RobFrain Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 Hi We're about to go ahead and purchase a Cashless Catering System, however we are still unsure which one to pick. We have three to choose from. These are Nationwide - love it just a bit too expensive. Vericool - Great product - does it work elsewhere? Live Register - Jumped in at the last minute - I don't know many schools with this? The Nationwide is by far the most expensive, followed by Vericool (£3k cheaper then Nationwide) and then Live Register (£400 cheaper than Vericool). We require three tills with biometrics, and a biometric pre ordering terminal. I just wanted to see if anyone has these products? Any pros/cons of any of the systems? Anything we need to know before we proceed? Thanks
skyhawk Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 Hiya, have you looked at Cunningham's Cashless systems ??
RobFrain Posted October 23, 2015 Author Posted October 23, 2015 We've been told to stay well clear by numerous sites. I believe haven't they been taken over by a Canadian company? Last time they visited they were also another £3k on top of the Nationwide quote so we were not impressed!
IrritableTech Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 We've got LiveRegister - as you suggest not a big name in the market, but by far the lowest cost for us. We have biometric tills, and recharge/top up boxes. We don't use a pre-order terminal. Support has been good when required, but generally the system just runs. Catering Manager is happy with his end, and it feeds payments from and to Tucasi which we were already using before cashless catering.
DavidYoung Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 Hi, We have Vericool but are going to be running a similar tender process as we need to replace all our hardware, so are checking what the other options are like. A big question for each company is how well they work with the online payment provider. We use ParentPay and often have problems with Vericool not sync'ing correctly and they have to remote in to fix it. Let us know what you end up choosing. David
FragglePete Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 Just gone through a similar process over the Summer. We did have Vericool, but to be perfectly honest; couldn't wait to get rid of it. It was a nightmare and the support were next to useless; I really felt as it I was baby sitting the system continuously. It was soooo slow in recognition in it finger recognition process at the tills. It was quicker for the till operators to look up the students name by hand. They don't seem to have many on the road engineers either, and its expensive to call them out as well. We went through a tender process, and Live Register was also there and I was impressed with the simplicity of the system, but just too much of an unknown. I know they are getting into many schools but we were then left with the two 'big boys'; Cunninghams and Nationwide. Both very good, but I would say Nationwide is very comprehensive (or over complicated depending on how you want to look at it). In the end, we've gone with Cunninghams which we put in place with Schoolcomms at the same time. So far, so good. It's doing everything we want and I just let it get on with it. The biggest thing we've notice is the speed on the biometrics; incredibly quick. It uses the same scanners as the Vericool system, but uses different drivers as part of BioStore (so that put paid to when Vericool were trying to blame my network and/or SIMS server). Support is ok - nothing major has broken yet but little issues have been sorted out quickly and they make a point of speaking to online payment providers throughout the install process to ensure it all goes smoothly. Time will tell but already we're impressed with Cunninghams so far. Pete 1
DavidYoung Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 @FragglePete, your first paragraph seems very familiar to us, particularly about the speed of the biometrics. I'm impressed to hear that Cunninghams reading is much quicker. We have just taken the decision to move entirely over to proximity cards/tags for everything and the speed of that is hundreds of times faster. Did you have similar problems with online payments? How do you find Cunninghams on this point (although you said that they actually speak to them which I imagine helps a lot!)? Out of interest, what did you do with your old Vericool kit? I don't suppose you have any of the cashboxes left over do you?
FN-GM Posted October 23, 2015 Posted October 23, 2015 Anything we are now purchasing we are making sure it supports IPv6. The Nationwide system does not provide IPv6 support on network readers and reval units and has no plan to do so! Something I find a little bizarre to be frank. When we need to renew in a couple of years time and if they haven't change the stance on this it will be a deal breaker for us.
RobFrain Posted October 23, 2015 Author Posted October 23, 2015 Very concerned about the Vericool posts as they were top of my list. I believe they are now on v2 of the system? I'm guessing you guys are still on v1 if you're looking at new systems? I have live register coming in to show us what they can do but slightly nervous of the Unknown. I only know of one other school in Lancashire close to use they has it so will be checking after half term!!
