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SIS 2000+ Food Services

Sec. 1, Introduction / Getting Started
 

The Food Services module processes and integrates Eligibility data with student meal service data. Eligibility procedures consist of the Application processing module, the Application Verification module, and the Direct Certification module. Eligibility Letters, Verification Letters and Direct Certification Letters are user-definable. Generic Letter Templates are provided using English and Spanish.

Multiple meals per day are allowed, with the first student meal (breakfast and lunch) recorded as the reimbursable meal. Non-reimbursable meals are also tracked. Ala Carte and milk service (including SMP Milk), account payments and in-line payments are also supported. Account charging for meals and/or ala Carte may be allowed or prohibited per consumer, per food line, or as school/district policy.

Meal, Reimbursement, Sales Tax and food Item Rates use optional effective date ranges to allow for mid-year and future rate changes. Meal, Reimbursement and Item Rates may be set as district-wide, with exceptions allowed for individual schools that may use a meal or reimbursement rate other than the district standard (such as a Severe Need Breakfast school). Summary reports provide free/reduced/paid eligibility figures and actual service figures for free/reduced/paid students and student patrons. District Reimbursement reports calculate reimbursement due based upon meal service figures and meal reimbursement rates for each school. All data is maintained for the school year and is accessible for editing and reporting purposes. Food Service Letters and Labels are user-definable. Generic Letter Templates are provided using English and Spanish.
 

1.1 Open Food Services
Select the Food Service icon button from SIS 2000+'s Main Menu. The Food Services main menu will appear (Fig. 1) with nine icon buttons: Administration, POS Designer, Patrons, Payments, Cafeteria, Class Entry, Accounts, Eligibility and Reports.

Fig. 1 - Food Service main menu
 

Administration -
Click on this button to display the Administration sub-menu.

Fig. 2 - Administration sub-menu

 

Meal Rates

Sets the district and/or school rates for first (reimbursable) and second (non-reimbursable) meals (breakfast and lunch) for free/reduced/regular students, faculty, and visitors, including rates for workers (earned meals) for each category. Meal reimbursement rates and sales tax rates are also set, including identifying taxable consumers and taxable food items (meals and/or ala Carte items).

Meal Rates are user-defined and determined by the type of meal service. Rates include first and second lunch and breakfast meals for students (free, reduced and regular), faculty, and visitors, including workers. Patrons are set as student, faculty etc. in the Patron Editor, and reference that corresponding meal rate. Any pricing configuration may be accommodated. For example, you may choose to set faculty worker meals at no charge, while student worker meals may be set as charged -- using any price you wish. Meal, reimbursement and tax rates are date-driven and reference status records. Rate effective and expire dates are not required unless a rate changes. If a rate does change, the existing rate is closed with an expire date, and a new rate placed in effect with an effective date. Meals are charged using the meal rate in effect as of the service date. Rates are set using a District Rate template for elementary, middle and high schools. Exceptions to district rates may be made for individual schools.

Each Student Meal Rate has an associated Reimbursement Rate table, where a user-defined combination of federal, state, commodity and severe needs reimbursement rates may be entered to create a combined total reimbursement rate for that Meal. Reimbursement rates and meal service data are combined to produce District Reimbursement Reports.

Food Items
Contains all food items sold, district-wide or school specific. Items should include all ala Carte items, plus a Lunch item and a Breakfast item (also a Milk item, if SMP Milk is processed). Lunch and Breakfast items use pre-defined prices as set in Rates. Ala Carte item prices must be provided.

Item availability may be specified as district-wide, or limited to a specific type of school (high school only, for example) or a specific school. Meal availability may be set for breakfast, lunch, or unset (available at both meals). Each item is defined as a Food Services Meal item (lunch/breakfast, potentially reimbursable), a Food Services Milk item (reimbursable SMP milk), or an ala Carte item. Different consumer prices may be set for an ala Carte item (for example, the student price for a hamburger may be different than the faculty price).
 

Cafeteria Policies
Contains Consumer Alerts, Quantity, Balance and Spending Restrictions.  Restrictions may be set as database-wide policies, or enabled without a district value and customized for individual consumers.
 

Audio Library
Contains audio files which may be optionally associated with Cafeteria Policy Restrictions and Alerts.  Custom sounds may be added to the library as needed.  Supported formats are .wav, .mid and .rmi.
 
