Sport Pilot Magazine

[FlyingVizsla]

Had a look at the RAA financials - unfortunately June 2014 was not available in the monthly format and only the summary version (the audited statement for submission to the ACT Dept of Justice & Community Safety) was available. So these figures are for 11 months only. The magazine costs have not been completely dissected as there may be other items included in the likes of "RAA Publications" and there is no dissection of wages - leaving no indication of how much it costs to administer. Now, with all these qualifications in mind, here are the figures.

 

 

 

INCOME

 

Members Market Advertising $ 23,139.99

 

Magazine Sales $ 7,184.10

 

 

 

EXPENDITURE

 

RAA Publications $ 226,168.17

 

 

 

Therefore COST COVERED BY MEMBERSHIP = $195,844.08 (11 months), approx $213,650.00 for 12 months. Andy's estimates may cover more of the hidden costs (wages etc).

 

 

 

Interesting to note the cost of stationery and postage = $58,930.07. It shows the cost of a paper based system; and add to that staff handling of each bit of paper; printing, enveloping, to/from post office, opening, distributing, filing, storage etc. A modern system would save some of that.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Folks

 

I don't intend to post volumes on pretty much anything for some time however a note of caution. (except this post it seems.... added after I was finished and added the and they all lived happily ever after bit)

 

If looking at the financials remember that under the previous contractual arrangement there were only 11 magazines a year, however the spend, doesn't align to the same periods because by they time they invoice us, and we post to the ledger the missing January magazine might not show up as a missing monthly payment until quite some time later depending on how as an organisation we account for transactional costs (convention is to transact and account for the invoice generation date, not the date that the service was delivered to us, of course that only works if the transaction period and the invoice date are in the same financial period(month) if offset then the invoice date drives subsequent payment date but not recognition of cost date). the 11 month period in Sue's post above certainly (and I say almost because I wont look specifically to ensure it s a fact) includes the 1 month when we didn't send a magazine, and the missing 12th month probably wont cover a period when we did so therefore not 11 months but actually 10 when you need to get to 11.... and that assumes nothing went wrong at any stage from a timing perspective in the previous 12 months, where the criticality of that relates to the earliest periods (maybe a double month in there as a possibility to consider) or the end (maybe we have missed a month for example)

 

Also, because of the way our chart of accounts is structured today an assumption that RAA Publications contains only magazine related expenditure, or indeed all magazine expenditure is probably wrong. there are 3 cost components to consider, content generation costs, printing costs and postage costs. each of those may not necessarily be posted in the ledger to Publications. Magazine related postage may, for example, be posted to the postage GL account, especially as today our GL is set up to record types of costs rather than costs associated with a service we deliver to our customers. Application of cost centres in a future Chart of Accounts restructure will add the missing dimension and make answering the question how much does our magazine cost us easier to answer, but remember that unless you can see the contract(s) for the period you are covering that the GL only contains what the parties agreed would be invoiced to each other, which is not necessarily the same as all related total transactions.

 

Lastly the reporting period that Sue has picked (assuming logically that its revisited when the Jun figures are posted so that you come up with 12 months of data) will contain a mix of old contract and new contract, making it very difficult to get an answer in that period.

 

I'm happy to take generalities questions, but not exacts because like any contract, what the parties agree is commercial in confidence and in any event in resigning from the RAAus Board I have not and cannot rescind the essential and required confidentiality agreement that I entered into. There has been much debate in the past about the need for that agreement, but my exposure to it was that its just being applied as a standard business practise and not to hide anything.

 

What we as members have been told, and I know to be a fact is that RAAus paid, under the last agreement nearly $400k a year to satisfy 2 of the 3 cost types mentioned above the 3rd will never show up in the accounts because its a contractual offset that is dealt with outside of the General Ledger.