FragglePete Posted October 24, 2015 Posted October 24, 2015 With regard to online payments. we used to use ParentPay with Vericool - again, it was a bloody nightmare. Randomly it would stop receiving the payments and you wouldn't know about it until some parent shouted that payments hadn't appear on accounts and they couldn't buy food. They kept trying to blame our internet connection when there was a backlog of transactions to upload (parent pay only allow so many through at a time). I got so fed up with it that I pleaded with our BM to get it changed and eventually they agreed too. The catering company were fed up with it also and we struck a deal with them to pay for a new system if they retain the contract for a bit longer (there was other things involved as well). Interestingly, my daughters school have just started using ParentPay and I've noticed a lot of 'transactions' on the account I use for them stating 'Balance adjusted to match tills' - which is an odd thing to see and have to say that is something that I used to deal with a lot trying to explain to parents what it was all about. Moving both cashless catering and online payments over to new systems in one go took a lot of planning but the actual 'change over' day went smoothly with only a couple of minor hiccups but thankfully Cunninghams and Schoolcomms actually talked to each other and resolved the little glitches. But generally. All good. Vericool were actually helpful in generating a query that generated the CSV files with all the balances against student admissions numbers, etc - I think they were pleased to see me go as I did used to get quite animated on the phone to them. We still have the old kit; the tills we actually replaced a couple of years ago (at great cost) to try and improve things but it didn't. We have four of them sitting in my store, but only three are worthy of selling on if anybody is interested - let me know!. The cashbox is junk. The motherboard of the cashbox machine has a soldered battery unit which failed a long time ago, which means we can't switch it off. If we do, we have to connect up a VGA monitor, PS2 Keyboard and play about with a whole load of BIOS settings to get it to output to the screen again. Had a bit of ceremony when we removed that from the wall!!! The only issue I've had with Cunninghams so far has been the initial support during the September period is very busy and getting through was difficult. But, as we were a new customer with a go-live date we had an engineer on-site for the first two days it was in operation and I had a direct dial number of the project manager so went through him with any issues. The Catering Manager now speaks to them the most with any issues with the Impact software, I just look after the server (which I have running on a VM) and just keep an eye out if any parents query payments. So far, have had no issues were the system was at fault, usually its the parents not doing things right or not understanding things. If this was still the Vericool & Parentpay I would have dealt with a number of issues already in September and October and it usually only settled down late October. A classic issue we got every year is where transactions were uploaded to ParentPay using the American date format, as these 'appeared' to be in the future when read as UK dates (eg. 11/9/2014 was read as 9th November 2014), ParentPay never showed the transaction until the date match the UK which then had a whole load of transactions appearing on parents accounts in November on a Sunday..... I had to deal with a lot of irate parents back then who then accused us of false accounting! This happened in the last two years and even then ParentPay blamed Vericool and vice versa. Hope it helps. But so far, my experience... Vericool - terrible, Parentpay - not great and difficult to get any sense from..... Cunninghams - it's a bit clunky but it seems to work well and Schoolcomms have been brilliant. Pete 1
RobFrain Posted October 24, 2015 Author Posted October 24, 2015 Thanks Pete. That's now scared me! We use Parentpay at the moment and Vericool was top of our list to purchase.
RobFrain Posted October 25, 2015 Author Posted October 25, 2015 Nope! Do you use it? Any good? I may ask for a quote! We are definitely not changing from Parent pay though!!
Max_Power Posted October 26, 2015 Posted October 26, 2015 Slightly off topic but may help? We use Live Register for registration and have done so for about 18 months, this uses the same technology that's used for the cashless catering system. Works well, and the company / support is very good indeed. Willing to develop enhancements where possible even if bespoke to your own school. Biggest headache was obtaining thumb scans, just takes a while and chasing students who aren't in etc. Also nice and easy to provide students who do not consent to biometrics with a PIN number. We dont use the cashless catering side, but do use the system for lunches, parents pay for lunch for a whole term and then the system operates a traffic light system. Scan thumb, green enter for lunch, red you dont - simple and effective.
