At My Food Program, our mission is to make participation in the CACFP and SFSP as easy as possible. We are always trying to make our software better by improving on the functions we have and adding new ones based on customer feedback. Check out our list of software updates and new features below.
ZERO DOLLAR CLAIM ALERT
We have added an alert in two places that provide a warning if there is a claim in which there are no payable meals at all, which we call a zero dollar claim. The alerts are on the View/Create Claims page at the sponsor level (1) and on the page used to Mark a Claim as Submitted to the State (2).
HOME SCHOOL CHECKBOX ON PARTICIPANT
We have added a new checkbox on the participant to indicate that they are home schooled. Checking this box will turn off the error “AM snack or Lunch served to school-ager on a weekday” if that is turned on by the sponsor. Note that providers and centers cannot check this box, only sponsor users, since it has implications for claims.
- Sorted the Serious Deficiency Events in date order with newest on top.
- Updated the system to allow the day capacity to be applied to the first meal shift and night capacity to be applied to the second meal shift.
- Restricted editing and deletion of Record Log Notes to the user that created the note.
IMPROVED: MANUAL CLAIM ADJUSTMENTS With software release 24.09.2 we added the ability for sponsors to manually adjust the claim attendance, days open and participant counts. We are further enhancing the manual claim adjustment feature to sort the errors by participant, then by date and then by meal type. In addition, it is now easier for sponsors to see if a single meal count has more than one error. For example, a meal count could be disallowed for both missing a whole grain rich food and also for a missing or expired enrollment form.Making this meal count “payable” (i.e. included in the claim) means that you have to override both errors for this meal count.
- Added a Select All option on the site visit page for participants “Observed During Visit”.
- Added the state submission as an option when running the State Claim Summary Report for Sponsors of Family Child Care Homes, and ACH Generator.
- Added the ability to filter the following reports by monitor: Monitoring Form Report, Site Closures Report, Sites Due for a Review Visit.
- Added additional information to the Site Summary Report to include the Record Log and Record Log Notes, a month history of Closures/Field Trips, any information related to serious deficiencies, the alternate ID and assigned monitor.
- Updated the formatting of the State Claim Summary Report for Family Child Care Homes.
- Added a reason for classifying an income form as Tier I as “Participant is from a household with a case number”. If you select this reason, you will be required to enter a case number.
- For sponsors that require their sites to enter menus before taking meal counts, we have ensured that this restriction does not apply to children under 12 months old. If a sponsor wants to require a facility infant menu before meal counts, there is an option for that separately.
RACE/ETHNICITY REPORT FOR PARTICIPANTS ON A SITE VISIT For those sponsors that are required to report the race/ethnicity of the participants observed at a site visit, we have a new report on the Site Visit page. Because this report is tied to a specific monitoring visit, you will find it at the bottom of the site visit page instead of in reports. Learn more and download a sample in our Help Center article.
MARK CLAIMS AS SUBMITTED TO STATE We are enhancing our claims process by adding the ability for sponsors to mark claims (and revised claims or claim adjustments) as “Submitted to the State”. Below is an overview of the claims process (1). Prior to this update, we already handled: The step that we have added is the ability to mark a claim as submitted to the state. Sponsors will now see this new button on the Claims tab (2). Please view our Help Center article on Marking a Claim as Submitted to State for more information.
DISALLOW AM SNACK OR LUNCH ON A SCHOOL DAY FOR AGES 6+ We have a new option to disallow meals for children ages 6+ for AM Snack or Lunch. Learn the two ways that providers or centers can claim these AM snacks and Lunches in our Help Center article. The new meal error reason you will see is “AM Snack or Lunch served to a participant 6+ on a weekday”.
- Removed the ability for family child care providers to change portion sizes for food production records since production records are not used for family child care homes.
- Added the name of the assigned monitor beneath the site name on the main site dashboard. If no monitor is assigned, then nothing will be displayed.
- Modified the Five Day Reconciliation Report to make sure it displays properly for sites where only one meal or snack is served.
- Renamed Food Contracting Entity ID to a more generic “Alternate ID” to allow for more flexibility.
- Added additional events and reasons for those sponsors that track the serious deficiency process in My Food Program.
- Added a place to list the “Hold Reason” for those that place sites on hold and prevent them from claims submission.
- Added a message when a user attempts to upload a file over 10MB on the facility license page. Prior to this change, users would get the crash page instead of the on-screen message.
- Added the ability to select multiple sites on the sponsor-level version of the Site Summary Report.
- Updated the food production reports to make sure the “actual” counts column is completed for the correct age range for afterschool sites that take meal counts by name.
ADDITIONAL MANUAL CLAIM ADJUSTMENT OPTIONS
There are now five ways that you can manually adjust a claim, including:
- Meal Count Errors Available for Override
- Change a Claim Meal Count Manually
- Change a Claim Participant Count Manually
- Change a Claim Attendance Count Manually
- Change a Days Open Count Manually
PARTICIPANT CLAIM ROSTER
This new report is a list of participants on the claim. This report will match the Participant Report, except in cases where you use a method that factors in an enrollment form and override a claim error related to a missing or expired form. In that case, the Participant Claim Roster will be accurate but the Participant Report will still exclude that participant. Learn more in our Help Center article.
- Added the list of meal types that will not be served to the email alerts for holidays, closures and field trips.
- Fixed an issue with the mobile version where a blank page was loading if the meal count screen was opened on a day on which the facility was closed.
- Updated the system so that users linked across multiple sites only need to add a signature one time.
PUT A SITE “ON HOLD” We have had the ability to place certain claims on hold before – which means that the claim is not created even if the site has clicked “Submit to Sponsor”. We are expanding on this feature by adding the ability to place a center or provider on hold. Learn more about this new feature in our Help Center article.
PROVIDER TIERING REPORT SPREADSHEET This new report is for sponsors of family child care homes and provides even more information about provider tier determinations than is currently available in the Tier Status Report. To see what information is all included in this report visit our Help Center article.
IMPROVED: SPONSOR MANUAL ADJUSTMENT PAGE We have made some improvements to the Sponsor Manual Adjustment feature. The improvements include:
- Changed the title to clarify that claim amounts displayed include all adjustments.
- Added a participant count, attendance, days open and average daily attendance.
- Sponsor users can now adjust claim payment amounts on the sponsor manual adjustment page instead of the Claim Payments page.
- We changed the sequence in which information is listed to the following:
- Full claim totals, including all adjustments
- Summary of Adjustments
- Meal count errors that are available for override
- Option for meal count manual adjustments
MONITORING VISIT STATUS REPORT This new report assists sponsors in seeing at-a-glance which sites have received monitoring visits over the course of the selected time period. The spreadsheet is laid out in a helpful grid format meant to mimic a calendar. Visit our Help Center article to learn more about this new report.
- We added a notes field when entering a Facility License and also had those notes populate on the Facility License Report.
- Changing the rounding protocol for the reimbursement method “Claiming Percentages Round Down” when the Paid participant count is zero.
- Adjusted the Site Summary Report to make sure all participants with Special Diet Statements are listed in the appropriate section.
- Renamed the Disbursement Record Report to add “For Sponsors of Centers” for clarity. Sponsors of homes looking for the payment amounts should use the Claims Summary Spreadsheet and select “Payment Amounts Only” when running the report.
- Added a vertical line separating the in and out times for ease of use on the Daily Meal Count with In/Out Times Report.
- Patched a bug that was hiding error messages when a user would omit required information when using the “quick add” feature to enroll a participant.
- Added monitor, comments and follow-up date to the Serious Deficiency Report.
- Added the Site ID to pre-populate on electronic visit forms.
- Changed the optional email alert regarding expense entry to NOT send an email if the user that entered the expense was a sponsor-level user.
- Re-phrased the rate type for clarity to say “Summer or School Release Rate” and made the same change on the invoicing pages.
- Updated the Michigan enrollment form report to add “Enrollment Date” field.
- Updated the email for closures, holidays or field trips to be more precise and changed it so that individual sponsor admin and sponsor reporters can opt in or out of alerts.
- Created a custom Enrollment Form for centers located in the state of Illinois.
ICON TO IDENTIFY EXPENSES WITH AN ATTACHMENT This feature is for sponsors and sites that use My Food Program to track expenses to demonstrate a non-profit food service. To assist sponsors in reviewing expense entries, we’ve added a paperclip icon next to the expense to indicate that it has an associated attachment.
WARNING IF A PARTICIPANT IS CHECKED IN FOR ATTENDANCE BUT NOT MEALS We have added a new section on the page used to check for errors. We have added a warning for participants that have been checked in for daily attendance but were not marked in for any meals or snacks. Learn more about this new warning in our Help Center article.
SEND A WELCOME EMAIL TO A SPONSOR USER We have the option to send a Welcome Email to any site-level user with an email address in the system. It sends them their username and provides them with a link to reset their password. You can now do the same with sponsor-level users! Below is what the email looks like. Visit our Help Center article to learn more.
REJECTED HOUSEHOLD IEF REPORT This is a new report for users of Ready Records, which compiles all the information about when the form was completed and when it was rejected. Learn more about this new report in our Help Center article.
GROUPING CLAIM ADJUSTMENTS We are improving the user experience when creating multiple claim adjustments. In the past, we would place each claim adjustment separately on the Claim Payments Page and on the Claim Summary Report. To make it easier on sponsors and centers/providers, we’ve grouped together multiple claim adjustments into a single line on the Claim Payments Page and a chart by meal type on the Claim Summary Report.
ENHANCED: FOOD TEMPERATURES We’ve enhanced our food temperature feature to offer more options and details for your recordkeeping purposes. This upgraded system provides additional benefits including the ability to record which food item a temperature was taken on; record temperatures for multiple food items; designate that an item is shelf stable; capture up to four signatures; and so much more. Learn more about using this feature in our Help Center articles on the web or using My Food Program+.
- Added the site address on the Meal Counts by Meal Type Spreadsheet.
- We reduced the age ranges displayed on the food production record screen to only show 6-12 years old if the site is an afterschool program and doing headcount meal counts. All age ranges are displayed on the food production record screen if a site is not afterschool or summer or doing meal counts by name.
- We are preventing the creation of any sites with a forward slash “/” or a back slash “\” in the name.
- We are adding in a restriction on tier determinations so that they are linked to a calendar month and cannot overlap. Each tier determination needs to start on the first day of a month and end on the last day of a month.
- Added the year to the Five Day Reconciliation Report.
- Correct a calculation error on the Time Distribution Report for CACFP admin hours.
- Updated the Provider Application Batch File to match the latest specifications.
- Added a meal disallow reason “Based on State Agency Direction”
- Enhanced the “Use Typical Times” feature to accommodate multiple arrival and departure times.
- Add the specific infant formula/food sign off statement for Michigan.
- Added the tier determination reason and email address to the Site Summary Report.
DAYS/HOURS VARY FOR PARTICIPANT SCHEDULE We now have the ability for sponsors to authorize providers or centers to designate that “Days/Hours Vary” on a participant schedule. If that box is checked for a participant, then we will skip the check that compares the days and meals for the month to the participant’s schedule. In other words, we will not generate the claim error, Meal Served to Participant Outside of Typical Schedule. Visit our Help Center article for instructions to set up this option.
PLACEMENT OF “MEAL OUTSIDE OF SCHEDULE” Oops! When we changed the system so that if providers or centers need to designate each meal that is outside of their normal schedule (instead of just marking it for the day), we inadvertently moved the checkbox. Our apologies! We’ve fixed that. Old Version (until Sunday) (1) and New Version (after Sunday) (2).
