Can we set up trips for the next academic year?

To set up future trips, create the academic year and a Custom Group, add eligible students, create the trip, and add prices. A single future-year trip is recommended; legacy two-trip methods require careful payment, participant, and balance management. We have left guidance on this method available for reference if this is the method you used to set up your trips.

Permissions

• School: Extra Curricular: Administer - Set up and manage trips
• Finance: Administer - Manage payments for trips
• School: Academic Structure: Administer - Add new academic years.

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

How should I set up trips for next year?

Setting up a trip for a future academic year (Recommended)

Step 1 - Create a Custom Group

• Create the academic year the trip takes place in (if not already created). 
  
  Do this by going to: School > School Structure > Academic Years 
  
  

   

• Next, create a Custom Group in the year you have just created. To do this:
   
  • Go to Students > Enrolment > Ad Hoc > Custom Groups. 

  • Change the Academic Year with the grey dropdown (1) and click Add new custom group (2)
    
    

     

  • Entre the details:
     
    1. Give the group a name (e.g. Year 11 27/28 Rome Trip)
    2. Set Contains students to All 
    3. Click Create custom group

• Then, add the members to the custom group. The group should have opened automatically and can be found at Students > Enrolment > Ad Hoc > Custom Groups by changing the Academic Year drop-down. 
  
  
  
  
  To add the members:
   
  • Go to the Members tab 
  • Click +Add 
  • On the slide-over, use the drop-down to add the student eligible for the trip
  • Click Add Members

Want to add all students in a specific form group at the same time? Type part of the current form group name into the drop-down, then press Ctrl/Cmd + A (Select All) to add all those students at once. 

For example, if you want to add all current Year 10 students (next year's Year 11s) and your Year 10 form groups all have the number "10" in their name (e.g. 10CU and 10KV), type "10" into the box and select all.

Step 2 - Create your Trip

Once you have your custom group, it's time to create your Trip with the custom group as your eligible pupils. 

• Head to School > Activities > Trips
• Click +Add
• On the slide-over, enter your trip's details
• Click Add Trip

Two important things to note when adding trip details: 

• Set Pupils Eligible to the Custom Group you just created (e.g. Year 11 27/28 Rome Trip)
• For the Guardian Portal Signup, leave these empty for now if you do not want the trip to appear on the Parent or App for now. Once you add in dates, guardians can see the trip, even if those dates are in the future.

Step 3 - Add Trip Prices

The next step is to add prices to your trip; without prices, students won't be able to sign up.

• On the Trip's Overview page (School > Activities > Trips > [Click the trip you just added]), scroll to the Trip Prices section.
• Click +Add

• On the next page, set a price for the custom group you created in Step 1.
  
  

• Complete all of the price details. More on trip prices here.
• Click Save

Students can now be signed up for the Trip. To open the trip up for parents to start making payments, either manually confirm students for the trip with the Bulk Action in the Trip Participants section or open the sign-up by adjusting the Sign-up Dates in the Trip Details section.

Top Tips for offering reduced rates for some students

• Students get charged the best price available to them, so if you set two prices that apply to the same student (e.g. £360 for everyone but £180 for disadvantaged students), they see the lower price (e.g. £180)
• Because the trip is next year, you cannot see most demographic cohorts when adding prices. To get around this, either: 
  • Create a separate custom group in the academic year of the trip containing the students on the reduced rate (like in Step 1 above); do not add the students who pay full price.
  • Add prices for students' reduced rates individually

Managing a trip set up with two trips (legacy method 1)

You may have set up two trips instead of using a single trip with a Custom Group: a paid "Payments Trip" (dated to the current year, used only to collect payments) and a free "Scheduling Trip" (dated to the year the trip actually takes place). The process for this is outlined below.

Step 1 - Create a Payments Trip

• Create a paid trip in the current academic year. Give it a name that's clearly distinguishable from the Scheduling Trip you'll create in Step 2 (e.g. "Y7 Oaks Wood Residential 27 - Paid"), and use the description (visible to parents) to explain that this trip is for collecting payment only.
• Set placeholder dates outside term time, and set the price to the full anticipated cost of the trip (not a deposit).
• Set Pupils Eligible to whichever group of eligible students you're using 

Step 2 - 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.

• 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.
• To be able to select the students you need in the Pupils Eligible dropdown, you can either wait until you have completed the New School Year Setup process so they have an enrolment for the academic year the trip is in, or you can create a Custom Group in the academic year the Trip takes place and then add the custom 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 3 - Managing Participants and Payments

Once 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 can we manage these? (legacy method 2)

If you've set up two paid trips, one in the current year (to start taking payments) and one next year (for scheduling), 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; therefore, we recommend taking payment through one of these trips, however, 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.

Adding eligible participants to a future trip

Upon creating a trip for the next academic year, you have the option to select individual students from the Pupils Eligible section.

When you then finish adding the trip and head back to add/edit eligible students from the Trip Overview section, you will no longer be able to select students individually. 

To ensure you can still add your students, you could create a custom group for the trip and select this in the drop-down instead.