About - Everything You Need To Know about End of Semester Meal Plan Transitions!
The end of a semester can be a very trying time, especially when you need to transition students from meal plan to meal plan. Below is a guide that should be very helpful in giving you as much information as possible to properly transition over.
How do I do an import in the first place?
There are two ways to do a patron import, the first way is to log into the Lucova website and upload it manually. The second way is to have an automatic import process set up.
No matter the method, the information below will be relevant to you! For details on each respective import please click on the corresponding hyperlinks above.
What happens at the end of the semester?
An important concept to note is that nothing happens to meal plans once a semester is over, the only thing that happens is that the meal plan can expire if that expiration date has passed. The changes occur only when you transfer a patron from one meal plan to another, if you don't make any changes then nothing will happen to the meal plans or their balances.
How do I change a meal plan that the student is on?
There are two ways to do a bulk change of the meal plan students are on, either through the automatic import which you may or may not have set up, or through a manual import. The data is exactly the same in either case the only difference would be the method of upload as specified in the documentation. Information on how to configure each can be found in the respective document.
I've changed a student from one meal plan to another, what happens to the balance?
This is a very important question, there are three events that can happen with a balance when you switch a patron from one meal plan to another. Please note that these rules/events, with the exception of the Archive rule, are only for the same type of meal plan (ex: DCB to DCB or meal plan to meal plan). You can't transfer 10 meal units to a $50 DCB plan.
Transfer: Transfers the balance from the old meal plan to the new meal plan
Deduct: Deducts whatever was spent on the old meal plan from the new meal plan
Archive: Archive the old meal plan completed and start with a brand new balance from the new meal plan.
If you do a manual import you will be asked by the software which rule you want to use for each patron. If you do an automatic import you will need to advise Nōwn what rules you want to ensure that we have this activated for you.
What happens if a student stays on the same meal plan from semester to semester but I want to increase the balance?
As mentioned, if you don't move a patron to another meal plan nothing will happen to the balance. However, we are aware that there are many cases when a student may technically be on the same meal plan year round but they may top up the balance at the end or beginning of a semester.
In this case, you will need to do a
balance adjustment. There are two ways to do this, you can either do one directly from the patrons tab
as found here or you can do it through an
imported balance adjustment.
The imported method works best if you know exactly what the new balance needs to be for each patron. While the method used directly in FIIT is better if you are increasing the balance of either a small or large group of patrons by a very specific amount. However, in most cases the import file is the better option.
What do I do if a student has graduated?
When a student first graduates you want to strip them of all their meal plans (as explained below) then simply stop including them on imports! That's it! Unfortunately due to auditing purposes there is no way to currently delete a student.
What happens if a student is not included on an import?
Nothing! If a student isn't in an import they keep all their meal plans. It's very important to note that if you want nothing to happen either don't make any changes to the meal plans a student has or simply don't include them on the import. If you leave the meal plan ID column blank you will strip a student of all their meal plans.
How do I strip a student of all their meal plans?
If you want to strip a student from all their meal plans, all you have to do is include them on the import but leave the meal plan ID column blank. If the meal plan ID column is blank for that patron then all their meal plan balances would be removed.
Common Issues with Imports
It is very important to note that if there is one error in the import, the whole import file will fail and nothing will go through. While this is clear when using the website, it can be less obvious when the automatic import is done because when those fail you are notified via email. Those emails are sent even when the import was successful so please make sure to monitor them closely. You would receive these notifications on the email you gave us when you set up automatic importing.
The number one issue occurs with automatic imports and it revolves around human error when inputting the patron key and patron company key. The following information is very important, in the import file for each particular person, you may change their patron key or patron company key, however, you may not change both of them at the same time. You can only change both of these value simultaneously in either the import on the website, or manually when editing a patron. If you edit both of them at the same time the system won't recognize the patron and it will cause the import to fail.