 

Lastly as Sue identified correctly, labour charges related to the magazine within RAAus, because of the missing 3rd dimension in our chart of accounts at present, can never be identified because when you employ someone you don't in a month pay them 20 sub amounts relating to the exact delivery of the 20 different services we offer (and that's just an illustration using 20...) we pay them once, and that amount is posted to labour costs not magazine costs. The ability to in the future report on soft labour charges as allocated to specific services very much depends on the degree of granularity that the CEO determine he needs his staff to report on to manage the organisation, at a point you can get a diminishing return of accuracy, if it takes 1/2 a day a week for the staff to accurately report time expended in a timesheet system then that is 1/2 a day that cant be used for productive use of labour resources...As long as the return on the accuracy required pays dividends beyond that which it costs its logical to chase it...my view is that in the future given the rise in self service that was envisaged in the future systems under development now it would be illogical to track magazine costs at a soft labour expenditure level, or in other words, it will cost more than the benefits of knowing exactly what it costs will bring.

 

Andy

 

 

[Allan CH650CH750]

In simple terms the RA Aus has increased the membership by 50% if you want the same benefits or no increase in membership fees but no magazine. I predict that about 10% of members will read the mag on the net within 12 mths. We all know what has happened with the crash comic ( when is the last time you have read it)

 

Due to the low readership, advertisers move to other places where the they get value for their dollar so the advertising revenue will fell

 

In the end no one will win

 

My 2 cents worth

 

 

[FlyingVizsla]

Thanks for the comments Andy. As anyone who has been a Treasurer (or accountant) knows, the totals are only as good as the dissection of the data in the first place. Accounts are usually paid, say, 30 days after the bill, which represents the work done a month or more before that. As treasurer for a number of organisations, I felt like I was presiding over a slow moving train wreck, the cause of which was about 2 years previous.

 

 

 

The figures for July 2014 to Dec 2014 are in the RAA Members section, and I would encourage people to have a look at them. It is a very good report, far better than any I have seen out of RAA to date. Jim & the CEO have done an excellent job on the analysis. Having a look at the magazine, there appears to be two payments in one month - just as Andy mentioned. So here are the 6 months July-Dec 2014:

 

 

 

INCOME

 

Members Market Advertising $ 28,302.74

 

Magazine Sales $ 6,649.91

 

 

 

EXPENDITURE

 

RAA Publications $ 213,955.45 **about 7 month's worth & possibly not all magazine.

 

 

 

There is no doubt RAA costs are going up (read about it on Jim's report), so the Board had to look at what is achievable. The magazine is a glossy quality publication, but it's primary purpose was to inform members of Board business, rule changes and to encourage safety. According to RAA 97% of members have email. They could have decided to can the magazine and only communicate by email & letter. This is a compromise - we still get the magazine, either immediately; or a few weeks later for a few dollars more. If the membership fee had gone up due to rising magazine costs, there would have been complaints that "I don't read it".

 

 

 

I am on a slow internet, but if it comes attached to an email, it will pop up once it has loaded. When I looked at it on the web, it was downloading at about the speed I was reading. I read the May magazine on-line, then forgot I had, and when the magazine turned up in the letterbox, I kept thinking "I've read this somewhere", it being so long between one and the other. If the experiment doesn't work, we can always go back to the paper magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

[rhysmcc]

The Members Market Advertising is for the aircraft ads members put in, there is still no details on how much is made from Companies who pay for Ads each month and whether that brings down the amount RA-AUS pays. I don't think it does which would be something that should be looked at come re-contracting time.

 

Does anyone here have an Ad in the magazine (other then aircraft classifieds)? How much does it cost you per issue. How close would we be to making back that $400k we spend on advertising sales if the proceeds went back into the association.

 

It's all great to have commercial in confidence, but any member can go into the office (with notice) and request to see ANY document of the association, this would include any contracts it has signed with other companies. Shame the same principle can't be done online.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

The quick way to ensure the magazine is viable as an electronic version is to

 

1/ improve the content to make it more interesting to a wider readership. This might mean moving to broader definition of what qualifies as an article. I would think that the role of the magazine is to address issues like human factors and maintenance issues.

 

2/ Post the best of articles to a RAA blog or a mini-site. having the articles available as text and pictures will pickup a lot more web traffic via search engines and through your social media channels. You can use this traffic to feed interested reader into learning more about the RAA.

