Setting up Trips - 1. Introduction

Welcome to the first part of our series on Trips in Arbor! This guide sets the stage by covering the basics you need to know before you start. We'll outline the necessary permissions to manage trips, explain what trips are within the Arbor MIS, look at their functionality (and limitations), and show you where to find and manage them in Arbor. You can set up free or paid trips for you to manually manage, or for guardians to sign up to through the Parent Portal and Parent App.

The guides in this series are:

1. Introduction
2. Creating the trip
3. Adding prices for paid trips
4. Managing trip participants
5. Troubleshooting, further reading and customisation
    

Permissions

Before you can start setting up and managing trips, you must have the appropriate permissions on your Arbor account. If you don't have the required permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to grant it to you.

• School: Extra Curricular: Administer - Set up and manage trips
• Finance: Administer - Manage payments for trips

If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to grant it to you using these instructions.

What are Trips?

Trips in Arbor are designed to manage one-off events for students that can span multiple days. They are distinct from Clubs, which are used for activities with repeatable events.

The Arbor system allows you to set up both free and paid trips for students. You can use the Trips feature to manually manage the activity, or you can allow guardians to sign up their children through the Parent Portal and Parent App.
 

What Can You Use Trips For and What Not?

Arbor's Trips feature is designed for managing off-site activities for which you may need to:

• Collect payments from guardians (for paid trips)
• Manage participant eligibility and sign-ups
• Track student consent
• Take attendance by creating a register for the trip
   

When should I use a trip?

The Trip feature in Arbor is best used for one-off events that require participant sign-up, payment, or attendance tracking. Even if an event spans multiple days (e.g., a residential visit), it is still configured as a single 'Trip'.

Use the Trip feature when you need to:

• Manage a single, non-repeating event, whether it is free or paid.
• Collect money for the event using prices that can be set up with instalments and voluntary contributions.
• Allow guardians to sign up and pay via the Parent Portal and Parent App.
• Link the activity to a specific course or club (e.g., a Geography trip would be linked to the Geography course).

A Trip is NOT suitable when:

• The activity has repeatable sessions (e.g., a weekly after-school activity). For this, you should use the Clubs feature.
• You are selling items such as uniforms, stationery, or tickets for events like performances, where you wish to allow someone to purchase different quantities. For this, you should use the School Shop feature.
• You are managing payments for regular school meals. For this, you should use the Meals feature.

For a comprehensive discussion on whether to use a Trip, Club, School Shop, Meal, or Account for payments, please consult the Arbor Help Centre guide: Should I set this up as a Trip, Club, School Shop, Meal, or Account for payments?
 

Limitations and Handling Academic Year Changes

Some important limitations to what trips can do are:

• You cannot copy a trip: It is not possible to copy a trip, so you will need to create it again if you want to reuse the details.
• You cannot change the price of a trip for students already booked onto a trip without contacting your Arbor Support team

• Taking payments for next year's trips: If you want to collect payments for a trip happening next academic year, you must set up two separate trips:
   

  1. One trip for the current year to take the payments.
  2. One trip for the next year to schedule the actual trip. You can find instructions for setting up the secondary trip in the Arbor Help Centre.

  Find our guidance on setting up trips across multiple academic years here: Can we set up trips for the next academic year?
   

Where to Find Trips in Arbor

To access the trip management area and start creating a new one or to view one you have already setup, navigate to the School > Activities > Trips page.

Once there, you can:

• Click +Add to set up a new trip 
• See upcoming Trips in a table, with columns for the trip's dates, eligible groups, participants, and the sign-up deadline.
• See and access past trips via the Past Trips table (use the grey Academic Year dropdown to switch between different past years)
• Click on a trip to see further details about the trip on a slide-over
• On the same slide-over, click More Information to go to the trip's Overview page
   

Trips on student profiles, the Parent Portal and App

Trips can also be found in the Activities section of the left-hand menu in student profiles. You can use this page to view all past and upcoming trips for which the student is confirmed, as well as any future trips open to the student.

Trips students are eligible to join, also show on the Parent Portal and App, more on that here: Signing my child up for a Trip on the Parent Portal or the Parent App

 

This concludes the first guide in our Setting up Trips series. You now have a solid understanding of the necessary permissions and the key distinctions between using the Trip feature and other Arbor modules, such as Clubs or the School Shop. Having covered the essentials, the next step is the actual creation process. Our following guide, Creating the Trip, will walk you through adding the trip, choosing between a paid or free trip, and setting up all the necessary details, such as location, staff, and dates.