Receiving Orders
Orders are received directly from customers using self-checkout. You may also accept orders using offline methods such as paper menus, telephone orders, or in-person purchases. If you offer those traditional methods, you will have to manually record the orders via the Mealsite backend for the purchases to be included in your reports.
In your daily interaction with Mealsite, you typically only need to pull up individual orders when a customer requests an order modification.
Recording a New Order
First determine if the purchaser has a Customer Account or if you need to record a Guest Order. Even if your Mealsite has Guest Ordering disabled, an administrator may still record a guest order. To reduce data input for future orders, offer Free and Reduced lunch, and account credits, it is highly recommended to setup a new customer account with the first order received.
Customer Account Orders
- Navigate to the Customers area using the main navigation menu.
- Find the customer account in the list. If a customer account does not exist, select New above the list to setup a new customer account. Tip: You may enter minimal information as you create the customer account. All mandatory information needed will be collected during the order process.
- With the correct customer account loaded, navigate to the Orders tab.
- Select New above the list of orders. The order form will load.
- Complete the order form to submit the order.
Guest Orders
- Navigate to the Orders area using the main navigation menu.
- Select New above the list of orders. The order form will load.
- Complete the order form to submit the order. Tip: Guest Orders cannot use store credits. Any adjustments to guest orders will require a refund or additional payment. Additionally, free and reduced lunch orders cannot be submitted as guest orders.
Notes About Orders
Orders record purchases for one or more serving days in the current months with products available.
Each order is for a single person, organized by school, grade, and teacher. Multiple orders may be completed with a single checkout, recording them on a single invoice.
Once a product becomes ineligible for checkout, because the daily order cut-off time has expired, that product will need to be removed from the order to continue. Orders with products for serving days that are approaching the cut-off time must complete checkout before the cut-off time elapses. It is not enough to have the product in your cart or partially through the checkout process.
Orders submitted from the backend do not enforce purchase restrictions. The order may record purchases for serving days already completed or after the daily cut-off time has expired. Reports used in your workflow might need to be manually generated again to reflect these new orders. For example, if the cut-off time has passed and Scheduled Daily Reports have already been emailed, late orders recorded will not be in those reports.
A receipt will be sent to the customer's billing email address and optionally to the Mealsite BCC email address for order receipts.