Meal Attendance

On the Meal Attendance screen you can enter Meal Attendance for a week or month at a time.

Go to: School > Meals > Meal Attendance

1. Choose the Meal Attendance Lookup: by Month or by Week.  

Click on the hammer   icon to set the default lookup.

2. Check off the filter box and choose a filter for meals to load (optional)

3. Choose Month/Week, Term, Meal and Grade. (Choosing Grade is optional.)

* Note: when entering the month or week to load, you don't have to choose the first day of the month/week. Any day of the month/week can be selected.

[Scroll down to the end of this page to see how to set the current term to be the default term by using the "User Preferences" screen.]

 If there is only one meal (ex. - Lunch), it will automatically be selected.

4. Click on "Search" to load.

The meal attendance grid will be loaded on the screen which contains all students' names, meal eligibility, class and dates to record meal attendance. 

You can type into the filter bar at the top of the grid to narrow the list by name, eligibility or class.

5. You can update the attendance status in bulk for all students by using the "Bulk Update Options".

There are a few options when updating in bulk:

a. Single day: To update a single day in bulk, check off the "Single Day" option and then click within the column of the selected day. The date chosen will appear in the "Bulk Update Options" section next to "Single Day":  

b. All (days): All days of the week/month selected will be updated on the grid. Any attendance recorded beforehand will be overwritten for the days of the week selected.

c. Multiple (days): choose multiple days from the grid by clicking on the  button. This is helpful for excluding vacation and non-school days.

d. To record individual attendance, click in the appropriate box to update the attendance status. The status will cycle every time you click in the box.

Click 'Apply' to save the changes and continue entering meal attendance, or 'OK' to save and close.

There are four types of attendance status:

        Clear- attendance is not recorded

 Served- meal is served to student

 Not Served- student is present, but meal is not served

  Absent- Student is absent. To use the absent status, set the 'Option for Absent Status' to "true" from the 'Preferences' screen.

To set the 'Option for Absent Status' to "true" go to: 

Tools > User Options > Preferences > School > Meal Attendance > System Preferences > Option of Absent Status

'Preferences' screen:

Note: if you choose not to use the 'Absent' status, then 'Not Served' status is used for all meals not served and absences.

Other codes:

A red border indicates that class attendance was taken on that day. 

Right click on a box to view class attendance records. (For absence, lateness, etc.)

Highlighted - indicates changed meal attendance eligibility for the day's record.

 To view/change the eligibility, right click on the attendance record and view/select from the eligibility list.

To view a summaryof the selected day's attendance and grid totals on the screen check off the 'Show summary' check box.

Click 'Print Grid' to print the screen’s loaded attendance grid.

Use theprint icon to print Meal attendance reports.

[User Preference – School >> Meal Attendance >> User Preference

1. Attendance Factor - If you are not calculating the Attendance factor, this has to have a percentage value of the average student attendance per day.
2. Calculate Attendance Factor – If this is set to True, the option for Absent Status must be set to True as well. This will calculate the amount of students absent each day.]

How to set the current term as the default term for meal attendance.

Go to: Tools > User Options > Preferences

On the 'Preferences' screen select: 

User Preferences > School > Meal Attendance > Default term. 

Select which term to use as the Default Term and click 'Save'.