Instant Book and Pay Events are a great option if you want to give parents/pupils the option of booking immediately, especially if you want to take payment up front. It's perfect for School Trips, Breakfast Clubs, Wraparound care events, and After School Clubs (that are not part of a larger, preference based sign up).
THIS OPTION SHOULD BE USED IF YOU ARE HAPPY FOR PARENTS TO SELF SELECT THEIR CHILDREN INTO THE EVENTS.
(Please note: you can control who can see which events they are able to book by filtering each group by Year, Grade or any other Group in the system).
Please see the article below or watch this video (21 minutes) for:
- Setting up a container for your care clubs
- Creating groups inside the container for both breakfast and after school care clubs
- Creating events for those groups both with:-
- Individual Drop-in sessions
- Daily block bookings - allowing parents to book each Monday in a sequence (e.g. a term or half-term)
- How to make a manual booking for a parent
- Where to view the bookings that have been made
- How to edit an event, e.g. change the number of places available for a booking day
Simple Breakfast and After School Club Setup
This article shows how to create an Instant book & pay to allow sign up for an example daily repeating Breakfast Club.
Step 1:
- Click the Activities, Clubs & Bookings Admin tab (this may be labelled differently due to your School's preferences)
- Click the container type. In this example it is Instant Book & Pay.
(As it is possible to amend the label name, your container type could be labelled Wraparound Care and this will have the same functionality. If you would like a Wraparound Care option, please contact help@schoolsbuddy.com and we will be able to set this up for you) - Click Add' to create a new container.
Step 2:
Fill in the details for the Breakfast or Afterschool Club (please click on the images below the instructions to enlarge them)
- Sign Up Title: e.g. Spring Term Afterschool Care - We would recommend setting breakfast clubs termly.
- Description: Any information that is relevant to all sessions
- Allow Booking Cancellation/Auto Adjust Payments: Enter the number of days/hours before the event starts that parents can cancel their booking and add the option to auto adjust payments if appropriate.
- Block Clashes: If switched on, this option will stop the booking from being completed if the pupil is already booked on to another event at the same time. If it is not switched on, a message on screen will advise that there is a clash, however the booking can still be completed.
- Maximum Bookable events per group: Leave this as 0 as the groups will be organised by year or by a custom group and there may be multiple sessions per term/year.
- Activities start/end dates/times: Set the dates for when you want the activities to occur, in this case for a term. You can re-use the container to add clubs as the year progresses. The times are not important in this case as they can be set for each individual event later.
- Responsibility for confirmation: This is who will make the booking. Leave Parents only highlighted green, or switch to Students or Parents or Students only according to your School’s preferences.
- Sign up opens: Date when sign up opens (when parents can start booking)
Sign up closes: Date when sign up closes (e.g. if you are creating the container for the term/year, when is the last day that parents should be able to sign up for the Breakfast Club sessions) - Show select all button: This enables the parent/student to select all events in one go.
- Use organisation block dates?: This defaults to on and will use your block dates that have been set at an organisational level. Don't use these if you want to run clubs during half term for example.
- Accept Voucher Payments: Only select this if childcare vouchers will be accepted for these sessions. If you select this option, you will have the choice to be able to limit which group can pay by childcare vouchers (please see this article about Restricting the use of Childcare Vouchers.)
- Terms & Conditions: You can enter any terms & conditions that apply to all wraparound care.
- T&Cs additional info (URL): If you have your school T&Cs in a PDF file, for example, you can add a link to it here.
- Booking Data Form: We can create a form for you to collect any other information you require of the student at the time of booking.
- Transport Timeslot: If you have the transport module and wish to collect information about the bus a pupil is taking, you can add a form here.
When the correct details have been entered click the green save button on the lower right of the screen.
Step 3:
From the left hand menu, click the Groups tab and then the blue + Add button at the top right.
Fill in the correct details regarding the Club.
