speedypro

This process was a huge learning curve and I thank everyone for their input, from the start of this thread. Since I got more feedback, I've decided to take a step back with Tuicamp. It's the "lots of hardware" needed that got me to rethink my approach. Who has the time to manually record hundreds of students at meal time? Who has time to manually add/update the menu list? All this information has led me to rethink. I will be adding some APIs at some point but Tuicamp may remodel to be something else. Maybe I'll look at offering this service to schools where they would own the software etc.

There are significant changes to the website, made over the school term (last week). New Meal and one-off order pages Display meal images Display one-off item images Add meals with dates it's available (Commences tab) User registration* *For registration, I've limit registration to a uk school email address to reduce the noise. If you are keen to not use the demo and would like to invite someone (as test parent/carer), you can but only if you register. The demo account would not be able to send emails which means who you've invited wont be able to use the system. If you would like to register, but not use a school email address, send me a PM of the email address you'd like to use. Please note you must have access to this email address as you'll need to confirm the email address. I believe by "letting you in", I could get things done much faster with the help of your feedback. Should you register, invite someone which they would become a parent. From there you could simulate what happens when that parent adds a child, top-ups etc. Have another look at the demo account to see what's new.

One-off payments section is changing to look more like an e-commerce. Same like an e-commerce, a school will see all orders with their statuses (design inspired by Shopify). Can view order by dates but custom dates is being worked on. Can leave a customer (parent in this case) note and staff-only-comments. I hope this minimal setup is enough for a school. I'll do the same for the meals but it needs a huge change to allow discounts should a parent has a child/ren that goes to the school and could use discounts for meal and/or for the one-off payments. Any recommendations? At this stage, I'm 100% flexible on changes. BTW the graphs are using fake data for now.

😂 I'm proficient with MySQL and I do get what you are saying. You have the experience in this sector and knows what information is required. I'm here for knowledge and feedback and I'll change it to PostgreSQL. This saves me from issues down the line. To all others, thanks for finding the bugs on the website ie someone messed with the DOM and changed the title to "Rev" (before it's now supported) and some others. Yes, I've seen them 😉

It's early days and things change

Thanks. Im using ruby on rails with a MYSQL DB (all instances on one server: everything). I'll be moving to a tenancy setup but that's way down the line. Not looking to go advance during an evaluation mode.

Hi. It's only me. The plan is to get funding once I have evidence of schools willing to use the platform. If no funding, and the app is profitable, I'll hire people. For the start, it will be only me.

While building this app, best practices will be my #1 priority though I'm not 100% a devOps person 🫣

I really value these questions. Nothing is perfect and apps do go offline at times. I would imagine this would be very critical to any school at that time. It should be worthless if we look it. Any app would be rendered useless unless the school has a Plan B in place where they know who gets what etc. There are two things I could do: Each morning, canteen would know what to prepare and who gets what Implement an offline feature for crucial webpages (difficult) That way schools can operate in the event the website/app is down temporally. I'll add this to my todo.

Solid questions. Though not yet implemented (staff members, canteen login), but when I do, their sensitive data will be redacted from any databases, backups etc when deleted*. When a student leaves and the parent's account has a positive balance, there will be a refund button (not yet implemented) for them to get any money back. No need to email or phone any one (the way we all like it). I will have to implement that but schools will be able to delete anything created from a parent (on my list of things to do). Will get this implemented. * Soft delete that will only remove (redact) sensitive data. Addresses, contact numbers will be deleted.

I know! 😂 Any suggestions? It needs a name in Stripe.

As promised, payments, school global debt limit and per-parent basis debt limit is live on the website. Website is using Stripe test environment so please to use their test card 4000000000000077. Exp date should be in the future ie 11/29 and any last 3 digits: 111 To recap, a school takes payments from a pot. A pot must be created for a school you wish to pre-order from (done already). In the future there will be a how-to section with videos. I guess I now need to focus on the school section UI then find ways for anyone to have their own demo data to play with. I've also posted a video on Twitter/X if you want to see it in action. To delete a pot, the balance must be zero and a school has no activity on it. If you've only just created a pot, the pot has a zero balance, it can be deleted. Any questions, I'm always here.

Schools are now able to set a debt limit which means a parent/carer will not be able to make any current or future orders when that debt limit is reached. This is only possible when I introduced "Pots". The idea was "borrowed" from Monzo Pots. With pots, a pot is assigned to a school and all payments, including future payments, will be deducted from that pot. By introducing pots, I'm now able to set rules around the school's debt limit. Having one account that "feeds" all schools won't be possible. If your account is currently in minus (debt) and another school does not allow debt on the account, it wont be possible for the parent to make a pre-order for the school that disallows debt on the account. You'd have to clear that balance first before doing so. With Pots, you can to-up directly onto a pot where the school does not allow debt on the account, then use that pot at checkout. Everything is one place. All children, from that school, will use that pot. See attachments. Hope to have a live demo by early or mid of next week.

Since we've introduced schools should have control around debt limit, there are now some huge changes to the checkout process. It's no longer possible to have one pot. School "A" allows debt while School "B" does not. Though there will be one pot, monies can be moved around for these schools. If I deposit £10, I could easily transfer money to School B's pot. You can also deposit directly into either School's pot when topping up. Would love to demo this in a a few days time. This way School B will know if the parent/carer has any money for a meal or can keep track of the debit limit. This is getting interesting.

MVP is in the mix. I use the term mvp because where I want Tuicamp to be, I can only make it a cashless app to begin with. I'm the sole developer here so I cannot use the term Agile or any other development methodologies. I make changes based on the feedback received. My focus is to get the this cashless app into the hands of a school for testing/trial later in the year.