Cashless Catering Upgrade

[Disease]

We are looking to upgrade our cashless catering system, currently with Vericool. We are looking between a straight upgrade to Vericool's SwiftQ platform or moving to a new provider we did have a quote a year ago from BioStore.

 

 

Can anyone provide any recommendations for a supplier or if you use SwiftQ what are your thoughts.

 

Thanks

[Disease]

No one has any opinions to offer on an alternative to Vericool?

[tech-man]

Civica (NRS) sent me an email last week something about their system will be supplied to work on your own hardware.

[Chaniel]

We use Civica (used to be Nationwide Retail Systems).

 

I cannot recommend them. The software works, but everything costs an arm and a leg. Need to install the software to manage the system on a new PC? That'll be £300 please, and no we won't give you the software to install yourself. Need a new till? That'll be a billion pounds and you need to pay for a engineer to come onsite to turn it on and confirm it works (aka change a few registry settings).

[Jawloms]

We use Civica (used to be Nationwide Retail Systems).

 

I cannot recommend them. The software works, but everything costs an arm and a leg. Need to install the software to manage the system on a new PC? That'll be £300 please, and no we won't give you the software to install yourself. Need a new till? That'll be a billion pounds and you need to pay for a engineer to come onsite to turn it on and confirm it works (aka change a few registry settings).

 

We absolutely had the same experience with them. We are now with BioStore and were quite happy, but the helpdesk we call now seems to have been shipped off overseas and they simply take notes and log a ticket. No troubleshooting at all. We are going to query this with them as that is not what we agreed to when we signed up!

[Disease]

Thanks, that sort of slims it down to Vericool and CRB Cunninghams. I had a quote previously from BioStore but since they have been bought out by Iris they seem to have gone downhill.

[fiza]

Thanks, that sort of slims it down to Vericool and CRB Cunninghams. I had a quote previously from BioStore but since they have been bought out by Iris they seem to have gone downhill.

I would check through Edugeek posts for experiences with Cunninghams. We were with them for a number of years, their helpdesk was always overwhelmed around Sept time and it would take weeks to get any response if at all. Maybe it's different now as this was a few years ago. We left and joined Biostore, have not had any major issues with the system. Much easier to use than Cunninghams old Impact software which was outdated and awful. I think they have updated their software now though.

Edited May 11, 2021 by fiza

[supportman]

Yeh we moved away from cunninghams due to the poor support and outdated software. Happy with biostore, not had an issue since install unlike cunninghams.

[ultima170387]

Just in the process of upgrading with CRBCunninghams. The Impact software is indeed very old and outdated, we've had it in for roughly 15 years. We are moving to their new offering, Fusion. Agree with the comments about support. We have had times where it has been hard to reach them but this was a few years back, recently they have been alot better. The systems works fine and support needed is few and far between, will see if this stays the same once the upgrade is done.

[Chris_Cook]

We've been with Live Register for a few years now. No real problems and very helpful. We used to be with Vericool. No end of problems with the older software + finger print readers. Now we use Mifare cards/fobs and its much quicker.

[wintech1]

We have Civica (NRS) in our sixth form and a secondary with mixed service. Raising issues with the helpdesk has been very difficult in the past however we recently implemented additional security to this network which 2nd line helped with and guided us throughout.

 

The whole solution feels "bodged" and outdated now?

[GREED]

Speaking of bogged down and out-dated, I'm still amazed that in 2021 most companies are still peddling physical tills and big expensive hardware - particularly as most schools are completely cashless these days too.

 

Have you considered Pebble: https://www.mypebble.co.uk/till

 

Make an iPad a till - probably you have some lying around or if not a fraction of the cost of a till, and much easier to manage (download an app, done!)