Preferences
Offers the option of managing Food Service Preferences for district, school and cash drawer/meal levels, or accepting default preference values. The Preferences Manager is located within Administration and is used to manage preferences, including preference values. The Preferences Editor is located within the File menu of those modules utilizing preferences, and is used for changing preference values, as permitted by the Manager.

The Cash Drawer Editor is located within the POS Designer File menu. Cash Drawers associate the food line with transactions for reporting purposes. A Cash Drawer should be used by one food line (one cash drawer per food line).

Example:
Six food lines are used for lunch and are designated Registers A-F. The first four lines (A-D) offer identical menus. The fifth line (E) and the sixth line (F) offer a variety of ala Carte items unique to each line.

Cash Drawers needed:
Register A
Register B
Register C
Register D
Register E- Sack Lunch Line
Register F- ala Carte Line

A seventh Cash Drawer "Office" is also created to identify transactions processed by office staff.

POS Configurations needed:
One configuration to be used by lines A-D (description set as "Lines A-D" for user convenience).
One configuration to be used by line E (description set as "Line E-Sack Lunch Line")
One configuration to be used by line F (description set as "Line F-ala Carte Line")

Eligibility

Fig. 3 - Eligibility sub-menu
 

Applications
Processes and stores eligibility applications. A processed Application creates Account Status records with the application pay-type and effective and expire dates for each household student present on the application (see Accounts, Sec. 6a). The effective and expire dates of account status records define the period of time a student is eligible to receive meals under the pay type set by the application. The Cafeteria module requires current student account status records to record service. If a current account status record is not in effect (expired application, for example), and the Cafeteria Preference EXPIRED ACCOUNTS = INSERT, the Cafeteria module automatically inserts a 'Paid' status record as of the date of service.

Applications are per Household and may be processed at the district level or at the building level. Schools which do not process their own applications but receive approval status data from the district may enter free/reduced status into the Accounts module (Sec. 6a, Account Status records).

The Applications module processes income based applications, categorically approved students, and directly certified students. Application approved / denied / incomplete status is derived from application calculations which compare household size, household income and federal income guidelines. The appropriate pay-type is then assigned to each student on the application. Changes in student pay-type require Re-application (unless a clerical error is being corrected, in which case the current application should be corrected).

Temporary status Applications are assigned an expiration date that complies with the Temporary status (30-60-90 days).

An application may contain a student whose pay type is different from that of the household application. In this situation the student(s) qualifying for a pay-type other than the household pay-type are flagged with red type, and the application Status is Split. Household size of '1' should be used for applications for a foster child.

Applications may be located by applicant, application number, or student.

An audit trail is maintained for each application by automatic system Edit Logs and optional User Notes and Application Notes. Automatic 'Date Changed' and 'Changed by' records are also stored.

Application Approved/Denied/Temporary Approved/Incomplete/Pending Expiration/Verification/Notice of Adverse Action Letters are produced using the language set as the Contact/FS Applicant Language in Student Contacts. Generic letter templates in English and Spanish are provided and may be customized as needed.

At year-end, active applications for continuing free and reduced status students are archived, then replicated as 'Temporary Approved (free or reduced)' for a user-defined period of time for the new school year.

Verification
Offers Random and Focused Sampling. Previously verified applications and Directly Certified individuals are excluded from sampling pools. Current status of each application in the verification process is tracked. Under construction, est. Spring quarter 1999

Direct Certification
Under construction, est. Spring quarter 1999

The Cafeteria module supports the use of bar codes, touch-screen ala carte terminals, manual ten-key line entry of ID numbers, and consumers by name to process food lines. Audio may be incorporated with consumer Restrictions and Alerts.  Service is recorded for students, faculty, visitors and patrons. Service includes sale of ala Carte and meals to individuals (in-line payment or charge to account) and anonymous cash service (service and payment) for student (full-pay status, reimbursable meal), faculty, patrons, visiting adult and visiting child. Worker status and Commodity Meal service may be designated. An individual sale may include more than one meal (the first meal only is counted as the reimbursable meal), plus ala Carte items. Service and payments previously recorded that meal are displayed (red italics) if an account is retrieved again that day for the same meal.

Cafeteria sales includes processing Volume Sales, which is a quantity sale of a single food item or meal (Banquets, Parents Day, or milk, for example).

Cafeteria Settings allow the performance of each food line to be customized -- Workstation, Policy and Audio settings.

