Cashless Catering System - Cunnighams and Nationwide Retail Systems Ltd

[ninjabeaver]

Hi everyone,

 

We are pushing forward now to have installed a Cashless Catering System. We have got it down to two companies. One is Cunnighams and the others is from Nationwide Retail Systems Ltd.

 

I need some honest feedback on both of these companies / solutions as there does not seem to be a lot in it. We are a Secondary school with 1400+ students and 165 FTE. Also running SIMS. I know that both systems support SIMS and can have the biometric systems we are looking at added to for Library , Door Access etc.

 

Anyone have any problems with support and the other part seems to be the wireless side of things for the Snack Shack and Main Hall Snack Table. We are running a Ruckus system throughout the site.

 

Many Thanks,

 

Simon.

[36Degrees]

We use Cunninghams here and the only issue I have had is getting past the receptionist because we no longer have a support contract with them. Other than that I think they have always been good with their support whether it be onsite or via remote login.

 

The other thing we have recently done with Cunninghams is link it to an online payment system so that parents can pay via credit card 24/7 therefore reducing the need for children to bring in cash or cheques.

[NikChillin]

We have a cashles system, Gladstones. There is an online payment system for parents but we could have done with a pay point in the school as the office have to do all the manual payments which can be time consuming.

[Little-Miss]

This is a issue we have but we're going with nationwide as they told me all their stuff is managed by them and nothing sources from other companies. i.e cunninghams software is made by CRB.....that's what I heard anyway.

[plexer]

Do cunninghams use biostore? I know NRS don't.

 

I'm just wondering with cash loaders, I can see if parents can do it online or send cheques in that that will be credited to the childs account but by accepting cash you can't be sure it will actually get loaded how do people and parents deal with that?

 

Ben

[Edu-IT]

Do cunninghams use biostore? I know NRS don't.

 

I'm just wondering with cash loaders, I can see if parents can do it online or send cheques in that that will be credited to the childs account but by accepting cash you can't be sure it will actually get loaded how do people and parents deal with that?

 

Ben

How do you mean? The kids don't put the money in the machine and spend it in the shop on the way to school instead? Or are you talking if the money goes into the machine but the machine doesn't recognise that?

[plexer]

As in they're given money by parents told to add it to their accounts but they go to Tesco instead just like they do now.

 

Ben

[rad]

We have NRS and it sync with Sims and ParentPay, had it since November and its working for us.

 

I would recommend it, worked well, biomentrics work just the way you go about registering and informing parents that is the issue, its called "CHANGE" not everyone takes it the same way.

 

PM if you want specific details.

[Edu-IT]

As in they're given money by parents told to add it to their accounts but they go to Tesco instead just like they do now.

 

Ben

Surely that's a parental issue and not something the school have to worry about?

[ninjabeaver]

It is. If they spend their money in Tesco's on the way to school they can't buy any food in school. Same as it is now without a cashless system.

[notalot]

Do Cunningham’s use biostore? I know NRS don't.

 

I'm just wondering with cash loaders, I can see if parents can do it online or send cheques in that that will be credited to the childs account but by accepting cash you can't be sure it will actually get loaded how do people and parents deal with that?

 

Ben

 

We use Cunningham’s and yes the use Biostore.

 

We have had mixed dealing with Cunningham’s, when the system was first put in they insisted that it must run on their workgroup and that nothing they installed would need AV, yet the system is hooked on to the existing network (no vlan atm) also when they came to install the "server" it’s just a pc that they were going to install without a UPS or any fault tolerance (no raid or backups) they still don’t see the problem with that setup. Further to this, we had lots of faults to the point they sent out a senior tech out to site to look them over only to have him informing our users (very rudely) what they must have seen.

 

Generally the equipment that has been provided is of a good quality, we’ve had some problems with the "reval units" (points that the students can put money on the system) eventually they replaced the main board after replacing every other part (a couple of parts twice). Since then we have had no problems with it.

 

The Support calls that we have logged have been resolved mostly, there is an outstanding call with them at the moment regarding free school meals.

 

Overall I would say that they are average, I wouldn’t recommend them from our experiences.

[pcstru]

We've used NRS for the last ~5 years (before my time), integrating with CMIS and more recently ParentPay. I did write quite a bit more but I'll sum it up with this : We are quite likely to be looking to refresh our cashless catering systems in the next couple of years. I doubt NRS will be sitting at the top of our list.

[Sylv3r]

We use CRB - this is the cunnighams product for the North of the country including Scotland - It's the same system but with a different name for local support etc. The CRB / Cunninghams system both use Biostore, and the latest version 3 - allows you to link with your MIS system for when you create student users an account is also produced on your Cashless system. Likewise with v3 you can link into various other biometric systems such as door access, library systems etc.

 

We've had good support from CRB in the 3 years we've used the system and support generally arrives in school the next day to fix any issues if hardware related or remotely if it's a software config.

 

On a side note - what do schools have in place, if the system was ever to be down whether that is a hardware or power cut during lunch? I haven't even thought about the fun and games that may cause!

[john]

On a side note - what do schools have in place, if the system was ever to be down whether that is a hardware or power cut during lunch? I haven't even thought about the fun and games that may cause!

 

I'm in the planning stages of Cashless so this is useful discussion on here, in terms of your point, I am proposing that one of the tills in the dining room is on a UPS and I am aiming, due to the proximity of the dining room to the Server Room, to directly cable the points from the tills in the dining room to the Server Room where I will have it all on a small dedicated server which can run on the big UPS in there, so fine we maybe down to one till from two but we should still be able to run a dinner service as actual serving / till usage time in a dinner service is 15 to 20 minutes, thus a 30 minute runtime UPS, as the tills don't seem to have huge electrical drains, should be suitable I would hope.

