What should I do if a Parent disputes a Payment or Charge?

When a parent disputes a payment or charge, the appropriate steps depend on whether you need to reverse a pending charge or return money already paid. This guide outlines how to review account balances, locate specific transactions, and resolve disputes through cancellations or refunds

Permissions

To manage payments and resolve disputes, you will need the following permissions:

• Finance: View – To see payments, credit notes, and outstanding balances.

• Finance: Administer – To issue refunds, manage credit notes, and cancel invoices.

• Extra-Curricular: Administer – To handle refunds specifically for clubs and trips.

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

Checking Account Ballances

Before addressing a payment dispute, for account types with a running account balance (like Meals or Wraparounds Care), a great starting point is to verify that the current balance of the disputed account is correct.

Similarly, for account types where you pay at the point of purchase, like Standard Clubs or Trips, we recommend checking which invoices are yet to be (fully) paid to help find the source of disputes. For non-balance-based accounts, skip to the How to find Invoices, Credit Notes and Top-Ups section below.

View balances for Top-Up Accounts like Meals and Wraparound Care

Please note: Account types that do not use top-ups and account balances, like those for Standard Clubs, Trips and the School Shop cannot be checked with this method

1. Go to the Student Profile 
2. On the left-hand menu, click Payments (this section displays an overview of all accounts, including Meals, Clubs, and Trips)
3. Click on the relevant Account Type (e.g Meals) to be taken to the Account Overview
4. You can see the current account balance near the top of the page
5. Click Invoices and/or Refunds on the left to see payments taken from the account 
6. Click Top-Ups and/or Credit Notes on the left to see payments added to the Account by the parent or admins

Top Tip: Ensure you change the filter on the Invoices tab to include the very first invoice issued to the account, because each account balance is a running tally of all payments relating to the account and defaults to the current academic year only.

A Note on Negative Balances

Negative balances (outstanding amounts) will show in red, while positive balances (credit) appear in green at the top of the Account Overview.

To check if a negative balance is correct, you should calculate the sum of the Top-Ups and Credit Notes minus the sum of the Invoices and Refunds

• If the Invoices add up to more than the amount topped up or credited, this will put the account in a negative balance

How to find Invoices, Credit Notes and Top-Ups 

Disputes often require a closer look at individual transactions, so it is worth checking the Invoices, Credit Notes, Refunds and Top-Ups section of Arbor

Invoices

1. Go to School > Payments > Accounts > Invoices
2. Click into the Filters to filter by Account Type (e.g., Clubs or Trips) 
3. View the Status of each Invoice. These will either show as Paid, Issued, or Cancelled.
4. Click on click into an Invoice for a more detailed breakdown, including:
   • What the invoice is for 
   • What has already been paid, 
   • The amount still outstanding 
   • Any narratives or notes left by the system or admins
5. Click More information to be taken to the Invoice's overview page

Top tip: To download a printable version of an invoice, head to the Invoice's Overview Page and click Print Invoice on the left.

Credit Notes

Credit Notes are used to adjust the balance of a top-up account, such as a Meals account. Credit notes can be added manually by admins (balance-based accounts only) or might be added by the system automatically based on your settings (for example, if you have Variable Contribution switched on for a Trip, Arbor creates a credit note to ensure students who pay less than the guide price do not see an outstanding amount)

1. Go to School > Payments > Accounts > Credit Notes
2. Click into the Filters to change the Date Range (the default range is one week)

Note: Staff can add ad-hoc Credit Notes for Top-Up accounts, but Credit Notes cannot be applied ad-hoc to Standard Clubs or Trips.

Top-Ups

1. Go to School > Payments > Accounts > Top-Ups
2. Click into the Filters to change the Date Range (the default range 

You may need to add a Top-Up by Cash or Cheque on behalf of a Parent

Resolving the Dispute: Cancel, Credit, Transfer or Refund?

There is no 'correct' resolution for resolving a payment dispute; the action depends on whether the parent has already paid and whether the payment was for a top-up account or not.

Cancel an Invoice (No money paid)

If a parent was charged in error but has not yet paid, you can cancel the invoice so the disputed amount is no longer outstanding.

Cancelling invoices for Meals and Ad-Hoc Top-Up accounts

When invoices are created via the Meals area or added by admins on an ad hoc basis (see Creating Invoices) you can follow this method to cancel the invoice.

1. Go to School > Payments > Accounts > Invoices.

2. Select the relevant Invoice 

3. Click Cancel Invoice

4. Add a Narrative

5. Click the red Cancel Invoice button

If the Cancel Invoice button doesn't appear, you'll instead need to log a refund.

Cancelling invoices not created Ad Hoc/via Meals

For account types where the system has created an invoice based on a membership in a club or a participation in a trip, you can only cancel these via the trip or club they were created through by cancelling the club membership or trip participation tied to the invoice.

You can see how to cancel club memberships and trip participations in these  guides:

• Cancelling Trip participation and making refunds
• Cancelling and Refunding Club memberships
• Cancelling and refunding breakfast club or after-school club memberships

Issue a Refund (Money already paid)

If the parent has already made a payment, you can issue a refund if they wish for the funds to be returned. Card payments must be refunded to the original card (taking 3-5 working days). 

Please bear in mind that payments not made by Card (e.g. Cash or Cheque payments) cannot be refunded to a card. More on this here: Refunding payments for Meals and other top-up accounts

1. Go to the Student Profile
2. On the left-hand menu, click Payments
3. Choose the relevant Account
4. Click on the Top-Ups tab 
5. Select the relevant Top-Up
6. Click the orange Refund top-up button
7. Add the Refund amount
8. Click the red Refund top-up button

Note: if you need to refund a Club or Trip these must be refunded from the specific Club or Trip page.

Transferring funds (Money already paid)

Arbor does not have a one-click functionality to transfer funds between account types; nonetheless, there are ways to move funds between account types if a parent who has already paid for something would prefer the funds to be moved elsewhere so they can be used for something else. More on how to managing transferring funds can be found here: Transferring payments

Exporting Statements For Top-up Accounts

To provide a parent with a physical or digital record of their history, you can export a PDF overview of all incoming and outgoing transactions that make up an account balance:

1. Navigate to School > Payments > Accounts > Balances

2. Use the green Bulk Export Statements button in the top-right corner 

3. Select the dates you are interested in

4. Select the Students to include in the export

5. Select the Account types to include

6. Tick Only include accounts owing money as required

7. Click Export Statements
8. If a PDF file does not automatically download, wait for a notification to appear on the left-hand side (the Bell icon) and click on the notification

You can also print specific Invoices from the student's profile or the main Payments menu. See the Invoices section above.