- Added a column for portion size and a text box for additional meal substitutions/notes to our page on recording substitutions for special dietary needs. This information is also included in the Special Dietary Substitutions Report.
- Added the date that a closure was entered and the user that created the closure to the Site Closures Report.
- Changed the email alert for “notes to sponsor” to use the site name instead of legal name.
- Added the ability to perform a milk audit using headcount meal counts if the site is an afterschool or summer site. In these cases, we assume that the age range is 6-12 years old.
- We’ve added a new report, Food Allergy Label Report, for sponsors that use central kitchens and want to print labels to remind sites about the special diet substitutions they should be making.
- Made sure that the option to Copy a Household to Another Site is limited to Sponsor Admin users.
- Ensured that on the headcount meal count screen with all options displayed, that the leftovers were recalculated properly when meals received/prepared or carryover values are typed directly into the box instead of using the increment arrows.
- Ensured that the Edit Schedule button is available to site-level users if an enrollment form is NOT entered and the sponsor is set to disallow meals not listed on the enrollment form.
- Made sure that the Food Temperature Report is visible if the site has food temperatures enabled.
TRACK SCHOOL NAME, NUMBER AND DISTRICT FOR PARTICIPANTS
We have added a series of text boxes to the child page for sponsor/sites to track school attendance. You will see these new fields on the participant page right above participant notes. This information is also included in the Participant Export Report.
SPECIAL DIET EMAIL ALERTS
We have had email alerts for Special Diets in place for a number of years, but the alerts were always sent to the main email in Sponsor Setup. We’ve changed this feature so that individual sponsor users can opt-in or opt-out of these alerts. Below is what a Special Diet email alert looks like (1). For existing users, we have checked the box so that all Sponsor Admin users get these alerts. To opt-out of email alerts for Special Diet entries, login as a sponsor admin, click on Users and uncheck the box for receiving these alerts (2).
PERMANENT ERROR MESSAGES IN MY FOOD PROGRAM+
We’ve improved the visibility of our error messages in My Food Program+ and also made them stay on the screen until cleared (previously the errors would stay on the screen for 5-10 seconds and then fade away). Here is an example of what the error messages look like now:
DO NOT APPLY INCOME FORM TO A PARTICIPANT IF THEIR START DATE IS AFTER THE EFFECTIVE DATE OF THE INCOME FORM
This feature is for sponsors that need to collect income forms to place participants into a tier or free/reduced/paid category, specifically:
- Child Care Centers other than Head Start
- Family Child Care Homes that are Tier II and want to claim children at Tier I rates or any time a provider wants to claim their own child
- Adult Day Care Centers
- Updated the Expiring Tier I Status report to account for situations in which a provider drops from Tier I to Tier II.
- On the site visit page we split out the menu verification questions for infant versus non-infant food items.
- Allowed the quantity field on the invoice page to be editable.
- Changed the protocol on milk audit by month so that it rounds UP to the next whole number when calculating the percent of meals to disallow. For example, if a center is short by 0.6% on milk, the system will round that up to a 1% shortage and disallow accordingly.
- Added the Infant Feeding Consent Form to the Participant Registration Form or homes and centers in North Carolina.
- Modified the column names for the Date/Time Stamp of Attendance and Meal Count Entries report.
- Added a participant registration form specific to Wyoming for family child care providers.
- Repaired the Meal Count Overview screen to function for summer food sites. Rows are highlighted in yellow when meals are delivered but no meal counts entered or meals delivered + carryover is less than meals served.
- Adjusted the Disallowed Meals line on the Claim Summary Report to account for when a meal has more than one error.
- We’ve updated the Meal Outside of Schedule to be associated with individual meals instead of the day overall. This means that if a participant is eating meals outside of their normal schedule for the entire day then each meal needs to be marked separately.
- Ensured the inactive rosters were available for selection when running the Daily Meal Count with Attendance Report.
- Added a designation on participants for “Migrant child – allowed to claim through age 15”.
- Added an option for the Claim Summary Spreadsheet to be pivoted to columns instead of rows.
ADD MULTI-DATE CLOSURES AND SCHOOL RELEASE/SUMMER DATES FOR ALL SITES
We have added the ability for sponsors to designate multiple-day closures, school release or summer dates for all sites under the sponsor account at one time! You can use this feature if your providers or centers have the same school schedules. The dates will even apply to newly-created sites. Providers or centers are not able to edit or delete entries made on this sponsor page in order to preserve data integrity. However, sponsor admin users can edit the entries made from this page for any individual provider or center.
FILTER THE CLAIM PAYMENT SCREEN BY BATCH
This feature is for sponsors that use Claim Batches – in other words, make multiple claims submissions to their state agency with batches of claims. The Claims Payment screen now has a column for Claim Batch. Read our Help Center article to learn more about this new feature.
CLAIM PAYMENT HISTORY + NEW REPORT
We have enhanced our Claims Payments screen in two ways:
- We have added a double asterisk to the “Paid” column if a claim payment has been revised by changing the check number, changing the payment date or removing the claim payment.
- We have created a Claim Payment History Report with the details about when payments were added, removed or edited. You will find this new report under Claims Reports at the sponsor level.
- Added an alert on the ACH Generator page that lists any sites that are marked as being paid by direct deposit but do not have banking information entered (and therefore will not be included in the ACH file).
- Added the option to mark claims as paid when generating an ACH file.
- Moved the save button on the meal count screens further to the left.
- Changed the default on the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance Report to have all rosters checked and also added inactive rosters to the dropdown list for those customers that need to run historical reports.
- Changed the phrasing on the visit page from “Expected” to “Expected to Be Claimed”.
- We now allow sponsor admin users to remove a claim payment.
- Added an option under Licensing Age Range Errors for “disallow all”. That means that if there is a violation of licensed capacity that all meals will be disallowed. The current configuration is renamed as “Disallow Overage” which means that only the number of meals in excess of licensed capacity will be disallowed.
RECORDING SUBSTITUTIONS FOR SPECIAL DIETARY NEEDS
We have added a button on the Meal Details screen that allows users to Record Substitutions for Special Dietary Needs (1). When users click on this button, the system will display a list of names of any participants with a special dietary need on-file along with the information from the special diet statement (2). Learn more about how to usee this feature in our Help Center article. Note that this feature is currently only in our web app; we will be adding it to our My Food Program+ mobile app soon!
IMPROVED: PAYMENT SUMMARY ON CLAIM SUMMARY REPORT FOR CENTERS
We have changed the way that we display the reimbursement amounts on the centers version of the Claim Summary Report. (The version for family child care homes did not change). We hope that this new way of displaying the reimbursement breakdown is helpful to state agencies, sponsors and centers.
MENU SHORTCUTS FROM MEAL COUNT SCREEN
We have changed the shortcuts that jump from the meal count screen to the menu screen from hyperlinks (that got a little lost!) to more prominent buttons. We’ve also added a “save” as part of clicking the button.
EMAIL ALERT WHEN A CENTER ADDS EXPENSES
We have added the option for sponsors to receive an email when an expense is entered. The email will contain a summary of the expense entry (shown below). Please keep in mind that attachments are not sent by email so the sponsor will still need to go into My Food Program to review the expense details. To turn on these email alerts:
- Login as a Sponsor Admin User
- Click on the green tab at the top labeled “Users”
- Click on your name
- Click the box to receive email alerts for expense entries
- Click Save
- Updated the Average Daily Attendance Report to work for summer food sites.
- Updated the header on the New York Participant Registration Forms to reflect a “last updated” date of July 2024.
- Removed the selection for Reimbursement Calculation Method on the Sponsored Claim Summary Report since that is set in Site Details.
- Repaired a software bug that was preventing “Notes to Sponsor” from saving on summer food sites.
- Updated the Delivery Receipt Report to add the option to only run the report for certain meal types.
- Created a sponsor-level version of the Sponsored Claim Summary Report, called Claim Summary Report without Admin Amounts that has simplified claim details and omits the administrative set aside from the meal reimbursement.
- Fixed the Expiring Provider Tier I Status report to account for multiple tier determinations.
- Put the list of Field Trips, Closures and School Release Dates in date order instead of create order.
- Repaired a software bug that was preventing some meal counts from being deleted on summer food sites.
WARNING IF MEAL ORDER EXCEEDS HIGHEST ALLOWABLE
This feature is for our customers that use the Meal Order Management screen (1) and also have entered a Highest Allowable total in Site Details. If a meal order is entered that is higher than the highest allowable, there is now a pop-up box (2) that warns you that your order exceeds the highest allowable. We still allow a save and just provide this warning as a courtesy.
- Added the option to hide the Blank Participant Registration Form.
- Added a link to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to the web app login screen.
- Updated the Enrollment Form for New York family child care homes to include gender.
- Added meal orders into the Meal Counts the Exceed Highest Allowable report.
- Added the original start date and infant food items to the Visit screen and accompanying Monitoring Form Report.
- Added an incremental count on the left column of the Participant Report.
- Added “Reused from Share Table” as a reason for a milk audit manual increase.
- Shaded the attendance column of the Five Day Reconciliation Report for improved readability.
- Added the option to run the Grocery List Report using Food Production Record quantities instead of relying on participant schedules and planned menus.
- Repaired a bug that prevented the Site Summary Report from running if a participant had multiple special diet statements.
- Added the option to run the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance Report by roster.
- Changed the Five Day Reconciliation Report so that the visit date counts fill in if they have been entered.
MULTI-DAY MEAL PACKS FOR SUMMER FOOD
This feature is for sponsors of the Summer Food Service Program that are taking advantage of the option for non-congregate meals in certain rural area. If you are in a summer food site and change the “Meal Count Entry” to “Multi-Day Meal Packs” this button will replace all the other meal count options (1). When users click on the button, they will be taken to this screen (2). Learn more about this new feature in our Help Center article.
COPY A HOUSEHOLD TO ANOTHER SITE
This feature is most helpful for sponsors of affiliated sites in which families switch from one location to another. We now have the ability to copy participants from one site to another within the same sponsor account. This feature is only available to Sponsor Admin users. See how this new feature works in our Help Center article.
- Updated the Meal Count Overview screen to work for meal count by name (previously it only worked for headcount).
- The site email address now prefills on electronic monitoring forms.
- Added the words “when my infant is developmentally ready for solid foods.” after the selections for provider/center-provided food or parent-provided food selections on the Infant Meal Notification that comes in the prefilled participant registration packet.
- We’ve added the ability to record hours with multiple in-and-out times to My Food Program+.
- Changed our Claims Spreadsheet from an unformatted .csv file to a formatted .xlsx spreadsheet.
DISALLOWED MEALS SUMMARY ON CLAIM SUMMARY REPORT We’ve enhanced our Claim Summary Report for all site types to add the option to include a summary of the meals disallowed along with an estimate of the dollar value of those disallowed meals.Note that the disallowed meals count does not include:
- Meals that are over the claim limit (i.e. more than 2 meals/1 snack or 2 snack/1 meal for child care centers, adult day care and family child care homes, 1 meal/1 snack for afterschool programs, 2 meals for summer food or 3 meals for emergency shelters.)
- Meals served to non-CACFP participants.
IMPROVED: DELIVERY RECEIPTS We have updated the workflow that sites use to record food temperatures and apply signatures to the Delivery Receipt Reports.
