Smartcard Education
Cashless Catering
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THE PROVEN SYSTEM FOR ALL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS |
Introduction
The Sharp Smart Card System is now the most used Cashless System in the educational catering sector.
CCM / Sharp have the pleasure of supplying and supporting a growing number of major catering companies and government agencies including a unique jurors meal payment system developed for Crown Court Services by CCM.
We also have numerous systems installed in: Hospitals, Police Authorities, Pub Partnerships, Holiday Parks , Retail Stores, and Industrial Canteens.
Our systems have been developed over 15 years and have proved to be efficient, reliable and cost effective.
The System has acquired fame on GM Breakfast Television, Tomorrow's World, BBC National News and ITN News who commended the system for its ingenuity and in particular its "Healthy Eating" programme in educational catering.
Overview & Security
The Sharp School Meal System utilises the latest smart card technology and not outdated magnetic stripes.
Our smart card system utilises a cash register with a smart card reader interfaced to it. All cards can be loaded with prepayments of any value. This is done in one simple quick operation at any cash register and a statement, showing the new balance, is printed, goods can then be purchased to the value on the Smart Card.
If the Card has insufficient value to cover a meal, the shortfall is calculated by the terminal and can be paid in cash or items can be returned.
When the card is running low on funds the system will alert the operator to inform the holder that they need to re-value their card.
The System also has the facility to control hospitality / complimentary meals supplied as well as staff on a free meal entitlement.
A number of security features have been built into the system which include the simple operation of hotlisting lost or stolen cards and automatically transferring any unused balances onto a new card.
If a hotlisted card is later presented as payment for goods the operator will be informed that this card has been previously hotlisted.
It is also possible to programme the users name onto a card which is displayed to the operator when used, a signature strip is incorporated and it is possible to add photo ID if required.
Meal funds can be paid by cheque to the caterers which prevents the risk of larger sums of money being lost.
Parents will no longer have the problem of finding change on a daily basis.
Parents are also assured that pupils are eating at the school with their dinner money and it is not being utilised on unauthorised purchases at the local shops etc.
Recent market surveys show that over £120,000,000.00 is spent every year by pupils on the way to and from school.
This is lost revenue and therefore profits to the schools.
Let us demonstrate how our system can help capture this lost income
Free Meal Entitlements
Could you improve the way free meal entitlements are coped with?
Free meal cards are personalised to a set allowance this allows the card to be electronically pursed each day with the set meal allowance.
The card holder can also place additional funds on to the card this is stored in a separate purse known as "Own Funds".
If the free meal allowance is not used or partly used it is automatically cleared at the end the day (or rolled over if required).
It is also possible, if required, to inhibit confectionery purchases with the free meal allowance and determine when the allowance is used i.e.: morning break and lunchtime or lunchtime only.
Meal allowances can be pursed to the card either daily, weekly or monthly.
A daily audit report is produced showing the number of free meals supplied as well as the cost of the meals supplied.
Healthy Eating
To further promote healthy eating a number of marketing features have been incorporated in our system.
A random draw is included in the system, any number of prizes can be offered and a simple operation at the terminal selects active card users at random and allots them 1st 2nd and 3rd prizes etc.
This feature can be for all card purchases or specified products, allowing school caterers to market healthy products.
Within schools our loyalty system is utilised to promote Healthy Eating, points are allotted to healthy products only, therefore encouraging pupils to change their eating habits.
When points have been accumulated they can be redeemed for credit on the card or items of interest e.g. gift vouchers, book tokens, leisure tokens , record token , etc.
Secure Loyalty Discounts
The smart card can also be utilised as a secure form of discount, cards can be personalised to allow a set discount on certain product lines.
Products are entered at the normal retail price when the transaction is finalised the terminal will interrogate the smart card for the discount group it belongs to, the terminal will then apply the appropriate rate of discount to the sale.
Additional Smartcard Applications
Smart Card technology is now being utilised by numerous other major companies.
The following uses have been added to our Sharp Smart Card in the educational sector.
Access Control- Registration Programmes
- Library Systems
- Photographic ID
- Photocopying
Sharp in 1997 also formed a working partnership with Simms Educational Software, this partnership allows the integration of Sharpsoft's Smartcard Manager and Simms Database. (Further details on request).
