Troubleshooting Guide for Common Payments Problems

This article addresses common issues in Arbor's Payments module, including correcting Customer Account Types, handling refunds (cash refunds, delayed refunds, partial refunds), transferring funds between accounts, managing invoices and credit notes, and troubleshooting card payments and Stripe setup. It offers step-by-step solutions and emphasises contacting support when necessary.

What do I do if I have incorrectly setup the Customer Account Type?

If you’ve chosen the wrong account type, or need to change how it’s configured, you don’t always need to start again from scratch, but in some cases you do - see below some common scenarios:
 

I need to change basic settings

1. Head to School > Payments > Payments Setup > Customer Account Types and select the account type you need to edit 
2. Select the orange Edit button in the top right corner 
3. Make the changes you need to make in the slide-over, then select the green Save Changes button 

School Shop isn’t appearing as an account option when I go to set up a School Shop item

This can be due to two main reasons:

1. You have not yet set up School Shop as an account type: this account type is not automatically on your Arbor MIS in the same way Clubs, Trips and Meals are; you’ll need to create a School Shop Customer Account Type in order for it to show as an option.
    
2. The category for your School Shop account type is ‘Ad-hoc’ instead of ‘School Shop’: in Arbor, you need to make sure the category chosen when creating your School Shop account type is ‘School Shop’.

If you have chosen any other type, in particular ‘Ad-hoc’, the account type will not work, and this cannot be changed using the edit button - you will need to create a brand new account type, and contact your support team to delete the old one.

This can be said for other incorrect Customer Account Types, such as a Trip being set up as an Account Type rather than a trip itself. In this case, you’d need to ensure you refund any payments made into the wrong account type, and then recreate the account to have them paid back in. 

Note: before starting again from scratch, check “Should I set this up as a Trip, Club, School Shop, Meal or Account for payments?” to confirm which account type is the right one for you.

What do I do if a refund has gone wrong? 

I’ve logged a cash refund by mistake

1. Refunds cannot be deleted once added to the system, but they can be rectified by adding the correct refund, and then adding a Credit Note to even out the account balance. 
   
   Search for the student’s profile in the Global Search Bar, and select Payments on the left hand side of the profile
2. Click into the relevant Payment Account, and either click into Top-ups if you need to add a Card Refund, or click into Refunds if you need to add a Cheque refund, and add the correct refund
3. Click into Credit Notes to add a credit note for the same amount as the cash refund to even out the account balance

The parent hasn’t received the refund yet

There can be a few different reasons this can happen:

• Refund time: it can take 3-5 working days for card refunds to return to the original card. If it has been less than this time, the parent may need to wait a bit longer. 

  If it has been longer than 10 days since the refund was issued, the parent will first need to contact their banking provider to find out if there are any blockers on their end, and if not the school will need to reach out to their relevant support team.
   

• Expired card: A refund can fail if the card issuer is unable to process it, such as if the card has been cancelled or expired. In these cases, the school will need to issue a refund via an alternative method. 
   
• Manual payment: it may be that the original payment was added onto the system manually instead of via card (I.e: cash, cheque). If this is the case, no money will be moved from the Arbor MIS to the parent’s card, as there wasn’t any money moved in the first instance. 
  
  In this case, the school will need to refund the parent outside of Arbor, and log the refund manually on the student’s profile.

I only need to partially refund the parent

You can partially refund parents by selecting the Advanced Options button when going to refund Trips and Club memberships. This is not seen immediately on the main screen, and will show once you start the cancellation and refund process.

Account Transfers - Can I transfer between accounts?

There’s no direct “transfer” button, so moving money between accounts always uses a two-step workaround: refund the wrong account, then top up the right one.

Sibling to sibling: refund the paying sibling’s account, then ask the parent to top-up the correct child’s account for the same amount.

Paid into the wrong account entirely: same two-step approach — refund from the wrong account, ask the parent to top-up the right one.

Trip balance needs to move to dinner money: Money cannot be transferred between an Invoice account and a Top-up account; the parent will need to have the trip payment refunded so they can top-up the meals account.

What do I do if I've raised the wrong credit note or invoice?

Once raised, school staff are unable to delete Credit Notes or Invoices. 

Credit note applied to the wrong account or duplicate credit note: you can reverse it with an equal and opposite credit note on the correct account, rather than editing the original.

You can also get in touch with your relevant support team for a full deletion of the wrong or duplicate credit note. 

Invoice shows as “Paid” but the parent hasn’t paid: this is almost always a voluntary contribution invoice, which is marked Paid by default. It isn’t a fault, but it’s worth explaining this to the parent directly when creating a trip with this feature toggled on.

Ad-hoc Invoices: create an individual invoice rather than routing it through Trips or Clubs. You can see how to do this in our Help Centre article: Creating Invoices

What do I do if my card payments setup isn't working?

Uploaded your documents and heard nothing: Check the status on Card Payments Setup – Step 8 before contacting us, and state the expected turnaround clearly there.

Verification failed or suspended: this is usually a details mismatch, most commonly for MATs where the listed legal director isn’t based at the school named on the account. Check the director and representative details are accurate, especially the address for your director and representative as it needs to be their personal address.

Payout missing or cancelled: Check the cancelled card payment payout first — a cancelled payout is usually a bank detail mismatch and is simple to resubmit. Please see our article for further troubleshooting: Cancelled card payment payout