Lots of potential but utterly infuriating interface
The Arbor app looks nice and has plenty of features. However, it’s overcomplicated and lacks basic user-friendliness.
If you have multiple children, they are separated, so you have to keep switching between them, rather than (for example) booking school meals for each child on a particular day in one go with ease (instead, it’s SIX presses of buttons to go via menus and sub-menus get to another child’s meal for the same day).
Changing meals requires removing a meal, confirming, then going back into the menu before you can change it.
Payments are strewn around all over the place, separated into different menus.
Viewing payment history to check if you’ve already paid for an item is also not intuitive – you go to Payments and it’s not there, and there’s no way to access it from the payments screen (instead, you have to go to the Main Menu, scroll down and click ‘Invoices’… why not call it something more obvious like ‘Payment History’ or ‘View Past Payments’?)
When on certain pages, it’s obvious you may want to go to a related page (e.g. if I’m on the Payments menu, I may want to View Payment History to make sure I’ve not already paid for something!) but there are no shortcut links provided on most pages, so this requires going back to another menu to find your way from there, as per the above example.
There’s really no need to have Clubs, Trips, School Shop and Payments as four separate menus – if they’re separate then at least have some shortcuts to get between them easily rather than having to go via the main menu all the time.
And one of the most egregious features is that, when you get a message from the school, the push notification from Arbor doesn’t tell you what the message is – you have to click on the notification to take you into the app. That’s not all, though – once inside the app, the message doesn’t even appear, so you have to then go to the right menu, to click on ‘Messages’, and then select the new message that’s just been received to see what it says! It’s so badly thought out.
And possibly the most infuriating issue: it doesn’t even save your debit/credit card details, so EVERY time you want to make a payment, you have to enter ALL your card details from scratch. It doesn’t support ApplePay either (despite it having existed in the UK since 2015).
There are bugs, too – sometimes (though not all the time) when you go to login, it doesn’t put your password in for you, even though you’ve clicked on the ‘Password’ field, and then selected the option to input your password automatically via your iPhone.
Overall, there’s lots of potential in this app, but the interface is utterly exhausting to use, nothing is where you would expect it to be, and it then requires far too much clicking, scrolling. It’s as fiddly as you can imagine, as you endlessly click around to try and get where you want to go.
The menu layout and navigation needs a complete rethink – it very clearly lacks any thorough real-world testing.
Fix this, and it could be a superb app that’s an asset to any school, parent/carer and child – but, even as someone who is very computer literate, it often has me tearing my hair out due to its lack of user-friendliness.
If you have multiple children, they are separated, so you have to keep switching between them, rather than (for example) booking school meals for each child on a particular day in one go with ease (instead, it’s SIX presses of buttons to go via menus and sub-menus get to another child’s meal for the same day).
Changing meals requires removing a meal, confirming, then going back into the menu before you can change it.
Payments are strewn around all over the place, separated into different menus.
Viewing payment history to check if you’ve already paid for an item is also not intuitive – you go to Payments and it’s not there, and there’s no way to access it from the payments screen (instead, you have to go to the Main Menu, scroll down and click ‘Invoices’… why not call it something more obvious like ‘Payment History’ or ‘View Past Payments’?)
When on certain pages, it’s obvious you may want to go to a related page (e.g. if I’m on the Payments menu, I may want to View Payment History to make sure I’ve not already paid for something!) but there are no shortcut links provided on most pages, so this requires going back to another menu to find your way from there, as per the above example.
There’s really no need to have Clubs, Trips, School Shop and Payments as four separate menus – if they’re separate then at least have some shortcuts to get between them easily rather than having to go via the main menu all the time.
And one of the most egregious features is that, when you get a message from the school, the push notification from Arbor doesn’t tell you what the message is – you have to click on the notification to take you into the app. That’s not all, though – once inside the app, the message doesn’t even appear, so you have to then go to the right menu, to click on ‘Messages’, and then select the new message that’s just been received to see what it says! It’s so badly thought out.
And possibly the most infuriating issue: it doesn’t even save your debit/credit card details, so EVERY time you want to make a payment, you have to enter ALL your card details from scratch. It doesn’t support ApplePay either (despite it having existed in the UK since 2015).
There are bugs, too – sometimes (though not all the time) when you go to login, it doesn’t put your password in for you, even though you’ve clicked on the ‘Password’ field, and then selected the option to input your password automatically via your iPhone.
Overall, there’s lots of potential in this app, but the interface is utterly exhausting to use, nothing is where you would expect it to be, and it then requires far too much clicking, scrolling. It’s as fiddly as you can imagine, as you endlessly click around to try and get where you want to go.
The menu layout and navigation needs a complete rethink – it very clearly lacks any thorough real-world testing.
Fix this, and it could be a superb app that’s an asset to any school, parent/carer and child – but, even as someone who is very computer literate, it often has me tearing my hair out due to its lack of user-friendliness.
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Very hard to book clubs and No invoices provided
This has been the worst by far parent app. Its time consuming. I have two children attending clubs morning and afternoon. To book them in I have to deal with this more than 30 minutes every time. Topping up 4 accounts, 2 breakfasts and 2 after school . After paying I have to go to each of them (4 times again) book the days and the times.
I don’t want to think parents with 3 or more children. Very chaotic.
And another thing, I cannot download any invoice, thing that I need to declare my childcare costs every month.
Rubbish
I don’t want to think parents with 3 or more children. Very chaotic.
And another thing, I cannot download any invoice, thing that I need to declare my childcare costs every month.
Rubbish
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TELL YOUR SCHOOLS TO STICK TO PARENT PAY
This app is a total farce compared to parent pay. Everything takes longer to do, requires more clicks, it clunky bordering on unusable. Speak to the admin team at your school that have to suffer on the other side. No one consulted them, it so much harder for them. Schools have to be responsible with budgets but don’t let deploy this abomination
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Notifications not descriptive
The notification appears as “New message received. Tap for details” why can’t the message be descriptive rather visiting to app every time to understand about that notifications.
The message read and unread should be highlighted with different background or foreground colour, as it is very difficult to differentiate both.
The message read and unread should be highlighted with different background or foreground colour, as it is very difficult to differentiate both.
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Inexplicably bad
Logged out and seemingly never to be let in again. Linked to a school that doesn’t use it, not to the one that does and can’t change. Arbor team seemingly think parenting isn’t time consuming and stressful enough so have added this fresh hell for us all. Thanks!