- Title: Title of the Group (Parents/Pupils will see this), e.g. 'Breakfast Club'
- Description: Description of the Group (Parents/Pupils will see this)
- Available to: When selected, a pop-up box will appear on the screen. This will determine who can sign up for the Breakfast Club. Use the drop-down box and search bar to search for the Year/Group/Class that will be able to sign up. When the correct Year/Group/Class has been found, select the ‘Add’ and then the green ‘Continue’ tab.
(PLEASE NOTE: THIS CAN BE ANY OTHER GROUP IN THE SYSTEM, SO IF YOU WANT TO FILTER WHO CAN BOOK TO JUST A SELECTION OF 5 STUDENTS YOU COULD CREATE A CUSTOM GROUP AND ADD IN 5 STUDENTS AND ONLY THESE PARENTS/STUDENTS WOULD BE ABLE TO BOOK IT) - click here for how to create a group - Gender: Gender of the Group
- Lead Staff Member: Which Staff Member will be the Organiser of the group
- Activity: This will not be visible to the booker so can be set as Other
- Default Location: Location of the Breakfast Club
- Group Code: This can be used for finance reconciliation
- Billing Code: This can be used for finance reconciliation
When the correct details have been entered, click the green Save' button.
Step 4:
Now the group has been created it will appear in the container Groups tab.
Events must now be created for the group. To do this, click Create Events in the left hand menu and then the blue + Add New button.
Fill in the following information fields as follows:-
- Title: eg. ASC session
- Vital Information: any vital information surrounding the Club
- Additional Information: any further information surrounding the Club
- Booking Options: Use Block where e.g. all Mondays must be booked at the same time. Use Individual where each session can be booked individually, the select all button will allow you to select all Mondays, Wednesdays, etc as required as well as ad-hoc bookings.
- Number of places: maximum number of places for the Club
- Create for groups: select the newly created group
- Location: this can either be the location specified when creating the group or a location can be selected in the drop-down bar.
- Event type: this will be After School Club
- Cost Type: this can either be free or chargeable
- Price per session: this will be the price per session (for example, £2 per after school club session)
- Percentage to pay at time of booking/Deposit (%): this is the percentage required to pay when booking. If less than 100%, the remainder will sit on the account balance to be paid in the future. If no upfront payment is required enter 0.
- Payment Method: select Default - Create Fees to charge to the parent wallet and allow online payments if using.
Continue to complete the information fields as follows:
- Frequency: For this example of a term's sessions, this will be Multiple Days
- Activities start date: First date of the club / Activities end date: Last date of the club
- Days of the week: select which days of the week
- Start Time: start time of club / End Time: end time of club
- Sign up opens in advance: This is optional. Leave blank to use the date & time set at container level / Sign up closes in advance: This is optional. Leave blank to use the date & time set at container level
When the correct details have been entered, click the Create Rule button.
Step 5:
- When Create Rule has been clicked, the event template will show in the Create Events tab. Now go to the Publish Events tab.
- A summary of the events ready to create will be listed. At this point check all details are correct and check the last column Event Count is as expected.
- To publish the events, click the I confirm tick box and the green Publish button.
- When the events have been published and the sign up has opened, parents/pupils will be able to book the events.
Block Bookings - Charging Full Price if student joins part way through.
Using Block bookings, you now have the ability to charge a pupil the full amount for an event rather than just the sessions that they have signed up for / attended. By default the system charges the student from the point they join an event if joining part way through.
If you want to charge Full Price for an event, even if joining part way through, please follow guidance below:
- Event is set to Block Booking and is a Chargeable Event
- Check the Always Charge Full Price option located just underneath the Cost Type
(If you hover your mouse over the green information icon, this will give a brief description of the option.)
- Fill out the remaining event details and click Save.
Please note that if you change the location of a Group after events have been created, this will not change the location of those events. This must be completed as well but the location can be bulk changed for all future events at once.
Please read the Editing part of this article for more information about how to do this: Editing, Deleting or Cancelling an event