 

3/ Promote the magazine via email, send every member with an email account the synopsis of the new edition. Link article titles directly to the blog entries. Have the link in the email to directly download the PDF version of the magazine.

 

4/ Improve the advertising options for the advertisers, allow much more space for sellers to promote.

 

5/ Video, I would love to see Prof Avius and his whiteboard or the CEO or tech manager giving a short 2-3 minute presentation on what the RAA does every month. mobile phones are now capable of delivering a good enough broadcast quality

 

6/ Tap into the readership for content: There are 10,000 stories that need to be told

 

7/ Obviously, the print version will just be a slimmed down version to keep the costs down.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

Folks

 

I followed the link in the newsletter that RAAus sent out and noted that the pdf download was only 7Mb in size.....but the photo quality was pretty poor. I raised with the CEO and was told that if I downloaded from within the ISSUU online magazine the resultant pdf would be the usual much larger size and the resultant quality would be what I was used to.

 

So... You now have 2 choices, a much smaller download with the direct pdf link, or the better one from inside ISSUU as your bandwidth constraints dictate.

 

I was also told that the 5 year backlog of magazines would be provided in dual download format small/worse quality and larger/better quality for people to choose which ever suits their needs better

 

Andy

 

 

[rhysmcc]

I used the link and viewed in iBooks on the iPad and had no problems with he magazine quality, I did need to zoom in on a few of the larger articles that had a bit to read. Overall happy with the digital version and look forward to seeing some of the new changes to make the most out of the new format.

 

One concern I do have was it was mentioned it would be released around the 10th of each month, to time in with the arrival of the paper version to people's letter boxes. Besides the cost saving, I had hoped the digital version would mean the information covered wouldn't need to be 2 months old by the time we got to read it.

 

 

[johnm]

Ironically forums such as this (this forum) .......................... will become even more valued and important in conveying information

 

Pennies from heaven Ian (Ian the forum owner) ................... pennies from heaven

 

 

[dazza 38]

So we are being told that we are losing our magazine because we cannot afford to keep it.

 

Then why in the hell is the RAA now advertising for a Training co-ordinator with the wage being $70 000 plus super ?

 

 

[Geoff13]

I gave you a like Dazza but in hindsight that might be a nice little number to kick start my third career now that I have retired. LOL

 

 

[Robert]

To my way of looking at it all is RAAus just wants to become a massive bureaucracy and we the members will be paying for it !!!!!

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

We've just had 5 fatalities in a little over five weeks...... for most years that's either approaching or past 1/2 the annual fatalities. Feel free to sit back and wait if you want, my vote for those that start to proactively try and address the obvious (to me) human factors issues we are dealing with. Better we start the process than have something less relevant and probably more expensive foisted on us as a result on a clueless coroner or a "good" idea from CASA. But I'm just guessing.

 

Seems to me that the best you could do, if really concerned, is write to the CEO and ask him what is he doing and why, I'd be very surprised if you didn't get a response fairly rapidly explaining the thinking behind it. If enough people do the same thing he may be inclined to let the membership in general know via an email out.

 

Andy

 

 

[turboplanner]

Agree Andy, but RAA have done a hopeless job of explaining the seriousness of the situation.

 

 

[dazza 38]

How exactly is employing a Training Co - ordinator going to stop the aircraft crashes ? Waste of money IMO.

 

Pilots have to be responsible for their own actions and get their sh*t together, somebody shining a seat in Canberra isn't going to save them.

 

 

[jetjr]

Id say because we need someone to manage the training part of the organisation. More than we need 4 momths of paper mags

 

You saying we should cut back training oversight so we get a paper magazine each month?

 

 

[dazza 38]

Id say because we need someone to manage the training part of the organisation. More than we need 4 momths of paper magsYou saying we should cut back training oversight so we get a paper magazine each month?

We haven't had training oversight for the last 30 years, why start now. We are just going through a bad patch ATM.

 

 

[DGL Fox]

Well after trying to read the online version of the mag I decided to pay for the subscription of $90, I think, IMO this is great value for money, this is what you get for ONLY $90, this is the letter I was emailed after I paid for it,

 

"Thank you for subscribing to the RA-Aus Sport Pilot magazine. Your subscription expires on 06-12-2016 (Including additional 6 months free subscription). You will be notified via email when the subscription is due for renewal"

 

The additional 6 months subscription is great...and you know the best thing...I will always have my copy of my magazine sitting on my coffee table ready for me to read anytime...thanks RA-Aus..

