We have a specialised area of Arbor to manage payments and bookings for breakfast or after-school clubs - with this feature you can:
- Allow parents to book sessions and pay in advance through the Parent Portal and Parent App.
- Manage different length sessions with different prices.
- Define the cut-off time for signing up e.g. 24 hours before the session.
- Choose any top-up account type for payments to be deducted from e.g. Meals or your Voucher account.
- Choose whether parents need to pay for all sessions or just the ones their children actually attend.
Top Tip: Make sure you have set up Card Payments on your site to allow payments via card.
Permissions
- School: Extra Curricular: Administer - Set up and manage clubs
- School: Teaching: Administer - Add staff to a club session
If you don't have the permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.
How long will it take?
- Switching from your old setup - 10 minutes
- Creating the club and scheduling sessions - 15 minutes
- Add accounting details and prices - 15 minutes
- Add membership periods - 5 minutes
Setting up wraparound care
Please note that if you want to set up more than one session within a day (such as a breakfast club and an after-school club), we recommend setting up two clubs. If you don't, each time will count as two separate sessions the parent could book and they could sign up for both. It also means that if a parent signs up for a day, they would be charged for both sessions that take place on the day.
Step 1 - Create the wraparound care club
Go to School > Activities > Clubs and click +Add to select Add Wraparound Care Club.
A slide over will appear for you to enter details about the club you're creating - choose:
- Club name
- Club description
- Students eligible for this club - Which students can be signed up to the wraparound care club. Top Tip: See how to add students who will be attending next year here: Custom Group for Clubs next year
- Maximum number of participants - this is the maximum students per each club session, not anyone who has attendance the club at any point. Once this limit is reached, guardians can no longer sign up to a particular session, but Administrators can still add additional students.
- Whether meals are going to be provided during the club. Top Tip: You will also need to set up a Meal Type or new Meal Menu (for parents to select the meal).
Next, add a club lead. This should be the person in charge of the club.
Step 2 - Schedule sessions and define session intervals
Click +Add to add sessions on a weekly basis.
Please note that guardians can only book one session (or one session interval) for a club per day. This would also mean that if a guardian wants to sign up for another session or interval on the same day, this would need to be recorded by the school.
For example, if you have a club with sessions before and after school, guardians will only be able to sign up for one or the other. In this scenario, you would need to set up a breakfast club and an after school club.
Top Tip: Need to schedule a one-off single session? Set the Effective end date to be equal to the Effective start date.
A session interval is a slot of time for a student to attend during a wraparound care club session. You can set up as many intervals during one session as needed.
Usually the price which parents need to pay depends on the length of the session interval their kid attends. For example, if your breakfast club runs from 7-9, you might have a different price for students who attend 7-9 and 8-9. We'll add prices in a later step.
Important information for setting up session intervals:
- There must be at least one session interval defined. If there is only one interval, set it as the same duration of the sessions.
- If you don't add an interval covering the full length of the session, we'll create one for you to allow parents to sign up their kids for the whole session length if needed.
- It is not possible to define session intervals that start earlier or end later than the session.
Step 3 - Add accounting details
Check whether your school has Card payments set up on your site.
- Schools that do not have card payments enabled do not need to fill in this section.
- Schools that have enabled card payments need to make sure accounting details are specified, even if you are setting up a free club.
In the Accounting Details section you'll need to choose:
- Customer account type - Which prepayment customer account type will be used for this particular wraparound care club - we recommend using your Voucher account. If you don't see the option you need, you can set up a new Customer Account Type. If you leave it blank, you won't be able to take payments.
- Accounting code - leave this field empty to use the default accounting code for this club. Please note that even if you add a different accounting code here, top ups will only show with the default accounting code - you'd need to add a new Customer account type and select it here to set a unique accounting code.
- Decide whether to charge students based on their attendance. If you select yes, students will be charged if they are marked in the wraparound care club register as present or late. If you select no, students will be charged for whichever wraparound care clubs they book, whether they attend or not.
Step 4 - Set prices per session interval
Check whether your school has Card payments set up on your site.
- Schools that do not have card payments enabled do not need to fill in this section.
- Schools that have enabled card payments need to make sure prices are specified, even if you are setting up a free club.
In the Club Prices section, you can add the price depending on the length of the session.
- Group / Student - Choose a group of students or a single student and the price they should be charged
- Club Session Interval - Select a session and a weekday and a session interval for which a price is set
- Price Excl. VAT
- VAT Rate
It isn't possible to define different prices for the same student group in the same interval. For example, if there is already a price for Year 7 for Monday 9:00-9:30, you can't create another price for Year 7 for Monday 9:00-9:30.
For a free club, you would need to add prices for each session interval of £0.
When prices are only added for different Key Stages you'll see an error when signing students up. We recommend setting up prices for Year Groups instead if there are different prices per key stage.
Step 5 - Add Membership periods and define cut-off times
In this section, you'll define when parents can sign up for the club.
So that parents don't have to book each day separately, you can add different membership periods - select from day, week, month, term or year. The available dates determine which sessions will be available to book.
- If you want parents to be able to select specific sessions, set up a daily membership period.
