How to ensure FSM / UFSM students are not charged for meals

This article is designed to help you configure your meal provision prices correctly so that FSM and UFSM students are automatically charged £0.

Permissions

To manage your Meals setup, you will need the following permissions:

• Finance: Administer - Adding and managing meal provision prices for students

• Student Profile: Meals: Administer All Students - Needed to access the meal setup

If you don't have permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

Step 1 - Initial Setup

The prices you set during this part of the setup determine how much a student gets charged each time a provision is recorded on the meal register. Ensure you double-check your choices during this step, as it can be tricky to make changes at a later date.

When adding meal provision prices, it is crucial to add your prices in this order:

1. Free School Meals (FSM) students.
2. Universal Free School Meals (UFSM) students (Year 1, Year 2, and Reception).
3. Other Year Groups with a unique price
4. Finally, use the All Other Students/Staff option for all other students who pay the standard price.

Adding the prices to your provisions

• Go to School > Meals > Setup (in the left menu)
• Under the relevant meal, click on Prices
• Click on the Provision you want to add the prices for
• Click the green +Add button above the Prices table

FSM Students

• Click the green +Add button

• Set Price to £0

• Under Specific Groups, select Free School Meals Students

UFSM Students

• Click the green +Add button

• Set Price to £0

• Under Specific Groups, manually select Reception, Year 1, and Year 2

The steps above apply specifically to FSM and UFSM prices; for a more general explanation of how the process works, please refer to this article, here.

Things to check before saving

• Don't leave the price blank: For FSM/UFSM, you must explicitly type 0 in the Price (inc. VAT) box

• Set VAT Rate: Usually set to Exempt for student categories

• Define Dates: Ensure the From and Until dates are within the current academic period, and that the From date is in the future, i.e. tomorrow

• Check Provision Types: For provisions like "Absent" or "Packed Lunch," you can skip adding a price entirely; the system will default to no charge

Step 2 - Editing prices

• Change the group of students a price applies to: If you assigned a price to the wrong group of students, you cannot edit it; you must delete the price category and add it again. See how to do this here. 
  
  Note: This can only be done if you haven't yet started using the price category.

• Change a provision price: If you accidentally set an incorrect price for your FSM/UFSM students, you can edit the price going forward. See how to do this here.

Step 3 - Where to check if a student is being charged correctly

1. The individual Student Profile: Navigate to the Student's Profile > click on Payments in the left menu > Meals. Check that no charges of more than £0 have been made.
2. The Charges by Person report: Navigate to School > Meals > Meal Reports > Charges By Person. Edit the filters to your desired date range, and check that the student has £0 in the Total column.

Step 4 - What to do if an FSM/UFSM student has been charged an incorrect amount

1. Check that the student is recorded as FSM/UFSM. If not, you can see how to do this here.
2. Go back through the above setup steps to check if a provision price has been set up incorrectly. If it has and you need to correct a price, this will only update the price going forward, so you will need to cancel the incorrect invoices for the student. You can see how to do this here.