Setting Up Meals - A step by step guide

Once you've set up the meal accounts, you need to name the meals the school provides in your canteen, for example, Lunch. 

Go to School > Meals > select Setup from the left-hand menu.

Once in Setup click on the Create Meal button.

In the slide over enter the name of the meal and which account type (auto set to Meals) you want this to be linked to.

Provisions are the types of meals for students or staff. All possible options should be labelled here with a meal price(s) attached. To set up a provision, click on the 'Provisions' option in the Meal's set up checkbox.

Provisions are the types of meal your school provides for students or staff.

Depending on the context of your school's meals, Arbor suggests setting up these provisions:

1. School Meal/Hot Meal/Cold Meal etc can be set for students who require a meal. You can later set different prices for students who should pay and students (such as Free School Meal or FSM where the price should be £0.
2. Absent - This will mean that when a child is absent Arbor will automatically remove the meal from their record for the day. When setting up, do not tick 'Requires Meal' but tick ' Is Absent' - this will automatically make Arbor pick up any children who are not in and give them this provision of no meal which will not have a price.If you wish to charge students who are absent a price needs to be set against the absent provision.
3. Packed Lunch - This is a provision for students who bring their own lunch to school from home. Nothing will need to be ticked and no price will need to be given. 
4. Staff Meal:
   • If you use Meal Menus, or all your staff pay the same amount, do not set up different provisions for staff meals - you can set up your price in the next step.
   • If you have two prices for staff; one paid for and one on duty (free), you'll need two provisions so each staff member can choose depending on their schedule.

In the slide over you need to enter details about the provision.

• Meal - Lunch 2 is what we have called our overall meal.
• Meal provision name - This is where you enter what you will call the meal, for example School Lunch or Staff Meal.
• Meal type - Select from the options which description best fits the provision. In the above example, we have selected 'A hot meal prepared by the school'. Make sure you add an absent meal type so students who are not present will not be charged.

Then click on the green 'Add Provision' button.

Note: If you are a school that has set choices every day then you can set separate provisions for clearer records for the kitchen and finances, e.g. 'Jacket Potato', or 'Sandwiches'. You may also have a provision for packed lunches provided by the school for school trips.

For anything more complicated, please speak to Arbor Support.

Please note: This step requires the Finance: Administer permission on your profile. If you are not going to charge for meals in Arbor then you can skip this step.

Enter a price by clicking '+Add' in the prices' table. This will automatically charge students and staff for the food taken. 

With chargeable meals, remember to add prices for:

• Free School Meals - Any student where this is set on their profile
• Universal Free School Meals - Add a price and select that it applies to students in Year 1, Year 2 and Reception
• All other students/staff - for students who are not FSM or UFSM

Top Tip: For FSM and UFSM students, they will not be charged because whichever the lowest price for a student is used.

You will now have a list of all the meal provisions with prices, your school offers.

When you have finished creating provisions, click on the Back button.

You will see that you are half-way through the process of setting up the lunches - nearly done!

A sitting is where and what time the meal will take place. You can set up more then one sitting if you split up students meal times, e.g. if KS1 and KS2 have different meal times.

Click on 'Meal Sittings Schedule' in the table. 

Click the green 'Add Sitting' button to put in the days and times. 

Next, click on the 'Schedule Meal Sessions for XXXX' (this example is KS1 but this will have the name you have called your sitting here.)

A slide-over will appear to enter further details into.

If your meal session will be at the same time every day, just leave the 'Day of the week' field blank. The same applies to 'Terms'.

Click on 'Schedule Meal Sessions' to complete.

Top Tip: Make sure that lunch starts after scheduled lessons end. Otherwise, this will create an attendance clash for students.

This part adds students to the meal registers to enable teachers to mark students in certain classes down for each meal. If you don't complete this step, you won't have any students in your meal registers!

Go to the 'Automatic Group Attendees' tab, then click +Add. In the slide-over select the class/classes you wish to automatically enrol in this sitting. Click on the arrow at the end of the box to see the drop-down menu.

You must select all the groups of students you wish to add to this sitting, or they will not appear in the meal registers.

Once you have added your groups, your Automatic Group Attendees tab might look something like this:

This final step is not mandatory. This part of the setup is to assign each student a regular meal choice so that teachers or administration staff do not have to enter this manually each day.

If any changes happen during the day, an administrator can make the changes. 

Click on the 'Add Meal Choices' green button.

A slide over will load entitled 'Add Meal Choice' where the first drop-down list for 'Attendee' is to choose the student(s) on the same meal provision. 

Tick the days the students will be taking the provision.

Choose the meal provision from the drop-down and update the effective start and end date, then click on Save Changes.