Can we set up trips for the next academic year?

You may want to start accepting payments for a trip scheduled to take place in a future academic year, such as a residential trip. However, as you can't take payments for trips in future academic years, you'll need to set up two trips - one for this year to accept payments, and one for next year to schedule the actual trip to achieve this. This guide takes you through the best practices for setting up these trips.

Permissions

• School: Extra Curricular: Administer - Set up and manage trips
• Finance: Administer - Manage payments for trips

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

Why do we need two trips?

It is not possible to take payments for a trip in a future year until the academic year in which the trip takes place has started. However, you can accept payments for trips in the current academic year and for past trips as well. 

Furthermore, it is not possible to automatically carry over balances from one trip to another, nor can you change the dates on a trip to move this to another academic year or have a trip span multiple years.

So, the solution is to set up two trips:

• One trip in the current year that you use to collect payments. For the purposes of this guide, we will call the Payments Trip. Even though you set a trip date and add participants to this trip, these trip dates are just placeholders - this trip does not actually take place.
• A second trip during the academic year in which the trip actually takes place. For the purposes of this guide, we will call the Scheduling Trip. This will be a free trip that you confirm students for once they have paid for the other trip. This trip is for attendance taking and scheduling.
   

Step 1 - Setting up this year's Payments Trip

You create the trip as you would normally, by following these instructions for a paid trip: Setting up a Trip

The main things to note during the setup are the following:

• Give your trip payment trip a name that you can distinguish from the scheduling trip (e.g. Y7 Oaks Wood Residential 27 - Paid vs Y7 Oaks Wood Residential 27 - Scheduling)
• Make the purpose of the Payments Trip versus the Scheduling Trip clear in the trip description, as this information is displayed on the Parent Portal and App. This is a great place to confirm the Actual dates of the trip (start and end dates of the Scheduling Trip you will create in Step 3 of this guide.
• If the students eligible for the trip are currently enrolled, you can use their existing groups/courses/classes or select them individually without creating a custom group.
• This trip will not actually take place, but it does need a start and end date. To avoid the trip appearing on student and staff calendars at inopportune moments, we recommend setting the trip dates outside of term time. And, if you want to have as much control over when guardians can sign up for the trip themselves via the Parent Portal or App, we recommend setting the Payments Trip up to take place as late in the current academic year as possible (for example, on August 31st if your next academic year starts on September 1st).
• When setting up prices for your Payments Trip, we recommend charging the full price the student will need to have paid before the trip takes place, rather than a deposit or partial payment. You can still set different prices for different students and groups; these need to equal the total value you wish these students or groups to have paid by the time the Scheduling Trip takes place. If you want to take a deposit, consider using an Auto Confirmation Threshold instead.
• If you want guardians to be able to independently sign up for the trip through the Parent Portal or App, set Guardian Portal Signup dates and times.
   

Why not set up payments on both trips?

The reason for this is that if you set up two trips, both paid, it becomes much harder to see and manage who owes what and when, as you will need to switch between trip pages to compare the total amount a student has paid. Furthermore, once a student has been confirmed for a trip, it is not possible to change the trip's prices and outstanding amounts for that student without contacting your Arbor Support team. More on this here. 

This means that if a student has a price for the trip this year and in the future year, any outstanding charges relating to this year's trip are not easily adjustable and be default remain outstanding on the parent portal even if you only charge the outstanding amount on the original trip on the trip in the next year, which is likely to lead to confusion amongst guardians. 

For example, you might charge £100 for a trip, and a student pays £60 this year towards that trip, making their outstanding amount for the trip £40, which will be carried over into the following year. If you then create a paid trip in the next academic year and charge the outstanding amount on that new trip, the original outstanding amount will not be wiped out, so it will appear to guardians and administrators that students owe double the amount.

If you opted to set up two paid trips, please refer to the sections at the end of this guide for guidance on managing these.
 

Step 2 - Make sure you can add students

When creating your trip for next year, you can either wait until you have completed the New School Year Setup process to select those students, or you can create a Custom Group in the academic year the Trip takes place. 

Note: if you have not set up the relevant academic year yet, see how to add academic years here.

If you wish to use a custom group, make sure to follow these steps:

• Go to Students > Enrolment > Ad Hoc > Custom Groups
• Set the grey Academic Year dropdown to the academic year the trip takes place in (e.g. 2026/2027, if 2025/2026 is the current academic year)
• Click the green Add new custom group button
• On the slide over:
   
  • Set a Group Name (make this recognisable and unique so you can easily find this later, e.g. Y7 Oaks Wood Residential 27)
  • Set the Contains Students dropdown to All
  • Set Conatains guardians and Staff to None
  • Click Create custom group to confirm and be taken to the new custom group's overview page
    
    
     
• On the overview page, make sure you are on the Members  tab
• Click +Add
• On the slide over:
   
  • Use the Member's dropdown to select the students eligible for the trip. You can type student or form names in the box to narrow down the list. If you wish to add a whole form group in one go, type the name of the form group (e.g. 7C) and hit Ctrl + A on your keyboard.
  • Ensure the From and Until dates align with the start and end dates of the academic year of the scheduling trip.
  • Click the green Add Members button to finalise
     

Step 3 - Create the Scheduling Trip

Now that you have confirmed you have an appropriate student group for the Scheduling Trip, you can proceed with creating this trip. To set up the trip, follow these instructions and ensure this is a Free trip.

