To only pay for school dinners when I get a text from the school?

[NumberZ]

We’ve been told that arrears of 2 weeks worth of dinners will mean that the pupil will have to bring school dinners in and will not be given a school meal.

I’ve always waited for the ‘reminder’ and paid it anyone else?

No prepay option here.

Have you not registered for parentpay yet?
You log in and add funds to your child's meal account

We use parentpay. You top it up from time to time. Our account is always in credit

From the faqs

I pay it when my son sends me a text saying the balance is about to run out (at which point he can't buy any more). The idea is to have a balance that you pay in advance and then run down, and top up as required. My daughter's school used to have a system where you got a reminder when the balance reached a certain (positive) level which you could choose yourself. Much more sensible!

We weren't allowed to be in arrears. But other schools may work differently and expect you to pay in arrears I suppose.

My DDs can’t buy anything unless they have money on their cards. DS was a blooming nightmare when he was at school. Some days he’d spend £6!! It turned into a bit of a standoff with me then refusing to put money on the card and buying packed lunch stuff which he would eat for a while and then say he didn’t like it. I’d then feel guilty that he didn’t have any lunch so would refill the card and the cycle continued 🤷‍♀️

On parentpay you usually have to pay upfront. There is a small amount they can go into minus but if they hit that amount they literally can’t have anything to eat as lots of parents were just not paying it.

If yours does it in arrears then why not just pay every Friday evening?

You are using the app which I’ve not been on before but if I go on the website and log in, the first page that comes up says ‘pay for child’s name meals’ and underneath ‘pay for something else’. Underneath has a list of account activity to see how much they’ve spent.
I click on pay for meals - then I can put in as much as I want to.

Ok I think I’ve worked it out, we’ll see what happens when they go back.

When my DS was small I paid a month in advance so the money was there. Schools cannot subsidise this and if the children are small enough they will feed them even if the money isn't there. When he was older he had an app with at least a months money on for him to choose his lunch each day.

I think you are being unreasonable op I'm a kitchen manager in a school. When a child's account is in arrears when they press their name the word office appears on a big blue screen so everyone knows they are in arrears I am also just meant to give them bread salad and water should that happen just pay the dinner money

@NumberZ

It sounds like the wisdom of MN has helped you OP, if parentpay is supposed to be preloaded with funds - and you mistakenly thought you weren't allowed to as thought it meant you'd be prebooking dinners. Have you worked it out now?

Whoops @NumberZ you literally said "I think I've worked it out now" in your last post

Of course YABU.