> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://educontroldoc.pixelspectivetech.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Feeding invoices

> Billing meals separately from tuition, and why the two ledgers are kept apart.

Meals are billed on their own invoices, separate from academic fees. A pupil can hold an academic invoice and a feeding invoice for the same term, and the two never merge.

## Why they are separate

Feeding is a different kind of debt. It accrues daily, it is often prepaid, and it stops the moment a pupil leaves — none of which is true of tuition. Keeping the ledgers apart means:

* Meal arrears do not look like tuition arrears in your reports
* A family can prepay a term of meals while still owing tuition, and both figures stay honest
* A payment can be directed at meals specifically — see [Allocation](/docs/payments/allocation)

## What a feeding invoice is built from

Three things:

1. The class's [feeding rate](/docs/fees/feeding-rates) and the cadence discount
2. The pupil's [feeding plan](/docs/pupils/feeding-plans), including any price override
3. The meal days on the [term calendar](/docs/before-the-term/academic-year-and-terms)

A day the kitchen was closed is not a day anyone is billed for, provided the calendar says so.

<Warning>
  An unfinished calendar produces wrong feeding bills. If holidays are not marked as non-meal days, families are charged for meals that were never served. Finish the calendar before running feeding billing.
</Warning>

## Running it

Feeding billing runs like academic billing: preview, check the pupil count, then issue. The same guard applies — one feeding invoice per pupil, per term, per period — so a repeated run cannot double-bill.

Pupils whose plan is **None** are not billed.

## Reconciling against meals actually served

Where a pupil prepaid for more meals than they ate — an absence, or a withdrawal mid-term — the difference is settled with a credit note against the feeding invoice rather than by editing it. See [Corrections](/docs/payments/corrections).

## Who can do this

The `edit_finances` permission.