FBO Director

FBO Director is a cloud FBO management suite from Essinta Labs, Inc. of Port Orange, Florida. Founder John R. Nelson — an engineer and Florida attorney who holds a 2005 patent filing for a real-time FBO management system — released his first aviation software for small flying clubs in 1992, launched FBO Manager in 1996, sold that company in 2006, and launched the current product, FBO Director, in January 2017 with a first customer that went paperless on day one. Named customers include Rabbit Aviation Services, Tiffin Aviation, Purdue University Aviation, Million Air St. Louis, and Monroe County Airport.

The suite covers fuel management, point of sale, invoicing and periodic billing, work orders, flight-school dispatch, inventory with commingled-fuel tracking, and reporting — meter and flight reconciliation, account statements, and work-order reports with exports to Excel and QuickBooks. A Wireless Fuel Automation feature connects the truck meter (TCS Cloud, or Veeder-Root and EMR DataLink) so that when the fueler presses Done on the truck, the invoice is generated without a ramp app or re-keying. The FlightBridge integration is bidirectional: reservation notes and services flow in, and invoice and payment status — including contract fuel, card, and account payments — sync back to FlightBridge with a 90-day PDF invoice link for the flight department.

FBO Director is certified with the Avfuel, EPIC, and Shell contract-fuel card gateways and supports zero-dollar invoicing for contract transactions; accounting exports go to QuickBooks Online and Desktop, Microsoft Dynamics GP, and Sage. Unusually for this category, pricing is published on the homepage: five monthly tiers from Lite (with a per-transaction fee) through Starter, Basic, Business, and Ultimate, plus an optional FlightBridge and Scheduling Concierge add-on. It is also one of the point-of-sale options in Phillips 66 Aviation's EPOS program. Support runs through an onboarding program, downloadable setup guides, a YouTube training channel, and email.