Cunninghams - Schools Cash Office Issues

[truebluesteve]

Morning

 

Since the start of term the link between our Cunninghams Cashless Catering System (Impact) and Schools Cash Office hasn't been working, so that money being added by parents isn't showing on Impact. To get around the problem we've had to allow students a daily overdraft of £5 simply to allow them to have meals and stop chaos ay break and lunchtimes. I suspect we probably have the national debt of Greece by now!

 

To compound the issue the support from both companies has been awful - Cunninghams took 4 days to get to me after I logged the initial support call with them, and there seems to be no sense of urgency to resolve the issue (which is affecting a number of Schools according to Tucasi). We will be looking at different suppliers after this but I get the impression that there aren't many out there and those that do exist aren't very good either!

 

Is anyone else having these issues or that can recommend alternatives?

[ITBadger]

In fairness there are a lot of education providers that are swamped at the beginning of term, but it does tell you a lot about the efficacy of the company support team at times like this. We have recently moved from Cunninghams to Biostore FasTrak and whilst they too had issues with being very busy, their approach to providing support has been a world apart from what we were used to with Cunninghams. The product itself is much better than that offered by Cunninghams in my opinion and their developers are responding well to suggestions on how to further improve the product. I'd certainly include them in any considerations of alternative providers. I've also heard that Live Register are good from a trusted colleague at a neighbouring school (who also ditched Cunninghams this year), but have no experience of Live Register myself.

[truebluesteve]

In fairness there are a lot of education providers that are swamped at the beginning of term, but it does tell you a lot about the efficacy of the company support team at times like this. We have recently moved from Cunninghams to Biostore FasTrak and whilst they too had issues with being very busy, their approach to providing support has been a world apart from what we were used to with Cunninghams. The product itself is much better than that offered by Cunninghams in my opinion and their developers are responding well to suggestions on how to further improve the product. I'd certainly include them in any considerations of alternative providers. I've also heard that Live Register are good from a trusted colleague at a neighbouring school (who also ditched Cunninghams this year), but have no experience of Live Register myself.

 

Thanks for the FasTrak info - I had heard of it but hadn't considered it until now!

 

I completely understand about these companies being busy at the start of the new school year and I wasn't expecting and engineer to call me that day - but 4 days is hopeless IMHO as there was no communication whatsoever. Its incredibly frustrating when the problem is out of your hands and you can't give parents and SLT an answer to when it will be fixed

[Reverend_Dan]

Have you tried going on your server that hosts impact and stopping the service impact internet gateway payment service then starting it again. That fixes the link 9/10 times at our school with parent pay.

 

I have always found their support to be great apart from the one time I didn't ring the Edinburgh. The 0333 number was next to useless and I'm still waiting for a call back

[truebluesteve]

Have you tried going on your server that hosts impact and stopping the service impact internet gateway payment service then starting it again. That fixes the link 9/10 times at our school with parent pay.

 

I have always found their support to be great apart from the one time I didn't ring the Edinburgh. The 0333 number was next to useless and I'm still waiting for a call back

 

Internet Pay is working fine but there are some errors in its logs. Both Cunninghams (who have now checked the server) and Tusasi say there is an issue but they don't know what it is!

 

Their support was very good when we first started using them about 4 or 5 years ago, but it has gradually got worse.