School Hot Lunch Program

The administrative side to the lunch program is housed completely inside Spruance and utilize the power of the CRM system. There are many different options and screens that include:

• Setting up the School Year
• Setting up the Students and Class Rosters (so the reports can be broken down to the classroom level)
• Creating the Schedule with Available Meals
• Setting up the Vendors
• And More...

These items allow administrators to properly setup their Hot Lunch Programs to match their individual school needs.

The Hot Lunch Program works much like a credit card account. Orders are placed for individual students and the system tracks the expense against their account. When the payment is submitted either via Online E-Commerce or other method, the payment is tracked against the balance in the system. This is also how additional features such as Forgotten Lunch charges, snow days, and other unexpected activities are achieved. They are simply applied to the user account and either applied to the next order or added to the next charge.

The account information is tracked throughout the history of the account and administrators can view that history and get quick details on each individual transaction that has ever occured.

The Hot Lunch Program allows administrators to quickly apply charges or credits to any account. Forgotten Lunches are a snap, as an administrator will simply look up the child select the day and the lunch that was provided, either a standard "forgotten lunch" or an extra from the regularly scheduled lunch meals for the day. The system will automatically update the student financial account and the master order count.

Administrators are able to view every single order that has been processed for each individual user in the system. They can see information to include the date, cost, payment method, notes, and even E-Commerce payment details.

Orders that have been started, yet not completed in the system will also appear, allowing administrators the ability to quickly complete orders in the event of user error or a problem with the payment gateway.

Entering the meal options can be time consuming, especially if there are a lot of repeats from month to month, even week to week. To help with the process, the system allows the administrator to create Favorite Meals that can be applied to any order period, saving a lot of time.

With as many moving pieces as a lunch program has, having accurate and real-time reporting on the program is vital. The system has two main types of reports. The first is regarding the lunch orders themselves. There are seveal reports to choose from, including orders by grade, classrom, month, or ordering period. The reports are generated each time with real-time information in them to ensure accuracy.

The second kind of reports is for overall health and fiscal accounting of the lunch program. Reports include outstanding balances, daily payment reports, monthly financial repots, and more. This helps ensure that the system is under control and lost revenue is avoided.

The Hot Lunch Program can be setup to either operate with the PayPal or Authorize.NET payment gateway systems. The secure transactions occur on the gateway provider's secure website, reducing costly additional security and giving peace of mind. The users, in the payment process, are taken automatically to a secure payment page on either PayPal or Authorize.NET servers and then returned when the payment process is completed. The payment gateway then sends a special code in the background to the system, letting the Hot Lunch Program to know if the payment has been accepted or not.

Currently the Hot Lunch Program is in its third generation release, and has seen a lot of changes over the years. Ideas for improvements and changes have always come from the users and clients of the system. They have helped make the system what it is today and as new clients are added and the system continues to be expanded, we welcome new ideas and suggestions.

The Lunch Program, the same as with Spruance itself, will continue to evolve and improve on itself, and we stay flexible to achieve just that. The systems are not "boxed solutions" rather living code built upon enterprise class Microsoft technology with the committment that it will grow with the clients.

Ok, for the nerds in the bunch. The Hot Lunch Program and Spruance systems are written using the .NET framework from Microsoft. Our sites are all custom C# web applications running on a enterprise cloud server running Windows Server 2012, with 24/7 monitoring and backup services.

Our website are database driven, utilizing the powerful Microsoft SQL Server 2012 engine, meaning that your sites are built upon a solid Technology Foundation.