Class Entry
An alternate method of processing cafeteria meal service, designed for schools that bring students to the lunchroom organized by class and prefer not to use barcodes or student ID numbers. Students are grouped alphabetically by teacher, and service is indicated by pressing an 'L', 'B', 'M (ala Carte milk)', 'S' (SMP Milk) or 'W' (worker meal) for each student (see Sec. 14, Class Entry). Class Entry processes service for these items only.

Payments
The Payments Entry module is designed for 10-key speed entry and is the fastest method of recording payments to individual accounts. Payment transactions may be recorded district-wide. Transactions may be identified as a payment (general), refund, transfer, balance forward, or returned check. Intended for recording account pre-payments in the office.

Payments may also be deposited to account during Cafeteria food line entry, or recorded directly into the Payments page in an individual's account. Payments may be recorded on a district-wide basis. Payments Reports may be produced for any period of time and provide detailed listings of payments using a variety of report parameters. A School Payment Summary Report with payment totals by category of payer is also available.

Patrons
Patrons are individuals who participate in the Food Service program but who are not enrolled in the school. These are individuals whose participation is frequent enough to justify maintaining an account (to allow prepay and/or charging), or whose meal service needs to be recorded due to participation in free/reduced Child Nutrition programs.

Examples:
1. A school that serves meals to students from a nearby pre-school or alternative school.
2. The spouse of a staff member
3. Student teachers
4. District staff
5. Students not currently enrolled but who will be when processing is completed by the Attendance office.

Reports
While some reports require preset formats, the majority of Food Services reports allow user-defined formats. Definable reports may be produced sorted by school, grade, class, individuals etc. Reports may be produced for any date range. Since all data is stored for the entire year and is editable, errors may be corrected and reports reprinted. Barcodes may be printed using the same report options. Deficit letters reference a user-defined template and are produced for accounts within user-defined parameters.

Reporting may be limited to the building level or expanded to district/network-wide. Detailed reporting provides a complete audit trail for all required Child Nutrition Eligibility figures. All Service and Payment reports may be configured for any desired date range. Reports that include Eligibility figures incorporate a user-defined attendance factor. Eligibility Letters Reports combine application data and user-defined letter templates to produce household letters. District Reimbursement Reports combine student meal reimbursement rates and student meal service data to produce totals by school and district. Sales Tax Reports combine Meal and ala Carte service data and sales tax rates to produce district sales tax payable reports.

Food Service Reports include:

Daily Detail Reports - for Breakfast and Lunch
Daily Payment Detail, Daily Payment Detail by Drawer, Daily Meal Service Detail, Daily Meal Service Detail by Drawer, Daily ala Carte Detail, Daily ala Carte Detail by Drawer, Student Payments, Meals and ala Carte by Teacher
 
Food Service Rosters -
Class, School and Grade Rosters with student pay-types (alias available), optional weekly account balances forward and register (grid)
 
Daily Summary Reports -
Daily Deposit Summary, Daily Meal Summary, Daily Food Service Summary, Daily Cafeteria Summary, Daily Cafeteria Summary by Drawer, Daily ala Carte Summary, Daily Eligibility Summary
 
Monthly Summary Reports -
Monthly Meal Summary, Monthly ala Carte Summary, Monthly Payment Summary by Date, Monthly Payment Summary by Drawer, Monthly Eligibility Summary
 
Meal Rates Reports -
Meal Rates, Reimbursement Rates, current rates or all.
 
Food Items Reports - current or all ala Carte Items and Meal Items by school, school type or district

Account Status Reports - by school or district (Account Status refers to students free/reduced/paid status)

Current Status by Grade, Current Status by Ethnic, Current Status Counts, Current Status Snapshot (free/reduced/paid per report date), Current Status by Teacher, Pending Status Expiration
 
Account Balance Reports -
Student Account Balances (Active or non-Active), Faculty (Active or non-Active), Students by Teacher and Patron Account Balances.
 
Eligibility Reports -
Reports, letters and labels generated by the Applications module. Reports, letters and labels generated by the Verifications module. Reports, letters and labels generated by the Direct Certification module (under construction).
 
District/State Reports -
Reimbursement, Sales Tax Payable, all above reports on a district/state level
 
Regional Reports -
SFA Site Monthly Worksheets, Schedule G

Select 'Yes' to open the second session. Keep in mind that the last entry made and saved in the module (using either session) will be the entry that is recorded. While this capability does exist, the primary intention of this alert is to serve as notice that the application is already open, possibly minimized or concealed behind a larger window.