[Sylv3r]

I'm in the planning stages of Cashless so this is useful discussion on here, in terms of your point, I am proposing that one of the tills in the dining room is on a UPS and I am aiming, due to the proximity of the dining room to the Server Room, to directly cable the points from the tills in the dining room to the Server Room where I will have it all on a small dedicated server which can run on the big UPS in there, so fine we maybe down to one till from two but we should still be able to run a dinner service as actual serving / till usage time in a dinner service is 15 to 20 minutes, thus a 30 minute runtime UPS, as the tills don't seem to have huge electrical drains, should be suitable I would hope.

 

Hi John

 

I like your thinking, but I don't think that would work for us - your school sounds much smaller than ours we have 1,400 on roll and I know all won't use the canteen on a lunchtime we still have 5 tills in operations which are in use for the majority of the 55 minute lunch break. I thought about a print off of exactly the same layout as the till screen with a box for student name at the top. The till ops write the student name, then tick everything purchased which is deducted manually from the student accounts a later date. Not sure how feasible it would be and - what preventative steps to have in place to ensure that students do not say someone else's name and for the deduction to take place on someone elses account. This may need it's own post - I wonder if any Cashless catering companies / schools have any tried and tested methods when these scenarios have occured.

[Tallwood_6]

We have just ordered NRS here after demos of cunninghams vericool. NRS stood out as the software seemed the most user friendly, front and backend and is entirely there own unlike the others. The tills and readers also seemed much more robust, the only negative is in the default setup seem to run everything from nothing more than a pc setup for use by the canteen staff if this goes down then your in trouble.

[adamf]

The tills and readers also seemed much more robust, the only negative is in the default setup seem to run everything from nothing more than a pc setup for use by the canteen staff if this goes down then your in trouble.

 

I'd agree with that. They told us that it would run on it's own network and they'd link into ours for the purpose of accessing the Internet so it could sync with ParentPay.

 

I told them no and have everything running on our network, the backend app and SQL database is installed on one of our servers.

 

My only other comment is regarding the client installation.... A very lengthy process (compared to what it could be) requiring you to install various different bits of software, copy this there, copy that there and then change a couple of ini files.... Then it works!

[FN-GM]

We have just ordered NRS here after demos of cunninghams vericool. NRS stood out as the software seemed the most user friendly, front and backend and is entirely there own unlike the others. The tills and readers also seemed much more robust, the only negative is in the default setup seem to run everything from nothing more than a pc setup for use by the canteen staff if this goes down then your in trouble.

 

Last time i installed the software on a PC it was a nightmare! you had to mess about moving files making manual edits after you have done the install.

 

I have worked in a few schools that uses Nationwide, my first school was the first on in the country to go biometric. On the whole the system seems pretty good. They dont seem flexible with what the software is hosted on. They wouldnt let us virtualise the servers etc.

[p858snake]

I'm in the planning stages of Cashless so this is useful discussion on here, in terms of your point, I am proposing that one of the tills in the dining room is on a UPS and I am aiming, due to the proximity of the dining room to the Server Room, to directly cable the points from the tills in the dining room to the Server Room where I will have it all on a small dedicated server which can run on the big UPS in there, so fine we maybe down to one till from two but we should still be able to run a dinner service as actual serving / till usage time in a dinner service is 15 to 20 minutes, thus a 30 minute runtime UPS, as the tills don't seem to have huge electrical drains, should be suitable I would hope.

 

Without looking/seeing the software, but a frontend for a POS client shouldn't need all that much so you might be able to get around with terminal servering it and running thin clients which would save even more power so you could have smaller upses for them, and keep the server on a larger one as well.... (and less objects to break as well)

Edited April 9, 2011 by p858snake

[Little-Miss]

We have just ordered NRS here after demos of cunninghams vericool. NRS stood out as the software seemed the most user friendly, front and backend and is entirely there own unlike the others.

 

That's what sold it to me...

 

So parent pay can be intergrated into the system, i needed to ask them this again? My Head is now saying that he wants to be able to do more then just use the cash machines, wants to start doing donations/trips etc..

[robk]

I understand that parent pay is supported by NRS I saw the options when setting up our cmis link.

 

In terms of ups support its worth thinking how much the canteen can continue serving with no power.

 

In fact as our site uses pumped storage for water we end up closing if a power cut lasts more than half an hour. (1400 students and no flushing toilets can be a problem!)

[Tallwood_6]

If you have sims then the best method is to have sims sync with parentpay (parentpay have an app for this) then have nrs talk directly to parentpay. If you have cmis like us though you have to manually upload any changes to parentpay and manually upload pictures from cmis which is a royal pain.

[Tallwood_6]

That's what sold it to me...

 

So parent pay can be intergrated into the system, i needed to ask them this again? My Head is now saying that he wants to be able to do more then just use the cash machines, wants to start doing donations/trips etc..

I dont have much involvement with parentpay here I leave it with finance, but we do use it already for trips etc the idea being with the exception of a few once NRS is in we will be completely cashless.

[Steven_Cleaver]

I have used both systems to be honest not much to choose between the two, both pretty decent systems the only downside I have noticed on the NRS side is the finger print readers don't quite seem as effective as they could be and it does sometimes take two or three goes to read fingerprints which can slow things down quite a bit.I also have moved from Cunninghams to NRS and you can just copy the Impact folder and copy this anywhere and have access to all your past data for that year, but looking at the NRS setup this wouldn't be quite as easy. We also have had some minor teething problems with both systems.

[peepsw]

The NRS system can be run from a virtual server without problem. All you have to do is tell them what you want. They also intergrate with all available on line payment companies not just ParentPay.