truebluesteve Posted October 26, 2015 Posted October 26, 2015 We have used Cunninghams for a number of years and on the whole its been fine - although we have had issues with them and our online payments system (Schools Cash Office). This was resolved last year after a lot of moaning - made all the more frustrating that both those companies were part of the same organisation! Since then its been fine although we are looking at moving away from SCO now for various reasons. We do use Vericool for our 6th form registration and it seems to work OK although the support can be a bit hit and miss in my experience.
rad Posted October 26, 2015 Posted October 26, 2015 We use Parentpay and Nationwide. I cant fault it, had it 5 years and the number of issues is minimal. We have 2000 students and use biometric thumb impressions, if you search NRS or nationwide you will find other posts on this topic.
GREED Posted October 28, 2015 Posted October 28, 2015 Nope! Do you use it? Any good? I may ask for a quote! We are definitely not changing from Parent pay though!! Do it, they great company to chat to. Reasonably priced and company has a good track record in this sector! Everything I have seen from schools that use it say it is simple and easy to use.
RobFrain Posted November 4, 2015 Author Posted November 4, 2015 Still undecided. The headteacher is deciding next week on Friday. My heart wants Nationwide, my head says it will be Vericool. Liveregister have jumping in at the last minute with the cheapest price and are coking in next week to show us what they can offer....
john Posted November 5, 2015 Posted November 5, 2015 I was very happy with Nationwide with Parent Pay and the support was excellent and great people at Nation Wide they are a big firm and know there stuff they do a lot of commercial systems as well so have good background in retail technologies and certainly forward thinking. If I was spending my own money I'd use Nationwide and given how Vericool went pop a few years ago and left lots stuffed then re-appeared as a new non-connected firm etc... they are a risk I'd not take. (search Vericool on here you will find threads from a couple of years ago on the subject).
pete Posted November 5, 2015 Posted November 5, 2015 The biggest thing we've notice is the speed on the biometrics; incredibly quick. It uses the same scanners as the Vericool system, but uses different drivers as part of BioStore (so that put paid to when Vericool were trying to blame my network and/or SIMS server). Just spotted this - I don't suppose you'd mind PM-ing (or posting in-thread) the Biostore driver versions that Cunninghams are using would you?
GREED Posted November 5, 2015 Posted November 5, 2015 Oh boy is thay going to open a can of political worms...
RobFrain Posted November 5, 2015 Author Posted November 5, 2015 .... given how Vericool went pop a few years ago and left lots stuffed then re-appeared as a new non-connected firm etc... they are a risk I'd not take. (search Vericool on here you will find threads from a couple of years ago on the subject). Went pop???
john Posted November 5, 2015 Posted November 5, 2015 Went pop??? So the modern Vericool is a new company, think its about 4 years old, they were however around with the same name for many years previous to that (you will find threads back to 2007) but that company vanished a couple of years ago just before a BETT if I remember correctly and then the new firm was at BETT and were making it clear they were nothing to do with the old one etc... we did have a discussion on here about it at the time but cannot find it in the many posts that mention Vericool.
RobFrain Posted November 5, 2015 Author Posted November 5, 2015 So the modern Vericool is a new company, think its about 4 years old, they were however around with the same name for many years previous to that (you will find threads back to 2007) but that company vanished a couple of years ago just before a BETT if I remember correctly and then the new firm was at BETT and were making it clear they were nothing to do with the old one etc... we did have a discussion on here about it at the time but cannot find it in the many posts that mention Vericool. Wow didn't know any of this. Like you said I couldn't find it in any previous post. Just had a quick look at the company history and they dissolved in 2010 (https://companycheck.co.uk/search?term=Vericool) Quite alarming...
john Posted November 5, 2015 Posted November 5, 2015 Wow didn't know any of this. Like you said I couldn't find it in any previous post. Just had a quick look at the company history and they dissolved in 2010 (https://companycheck.co.uk/search?term=Vericool) Quite alarming... Not saying that the kit you are getting is at risk just if your thinking I see threads for years ago they have been around a long time like Nationwide have then its not strictly accurate. I have not seen or use the new Vericool but did see the old system when I evaluated Nationwide, Cunninghams and Vericool at the time and in the end went Nationwide
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