RocketScan a “Huge Time Saver” For California School District

“I scan them in bulks of 25. It immediately – just boom boom boom – puts them in the system.”
– District Clerk

With nearly 7,000 students in  11 schools, keeping track of school lunch applications was no elementary task for one school district on California’s Central Coast.

The district includes an instructional kitchen where high school students gain experience in a variety of food service operations and prepare for a culinary career.

Everyday food service operations however, could be an exercise in paperwork

A clerk whose job includes helping to administer and process free and reduced school lunch applications in the district said the addition of a RocketScan online application was a big improvement over the previous method of processing applications manually.

RocketScan: An End to the Meal Application Paper Jam

The problem was that the district was still receiving over half of the applications on paper, largely from low-income families with no internet access. “We’ve been trying to get them to use the online version, but it’s a long process,” the clerk said. With about 50% of the students on a reduced or free lunch program, the paperwork piled up quickly.

Then about two years ago, the school district elected to add on RocketScan’s scanning capability. And that’s when the school district began noticing a huge difference in time savings.

Before scanning, each paper form had to be individually entered. The district would bring extra people in to help with applications at the beginning of the year. With each application taking 2 to 7 minutes to process, there were some long nights. “My first year, I was working late every night,” the clerk said.

With the addition of scanning capability, one clerk can now do the majority of applications – and get home on time.

The most time-consuming part is finding the student record. “I scan them in bulks of 25, it immediately, just boom boom boom, puts them in the system,” the clerk said. Once the applications are scanned in, it takes just a few seconds when there is a match, and up to one minute if a search for the record is required.

The scanned entries are corrected as they go, but while there was a bit of a learning curve, the team didn’t take long to get the hang of it.

The clerk says Image One customer service also gets high marks. “Whenever we have issues, we get them corrected right away.”

Meal Application Process No Longer a Paper Ordeal

The change has made a big difference for the district, not only allowing them to process applications efficiently, but also meeting the needs of their students and families.

“It’s a huge difference…a huge time saver,” says the clerk.

To learn more about how RocketScan save you hours of tedious manual processes, give us a call or click on the link below.

Contact us to learn more about RocketScan meal application software