Easy Class Trip Planning

Using GroupTools for your educational group travel will keep you organized and unify your planning process because it eliminates the need for disconnected and outdated forms of class trip planning. If you're ready to plan your trip in GroupTools, here's how to get started in three easy steps:

Step One: Fill Out The Basic Group Trip Info

When you create a trip with GroupTools, the first prompt asks you to tell us about your event. This process will customize your event page to reflect your class trip. You can do this by setting a name for the trip, adding the date, time, and destination, including any applicable pricing information, and additional information such as uploading photos. This will let your students and parents know what to expect.

Step Two: Gather Your Group

A key step in turning your educational group trip from pending to active is to add and invite the participants. For younger students, you can provide the parents' contact information to populate your invite list. On the other hand, for older students, you can use their school emails to send invitations directly to them. 

Each invitee will receive a personal invitation with easy RSVP response options for your class trip and the tracking of these responses is handled automatically. No more juggling manual attendance sheets. You can easily see which students have signed up for your trip and can even download and print an easy event report with all the attendance details.

Step Three: Manage the Details

As an educator, you need more information for your students than just a yes or no on attendance. Use the built-in communication tools on your event to get all the necessary details you need to run your class trip easily such as completed permission slips, emergency contact forms, and student health information. The more you know from your students and parents in advance, the easier the process will be. You won’t be forced to scramble at the last minute, re-sending lost permission slips to parents and gathering student information. 

Through these three simple steps, GroupTools enables you to have a stress-free educational group planning experience but, our class trip planning services don't end here.

Flexible Organizing Experiences

While planning your class trip in GroupTools is as easy as 1, 2, 3 - we have many more options that fit any educational group travel planning style. 

Full Itineraries

For the teacher who plans their class trips like their lesson plans, down to the last detail, you can add activities, transportation, and other items to your basic event page. This will build out a full itinerary. You can let your students and their parents know down to the minute what they’ll be doing on your class trip, or just give an outline of all the stops and activities included on the trip. You can also set elements of the trip to required or optional for your trip to get all your student counts for each trip element correct from the start.

Easy Payment Collection

For trips where the full cost isn't handled by the school, GroupTools gives you options for easily collecting class trip payments online. You can set up one of our integrated payment processors to accept card and e-check payments from parents if your school allows or add in custom payment options that your school provides. This automates another major process of your trip planning and eliminates concerns about students losing paperwork and payments on their way to school.

Administrator Insight

If policies require that your school administrators either plan or have oversight of the planning of all school trips we offer two effective solutions to keep them in the loop. We can keep them involved as much or as little as necessary in your GroupTools planning activities. 

• School administration can easily create a standardized event format for the school. Each time a teacher like yourself is planning a class trip, they can transfer you the template to customize and have a dashboard with at-a-glance oversight onto how each class trip is pacing in terms of attendance and payments. 
• If your administrators need to take a more active role in your class trip planning, you can add them as additional group leaders. This will give them the same access and control to your event as you have in GroupTools.

Planning Pivots

Educational group travel can be dependent upon specific conditions and safety levels being met. Should circumstances change your plans for your class trip, GroupTools makes it easy to pivot your planning. No longer attending a physical location? No problem. You can adjust your event location from a physical location to a URL for a virtual field trip. 

Plan Your Class trip with GroupTools Today

GroupTools is easy to integrate into both traditional and online classrooms and as a free educational group planning solution, it fits into any teacher's budget. Visit GroupTools to learn more or jump right into your planning today.