Conclusion
THE ABOVE FEATURES ENSURE THAT THE SHARP SMART CARD SYSTEM IS THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE AND FLEXIBLE SYSTEM IN TODAY'S MARKET AT AN AFFORDABLE PRICE.
Now available! CCM again break new ground in being the first retail systems company to incorporate contactless readers, cards, wireless networks,and wireless modems in their portfolio for educational catering.
Primary Schools
One of the latest additions to our range four years ago is our Primary School solution.
Primary schools have a unique requirement, as most meal services are for a fixed price meal.
Dinner money is normally collected on a Monday morning, and registers are checked for when pupils do not attend school, so that dinner monies paid can be carried forward to the next school week.
Our system removes the need to check registers.
Parents can pay dinner money either weekly, monthly, or per term whatever their finances allow.
Free meal entitlement pupils have an identical card to all other pupils, but their card does not need re-valuing.
The money is funded to their child's individual smart card, as meals are taken these are deducted electronically from the card, reports are available at any time of balances left on cards.
Our system allows for all administration of the system to be undertaken outside meal service times, therefore there is no delay to the meal service times.
Overdraft limits can be set to allow pupils to receive a meal even if they have no funds on their card.
A report is produced of all pupil whose card is in a negative balance.
Please e-mail : sales@sharpretailsystems.co.uk for more details.
Meal Monitoring
We also have in our range a hand held portable unit for monitoring meals supplied where pupils lunches are included in their school fees.
Each pupil who is entitled to have a meal is issued with a smart card.
Each day when a meal is taken their card is read via the hand held terminal, a process which takes one second and does not require any keyboard depressions. If a pupil attempts to take a second meal or pass their card to another pupil the terminal will display [ MEAL ALREADY TAKEN ] and give an audible warning.
At the end of service the hand held terminal is placed into its cradle in the school finance office, this serves two purposes , the first to re-charge the hand held unit, the second to allow the transaction data to be imported into the smartcard database.
Reports are available on the following
- No of meals supplied
- Names of pupils taking meals on any specified day
- No of Visitor Meals
- No of Free / Assisted Places Meals
Questions & Answers
Why CCM / Sharp?
CCM are the market leaders in cashless systems for educational catering, having gained over 12 years knowledge and experience with new smart card technology. (Previous to this we offered magnetic stripe solutions which many companies are still operating).
Sharp Electronics are one of the worlds largest manufacturers of electronic systems.
CCM have 34 years experience of marketing and supporting retail systems with Sharp who are the number one suppliers of hospitality systems in the UK.
Our system utilises a conventional cash register with a proven record for reliability (Over 28,000 in use in the UK alone).
Software is not required to control our system, although we do have a complete back office database system with reports for larger installations.
As we do not use file servers and software driven applications like many other similar applications. Therefore, our system is more secure in that if any terminal malfunctions all other terminals are still operable, whereas a file server that malfunctions will automatically cause all terminals linked to it to malfunction.
CCM/Sharp are dedicated to customer support not only on implementation of the system but also in after sales support.
Quotation prices are fully inclusive, with no hidden charges for telephone hotline support, staff training, maintenance, and project management fees.
CCM/ Sharp offer the most cost effective solution.
CCM clients benefit from their wealth of experience in educational catering
What are Smart Cards?
Smart cards are similar in appearance to standard credit, debit, and loyalty cards. The one significant difference is that smart cards do not have an encoded magnetic stripe, instead they have an embedded intelligent chip.
The easiest way of explaining this chip is to compare it with a hard disk on a computer which can be read or written into.
Smart cards can have varying size memory chips embedded on the card Sharp utilise a 2k memory chip of which only 10% is used to control our system, this allows other applications to be integrated onto the same card.
Why Smart Cards?
Smart Cards within the next five years will be the industry standard in debit and credit cards.
The major high street banks and finance houses are now investing in the change over to smart card technology.
Smart cards have an anticipated working life of 10 years compared to 3 years with magnetic stripe cards.
Smart Card systems are more secure than magnetic stripe cards as the processed information is written to the terminal; and also to the chip on the card, therefore if one part of the system fails then the other part works as an automatic restore facility. Magnetic cards are only written to the terminal.