Parents can't sign up to the breakfast or after-school club (Wraparound Care Clubs)

This article provides troubleshooting steps for parents and guardians who are unable to sign up for breakfast or after-school clubs through the Parent Portal or Arbor App. It covers issues related to permissions, booking specific days, eligibility, accounting details, term-time restrictions, visibility of clubs, and inactive club statuses.

Important note

This guidance is for Wraparound Care Clubs, not Standard Clubs. For a detailed discussion of the difference between the two, please refer to this guidance. For troubleshooting help with Standard 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 daily sessions (e.g. Monday only).

Go to School > Activities > Clubs, select the club, then make sure to add a Daily period in the Membership Periods 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 schedule wraparound 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.

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?
• Ensure your Start and End dates do not span school days; you will ned up with duplicate sessions during term time otherwise.
• Add prices for the newly created session intervals
• (Optional) Create a Daily Membership period to allow parents and admins to sign up students for single sessions
• (Optional) Manually add students missing from registers 

Once scheduled, it is not possible to untick Term time only?. You have to schedule additional sessions.

Step 1: Schedule sessions

• Head to School > Activities > Clubs  and open your club
• Click +Add in the Sessions section
• Set the Day(s) of the week you want to schedule missing sessions for.
• Untick Term Time Only?
• Set session Start and End times - if you make these one minute longer or shorter than your term time, these sessions are easier to recognise when setting prices in Step 2.
• Set Effective dates that cover dates you are missing sessions for, only - do not include dates that are not covered by an academic holiday, or you will create duplicate sessions during term time.
• Add session intervals for parents to book - if you offset these by a minute compared to term time sessions too, they are easier to spot later.
• Complete any other information you want to add, and select Schedule club sessions to finalise

Step 2: Add prices

• On the club's overview page, click +Add in the prices section.
• On the next page, add a row for each session interval you need to create a price for with the grey +Add button under the table
• Use the drop-down in the Club Session Interval column to choose the session intervals you just created. If you started or ended these just before or after your old intervals (e.g. 10:01 instead of 10:00), they are easier to spot. 

• Complete the other details
• Click Save Prices

Guardians can't book onto a new club

Step 1 - Check sign-up is open

First, check the guardian portal signup dates for your club. Go to School > Actitivies > Clubs, select the club, then click into the membership periods. If you have multiple membership options, make sure to check each as sign-up dates are set per membership period.

Check that you have added dates overlapping with today.

Step 2 - Check eligibility

Check the pupils' eligibility. Only students who are eligible for the club will be able to be booked on.

Step 3 - Check accounting details

Check whether your school has Card payments set up on your site. Schools that have enabled card payments need to make sure accounting details and prices are specified, even if a wraparound club is free!

For a free club, you will also need to ensure you have added prices for each session interval of £0. More on adding prices can be found here: Wraparound care clubs - Setting prices (Breakfast and after-school clubs)

Step 4 - Check terms

Check whether it's outside term time. When adding the sessions for a club during the holidays, if you selected 'term time only?' parents are be unable to book their child onto the club during school holidays, for example.

You would need to delete current sessions, create them again, and untick 'term time only?' when re-adding them. More on adding club sessions here: Wraparound care clubs - Scheduling sessions (Breakfast and after-school clubs)

Step 5 - Check clubs are visible

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).

The club used to show for parents to book but it isn't showing now

If the Club appears in the Inactive tab in School > Actitivies > Clubs, this is due to there being 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. You can either:

• Move the effective end date for the sessions
• Add new sessions using this article - you can either add a single session far in the future to avoid the club going back to inactive too early, or set up more sessions to accurately represent when the club is actually taking place.