Parents can't see or make Meal Menu choices

This article provides troubleshooting steps for parents and guardians who are unable to see or make meal menu choices for their children. It outlines necessary permissions, checks for meal menu features, deadlines for meal choices, availability dates, student attendance, and school calendar accuracy.

Parents and guardians might not be able to select which meal their child is going to have. Follow the troubleshooting steps below to resolve this. 

Permissions

You'll need the Meals: Administer All Students permission to set up meal menus. If you don't have the permission, you'll need to ask your admin team to give you permission using these instructions.

Parents can't see Meal Choices at all

Step 1 - Check you have the Meal Menus feature

Rotating Meal Menus are included in our newest Perform package. All other Arbor packages won’t have this feature by default. Want to upgrade or find out what package you’re on? Just get in contact with the Partnership Team by emailing customersales@arbor-education.com 

Step 2 - Check the date

Guardians can edit their children's future meal choices until either:

• the deadline your school sets for changing meal choices has passed.
• the meal has taken place if you don't set a deadline.

Once the deadline passes or the meal has taken place, guardians cannot see past meal choices.

Step 3 - Check the Parent Portal availability dates

If a meal isn't marked as available, it won't be visible on the Parent Portal or Parent App.

Go to School > Meals > Setup and select Meal menus. Select the meal, then check the Availability Dates are current.

Step 4 - Check the students attending the meal

If a meal isn't available for a student, it won't be visible on the Parent Portal or Parent App.

Go to School > Meals > Setup and select Attendees and either:

• Click on the Automatic Group Attendees tab, and add the student's registration form.
• Click into the Students Without regular Meal Patterns tab and click on the individual student to give them a pattern.

Step 5 - Check your school calendar

If it's not a school day in your calendar, parents will se a message saying 'School holiday - no choices available'.

Check and make changes to your academic calendar if this is not correct: Amending the Academic Calendar

Parents can't change meal choices

Step 1 - Check the deadline

Guardians can edit their children's future meal choices until either:

• the deadline your school sets for changing meal choices has passed.
• the meal has taken place if you don't set a deadline.

Once the deadline passes or the meal has taken place, guardians cannot see past meal choices.

Step 2 - Check if old choices have been removed

Guardians can only change their meal choice if the current meal choice is No Choice Selected. So, please check that guardians have followed these steps on the Portal or App before they select a new meal choice.

Check guardians have:

• Clicked on the day you want to change to open the edit screen.
• Updated the meal choice to No Choice Selected using the dropdown
• Clicked the green Process button to delete the choice

This will have reverted the day they selected to No choices selected.

Once you have done this, they can set a new meal choice by:

• Clicking on the day
• Selecting a meal choice using the dropdown
• Clicking Process to confirm your choice.