Paying for meals at the till point works the same for students with free school meal entitlement - they scan their fingerprint or give their pin number. All students entitled to free school meals will stay completely anonymous.

The amount allowed for free school meals is entered onto the students account daily by the software. Any under spend or missed dinner is identified by the system and won’t be added to the next day's balance.

In high schools the student can choose to spend the daily allowance amount at any point of the day (breakfast, break snacks, or the lunchtime meal). However the student will need to top up their account with extra cash to cover the cost of any purchases over the daily allowance, using the revaluation machine.

Yes, the system has the ability to prevent specific foods from being sold to an individual, throughout the day or at specific periods. If a student has a food allergy or is diabetic then purchases of a certain product or group of products can be prevented on the system, and the till operator is shown an on screen warning.

Yes, you can get reports from the system by contacting your schools kitchen (they can’t be sent in the post). The report can be for a specific day or between any two dates, and are dated/timed to the minute.

You can get reports that show:

• every item of food sold to that account and the cost of each serving
• all individual payments made directly to the school by cheque or cash and manually entered onto the system
• each payment made at the revaluation unit by the student, including the number of individual coins and their denomination
• every transaction including all sales and credits itemised

Certain data is held on the system (your child's name, class, account balance and meal entitlement) to allow accurate operation. This data is handled under the guidelines of the data protection act and only used by parties directly associated with the school.