Note: To set up a trip for the next academic year, please ensure that you have first set up the academic year under School > School Structure > Academic Years. If you have not yet set this up, see how to add academic years here.
 

The main things to note during the setup are the following:

• Make sure this is a free trip
• Make sure to give your trip a name you can distinguish from your Payments Trip (e.g. Y7 Oaks Wood Residential 27 - Scheduling)
• Set the dates when the trip will actually take place in the Trip start and end date/time fields.
• In the Pupils Eligible dropdown, select your custom group from Step 2 (e.g. Y7 Oaks Wood Residential 27) or student group.
• Recommended - do not enter sign-up dates in the Guardian Portal Signup section, especially if you allow independent sign-ups via the Payments Trip. Two trips for the same purpose but at different times and price points are very likely to be confusing. Instead, manually confirm students for the trip once you are happy with their contributions via the Payments Trip
   

Step 4 - Managing Participants and Payments

Now that you have set up both trips, you can start managing your participants and payments.

As the Payments Trip is the only trip with prices set, this is the trip students will need to ensure they are signing up for or have been confirmed for to start making payments.

For the Scheduling Trip, you can choose to open sign-ups simultaneously, or you can opt to add students only once you are satisfied with the amount they have paid for the other trip.

Any refunds or manual payments you need to make will need to be made from the Payments trip. 

Once the academic year of the Payments Trip has passed, continue to use this trip to manage your payments and communicate this to parents as well.

Students can still be signed up for trips, even if they are in the past, and they can continue making payments. More on this here: 

• Can parents pay for a trip after it takes place?
• See and access trips for past years

To avoid confusion, we recommend only using guardian sign-ups for one of the trips. If you wish to use an Auto Confirmation Threshold to set a deposit (students are only confirmed for the trip once the threshold is reached) and to provide parents with a clear indication of the trip price, we recommend using this feature with the Payments Trip.

For the other trip, you can either open the sign-up later by adding dates in the trip details, or you can manually sign up the students once you are satisfied that they should appear as signed up and confirmed on the Parent Portal or App.

We have two paid trips. How do we manage these?

If you've set up two paid trips, you will find that you can't simply carry balances over from the earlier trip to the later trip. Charging students the same amount for each trip could lead to overpayment and confusion; this section outlines best practices to help you manage this setup effectively. 

Setting prices for the later trip

To set up Trip Prices for your later trip, you'll need to assign each student's trip cost to the outstanding amount still due for payment.

For example, if a student needs to pay a total of £100 for a trip and they paid £80 in the previous academic year, they still owe £20. This amount should therefore be the price for the student for the later trip.

See how to set different prices for a trip depending on the student or group in question here: Setting up a Trip

Top Tip: Duplicate your tabs so you can view the old trip and the amount each student has paid in one tab, and the new trip in the other tab.

To determine the contribution each participant has already made to a trip, navigate to the previous trip (see 'See and access trips for past years') and refer to the Participants section, checking both the Confirmed and Reserved tabs.

Managing balances on the earlier trip

While it is possible to change trip prices (even after a trip takes place), students who have already paid any amount will not have their invoice changed or price updated when you do this. More on this here: Change the trip price or Voluntary Contribution 

This means that for anyone who has already contributed to the trip, there is still an outstanding amount. To prevent guardians from seeing this outstanding balance on the Parent Portal or App, you can untick 'Show Amount Outstanding?' in the earlier trip's price settings. 

Please note: changing this setting will also prevent you from seeing the amount outstanding in the trip overview of your MIS. Therefore, only switch it off once you have set the correct prices for the later trip.

To do this: 

• Navigate to the trip earlier (see See and access trips for past years)
• Head to the Trip Prices section
• Click on the price you want to switch outstanding amounts off for
• On the slide-over, untick Show Amount Outstanding?

• Click Save to confirm 

  
   

What if the trip allows voluntary contributions, or the child has already paid enough last year?

If students have already paid enough in the previous trip, you won't need to add a price for them in this one if you only want to track payments and don't need to take attendance.

If you want to take attendance, you need to add them to the trip; otherwise, they won't appear in the register. When adding prices, you can set their price to zero.

You can then mark the students who have paid in full as confirmed.

Please note that even if you accept voluntary contributions using this method, the guardian won't be able to make further payments through the Parent Portal or Parent App.