- If you want parents to sign up and pay for sessions in bulk, set up e.g. a termly membership period.
- You can set up both types if you want to give parents either option, but please note parents can't purchase a termly period if they've already purchased a daily session that falls in that term's date range.
Next, you'll determine the settings for guardians.
- Sign-up opens - Choose when guardians can start booking sessions on the Parent Portal and Parent App. Leave this field empty to disable sign-up for guardians if you want to manually sign pupils up. Arbor won’t automatically email parents to tell them they can sign up, so you would need to let them know via email, SMS or in-app message.
- Sign-up cut-off time - Choose the cut-off time for when guardians will no longer be able to book - from 30 minutes to 48 hours before the session is due to begin. Leave this field empty if there should be no cut-off time and guardians should be able to sign-up to the session at any moment of time until it begins.
- Allow sign-up if not enough balance? - As wraparound care clubs use top-up accounts, it is possible to go into debt. You can choose whether this is allowed when signing up to the club if signing up would take the balance below 0.
- Ask guardians whether student will have meals? - Choose whether parents can decide whether the child will have a meal during the club (only available if you specified that meals will be provided during the club).
Viewing and adding Club Participants
- Click Club Participants from the left-hand menu to view all the students that the club is open to, their account balance, and how many sessions they've signed up for and attended.
- Click Club Daily Summary from the left-hand menu and change the date to view all the students that are signed up to the club on that day, and their attendance mark.
You can see how to add students to sessions here: Manually signing students up to a wraparound care club
Guardians can sign their child up for sessions by clicking into the Clubs area and selecting the club. They can then top up their account (for paid clubs) and register.
You can see how guardians can sign their children up here: Signing my child up for a Breakfast or After-School Club on the Parent Portal or Parent App
Changing the start date
Before students have started booking on, you can edit the membership periods and timetable slots to adjust the effective dates.
However, once booking has started, some of the club setup becomes locked! An example of this is when multiple session intervals are set up, that cover different parts of the timetable slot for a given day. If you have this, you cannot edit the timetable slot once students have begun booking.
You may see a banner like the below - however we don't recommend removing the session intervals as students are already booked on.
Instead, you'll need to add an extra day to your club.
First, schedule your additional sessions. See Step 2 of the section Setting up wraparound care above for instructions on adding sessions.
You'll need to set up new intervals for these sessions too! Make sure these match what you have already got set up on your existing sessions. Make sure these additional sessions only cover the missing time span - don't overlap them with your existing sessions!
Finally, set prices for your new intervals. This is in addition to your existing prices for your previously existing intervals. See Step 4 of the section Setting up wraparound care above.
FAQ
What if we change the Charge students based on attendance mark setting?
If you change this setting from yes to no, or from no to yes, this setting will not be backdated. Only students that are enrolled in a session after the change are charged based on attendance mark, so previous invoices will not be changed.
Can we change or remove the customer account type?
You can remove or change the account before you start taking payments. Once at least one student is signed up for a future session of this club or at least one price is defined for this club, you won't be able to remove the account.
Can guardians pay with a voucher?
Yes, you can see how to set up and manage this here: Making and managing payments for Wraparound Care using vouchers
Please note that if your school has Allow sign-up if not enough balance set to No, don't allow sign-up in your Membership Period club settings, this will determine whether guardians can sign up.
- For students where voucher payments are set to Yes, guardians will still be able to sign their children up via the Parent Portal and Parent App, even if they do not have enough balance. This is so they are still able to book if your school hasn't added the latest voucher top up (as shown in the example below).
- For students where voucher payments are set to No, guardians will be asked to top up their account balance before they are able to book onto the club if they do not have enough balance.
Can you sign students up as a provisional club member?
No, this isn't possible. Because payments are taken from a top-up account rather than during signup for guardians, it is not possible to sign students up to pay later.
Do guardians need to provide consent?
No, guardians do not need to consent. It is not possible to request consent using wraparound care clubs.
How many invoices are raised?
One invoice is raised for every session interval the student is signed up for. For example, if a student is signed up for one session for two session intervals (e.g. 9-9:30 and 9:30 - 10) - then two invoices will be raised.
Can applicants for next year sign up?
See how to add students who will be attending next year here: Custom Group for Clubs next year
How do I add a Wraparound Club session to a staff member's calendar?
Staff members will have all Wraparound Club sessions recorded on their calendar if they are the Club Lead, but to add an individual club session to a staff member's calendar, you can follow these steps:
- Go to School > Activities > Clubs and click into the Wraparound Care club
- Click on the relevant session (e.g. Monday) and then click the specific session you want to add the staff member to
- Click the +Add button in the Staff section of the session page, and select the staff member
- Click Save Changes.
How do Wraparound Care clubs show in calendars?
The calendar event will span the whole session. Hover over the event to see the actual session times.
Comments
In our test site we have set up a Breakfast & After School Club, which runs over 5 days. When testing a parent sign up it seems they have to sign up to at least once session each day? What if a parent only wants to sign up 3 days for example how would this work?
Hi Ruth, you'll need to make sure you've set up a daily membership period. The guardian will then be able to select 3 days to sign up for.
Ah i see thats great, thanks for this :)
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