- Step 1: The Delivery Driver or Central Kitchen Staff user enters the temperatures at dispatch and/or delivery and certifies that their signature should be applied to the Delivery Receipt Report.
- Step 2: The site personnel receiving the meal certify the temperature at time of meal service and certify that their signature should also be applied to the Delivery Receipt Report.
IMPROVED: MULTIPLE IN AND OUT TIMES FOR RECORD HOURS FEATURE This feature is for those sites that record working hours in order to count staff expenses toward demonstration of a nonprofit food service. We have enhanced this feature so that staff can enter multiple in and out times.This feature is meant for daily recording and only applies to recording hours for a single day but does not apply to the feature where multiple days of work schedules are created.As part of this ticket, we’ve also updated the Time Distribution Report with the multiple in and out times.
IMPROVED: EMAIL ALERTS WHEN A SITE ENTERS A “NOTE TO SPONSOR” ON THE ATTENDANCE/MEAL COUNT PAGE We have a box on the attendance and meal count pages that allows providers or centers to enter a “note to sponsor” (if you don’t want to offer this option to your providers or centers, you have the option to hide the “notes to sponsor” box). Previously, we had a checkbox in Sponsor Setup that triggered an email alert for the main sponsor contact if a “note to sponsor” was entered. We’ve transitioned this checkbox to be on the sponsor users instead. This allows multiple staff to receive email alerts if desired. If this box was checked in Sponsor Setup, we’ve turned on email alerts for all sponsor admin users. To turn off the email alert or add the alert for additional users,
- Login as a Sponsor Admin user
- Click on the green “Users” tab
- Click on the name of the staff person that you want to add or remove the email alert
- Check or uncheck the box for the email alert
- Click Save
- Added a field for “Business Name” in Site Details.
- Added a disallow reason “Participant on incorrect shift”.
- Added the following information to the Site Summary Report: participant start date, participant status, special diet.
- Changing the shading of the attendance column on the Meal Count and Menu Documentation Report to better distinguish between attendance and meal count data.
- Added the option to get a total across all sites on the sponsor-level version of the Staff Hours Detail Report.
- Created a sponsor-level version of the Delivery Receipt Report. This allows sponsor users to run the Delivery Receipt Report across multiple dates for multiple sites.
DISALLOWS IF A PARTICIPANT IS NOT EXPECTED OR OBSERVED AT A SITE VISIT This feature builds on our recent upgrades to the site visit page. We now have the option to disallow meals if a participant is not observed during a review visit or expected to participate in the meal service. You can turn on this new disallow reason in Site Details under “Claims Settings”. If you would like to have this error turned on for all of your sites, you can contact My Food Program and we can do that for you.
DISALLOW MEALS IF PARTICIPANT NOT SCHEDULED TO BE IN ATTENDANCE AT MEAL TIME We have added a new error check for “Compare participant schedule to meal time and disallow if participant not scheduled for meal time” which you can turn on in Site Details under “Participants & Rosters Settings”.
If this box is checked and the checkbox for “Disallow meals outside of schedule” is checked in the sponsor setup, then the system will run through each meal count and make sure that the participant’s schedule matches up with the meal. To see an example or learn how to override this error, please visit our Help Center article..
MONITORING FORM REPORT We’ve added a new report at the sponsor level that combines all the information on the site visit screen AND any attachments into the same PDF! This is especially helpful if you have a sponsor policy of printing visit forms for your centers or providers and you are making use of our recent site visit improvements that added a text box for “reminders for next visit” information about the facility license and a list of participants observed or expected by the site monitor. Learn more about this report in our Help Center article..
HIGHEST ALLOWABLE MEAL ON THE MEAL COUNT OVERVIEW SCREEN This feature is for sponsors that use our Meal Order feature and also have a restriction on the maximum number of meals that can be claimed. (separate from a licensed capacity). We now display the Highest Allowable count on the Meal Count Overview screen on the left column. If you use meal order but do not enter a “Highest Allowable” then the screen will remain the same as before.
PARTICIPANT AGE ON ATTENDANCE AND MEAL COUNTS SCREEN We have added participant age in years and months on all attendance and meal count screens. We hope this assists with sponsors disallowing meals based on age range and catching any times in which a participant birth date is entered incorrectly.
- View when attendance and meal counts are on the same screen (1).
- View when attendance and meal counts are on separate screens (2).
- Fixed an error when a file was uploaded to a site visit and the site is no longer active.
- Updated the Menu and Meal Count Documentation report for the participant age as of the meal date instead of as of the date the report is run..
- Changed the Weekly Meal Count with Attendance Report so that it can be run for days in the past without any attendance or meal counts, added a place to record number of claimed meals and number of program staff and non-program meals.
- We’ve added options to our report Meal Counts that Exceed Highest Allowable so that you can run the report and include data for all dates, not just those that have a meal count that exceeds the highest allowable. We’ve also added the calculation for days open and highest allowable x days open per meal type to the report.
- Changed the Standard Meal Allowance Report to use the legal name instead of the site name.
- Added the address, city, state and ZIP to the Sites Dues for a Review Visit report.
- For sites doing headcount meal counts, we’ve filled in the “first meals” box green in both the web app and My Food Program+ to highlight it as the primary entry field.
- Added an option for the Site Food Order Spreadsheet to have dates as columns instead of rows.
- Adjusted the Meal Counts by Meal Type Spreadsheet so that the counts continue to be reported even if the meal order category is later removed.
- Added the automatic carryforward balance to the milk audit when the setting is set to automatic.
- Added “Notes to Sponsor” as a column in the Meal counts by Meal Type Spreadsheet report.
SPONSOR EXPENSE DETAIL REPORT
We have added a new report at the sponsor level under Financial Reports. This spreadsheet report lists the contents of the Expense Detail Report but can be run for a custom date range and with the site(s) of your choice. Learn more about this report and download a sample in our Help Center article.
EARLY HEADSTART PROGRAM TYPE
We have added to our list of the types of claims you can create in My Food Program! We can now create an Early Head Start claim. You should use the new Early Head Start program type if you are required by your state agency to file a separate Early Head Start and Head Start claim. If you are allowed by your state agency to combine these two groups together into one claim, then you should only use the Head Start program type.
In order for a meal count to be taken, the program type has to be authorized at multiple levels including Sponsor, Site, Meal and Participant.
Meal counts that are eligible for Early Head Start will have an EHS button next to the participant’s name, like below. Learn more about setting up this program type in our Help Center article.
IMPROVED: VISIT PAGE
With our last release, we added a list of active participants to the visit page and the ability to mark them as “observed” during the visit. We got such a variety of feedback from our customers!
To accommodate those of you that preferred the previous version, we’ve added a toggle button so that you can show or hide the list of participants.
To accommodate those of you that loved our new feature, we’ve expanded it to include a column to mark a participant as “expected” for the meal. This would be used if the monitor showed up after some participants had already eaten the meal or if more participants are expected to participate in the meal service after the monitor has left.
- Made sure that the participant schedule lists the schedule with multiple arrival and departure times in chronological order.
- Updated the Site Summary Report to properly display trainings.
- We changed the Average Daily Participation Report to allow for a date range, added a multi-select for meal type and added a total to the columns for days, number served and average daily participation.
- Updated the meal counts by meal type spreadsheet to include meal orders even if there was a site closure recorded for that day.
- Fixed a bug that was excluding participants from the Missing Forms Report if their start date was the last date of the calendar month.
AUTOMATIC MILK AUDIT
We have added a feature for milk audits to be created automatically when a user clicks “Submit to Sponsor”. If you enable this feature, please be aware that no review of the milk amounts is necessary by either site or sponsor before the milk audit is finalized. That means that prior to clicking “Submit to Sponsor”, receipts for milk should be entered. Learn more about this new feature in our Help Center article.
REQUIRE AN INFANT MENU BEFORE MEAL COUNTS
This new feature will require providers or centers to enter a planned infant menu before they can take meal counts. Read important notes about this feature in our Help Center article.
IMPROVED: SITE VISITS
We have added the following fabulous new features to our Site Visits screen:
- Facility license information
- License type or licensed capacity
- List of all active participants with an option to mark them as “observed” during the visit
- An additional text box for “Reminders for Next Visit”
FILE CABINET CONTENTS
This new sponsor-level report is a summary of the files that have been uploaded into the File Cabinet. To see what is included in this report and to download a sample, check out our Help Center article.
- Ensured that meal order categories are correctly displayed for newly-created sites if the sponsor has meal order categories available.
- Fixed a bug in the site export report for “Site Deactivation Reason” being filled for active sites.
- Added meal orders to the Delivery Receipt Report.
- Added a column for “Possible Meal Order Categories” to the Meal Counts by Meal Type Spreadsheet.
- Changed Ready Records to allow parents to update their address and phone number when they complete the form.
- Updated the enrollment form for New York homes to ask for provider signature in lieu of sponsoring organization signature.
- Added participant birth date, roster, start date and the last time any special diet was added or updated to the Special Diet Report.
AUTO-FILL CHECK NUMBERS ON CLAIM PAYMENTS PAGE
We recently added the ability for sponsors to track the check number associated with a claim payment. We have enhanced that feature and sponsors can now auto-fill the check numbers on the claims payment page automatically! See our Help Center article for more information.
RECEIVE AN EMAIL WHEN A FILE IS ADDED TO THE FILE CABINET
We have enhanced our File Cabinet feature to add the option to receive an email whenever a file is uploaded. See what the email looks like below.We have NOT turned on this email alert for any sponsors. If you would like to turn on email alerts:
- Login as a Sponsor Admin User
- Click on the Users Tab
- Click on your name
- Check the box that says “Send Email When Files Added to File Cabinet”
- Click Save
HIGHEST ALLOWABLE COUNT BY MEAL TYPE
Afterschool programs and summer feeding sites sometimes have a maximum number of meals that they can claim. This number can vary by meal type and is not a licensed capacity, but rather a ceiling set on the amount of meals that can be claimed. We have added a new checkbox on after school and summer food sites only in Site Details under the Claim Setting section. See our Help Center article to learn more about how this feature works and the report associated with it.
PARTICIPANT NAME DISPLAYED ON SCREEN
We have added the participant name to the top of the screen when a user is doing one of the following:
- Adding an Enrollment Form
- Adding a Special Diet Form
- Adding an Infant Form
- Editing a Participant Schedule
CHECKBOX FOR “REVIEWED BY SPONSOR” FOR EXPENSES
We’ve added a checkbox on expenses so that sponsors can track that they have reviewed an expense. You will see this new checkbox on the expense screen (shown below).You will also see this on the main expense page and also the Expense Detail Report. Only sponsor users can check this box, site-level users cannot.
- If a center separates out their Preschool CACFP claim from their School Age claim, we added the combined Free/Reduced/Paid participant count to the Claim Summary Report.
- Repaired a loophole that was creating a participant status with the same start and end date when using the bulk enrollment feature.
- We changed the system so that afterschool sites using headcount attendance and meal counts can use the Fixed method of FRP Classification. If the Fixed method is not selected, the system will use the highest attendance for the claim month as a proxy participant count.
REQUIRE FINALIZED FOOD PRODUCTION RECORDS BEFORE MEAL COUNTS
Sponsors can now require centers to complete the following tasks prior to taking a meal count on a non-infant roster: Sponsors do have the ability to un-finalize a food production record if they wish, but the center cannot do that on their own. Learn more about this feature in our Help Center article.
