The problem

Manually processing refunds was longwinded, and very complex. Without access to balances or pupil information, it was difficult to ensure the refund was correct.

Impact Food Group cater for multiple schools and process around thirty refunds each day, this massively increases to around 700 during end-of-year, meaning processing these refunds can be a whole day’s work.

The process starts with the school emailing the caterer with the refund request. Should the school provide incorrect details, the wrong amount, or wrong person could be refunded. This happened a few times, and the caterer had to absorb the loss.

After processing each refund, the caterer then had to email both the school and parent to notify them the refund had been actioned. The whole process was just so time-consuming.

How we helped

We regularly undertake customer research, upon discovering the length of time refunds took to process, we developed our e-catering portal.

The system lists all the transactions to refund, allowing the Impact Food team to approve or decline all refunds, safe in the knowledge that it is impossible to refund a negative amount. The system will only refund what is in the refundable amount.

Parents can request refunds directly, taking the school completely out of the equation.

There is a full audit trail, and automated confirmation emails are sent to parents.

The result

Refunds are now done in seconds, with a few clicks and the automated emails save a huge amount of time.

“I couldn’t believe it the first time I just clicked a button, and it said completed!”