Hertfordshire-based St Albans School has installed an advanced wireless cashless system for payments made in its canteen.
With over 750 pupils and 130 staff, the catering department provides around 2,250 meals and snacks every week. The school decided to update its cashless checkout technology for meal payments after experiencing problems with their existing cashless system.
Derek Todd, St Albans bursar said: "There were so many problems associated with our old system - for instance, if the system crashed information could be lost. The readers were very slow and if the cards were dirty or greasy it took a very long time to read."
He also said that, as the tills were not wireless, they proved difficult to move leading the school, more often than not, to call out an engineer.
The school now has a wireless cashless system together with management functions for the catering and bursar's office supplied by VMC, which enables remote management of the system, managing card history transactions and individual card printing. A full backup facility also provides for system recovery.
"The cash-loader machines have saved so much time for till operators. The previous system meant that the students either had to go to the Bursary to load cash on their cards or do this at the point of purchase. This meant longer queues during very busy serving periods", Todd continued.
The VMC system went live in October 2006 and is bringing the school additional benefits. Todd added: "The new technology is simple to use, the tills are easy for training staff and there is more information for the till user and customer. The software is upgraded when new versions are introduced and the queuing system is more efficient due to quicker tills. Our catering manager now has more information for pricing, trends and ease of use.
"We now have an all-round superior system, which works incredibly well for us."