TRACK CHECK NUMBERS FOR CLAIM PAYMENTS
We have added the ability to record the check number associated with a claim payment. To learn how to record the check number please read our Help Center article. Check numbers have also been added as a column on the Claims Spreadsheet.
SPONSOR-LEVEL STAFF HOURS DETAIL REPORT
The Staff Hours Detail Report collects the information entered in the Record Hours feature. It includes a breakdown of each date that a staff person worked and also captures the electronic signature of the employee and their supervisor. Learn more about this report in our Help Center article.
SPONSOR-LEVEL TIME DISTRIBUTION REPORT
The Time Distribution Report collects the information entered in the Record Hours feature. It includes a breakdown of each date that a staff person worked, includes more details on operating/direct activities and also captures the electronic signature of the employee and their supervisor. Learn more about this report in our Help Center article.
BLANK PARTICIPANT REGISTRATION FORM
We have added a new report that generates a blank enrollment, income and infant form at the site level. The appearance of the form depends on which state the site is located in and the type of site. Most state agencies accept the default My Food Program form, but in some states it is necessary to match the state agency template precisely.* See our Help Center article for sample reports.
*Before using any enrollment, income or infant forms from My Food Program, you should always check first with your state agency to ensure that our format meets the recordkeeping requirements. If changes to our forms are needed, please contact us so that we can accommodate the recordkeeping requirements in your state.
STANDARD MEAL ALLOWANCE
The Standard Meal Allowance Report is used by sponsors of family child care homes to assist with computing the deductible cost of food provided to eligible children for tax reporting purposes.
This report has previously only had a provider-level version. We have pulled this report up to the sponsor-level for those sponsors that wish to generate the report on behalf of their providers. If a sponsor wants providers to continue to run the report themselves, they still have the option to do so. Learn more in our Help Center article.
- Made corrections to the Milk Audit for Fluid Milk Substitutes to ensure meals were being disallowed properly for participants drinking fluid milk substitute not provided by parents.
- We updated the error for “Missing CN Label or Product Formulation Statement” to only look for dates and not uploaded files.
- Revised the pre-printed income and enrollment form for sites located in Minnesota to match state agency template.
- Added the breakdown of Tier I attendance and Tier II attendance on the Claim Summary Report for family child care homes.
- Fixed a bug in the Household Report in which participants with the same first and last name were being grouped together.
- Revised the pre-printed income and enrollment form for sites located in North Carolina to match state agency template.
- Added the pre-printed income and enrollment form for sites located in California to match state agency template.
- Added a file to import provider application data into the California state agency system (CNIPS).
- Added a claim import file for use by sponsors of centers in California.
HIDE “RECORD HOURS”
If you are a sponsor who does not want your sites to record their hours for time distribution reports or expense tracking, you can now turn that feature off. To hide the “Record Hours” button from the main site dashboard, just go into Site Details and check the box “Hide Record Hours?” under Site User Settings.You also have the ability to change the settings for multiple sites at once using Manage Site Configurations. If you would like us to change your settings on your behalf, reach out directly to the My Food Program support team by email at support@myfoodprogram.com.
EXCLUDE NON-CACFP PARTICIPANTS FROM MILK AUDIT
This feature is for sponsors that are required to conduct a milk audit. We’ve added a new checkbox in Site Details under Menu Settings that will allow you to automatically exclude all non-CACFP participants from milk audit calculations. This feature would be most useful for centers that need to record staff eating a meal with the children as part of the meal counts, but do not want those staff taken into consideration for the milk audit.
SPONSOR DASHBOARD FOR EXPIRING/EXPIRED TIER I DETERMINATIONS
We have added a new sponsor dashboard icon for sponsors of family child care homes. The alert gives you a count of the number of active providers with a Tier I determination that is expired or will expire in the next 30 days. Clicking the dashboard indicator will take you to the Expiring Tier I Report.
DISALLOW FOR MISSING OR EXPIRED LABEL
We have added a new option for sponsors that use our Labels feature to store:
- CN Labels
- Product Formulation Statements
- Ingredient Lists (to confirm whole grain-rich requirements)
- Nutrition Facts Panel (to confirm sugar limits on cereal and yogurt)
RESTRICTIONS ON RECORDING HOURS ON BEHALF OF OTHERS
This feature is for sites that use My Food Program to record their hours for the purposes of time distribution reports and/or expense tracking. We now have the ability for sponsors to authorize site-level users to record hours on behalf of others. For example, if a center director is taking timesheets from another system and entering the data into My Food Program for CACFP-specific recordkeeping, then they would need to record hours on behalf of others.
There are now three new checkboxes:
- Checkboxes #1 and #2 are for sponsor users
- Checkbox #3 is for site-level users
- Added page breaks for each calendar date to the Daily Meal Production Record Report.
- Added hover text to the single-meal food production screen to provide additional explanation about when and how the columns are filled.
- We hid the button for “Meal Order Categories” on the menu calendar screen unless the sponsor has set up a meal order category.
- On the Site Closures Report, we updated the date selection dropdown to include one year in the future.
- Repaired the multi-select menu when viewing Pending Ready Records requests.
- Added a cross-check for sponsors that are using enrollment forms to make a participant claim list to ensure that they are also disallowing for missing enrollment forms.
- Added the ability to hide the Message Center.
- Change the name of the button “Message households with expired paperwork” to say “Message households with missing/expired paperwork” on the Ready Records screen.
- Added logic to calculating food shortages for afterschool and summer food sites that use headcount meal counts by assuming that all children are ages 6-12.
- Alphabetized the site list, with active sites first, on the Household Contact Email List report.
- Ensured that participant status was being changed from Pending to Active if paperwork was approved via Ready Records.
- Ensured that the field for “not developmentally ready” was being filled correctly for Ready Records infant forms completed for sites in Texas.
- Added a new option to the Weekly Meal Count with Attendance report that allows you to include specific calendar months.
FILE CABINET
The File Cabinet is a place to store documents that don’t fit anywhere else.
- Sponsors have control who can see the File Cabinet and who can add files to the File Cabinet. Only sponsor admin users can delete files from the File Cabinet.
- By default, we have set all site-level users with the role “Site Manager/Director” to be able to both view and add files to the File Cabinet. All other site-level users do not have access to view or add files to the File Cabinet.
- If you would like My Food Program staff to either add or remove privileges based on these defaults, please reach out to us.
- Corrected the Site Hours and Meal Times display order on the Site Summary Report.
- Added a summary table to the Time Distribution Report to show the percentage of total hours hat are allocated to CACFP Hours Direct (operating) and CACFP Hours Admin.
- Added an edit check during “Check for Errors” to prompt users to allocate attendance to a program type when the participant did not have a valid program type for that date. If this situation occurs, users will get a red error notice at the top of the check for errors page that says “Claim has unallocated attendance.”
- We renamed the flag “Site is Self Sponsored” to the more helpful phrasing, “Center is allowed to approve CACFP paperwork and record admin expenses”.
- Updated the date picker on the Print Menu function to allow for dates in future years.
- Added a reason for a “Free” household income eligibility that reads “Eligibility Number” to match guidance from the Texas Department of Agriculture.
- Added an option on the Missing Meal Counts Spreadsheet to have dates listed as columns instead of rows.
GENERATING ACH FILES
My Food Program now offers the ability to generate an ACH file that you can upload in your bank to generate direct deposits and pay your providers or centers. My Food Program does not transfer the funds; we only provide you the ACH file that you can use with your bank. There are two parts to this process, which must be done in this order: Click each item above to visit our Help Center for step-by-step instructions on how to use this feature.
LICENSING AUTHORITY
We have added the ability to track the authority that issues a facility license. The options are:
- Standard (for example, a county or a department of human services)
- Legally Unlicensed
- Military
- Tribal
- Other
HOUSEHOLD CONTACT EMAIL LIST
This report provides the email addresses for each child included in the claim for the selected month and may be helpful when conducting household contacts. It is a spreadsheet that includes:
- Site name,
- Participant name,
- Parent/guardian name and
- Parent/guardian email address.
- Fixed the sponsor-level export race/ethnicity spreadsheet to account for participants with multiple enrollment forms.
- Added an optional notes box on the page where providers or centers record a closure or field trip.
- Corrected a rounding protocol on milk estimates used in food production records.
- Repaired an offset column on the participant export report.
- Ensured that the meal received/prepared count that is displayed on the food temperature screen were populating from meal orders.
UPDATED: TIER DESIGNATION We have added some additional fields for home sponsors when they enter tier determinations, which include qualifications for the following:
- Census Information
- School District
- Participation in a Public Benefits Program
UPDATED: TIER I INCOME FORM REASON If you are in a family child care home account and adding an income form to a household, the new options available will be:
- Provider’s own child allowed to claim because of income verification
- Provider’s own child allowed to claim because of Case Number
- Participant from an income-eligible household
READY RECORDS: NEW STATUS “REVIEWED/READY FOR SIGNATURE” We have a new feature available for those customers that use Ready Records to electronically collect income, enrollment and infant forms from families. We have added a new status to a draft form called “Reviewed/Ready for Signature”. This new status is most helpful for those sponsors that have multiple people reviewing the household income category determination.You will see the new “Reviewed/Ready for Signature” status in two places:
- As a dropdown option on the screen for draft forms
- As a filter on the Ready Records tab for sponsors
- Made sure that the error for “Meal for which there is no menu” applies only to participants ages 1 and older. The error for “Missing or Incomplete Infant Menu” applies only to those participants under the age of 1.
- Added two options to the Weekly Meal Count with Attendance Report. You can now choose to hide days without any attendance and/or to truncate the report by calendar month.
- Repaired a bug that was deleting the Meals Received/Prepared field if a meal counts was entered using the headcount method and not all options were displayed on the mealcount screen.
- Updated the Portioned Menu Report to use the more technical food item term instead of the display name for increased accuracy.
- We have added a “Reason for Deactivation” choice for family child care providers that are set to “inactive” status.
- On the Disallowed Meals Report, we’ve checked all Program Types by default.
- We repaired the email alert “Send an email when a meal submission is made” from sending an email when a user clicked “Check for Errors” to only sending an email when a user clicks “Submit to Sponsor”.
- Repaired optional email alerts for Sponsor Reporters for new participants and updated schedules, status, and race/ethnicity.
- Made sure that deleted or expired facility licenses were not appearing on the Site Food Order Spreadsheet report.
CREATE MILK AUDITS FOR MULTIPLE CENTERS AT THE SPONSOR LEVEL We have added the ability for sponsors to create milk audits for multiple sites. This feature is available under Claims at the Sponsor-Level and will show you the following information:
- Site
- Disallows
- Monthly Surplus/Deficit
- Create or Refresh Milk Audit
- Finalize Milk Audit
- Added columns for meal order quantities and categories to the Meal Counts by Meal Type Spreadsheet Report.
- Ensured that only active staff are included on the Missing/Expired Training Report.
- Added the export file for North Carolina centers to file their claims electronically with the state agency.
- Allow users to select more than one Program Type when running a Disallowed Meals Report.
HEADCOUNT ATTENDANCE & MEAL COUNT CLARIFICATION
We have added additional text on the screens for headcount attendance and headcount meal counts to clarify what will happen when additional data is added.
- Adding an Attendance Count will overwrite other user’s data.
- Adding a Meal Count will add to other user’s data.