SIS 2000+ Time Out
The SIS 2000+ System utilizes a "Time Out" security function to help prevent unauthorized access. "Time Out" causes SIS 2000+ to "self-exit" if it has not been used for a defined period of time. Any use of a SIS 2000+ module resets the time out countdown. If your kitchen processes more than one session for lunch or breakfast, request that the system administrator set the time out preference to a period of time greater than that time between lunch sessions. Otherwise, your system will self-exit between lunch sessions.
 

1.2 Getting Started - General
SIS 2000+ Requirements for Food Services operation:

Student Enrollment / Student Editor

1. Students are present with current status records
2. Teacher/Advisor data (General tab) present if:

• You plan to print Food Services reports by teacher
• You plan to use the Class Entry Cafeteria module Faculty Editor -

Track Editor
Data for current year is present
 

1.3 Food Services Setup

1.3.1.  Sec. 2, Cafeteria Policies
Enable desired Cafeteria Policies - Balance, Quantity and Spending Restrictions, Alerts (Policies are per database)
Complete workstation setup if audio alerts are to be implemented
Setup/customize Food Services Audio Library

1.3.2  Sec. 3, Preferences
Launch each Food Service module to self-install required preferences at appropriate levels.
Modify installed settings and manage access for module preferences by using the Preferences Manager - Food Service Administration / Preferences

1.3.3. Sec. 4, Rates
Set Meal Rate configurations. Complete District rates for meals, including Reimbursement rates, and any school rate exceptions to District default rates. Meal Rates should include configurations for (breakfast and lunch, first and second meals):
 

• student free, reduced, regular, worker, reimbursement
• faculty (second meal only), faculty worker
• Adult (visitor, second meal only), worker
• Child (visitor, second meal only), worker
• Milk for any/all of the above configurations -- Milk should only be treated as a meal item if:
1. You wish to include milk service in Meal Reports or,
2. Milk is a reimbursable item (participation in the Special Milk Program). If SMP Milk is used, complete Reimbursement Rate for each SMP Milk Rate.
• Set Sales Tax Rates (if applicable)
• Identify Taxable Consumers (if applicable)

1.3.4 Sec. 5, Food Items
• Enter Meal Items - Meal items present must include Lunch , Breakfast (if served), and a Milk item (see Milk, above)
• Enter ala Carte Items - Include milk as an ala Carte item if milk is not a reimbursable item. Milk may be present as a Meal item and an ala Carte item.

1.3.5. Eligibility - Sec. 7, Eligibility Applications
Complete Income Guidelines
Customize Eligibility Letter Templates (Eligibility Reports, Document Editor)
Process Applications to establish Free, Reduced, Full Pay status for students
Print Eligibility Letters

1.3.6. Sec. 11, Patrons
Enter Patrons into the Patron Editor
Accounts module - Modify default 'Paid' status records for Student Patrons.  See  Sec. 11b, Free/Reduced Student Patrons

1.3.7  Sec. 6a, Account Status Records -
The Applications module is not in use.  Overall level Food Service Eligibility Preference Value is OFFLINE.
Student pay types have not been imported into the system.
 

Student account status records default to 'Paid' status. These records must be edited manually and changed for each Free and Reduced student and student Patron. Verify that effective and expire dates are correct. Free and Reduced status records which have been maintained manually are designated as OFFLINE.
 
1.3.8  Sec. 8, Direct Certification -
Process Directly Certified students into Food Services (under construction).

1.3.9  Sec. 15, POS Designer -
Complete design layouts for various food line configurations (menus). Create a Cash Drawer for each food line and for the Office, per School (see Sec. 15d, Copy a POS Configuration).

1.3.10  Sec. 13b, Cafeteria Settings -
Evaluate and modify Cafeteria Settings for each cash drawer (Workstation, Audio and Policy settings).

1.3.11 Sec. 12, Payments
Enter Account "Balances Forward" (first-time setup only - thereafter new year procedures carry forward or clear account balances at the user's option). Current account balances are not required for daily operation. Daily service may proceed, and balances forward completed as time allows. Students and faculty will initially process as charging to their accounts, but this will correct as balances forward are entered.

1.3.12 Food Services Reports
Customize Generic Deficit Letter templates (see Food Service Reports / Document Editor)
Print barcodes (see Food Service Reports / Letters & Labels