It can be frustrating for guardians when they try to sign their child up for a Standard Club on the Parent Portal or Arbor App but can't see the club or complete the booking. These issues are almost always caused by a club’s specific setup settings in Arbor. This guide will walk you through the most common reasons why a club may be unavailable to parents—including issues with Guardian Portal Signup dates, incorrect Membership Periods, a club becoming inactive, or a session being fully booked—and explain how to check and correct these settings.
Important note
This guidance is for Standard Clubs, not Wraparound Care Clubs. For a detailed discussion of the difference between the two, please refer to this guidance. For troubleshooting help with Wraparound Care Clubs, please refer to Parents can't sign up for the breakfast or after-school club
Permissions
- School: Extra Curricular: Administer -Manage clubs
- Finance: Administer - Manage finance details and payments for clubs
If you don't have the permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
Guardians can't book certain days of the week
If you've set up a grouped membership period, e.g. Termly only, parents can't select specific sessions, e.g. Monday only.
You can go to School > Activities > Clubs, select the club, and then make sure you add a Daily period in the Membership Periods and Prices section.
Check the max participants
Check whether the maximum number of participants has been reached for that day. If it has, either:
- Ask the parent only to book individual days (one at a time) that aren't full, or
- You'll need to sign them up manually as an admin
Guardians can't book sessions during school holidays, half-term or bank holidays
When you create weekly standard club sessions, you choose whether to create them during Term Time only or not, with a checkbox. This gives you the option to not schedule club sessions for days the school is also closed.
- If you leave the box ticked, sessions are not created for any days marked as an academic holiday on the School > School Structure > Academic Years page.
- If you untick this box, sessions are created for all days of the week you selected - regardless of holidays - between the start and end date you set.
Find more on academic holidays here: Amending the Academic Calendar
Why does this mean guardians can't book?
Only sessions that have been scheduled can be booked. And, because leaving the Term Time Only? box ticked stops the sessions from being scheduled during holidays at all; parents are not able to book them.
What about students who already have a membership on the days of the missing sessions?
If a student already has a confirmed membership - for example, they have a termly membership and the sessions are missing during that term's half-term - students are automatically added to newly created sessions during their membership without any additional charges. Even if the student signed up on a pricing basis per session, any additional sessions do not incur a charge.
How do we resolve this?
If you want to make sessions during an academic holiday bookable for parents, ensure you:
- Create the missing sessions and untick Term time only? if not scheduling them as individual sessions.
- Ensure your Start and End dates do not span school days; you will ned up with duplicate sessions during term time otherwise.
Check if they can click the button to pay
If it's just one or a few parents reporting issues, ask them to follow this article: I can't click the button to pay?
Guardians can't book onto a new club
- First, check the guardian portal signup dates for your club. Go to School > Activities > Clubs, select the club, then click into the membership periods. Check that you have added dates that overlap with today.
- Next, check the pupils' eligibility in the Club Details. Only eligible students will be able to book a spot in the club.
- Check whether it's outside term time. When adding the sessions for a club during the holidays, if you selected 'term time only,' parents will be unable to book the club for their child. You would need to delete the current sessions (see Managing Scheduled Sessions), create them again, and untick the 'Term Time Only' option.
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Check you have opted to show clubs on the Parent Portal and Arbor app by going to Students > Parents & Guardians > Parent Portal Settings. Amend this if you see an X here.
If the setting is off, it will say (No do not show clubs)
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For paid clubs, check that you have enabled card payments for your Clubs account type. If you have not, parents are unable to make card payments and will see a "Card payments for clubs are not available. Please contact your school and advise them to set up card payments for clubs" message when they try to sign their child up.
To check if you have enabled card payments for your Clubs account type, head to School > Payments > Setup > [in the left-hand menu] Customer Account Types and refer to the Accept Card Payment column. If this is set to No, you need to edit the account type to enable card payments.
- Similarly, to accept card payments, you must ensure your payments are fully set up and verified. More on this process here: Card Payments Setup - 1. Introduction
The club used to show for parents to book, but it isn't showing now
If guardians can't see the club on the Parent Portal or Arbor App, this is due to your settings. Please check and amend these according to the instructions below to enable them to display again, allowing parents to sign up and pay.
Club showing in the Active tab but not on the Parent Portal
This is likely due to the Guardian Portal Signup dates not being set. Go to School > Activities > Clubs and select the club from the Active tab.
Click on "Membership" under the "Membership Periods" section for Free Clubs or "Membership Periods and Prices" for Paid Clubs.
- You will need to click on each Membership to check the Guardian Portal Signup dates, as they are set up separately.
- Ensure that you have dates in the Guardian Portal Signup section and that they are up to date.
You can edit this by clicking the orange Edit button and changing the Guardian Portal Signup dates and times at the bottom of the slide-over.
Click the green Save Changes button.
Club showing in the Inactive tab
If the Club appears in the Inactive tab, this is because there are no upcoming scheduled sessions.
Find the Sessions section of the Club. Check when the last session took place, as this will be the reason the club is inactive.
In this example, the sessions should run until 2nd April. However, because the sessions run every Tuesday, the last session would be on the 30th March.
By clicking on the session, you can see that the last session was on Tuesday, 30th March. Following the session, the club became inactive.
To make the club active again, go to School > Activities > Clubs and select the club from the Inactive tab.
In the Sessions section, add more sessions using this article.
- If you are adding sessions to make the previous sessions visible to parents again, you can add a single session for the payment deadline or as far in the future as possible to avoid the club becoming inactive too soon.
- If you are adding sessions due to the club returning after a break, you can set up the sessions to match the actual club session times and dates.
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