 

David

 

 

[bull]

BTW when we send you a digital copy of the magazine its then up to you what you do with it.....It can, as some of you have suggested, end up in the bit bucket (trash) or you might well choose to send it to all your mates, some of who might not be members of RAAus, and they in turn will send it who knows where......Your paper copy however can only be in one place at a time...... So it's not all negatives, there are positives that need to be considered as well in my opinion.

 

Andy the digital mag is NOT free as you guys are saying , People like my self that only have prepaid internet access it costs over 20 dollars to download . IT SUCKS and how about reducing the board members and travel costs and the best motels and first class flights etc that YOU guys are doing ..The way you are going ,a breakaway group is already in the making and you will lose so many members that RAA will die the ga way you are taking OUR CLUB for cheap affordable flying for the average person on a tight budget will sell thier plane and not renew membership OR will join a breakaway group for ULTRALIGHTS not quasy GA planes so i,ll say it BRING ON THE AUF

 

 

[fly_tornado]

Bull, internet access is rarely free.

 

 

[SDQDI]

The amount of effort required to set up a breakaway group IMHO would be much better put into the RAA what I mean by that is if you have enough time and drive to even think about branching off why not run for a place on the board and if there are as many like minded individuals as you think there are you would end up having a good say in our direction.

 

IMHO if you have the idea that you can set up a 'full of freedoms' group without CASA putting so many requirements on you that you end up exactly the same as Raa you have to be kidding yourselves. Yes the American version of under a few kgs having no licensing requirements ect would be good but CASA as they are won't let it happen, and the days of doing our own thing without the fear of litigation are well past.

 

 

[bull]

Yes but if we where not trying to turn RAA into GA we would not have this problem,ie more weight ,more controlled airspace access more speed ,,just take one look at the adds in the magazine all planes you see are mostly fast big GA planes NOT ULTRALIGHTS so a group that was formed to cater for ULTRALIGHTS with a Maximum TOW of 600 kgs and anything over that has to go to the RAA or SAAA as we were originally formed for something has to happen as members are fed up paying for quasy GA ,,we just fly for fun not flying for business, and getting to that point some members are using their aircraft as a business tool to fly to customers ,,NOW is that not using your plane for financial return WHICH under our RAA rules is illegal is it not ,,,why are you promoting something which is illegal under our contitution ????????

 

 

[dazza 38]

Ultralight flying was so much simpler 20 years ago.

 

 

[SDQDI]

Yes but if we where not trying to turn RAA into GA we would not have this problem,ie more weight ,more controlled airspace access more speed ,,just take one look at the adds in the magazine all planes you see are mostly fast big GA planes NOT ULTRALIGHTS so a group that was formed to cater for ULTRALIGHTS with a Maximum TOW of 600 kgs and anything over that has to go to the RAA or SAAA as we were originally formed for something has to happen as members are fed up paying for quasy GA ,,we just fly for fun not flying for business, and getting to that point some members are using their aircraft as a business tool to fly to customers ,,NOW is that not using your plane for financial return WHICH under our RAA rules is illegal is it not ,,,why are you promoting something which is illegal under our contitution ????????

When have I ever promoted doing illegal things? That is hugely defamatory and I certainly don't appreciate that!

 

As for who's paying for who IMHO dividing the membership over that is stupid we are all rec flyers and if we get divided it will be much easier for the CASA to take us all over then no one wins. Like I said before if there are enough that feel that way run for board positions and steer us that way.

 

 

[bull]

When have I ever promoted doing illegal things? That is hugely defamatory and I certainly don't appreciate that!

 

As for who's paying for who IMHO dividing the membership over that is stupid we are all rec flyers and if we get divided it will be much easier for the CASA to take us all over then no one wins. Like I said before if there are enough that feel that way run for board positions and steer us that way.

in your magazine ,just have a look yourself