for Multi-Engine time, and one for Single-Engine time.
• Many other logbooks do not differentiate SE and ME time, but do track engine types such as Jet, Turbo-Prop and Piston, so separate entries may be desired based on these values (see instructions below on how to do this).

Note: You should create a separate entry for Simulator totals, as well as specific simulator Aircraft Types. This page has some other tips for Managing your Aircraft Types

Setup

Now that you have a basic idea of how you're going to bring your time into LogTen Pro, let's take a look at what you'll need to enter your time.

LogTen Pro uses Total Time as the basic time field which much of your logbook will function on. In these forwarded entries (total) Night will be important as well. Day time is automatically calculated in the background. Seat / operating capacity time functions the same way, so in LogTen Pro, PIC is always PIC Total.
Please take a minute to read this short article thoroughly explaining how LogTen Pro handles Tracking Day & Night.

Next, let's display the different time fields you'll usually need for these totals on your flights:

PIC
PIC Night
P1u/s
P1u/s Night
P2 Night
SIC
Dual Rcvd
Dual Rcvd Night

On the iPhone or iPad, to customize which fields are displayed in your logbook, select a flight entry, and then tap the 'Action' button (three blue dots) in the top right corner. Scroll down to the time section, and tap "Configure section" which appears at the bottom of the group. In this window you can choose to display or hide any of the available fields by sliding the switch to On (displayed) or Off (hidden).

On the Mac, all of the data fields are accessible in the Preferences menu. Go to the LogTen Pro menu at the top of the screen, and select Preferences (or [**command+comma**] is a shortcut). The Preferences dialog is broken down into categories with a General settings section, and another tab for each type of data field (e.g. Flight, Time, Crew, etc). Select the Time section, and simply tick the box next to each field to make it appear in your file.

Adding Flights

Now you can add new flights via the "+" button in the corner of the window, and set the date to whatever you would like (often the date of the last entry included in the total, or the last date a Type was flown).
If the totals you have in your paper logbook don't explicitly have Total Time, Night (total), and total seat times, we'll need to add them up. This is the recommended strategy for entering time for each balance forward entry.

1. Total Time:
   If your paper logbook contains totals for PIC, SIC, Dual Rcvd, etc, add these together, and enter into Total Time.
   If your paper logbook contains PIC Day, PIC Night, SIC Day, SIC Night, etc., add these together into Total Time.

2. Night:
   If your paper logbook contains PIC Night, SIC Night, etc. add these together and enter into Night.
   Otherwise enter a total Night time.

3. Seat Positions (PIC, SIC, P1u/s, Dual Rcvd):
   If your paper logbook contains PIC Day and PIC Night, add these together and enter into PIC.
   If your paper logbook already contains PIC (total), enter it into PIC.

4. Night Seat Positions (PIC Night, SIC Night, P1u/s Night, Dual Rcvd Night):
   If you have these totals, enter them into these special Night fields.

5. Any Other Values:
   Add Actual Inst, Sim Inst, T/O & Landings, or anything else!

6. Repeat 1-5 for each entry you need!

After these balance forwards, you won't usually need to use PIC Night, SIC Night, Dual Rcvd Night, P1u/s Night. While logging regular flight entries, you'll enter a Total Time and a Night time (or have them calculated for you from Out & In times), and then enter whichever seat time you logged that flight as. If the flight contains Night time already, then that Night time will also be filled into the Night field of that seat time. If for some reason your seat night time does vary from regular Night time, you can use these specific seat Night times (generally this is only done for Long-Haul or Military operations). This page offers a full explanation: Day & Night Time

DO NOT log simulator time with your balance forward entries as this may result in some reports not showing your balance forward time correctly, please log any simulator time with a separate flight entry.

HELP!

This may be a bit complicated with your individual time, so please don't hesitate to contact our support team if you need any assistance.