Checklist for Setting up Seasonal Meals using Standard Meals

This article provides a checklist for setting up Seasonal Meals, including Christmas dinner and other one-time meal offerings, using Arbor's standard Meals functionality.

Permissions

• Meals: Administer All Students - Set up the Seasonal meal as a meal provision (you must also have the permission below to set up prices)
• Finance: Administer - Set a price for the meal provision and manage payments for meals or trips

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

Choosing the method

If you use standard meals, you have two options:

• Meal provision: These are best if you would like teachers to be able to record the students' meal choices on the day.
• Trip: These are best if you want parents to be able to book and/or pay for the meal through the Parent Portal or Parent App.

Please see our article for the pros and cons of each option here.

Note: If you want to accept payments through Arbor for meals, you must already have card payments enabled on your site (go to School > Payments > Initial Setup to verify that all steps are ticked)

Meal Provisions

• You must have set up your Lunch meal as a standard - click here to see how to set it up to ensure your teachers can take Meal Registers
• Step 1 - Set up your meal provision - Navigate to School > Meals and select Setup from the left-hand menu. More on this here.
• Step 2 - Adding meal prices - In this step, you can add a price for a specific meal and set the dates for which this meal choice will generate invoices. More on this here.
• Step 3 - Adding students - On the day of the meal, you or your teachers can access the morning register and enter student meal choices individually or in bulk. More on this here.

Trips

• Step 1 - Add your trip - Create your trip by going to Go to School > Activities > Trips, and click +Add to create a new trip. More on this here.
• Step 2 - Add your prices - Next, you will need to create prices. If the meal is free, you won't need to add a price. More on this here.
• Step 3a - Signing a child up on the school side - You can manually sign students up to the trip if you don't want to use the parent portal. More on this here.
• Step 3b - How guardians can sign up their children - If you want to use the parent portal and app, parents can sign up for the meal until the Signup Closes date and time. They will need to click into the Trips section and select the upcoming meal. More on this here.
• Step 4 - What to do on the day of the meal - On the day, teachers must record students as absent in the Meals Register so they are not charged twice. More on this here.