SITE VISIT SCREEN
We have added some helpful hover text to the Site Visit screen regarding the fields for meal attendance count and menu. This hover text will alert sponsors that filling in these fields will lock out the provider or center from editing meal counts (if a meal attendance is entered) (1) or menus (if the sponsor certifies that the foods observed do or do not match the menu) (2).
MILK AUDITS
We’ve made a small wording change on the milk audit page for those sponsors that complete a Milk Audit by Day. The Milk Audit by Day operates like a checkbox register and keeps track of the purchases and usage of milk on a meal-by-meal and day-by-day basis. A Milk Audit by Day can catch a scenario in which a center ran out of milk during a day in the month (based on the timing of milk purchases and usage) even when they may have purchased enough milk overall. In other words, sometimes analyzing overall milk purchases for a month isn’t sufficient to catch a shortage.
For those sponsor doing a Milk Audit by Day, the wording on the total screen that say “End Balance” was confusing. It has therefore been changed to “Monthly Surplus or Deficit”.
Remember, that with a milk audit by day, a center can have a monthly surplus and still have meals disallowed based on the timing of the milk purchases and usage.
- Made sure that at the Program Type is selected in Site Details when creating a site.
- Added the parent email address to the Annual Re-Enrollment Report and also ensured that participants with no meals on the schedules are still included in the report.
- Repaired the Meal Counts Summary by County Report to properly include the highest meal count during the month.
- Added the license group to the Site Export Report.
- Made sure that participants added through Quick Add on the attendance page or mobile app have the default age for developmental readiness filled in.
- Fixed a bug that was excluding providers doing manual claims from the sponsor-level race and ethnicity spreadsheet.
- Ensured that the Site Food Order Spreadsheet report was excluding facility licenses that are expired or deleted.
SITE-LEVEL REPORT: FAVORITE FOODS WITH CN LABEL OR PRODUCT FORMULATION STATEMENT
We already have a sponsor-level version of this report, but we’ve now created a site-level version. This report is a spreadsheet that lists the foods that require a CN Label or Product Formulation Statement that are also marked as “Favorite Foods” for this site. If you are a sponsor who uses our Enhanced Sponsor Control of Available Food Items feature, then only sponsors can mark a food as a favorite. Therefore, for sponsors using Enhanced Sponsor Control of Available Food Items this report becomes an approved foods list for CN-labeled foods.
To run this report at the site level:
- Click on Reports from the main site dashboard.
- Select the category “Food Service Operations Reports” from the dropdown.
- Click on the report titled “Favorite Foods with CN Label or Product Formulation Statement”.
- Click “Run Report” to generate a download link.
- Click “Download File” to download the spreadsheet.
FAVORITE REPORTS
The number of reports in My Food Program is always growing! To help you find the ones that you run all the time, we have added the ability to mark a site-level report as a “favorite” report. As part of this update, you’ll see the following changes:
- We have added a little heart next the name of each report at the site level. To mark a report as a favorite, just click the heart next to it. Clicking the heart will turn it red. Then click “Save Favorite Reports” in the upper-right corner.
- All favorite reports will jump to the top in each report category.
- We’ve added a new dropdown choice in Reports that holds all your Favorite Reports across all of the report categories.
SPONSOR-LEVEL RACE ETHNICITY SPREADSHEET
We have a new sponsor-level report to assist with required Civil Rights reporting. The Race Ethnicity Report is in Sponsor Reports under Export Reports. It provides a spreadsheet with an active participant count with a breakdown by race and ethnicity by month. Download a Sample Report >
- Corrected a formatting issue with the Site Summary Report.
- Fixed the claim upload file for Kansas Homes for providers missing a tier designation.
- Renamed the report “Sponsor Staff Training Report” to “Site Training Report”.
- Added an option to run the Participant Export Report with the option for All Participants and All Sites. This includes inactive sites as well as active sites.
- Repaired a display issue on the Meal Count Overview screen when multiple users entered meal counts.
- Added a cross-check to participant so that if a provider or center changes the status from Active to Inactive without clicking the “Set Participant Status to Inactive” button we do a double-check to make sure that there are not any attendance records or meal counts for that participant.
- Ensured that participants marked as providing their own fluid milk substitute are properly excluded from the Substitute Milk Audit.
- We filtered the milk types available in Expenses according to the milk types allowed on Sponsor Excluded Foods list. This will help ensure consistency in the milk types between menus, food production records, milk audit and expenses.
- Changed the phrase “Sponsor Percentage” to “Administrative Percentage” to better reflect that self-sponsored sites are limited to spending 15% of their reimbursement on administrative expenses. If a site has a sponsor, the administrative percentage is retained by the sponsor.
- We have added the ability to delete a license type that is no longer used.
- We have removed the restrictions on Participant ID so that it can contain letters and symbols and be any length.
DELETE FOOD PRODUCTION RECORDS IN BULK
Food production records are a feature for sites that need to document the total amount of food produced for a meal to ensure that sufficient amounts were prepared to serve all meal participants.
To enhance this feature, we have added the ability to bulk delete food production records that were created in error. This is a supplement to our features that allow users to generate bulk food production estimates, correct them for food shortages and/or for mis-matches between the posted menu and the production record.
You can find this new feature by clicking on Menu and then Food Production Estimates. At the bottom of the screen you will see the option to select the meal(s) for which you want to delete food production estimates along with a date range selector. The delete will be prevented if you have already submitted to sponsor for the month or the food production record was finalized.
“SUBMIT TO SPONSOR” IN BULK
This feature is most useful for sponsors that provide meals directly to their sites and retain all the reimbursement at the sponsor level. In these cases, the sites may only be entering attendance and meal counts and will not be submitting their records for reimbursement. This new feature allows the sponsor to close out the month for the site directly.
This new feature is located at the sponsor level under Claims.
- Click View/Create Claims.
- Select the claim month/year.
- Click the green button labeled “Submit to Sponsor”.
- On the following screen you can select the site(s) for which you would like to submit to sponsor (i.e. close out the month and lock it against further edits).
- Allowed the Site Summary Report to be run even if there are no participants in the site.
- Added a cross-check to make sure that the end date is after the start date when entering a multiple-day closure or summer or school release date range.
- Improved the five-day reconciliation report formatting for participants with multiple schedules.
- For family child care homes that are Tier II Mixed or High, we have added a section to the Site Summary Report to list the children being claimed as Tier I along with the effective and expiration dates of the household income forms.
- Repaired an issue with columns being offset on the Site Export Report.
- On the Meal Counts by Meal Type Spreadsheet report, we fill in the “meals received/prepared” with the meal order value if the meals received/prepared hasn’t been entered yet.
- Corrected a summing error in the Claim Spreadsheet when the report was run for multiple months.
IMPROVEMENT: AT-RISK DAILY MEAL COUNT AND ATTENDANCE RECORD (H1535-AT)
This report improvement is for sponsors of at-risk afterschool programs in Texas. We’ve modified the At-Risk Daily Meal Count and Attendance Record (H1535-AT) so that it prints blank if there is no attendance or meal counts for the day. That allows you to use this form as a paper back-up sheet for your afterschool programs. Here is an example of the blank version of the report:
IMPROVEMENT: TRACKING PARENT OVER-PAYMENTS
My Food Program has a system for family child care providers to generate invoices for care and match payments against those invoices. We have made a change to matching payments. We now allow providers to enter a payment amount that exceeds the invoiced amount (i.e. if the parent over-pays). When this happens, the invoice summary shows a negative balance which can then be manually added as a discount on the next invoice to that parent.
- If the sponsor has claim batches turned on, then we now require that they select a claim batch before creating a manual claim.
- Allowed the entry of Record Log Notes for years in the future.
- Changed which site-level users signature is applied to the Daily Meal Count Tally Report. We will now apply the user marked as Primary User, regardless of that users permission level. If there are no primary users, then it will select the first user alphabetically.
- Adjusted the claim reimbursement method “Claiming Percentages Round Down” to also round down the cash-in-lieu of commodities value.
- Updated the prefilled enrollment form for Iowa family child care homes to align with FY2023 updates.
IMPROVEMENT: INFANT MENUS
We have made a few changes to the way that planned infant menus work. (Note that we have NOT made any changes to the infant menu by name functionality where users are asked specific items and amounts for each infant for each meal).
- We are no longer asking users to pick whether they are planning an infant menu for ages 0-5 or ages 0-11 months. Instead, we are taking users straight to the screen for 0-11 months.
- We have added a cross-check for developmental readiness. If a user tries to plan an infant menu that ONLY includes iron-fortified infant formula or breastmilk AND they have a child under 12 months who is developmentally ready for solid foods, then they will get the warning message shown below.
IMPROVEMENT: AUTOMATIC ALLOCATION FOR PROGRAM TYPE
When we first launched the new meal count screens in January 2023, we offered the option to automatically allocate meals and snacks to ARAM if the site, participant and meal were eligible to be claimed ARAM but was marked CACFP Standard by mistake. For example, if a child should have been marked as eligible for ARAM but was not until the end of the month, the automatic allocation would recognize the mistake and place the meals for that month in the ARAM claim instead of the CACFP Standard claim. That automatic correction makes the claim more accurate.
We have expanded that concept and are offering automatic allocation as an option for all program types. This is helpful for any sites that are running multiple program types, including those that have Non-CACFP as one of the programs because either a child or adult day care client has declined the CACFP or because you are required to track meals for staff.
Because of the improvement in this feature, we have renamed the checkbox. The old name was “Automatic ARAM Allocation” and was in the ARAM section in Site Details. The new name is “Automatically allocate attendance and meal counts for participant program type” and it has been moved to the Claim Settings section in Site Details.
- Added an expiration date to sponsor training.
- Changed the sort order on the Meal Count Overview screen to be newest on top and oldest on bottom.
- Added all meal types to the dropdown when deleting menus in bulk. This was previously restricted to only the meal types in Site Details.
- Ensured that the batch selection is correctly applied when creating a new manual claim.
- Updated the Meal Count and Menu Claim Documentation Report to list the totals in a consistent order.
- Added the date/time of delivery to the Delivery Receipt Report.
- Created a Child Meal Pattern and Infant Meal Pattern report with improved graphic design.
- Added the Total Attendance Count to the Daily Meal Count Tally Report for Afterschool sites.
- Added a cross-check to ensure that users at the sponsor level are not assigned to both Admin and Reporter roles. If you do have admin staff that do monitoring visits, it is best to create two separate logins; one for monitoring activities and the other for administrative activities.
- Ensured that the full racial/ethnicity data is viewable on the Site Summary Report.
- Corrected a data query on the Providers Claiming Own Children Report.
- Removed repeating rows on the Disallowed Meals Report for sites doing meal counts by headcount.
NEW FEATURE
IMPROVEMENT: MEAL COUNT OVERVIEW
Our recently-released Meal Count Overview screen has three new improvements:
- You can now select a date range. All the dates are listed from the most recent to the oldest.
- You can now toggle the display to show only certain meal types.
- We have added a Totals row at the top and bottom of the screen. This total number dynamically changes as you use the meal type selection checkboxes.
We hope these new features make this page even more useful!
OTHER ENHANCEMENTS AND BUG FIXES
- Added meals shifts to the
Five Day Reconciliation Report. - Added two new reasons for sponsor to disallow meals: meal served did not match posted menu and meal not served within schedule meal service time.
- Repaired overlapping headers on the Site Summary Report.
- For those sites with multiple program types and automatic allocation turned OFF we have the manual program type allocation displayed.
- For those family child care homes using the prefilled enrollment form from My Food Program, the facility infant formula now shows up if there is a participant less than 12 months in the household.
