Setting up Trips - 2. Creating a Trip

This is the second guide in our series on using Arbor for school trips, focusing on the practical steps for adding a trip. Here, we'll guide you through the process of selecting your trip type—whether it's a free or paid trip—and explain how to add the trip to Arbor. We'll give a step-by-step breakdown of setting all the necessary trip details, including location, eligible pupils, staff, and, importantly, clarifying setting trip dates and times.

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
    

Choosing  your Trip Type (Paid versus Free)

The first choice you'll make is whether your trip is free or paid. This determines the information you'll need to enter and how parents sign up, so we recommend taking a moment to consider this. The trip types available are outlined below.

Paid trips

• The act of paying for the trip confirms the student's place, unless students are manually added by administrators or voluntary contribution is enabled.
• You can set different prices for different students and groups (including a cost of £0 to make it free to some or all students)
• You have the option to set an auto-confirmation threshold to confirm students once they have paid enough to be confirmed for the trip (much like a deposit)
• You have the option to set a minimum instalment amount (i.e. the minimum amount someone needs to pay in one go when contributing to the trip)
• You can request valutary contributions, where you set a guide price. However, for someone to be confirmed, they are able to choose how much or little they actually pay.
• If students are confirmed for the trip, parents can continue making payments even if the trip has already taken place.
   

Free trips

• Payments cannot be taken for free trips. This makes setting free trips up a lot quicker.
• Parents and administrators can sign students up for the trip; no payment is required to confirm a student's participation.

Once set up, you cannot change a free trip to a paid one, so please consider the above carefully before making your final choice.
 

Adding the Trip

To begin creating a new trip, navigate to the Trips page:

1. Go to School > Activities > Trips.
2. Click +Add to set up a new trip.
3. Select whether your trip will be free or paid.

A slide-over window will then appear where you will enter all the details for your new trip, and then press 
Add trip to create the trip.

Setting Trip Details

You will need to fill out the following fields on the trip slide-over:

• Name: The title of the trip (e.g., "Museum trip"). This field is required.
  
  We recommend making the name of the trip as specific as possible, so that it is easier to locate if you have set up more trips. The name of the trip is displayed on the parent portal, so please be mindful of this when making your choices.
• Location: The destination of the trip (e.g., "Museum"). A location is required and is entered using free text. This also shows on the parent portal and app.

• Staff: Select the staff members who are going on the trip. Staff assigned here will be able to take attendance for the trip if they have the necessary Attendance: Administer My Students permission. 

  Please note: ensure that only staff who will actually attend the trip are assigned, as the trip will appear as an event on their calendar and may flag them as requiring cover for lessons they are expected to teach.

• Link to: Use this field to link the trip to any courses or clubs in Arbor (e.g., linking a Geography trip to the Geography course).

• Pupils eligible: Select the students who are eligible to go. You can select 'all enrolled students' or narrow it down to an appropriate group or individual. This field is required.

  Tip: If you need to select a specific group of students who will be attending next year, you can create a custom group for this purpose.

• Max participants: Enter the maximum capacity for the trip. Guardians won't be able to sign their child up once this capacity is reached. Only students confirmed for the trip count toward this maximum. If left empty, an unlimited number of students can sign up (as long as they are all eligible)
• Consent required? : Tick this if you require guardians to agree to consent terms when they sign up for the trip
• Take Attendance: Tick this if you want a register to be created for the trip.
   

Setting Trip Dates

There are two sets of dates/times you need to set on the slide-over: the actual trip dates and the guardian sign-up window.
 

1. Trip Start and End Date/Time

These fields define the actual time and duration of the event. These fields are required.

• Trip start date/time: The exact date and time the trip begins.
• Trip end date/time: The exact date and time the trip finishes.

2. Guardian Portal Sign-up Dates

If you want guardians to sign up and pay through the Parent Portal or Parent App, you must add these open and close dates. If you do not enter any dates, the sign-up never opens, and students will only be able to be manually signed up by admins 

• Signup Opens: The date and time when guardians can start signing up and making payments for the trip autonomously. If you have manually confirmed a participant for a trip, parents can start paying through the Portal or App regardless of the sign-up date set.
• Signup Closes: The date and time when the sign-up window closes.

If you don't want guardians to sign up via the portal or app at all and prefer to manage it manually, you can leave the Signup Opens fields empty.
 

Once all details are complete, click 'Add Trip' to create your trip and be taken to your trip's overview page.

This concludes Creating the Trip. You have successfully set up the basic structure of your new trip. The following guide in the series, Adding Prices for Paid Trips, will walk you through setting up pricing, instalments, and custom prices for different groups of students. If you are setting up a Free Trip, you can skip straight to the fourth guide in the series, Managing Trip Participants!