NEW FEATURE
ADD A REASON TO A “NON-REIMBURSABLE MEAL” WHEN USING THE COMPREHENSIVE HEADCOUNT MEAL COUNT SCREEN
We have added the ability to record a reason that a meal was marked as non-reimbursable by a site-level user. This is typically used if there was a meal that was not able to be served because it was spoiled, incomplete or at an unsafe temperature.
If you are using the
headcount meal count screen with all options turned on, you will see a field called non-reimbursable meals. If the number of non-reimbursable numbers is greater than zero, then a text box will appear for the user to enter a reason. By default, entering a reason for a non-reimbursable meal is optional. If you would like this required, then check the box in Site Details under Attendance & Meal Count Settings called, “Require reason for meals that are non-reimbursable (headcount only)”.
OTHER ENHANCEMENTS AND BUG FIXES
- Changed the Missing Meal Counts Spreadsheet report to reference the program type start date and fill in the meal order number in the meals received/prepared column if no meal count has been taken. These changes should assist sponsors in identifying sites that should have entered a meal count and did not.
- Added the state agency enrollment and income forms for centers in Florida and Ohio when users create a pre-filled CACFP registration packet.
COPY SAVED MENUS BETWEEN SITES
This feature is for sponsors that use Saved Menus. My Food Program now has the ability to copy a saved menu from one site to another within your sponsor account. To access the feature:
- Click on Menu from the main site dashboard.
- Click on Saved Menus from the upper menu.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the menu(s) you want to copy and the site(s) to which you want to copy those saved menus.
- Click the green “Copy Saved Menus” button
MILK SHORTAGES
My Food Program currently has a feature to identify food shortages, but not milk shortages. This new feature allows users to identify milk shortages in addition to food shortages. This feature does not duplicate the milk audit feature as the milk audit is meant to determine that sufficient milk was purchased whereas the milk shortage is meant to determine that sufficient milk was served using the food production record as a basis.To turn on this new feature:
- Login as a sponsor user.
- Click on the green tab for Setup.
- Click on the icon for Sponsor Setup.
- Under the “Milk Shortage Policy” select “Include milk shortages with food shortages”.
- Food production records with a milk shortage will trigger the error Meal disallowed for food shortage.
- Those shortages will appear on the Food Shortage report.
- The milk amounts will be included if food production records are corrected for shortages.
- Allowed a multi-select on the Meal Order Management page up to 10 sites.
- Made sure that a Sponsor Reporter can only access the sites to which they are assigned.
- Adjusted the Daily Meal Production Record to correctly account for meal shifts.
- Ensured that Record Log Notes are being properly displayed on the Meal Order Management screen.
- Added the state agency enrollment and income forms for centers in Colorado when users create a pre-filled CACFP registration packet.
- Added the state agency enrollment and income forms for centers in Michigan when users create a pre-filled CACFP registration packet.
- Changed the sponsor percentage from a dropdown menu with choices 0-15 to a text box that can accommodate a sponsor percentage with up to two decimal places.
- Repaired a bug that was not allowing entry of training information for newly-created site-level users.
REQUIRE INCREMENTAL MEAL COUNTS FOR HEADCOUNT
This feature is for states that do not allow sites to enter the number of meals directly into a text box, but rather require that sites use My Food Program as a “clicker” to record meals one-by-one as they are distributed to participants. You can find this new setting in Site Details under “Attendance & Meal Count Settings”. The incremental meal count requirement applies to the web app, mobile app and our new MFP+.
MEAL COUNT OVERVIEW SCREEN
- Log in as a sponsor admin user to go to the main sponsor dashboard.
- Click on the green tab called Setup.
- Click on the box called Meal Count Overview (1).
MEAL ORDER MANAGEMENT
- Login as a sponsor admin to go to the main sponsor dashboard.
- Click on the green tab called Setup.
- Click on the box called Meal Order Management (1).
- Site Name
- Site ID
- County
- Driver
- Vendor
- Days Open
- Meals Served
- Meal Order Category
- Age Range
- Prefilled the infant formula on the default Enrollment Form if the participant is under 12 months.
- Automatically filled the meals received/prepared with the number of meals ordered.
- Improved the load speed for the menu calendar.
- Added fields for enrollment form to the Participant Report for adult day care.
- Removed the restriction on same-day meal order entry for sponsor users. Site-level users are still restricted to entering meal counts only for future dates.
- Added a field for phone number on Site Principal.
- Implemented meal order categories on the bulk meal orders screen.
- Added the “Notes to Sponsor” option on the screen for sites using both headcount attendance and headcount meal counts.
- Added the ability to archive a facility license.
- Disabled the milk audit hyperlink after one click to prevent multiplying milk usage.
- Skipped updates to food production record quantities if there was a site review visit for that date and meal type.
- Added the contact information for the Site Principal to the Site Summary Report.
APPLY A DIFFERENT LICENSED CAPACITY TO SPECIFIC MEALSThis new feature is for states that have licensed capacities that vary during the course of a day. For example, some states may allow a family child care provider to care for additional children if a helper is present. In this case, you would want My Food Program to use the provider’s typical licensed capacity for meals at which a helper is not present and to use the larger licensed capacity for meal at which a helper is present. Here’s how you can do that!
- First, you would need to create a License Group for the licensed capacity that is only used when a helper is present – we call this a “Limited License” because it is not applied to every meal automatically and instead is only applied in limited circumstances. You can refer to our Help Center article for step-by-step instructions on how to do that.
- In Site Details, you should add your new Limited License to any providers that may have a Helper present (1).
- Once you do that, the provider or center will now see an option on the Meal Details screen to indicate that the Limited License should be applied to this meal (remember to click Save Limited License!) (2).
MEAL COUNTS BY MEAL TYPE SPREADSHEET
This new report is a spreadsheet of all the information currently contained in the Meal Counts by Meal Types Report. Since it is a spreadsheet, users can select a specific date range and sort and filter data as needed.You can find this report at the sponsor-level under the category “Attendance and Meal Count Reports”. Download a Sample Report >
MISSING MEAL COUNTS SPREADSHEET
This report is meant to assist sponsors in identifying sites that are missing a meal count. This report is at the sponsor level under the category “Attendance and Meal Count Reports”.You can select a date range and select the sites you would like to include. The report will include a row for each site and each meal if the meal count is missing. In other words, you will get a list of sites, dates and meals for which:
- The site is active and the day and meal is on their site schedule in Site Details – AND –
- There is not a closure for that day and meal – AND –
- There is no meal count entered
OPTION TO HIDE “NOTES TO SPONSOR”
My Food Program has a box on the attendance page that allows a provider or center to type a note to their sponsor. The sponsor can then opt-in to receive these notes as an email or they can always run a Daily Notes Export report to view the notes in a spreadsheet.
However, some sponsors do not wish to have this option and users now have the ability to hide this box if desired. You can find this new option in Site Details under Attendance & Meal Count Settings.
MEAL COUNTS SUMMARY BY COUNTY
This report is for sponsors that need to do reporting on a county basis; this is mostly typically the case for food banks. This report will aggregate meal count data by county for the selected month and year. You will find this new report at the sponsor-level under “Claims Reports”. When you run the report, you can select the month/year for the report and the meal type(s) that you would like to review.For each county and each meal type, the following information will be summarized for the month:
- Total attendance
- Days open
- Meals Received/Prepared
- Meals Carried Over
- Total Meals Available
- First Meals
- Second Meals
- Total Meals (first meals plus second meals)
- Meals served to program adults
- Meals served to non-program adults
- Non-reimbursable meals
- Leftovers
- Highest Day (the day with the largest meal count for that month for each site)
- Average daily participation (first meals divided by days open)
TURN OFF INCOME FORM ALERTS
We have added the option to grey-out the box with reminders about income forms for child care centers and adult day care programs. (This box is not visible for emergency shelters, afterschool programs, family child care homes or summer food sites).You will find a new check box in Site Details under the Claim Settings called “Hide Income Form Alerts” (1).
- If this box is NOT checked, image (2) will be the status icons.
- If the box IS checked, image (3) will be the status icons.
- Added an income form designation reason “Blank Income Fields” to accommodate sponsors in California.
- Added the US Territories to the state dropdown menu.
- Added the option on the Claiming Percentages method of calculating reimbursement to either round down or use conventional rounding. This allows the My Food Program claim estimates to match exactly the claim amounts calculated by state agencies with different rounding protocols.
- Changed the default participant program to Head Start if that is the only site program.
- Added an option for “Other/Not Claiming” to the reasons for a closure. This can be used for providers or centers who are not claiming the meal. For example, if a provider or center is serving a non-creditable meal or does not have any children in attendance for the meal service.
- Added a field in Site Details for sponsor users to denote the Delivery Driver. This would be used for sponsors who provide meals to their sites instead of funds or use a central kitchen model.
PROVIDERS CLAIMING OWN CHILDREN
- All sites, including inactive sites
- All active sites that can currently claim their own children
- All active sites with an expired ability to claim their own children
SPONSOR DASHBOARD ALERT ON OVERDUE AND UPCOMING REVIEW VISITS We have added a new status icon to the sponsor dashboard regarding review visits. The status icon will show the number of active sites in your sponsorship that:
- Have an overdue review visit OR
- Have a review visit due in the next 30 days
- Updated the Record Hours feature to exclude inactive staff.
- Updated the option to “Auto fill in facility closure time if missing “out” time” to apply only to dates in the past and not the current date.
- Changed the Household Report to sort by participant last name if there is no parent/guardian in the system.
- Fixed the status icon on income forms expiring in the following month.
- Added some clarifying text on the closures page to clarify that adding a school release day does not automatically allow school age children to be claimed for lunch. If this is the desired outcome, then the user should enter a school release or summer schedule in each participant’s profile.
- Adjusted the Facility License Report to sort by Site Legal Name and ensured that inactive sites are properly excluded.
- Added the parent email address to the pre-filled enrollment form for family child care homes.
- Added the option to exclude the menu from the report Meal Count and Menu Claim Documentation.
IMPROVED: CLAIM SUMMARY REPORT
- To include the expense summary on the report, click the box “Show Expenses Summary”.
- To include the milk audit summary on the report, click the box “Show Milk Audit Summary”.
IMPROVED: TRAINING TRACKING We have improved the feature that tracks training for site-level staff (center staff and providers). Some sponsors require their center staff and providers to be trained every calendar year, other use the fiscal year and others just require training in the prior 12 months on a rolling basis. Therefore, we’ve added a “Training Expiration Date” on the training page. This allows sponsors to designate when the training will expire and the center staff and providers will need to participate in refresher training. For example,
- If you require your center staff and providers to be trained every calendar year you would want to put 01/01/2024 in as the training expiration date.
- If you required your center staff and providers to be trained every fiscal year you would want to put 10/01/2023 in as the training expiration date.
- If you require your center staff and provider to be trained annually on a rolling basis, you would want to put the date one year from the current training as the expiration date.
SITE FOOD ORDER SPREADSHEET This new report is for those sponsors that use our “Meal Order” feature. You will find it at the sponsor level under the Food Service Operations category. You will need to enter the date range and then the columns in the spreadsheet are:
- Date
- Site Name
- Meal Type
- Age Range
- Meal Category
- Quantity
- Comments
- Added a “Participates in ARAM” checkbox to the Enrollment form for Texas centers.
- Added a place for the parent/guardian email address on the default income and enrollment form for child care centers.
- Removed the double-listing of errors for “Meal counts exceed attendance” on the Disallowed Meals Report for sites entering meal counts by headcount.
- Repaired the “status” filter on the main Participant page.
- Simplified the claims page and added a hyperlink to the Claim Summary Report.
ADD CUSTOM DATE FOR “NEXT VISIT DUE” ON SITE VISIT SCREEN
- Monitoring Visits
- Sites Due for a Review Visit
MEAL ORDER CATEGORIES
This new feature is for sponsors that provide food directly to their sponsored sites and use My Food Program to collect meal orders. Sponsors now have the ability to create “categories” for their meal orders. Most commonly we see sponsors wanting a separate count of hot meals versus cold meals. But we’ve also had requests for tracking vegetarian meals, halal meals or gluten-free meals as well.
- Sponsors create their own custom meal order categories in Sponsor Setup.
- The meal order category available for each site is set using the “Meal Order Categories” button off the menu calendar.
- Meal order categories can apply to specific meal types as well.
- When sites enter meal orders, they select an age range, meal order category and quantity. And this order is reflected in the Site Food Orders Report, available at the sponsor level under Food Service Operations.
RECORD MEALS RECEIVED/PREPARED ON THE SAME SCREEN AS FOOD TEMPERATURES
We have added the ability to record the number of meals received or prepared on the same screen as food temperatures are recorded (1).
If you are taking meal counts by headcount, this is the same field as what you see on your meal count screen. You do NOT need to enter the number of meals received/prepared in both places – an entry made on the meal count screen will automatically sync with the number entered on the food temperature screen and the other way around.
We’ve also added a checkbox that allows the Kitchen Staff user to certify that the meals received/prepared is accurate and apply their signature to the delivery receipt.
To reflect these additional features, we’ve renamed the dashboard button from Food Temps to Food Temps & Delivery (2).
These functions are also updated on our mobile app.
- Updated the “Show Prior Days” option on the site closures page to include both single-day and multiple-day closures.
- Updated the printed menu and portioned menu to refer to user-entered date ranges instead of a calendar month.
- Fixed the logic that was blocking attendance and meal count entry for all users if a site review visit had been added.
- Repaired a report problem that was causing columns to be offset on the Site Export Report.
- Ensured that participants added through the “Add Participant” button on the meal count screen or through the mobile app were added as “Active” if the sponsor doesn’t allow the status of “Pending”.
FILL IN FACILITY CLOSE TIME IF “OUT” TIME IS MISSING
This new feature is available for sites that are required to keep in/out times. My Food Program can now auto-fill the participant “out” time with the time that the family child care home or center closes for the day if no “out” time is entered.Sponsors can turn on this feature for their providers or centers in Site Details under “Attendance & Meal Count Settings”.The “out” times are filled in each time that the provider, center or sponsor clicks “Check for Errors” or “Submit to Sponsor”.
PROVIDER TIER STATUS
This report is available at the sponsor level under Monitoring and Training. You select a date and the providers that you would like to include in the report and it will provide you with:
- Provider Name
- Site ID
- Tier Status
- Tier I Reason
- Census or School District
- Effective Date
- Expiration Date
EXPIRING PROVIDER TIER I STATUS
This is a sponsor-level report that you can find under Monitoring and Training. Users select the date and then the report will supply a list of the providers with expiring or expiring tier I determinations. Download a Sample Report >
LINK TO EDIT HOUSEHOLD IF PARENT OR GUARDIAN IS MISSING
We have added a link to the Household Info screen from the participant list. Prior to this update, only participants with parents or guardians entered into My Food Program could jump to the Household Info screen directly. After this update, users can go directly to the Household Info screen even for participants without a parent or guardian entered into My Food Program.To help you distinguish which participants are missing parent or guardian information, we’ve put the [Edit Household] link in yellow text.
- Improved the email sent to a sponsor when a “Note to Sponsor” is entered to include both the date that the note was entered and the date to which the note applies.
- Added attendance information to the sponsor-level report Meal Count and Menu Claim Documentation.
- Made the site-level report Headcount Mealcount with Attendance Report available to all sites. You will find this report at the site level under Attendance & Meal Count Reports and it is a spreadsheet.
- Added the number of training hours to the Site Summary Report. You can find this report at the sponsor level under Monitoring & Training and under the site level under Recordkeeping Reports.
NEW FEATURE
MEAL COUNT MAKEOVER
The attendance and meal count screens received a makeover. All sites that take meal counts by name will see a change to their screen. Sites that take headcount meal count will not have a change to their screen. In addition, all users of the mobile app will need to update to the latest version by clicking the “Install” prompt from your current app or downloading the newest version from the Google Play Store or the App Store. .
Click here to view the recent changes and find training materials on using these new features.
Update 22.12.1
- Added a roster multi-select to the Headcount Mealcount with Attendance Report.
- Added a sponsor-level version of the Missing Infant Meal Notification Report. You will find this under “Income and Enrollment Forms” in the Sponsor Reports menu.
- Added a roster multi-select to the Monthly Zero Meal Count Report. You will find this report under “Attendance and Meal Count Reports” at the site level.
- Added the address and Tax ID to the Invoicing Summary Report. This report is available only to sites using the option to track invoices and payments from parents and is under the “Financial Reports” section at the site level.
Update 22.11.3
- Added a cross-check to make sure that headcount meal counts aren’t selected with side-by-side meal entry screen.
- Repaired the Zero Meal Count Report for headcount sites.
- Added the option to do headcount attendance for all site types.
Update 22.11.2
- Fixed a bug in the Participant Export File in which children without a schedule were being omitted.
- Added the option to run the Mailing Labels Report using Site Legal Name or Site Name. Sponsors of homes should typically run the report with the Site Legal Name.
- Added Total Attendance, Days Open, Average Daily Attendance, Participant Count and Provider Phone Number on the site-level version of the Claim Summary Report.
Update 22.11.1
- Moving all the required fields to the top of the page. Users creating a new site should just have to complete the top sections through the Site Hours and Meal Times in order to complete all required selections
- Grouping the checkboxes and dropdown choices into sections. These are now the sections:
- Required Site Information
- Site Hours and Meal Times
- Additional Site Information
- Attendance & Meal Count Settings
- Participants & Rosters Settings
- Menu Settings
- Claim Settings
- Site User Settings
- Infant Settings
- At-Risk Afterschool Meals (ARAM) Settings
- Food Temperature Settings
- License Capacity Settings
- Principals
- Facility License
- Record Log
- Removed checkboxes, dropdowns and sections that are irrelevant for a site type. For example. the At-Risk Afterschool Meals (ARAM) Settings are not visible for adult day care programs.
- Fixed the Mailing Label Report to ensure all selected sites were included.
- License Type options now display without requiring the user to save the site first.
- Added the Site ID, address and phone number to the Disallowed Meals Report.
- Ensured that infant menu by name is applied to all shifts if an infant is checked in for multiple shifts.
Update 22.10.1
- The box is checked in Site Details that turns this error on.
- A participant attends a meal that is marked as drinking fluid milk substitute AND the parent is not providing the fluid milk substitute.
- The center or provider does not put a fluid milk substitute on their menu.
- Repaired a bug in the bulk enrollment form feature related to the active date on participant status.
- Fixed the Disallowed Meals Report for sites using headcount meal counts and attempting to claim more than the daily claim limit.
- Added to option to include attendance count in the Meal Counts by Meal Type report.
Update 22.09.2
- Made the Annual Re-Enrollment Report viewable to sponsor staff.
- Ensured that Ready Records requests exclude any children that are inactive.
- Added a confirmation before infant menu is deleted.
- We added more information when a user gets the crash page to assist us in tracking down any software issues.
- Ensured our income eligibility form calculator was using the income eligibility guidelines that match with the effective date of the income form.
- Ensured that the claim summary report was correctly adjusting claim totals for any sponsor manual adjustments.
- Fixing bug on “edit meal counts” on the menu edit page for site type Summer Food.
- Formatting updates to the Iowa and Colorado enrollment for for site type Family Child Care Home.
- Adding the process date to the Iowa claim export file.
- Requiring that users select a roster before loading the weekly attendance and meal count screen.
Update 22.09.1
- Improved the speed of the page reload when adding food items to a menu.
- We do not allow users to designate a participant’s racial identity as “unknown” and also select another racial identity.
- Corrected the alphabetization of the list of infant formulas when adding an infant meal notification.
- Added a confirmation message after a Welcome Email is sent to a site-level user.
Update 22.08.2
- Repaired the bug on the sponsor dashboard regarding the number of special diet statements that have been added in the last 10 days.
- We have updated the site dashboard button to refer to the number of participants missing income forms instead of the number of households missing income forms.
- We enhanced the feature that set all participants with expired enrollment forms to “Pending” by adding the option to include or exclude participants in the At-Risk Afterschool Meals Program.
- Repaired a bug in the Participant Report for sponsors using the method “All Participants” to create eligibility rosters.
- Ensured that only active infants were appearing on the Infant Menu by Name screen.
- A reminder of the license type is displayed when adding or editing a facility license.
- Made sure to update participant status to “Active” if an enrollment form was added using the new bulk enrollment form management feature.
Update 22.08.1
Update 22.07.2
- Patched a bug that was randomizing the list of expense categories; they are now listed alphabetically.
- Updated the pre-filled income forms to reflect household income eligibility guidelines for FY2023.
- Added site notes and participant notes to the Site Summary Report.
- Repaired the date order for the Meal Counts by Meal Type Report.
- Repaired a bug in which the system was requiring a Milk Audit for Substitute Milk when one was not necessary.
- Added a link to edit the infant menu to the meal count and attendance pages. This is in addition to the link that was already there to edit the non-infant menu.
Update 22.07.1
- Fixed a bug related to time zone conversions for centers locked into the current time for entering arrival and departure times for children.
Update 22.06.2
- Center manager and/or directors should be able to enter expenses any time, including after they have submitted to sponsor and after a claim is already been created.
- Center manager and/or directors should be able to enter expenses up until a claim is created by the sponsor.
- Center manager and/or directors should be able to enter expenses up until they submit to sponsor for the month.
- Repaired a bug in calculating leftover meals when multiple users entered meal counts.
- Changed the name of the checkbox from “Hide Submit to Sponsor” to the more precise “Hide Submit to Sponsor for Current Calendar Month”.
- Added a “select all” button on the page that provider and centers use to indicate which meals will not be served on a single-day holiday, closure or field trip.
- Fixed the participant counter on the attendance page for sites configured for attendance and meal counts on separate screens.
- Fixed a display issue on the Licensing tab for sponsors doing licensed capacity checks by license type.
- We have removed the option for “All” on the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance Report for child care centers that operate both CACFP and ARAM to reduce confusion with co-mingled data.
- Added the Idaho claim upload file for site types other than family day care homes.
Update 22.06.1
- CN Labels or Product Formulation Statements for main entrees that credit for meat/meat alternate and grain components.
- Nutrition Facts Panels for ready-to-eat cereals and yogurts to verify compliance with the sugar limit.
- Ingredient Labels for grain items to demonstrate compliance with the whole grain rich requirement.
- Providers or centers can always change the milk on the menu and it should always reflect what they actually offered. Adding the milk items is just a convenience.
- Incomplete menus cannot be saved in My Food Program. The other food items need to be added to the menu.
- Providers or centers still need to add milk manually to snacks since milk is not a requirement at snack.
- Ensured that the delete button was displayed for Field Trips and Holidays.
- Updated the Daily Meal Count with Attendance Report to include only attendance that was used in the claim calculations instead of all recorded attendance.
- Repaired the viewing of a Special Diet document for participants with a single quotation mark in their name.
- Added a warning if the Actual Start Date on a provider is changed in a way that might effect a provider upload.
- Added a column for “Allergies” to the Participant Export file.
- Added the option to set the default age for developmental readiness for solid foods to 12 months.
Update 22.05.2
- Updated the Infant Food Serving Report to allow users to print it for specific meal types.
- Added the option for “Unknown” for both race and ethnicity.
- We updated the dashboard button about “Claims Status” to ignore months without meal counts.
- Updated the rounding protocols for the Claim for Reimbursement Worksheet.
- Updated attendance calculations for the Claim for Reimbursement Worksheet and Daily Meal Count with Attendance Report.
- Added the option to label the column as “weekly total” on the Meal Counts by Meal Type Report.
- Added a check to make sure that the “Copy closing balance from prior month” button can only be pushed once.
- Added the option to print a manual claims worksheet with the Site Summary Report.
- Changed the Mailing Labels Report to use the site name instead of site legal name.
- Updated the Disbursement Report for Sponsoring Organizations to display the admin percentage in place at the time the claim was created rather than the current admin percentage.
- Added the number of meals received and site and contractor signatures to the Delivery Receipt Report.
Update 22.05.1
- Added a checkbox in Site Details that prevents centers or providers from submitting their claim if their facility license is missing or expired.
- Renamed the error “missing infant menu” to the more precise “missing or incomplete infant menu”.
- Expanded the tier status calendar to go 10 years into the future.
- Changed the infant menu icon to appear only if a pre-planned infant menu is entered. Previously it was appearing if there was an individual infant record OR a pre-planned menu.
- Added address, phone number and site manager information to the Meal Counts by Meal Type report.
- Fixed bug that was preventing users from running the Weekly Meal Count with Attendance report with option to combine rosters.
- Added the sponsor name and sponsor identification number to the printed menu.
- Added a choice for “mileage” as an administrative expense.
- Added delivery time and site manager signature to the Daily Meal Count Tally report.
Update 22.04.1
- If this box is checked, then all meals will be disallowed if the provider or center forgot to record an “out” time.
- If this box is unchecked OR the site is still using the COVID meal times waivers, then the meals will not be disallowed if the provider or center forgets to record an “out” time.
- If this box is checked, then food production records are updated automatically with the new or removed food items.
- If this box is unchecked, then centers need to manually update food production records to account for menu changes.
- Skip the requirement for a milk audit of substitute milk unless there is an active participant that drinks substitute milk.
- Ensured the infant meal notification preferences are implemented on the correct date.
- Updated claim summary report to use mailing address.
Update 22.03.1
- Number of reimbursable meals (these amounts will match the claim amounts)
- Number of disallowed meals (adding these to the reimbursable meals will give you the total number of meals served)
- Number of meals served to provider’s own child (providers are NOT allowed to claim the food expenses for feeding their own children)
- We have updated the report description for Calendar Year Payments to add more explanation. The new description is, “This report summaries the payments that your site has received during the selected calendar year. NOTE: the CACFP and SFSP work on a reimbursement basis. This means that the payments made during a calendar year do not line up with the meals served that year. For example, meals served in December are paid in January.”
- Removed the Add Payment button to an invoice if it has been paid in full.
- Ensured the inactive participants are not on the Missing Infant Meal Notification report.
- Adjusted the code that ensures that centers that were required to finalize a milk audit before claim submission were receiving the correct error.
- When creating a saved menu, we made sure the “duplicate food found” error was being displayed instead of the system crash page.
- Made sure that pending and incomplete participants were added to the Ineligible Participant Report.
- If there is a food shortage (i.e. the food production record indicates that not enough food was served), we still allow infant meals to be claimed.
- Repaired the button that carries forward the milk balance for Fluid Milk Substitute milk audit.
- Repaired the claims summary report to list sites in alphabetical order.
- Added an error message if users were entering attendance data at the same time on the same roster and provided conflicting information.
- If no whole grain-rich food is served during the day we only apply the disallowance to meals served to children ages 1 and older.
Update 22.02.1
- “Update food production records to match current menu” – this button will update the food production records in the selected date range to ensure that food production record items match those on the menu. This button is used to resolve the claim error Food items on menu do not match food items on production record.
- The second button is displayed only if the sponsor disallows meals for food shortages (i.e. when food production records indicate that an insufficient amount of food was prepared). The “Correct Food Production Records with Food Shortages” button will update food production records to match actual meal attendance. This button is used to resolve the claim error Meal disallowed for food shortage.
- Improvement #1: Ability to verify that the menu recorded matches the menu observed. Once you enter the day and meal that you observed, the system will pull the recorded menu onto the screen and the reviewer can certify if the menu matches or does not match. If the menu does NOT match, then the meals will be disallowed. The new claim error that will be displayed says, Menu food items differ from those recorded by the field monitor at the time of the visit.
- Improvement #2: Ability to enter the number of children observed at a meal or snack. The reviewer can enter the total number of children observed at the meal or snack. If the provider or center enters a number that is LARGER than what was observed, we will disallow the difference and display the claim error, Number of children observed by monitor does not match the number of children checked in for the meal or snack.
- Improvement #3: A comment box. We have added a text box for you to record any comments about the visit.
- If the box is unchecked (default) then Infant Menu by Name can be entered any time as long as the claim has not been submitted.
- If the box is checked then Infant Menu by Name must be entered from the time a meal service begins until the time that the next one begins. For example, if breakfast starts at 8:00am and lunch starts at 11:30am, the infant menu by name for breakfast must be entered between 8:00am and 11:29am. If it is outside of that timeframe, you will still be able to see the menu, but not be able to make edits.
- We now list the participant’s age in years and months next to their birthdate.
- If an enrollment form is expired, we have the expiration date in red text.
- Changed the color of the “juice” and “meat/alt at breakfast instead of grain” menu icons to be yellow instead of red. This change is meant to convey a warning to the user. The icon for a missing whole grain-rich icon will remain red as that indicates that non-infant meals will be disallowed.
- For sites that use Shifts and Infant Menu by Name, infants are only listed once on the infant menu screen.
- If a site uses Infant Menu by Name, then we hide the Infant Food Serving Report as it is not relevant.
- Updated the sponsor-level report Sites Due for a Review Visit to accurately include visits already completed for the trimester.
- Added “hourly rate” and “notes” as fields on the Staff Active/Inactive Report.
- Added the option for sponsors to allow participant status to be inactive on a date when the participant was checked in for daily attendance and/or a meal or snack.
- We have added the option to automatically allocate meals to the At-Risk Afterschool Meals (ARAM) claim if the site, meal, and participant were eligible for the at-risk afterschool meals program.
- Added additional fields to the headcount meal count screen for child care centers to allow them to track meals received/prepared and automatic calculation of leftovers.
- Added an alert if a date is already marked as a school release day and the user tries to enter the same date as a duplicate.
- Added a confirmation pop-up box if the user selects to email all households a Ready Records request.
- Simplified the milk audit screen to just a total number meals and snacks removed from claim.
- Added separate selections for School Release days versus Summer holidays. In both cases, we will still look at the school release/summer schedule instead of the typical schedule.
- Added infant meal notifications to the combined pdf that includes all income and enrollment forms that were effective for a particular month.
- Made the button “Delete all Headcounts for this Roster and Meal” available to site manager/directors at sites doing meal counts by head count.
Update 22.01.1
- Be sure you have selected the desired month on the view/create claims page before you click the Check for Errors button.
- The system will not do a ‘check for errors on any sites that already have a claim or have finalized their counts for the month by clicking Submit to Sponsor.
- In order to submit a claim to the sponsor, you will still need to go to an individual site.
- If it is checked, then the user can see the icon below.
- If it is not checked, then the provider or center cannot view any information about participants or rosters.
- We are adding an option to hide details about claim adjustments in the event that those details are confusing to your providers or centers.
- We are also improving the formatting to emphasize that the summary table of claimed counts already incorporates any claim adjustments.
- Sponsors should leave this box checked if they use My Food Program to track annual CACFP training requirements.
- Sponsors should leave this box unchecked if they do NOT use My Food Program to track annual CACFP training requirements.
- No milk audit required.
- Milk audit required before the claim, but do not disallow meals if there is a milk shortage.
- Milk audit required before the claim and disallow meals if there is a milk shortage.
- Milk audit required before center can submit to sponsor, but do not disallow meals if there is a milk shortage.
- Milk audit required before center can submit to sponsor and disallow meals if there is a milk shortage.
- We’ve removed the banding on the rows.
- We’ve added the ability to filter the view to show only one type of milk at a time.
- We’ve scaled the font down so the words all fit on one line.
- Corrections to the W-10 Report, Invoicing Summary Report and Revenue Summary Report to account for invoices paid in partial installments.
- Corrected milk audit disallowance calculations when multiple milk types are included in the audit.
- When staff are made inactive, we now move their name to the bottom of the site staff list and grey out their names.
- Milk audits will now automatically update based on new meal attendance since the last time it was viewed. Users do not have to delete and re-do the milk audits to get current usage.
- On the Claim Summary Report, we now show the original claim plus the adjustment for a “grand total” instead of calling out the amounts separately.
- Wrapped the report “Meal Counts by Meal Type” to two rows to accommodate 4-digit numbers.
- Added the count of active participants to the Site Summary Report.
- Removed many of the restrictions on editing participant status.
- Updated automated leftover calculations for sites using the headcount method.
- Added an “ending balance” to the summary table on milk audit page and only displayed units in those selected by the sponsor.
- Ensured that signatures and submission dates are correctly populated on the daily, weekly and monthly meal count with attendance report.
- Corrected the count of participants enrolled in the at-risk afterschool meals program for sponsors that use the method “all participants” to determine their free/reduced/paid percentage for the month.
- The “finalize milk audit” button is hidden from site-level users until a claim month is over to ensure that the data for the full month is included in the milk audit.
- Ensured “Other Users Counts” were displayed if users navigated to the meal count page from the menu calendar.
- Corrected the Participant Report for ARAM claims in child care centers that also participate in at-risk afterschool meals.
Update 21.12.1
SYSTEM MESSAGES We have added the ability for our team at My Food Program to send messages to sponsors directly in My Food Program. We will use this function to let you know about system maintenance and other important alerts. Below is what a message from us will look like (1). After you acknowledge the message, you can always view past messages by clicking on “View messages sent by My Food Program” on your main sponsor page (2).
NEW REPORT: SITES DUES FOR A REVIEW VISIT We have added a new report to assist sponsors in planning monitoring review visits. The “Sites Due for a Review Visit” will ask you for a date range and then provide you with a list of sites that are up for one of their three yearly visits. The columns include: Monitor, Site ID, Site Name, their most recent visits and the date when the next visit is due. Download a Sample Report >.
UPDATES TO MISSING FORMS DASHBOARD ICONS We have re-named and expanded the dashboard buttons for “Participants Missing Income Forms” and “Enrollment Forms Missing, Expired or Expiring Soon”. They are now labeled more simply “Income Forms” and “Enrollment Forms” and listed under each are the breakdowns of Missing, Expired, Expiring This Month and Expiring Next Month. If you click on the icons, you will be directed to the Missing Forms Report where you can get more specific details.
UPDATE TO FIELDS TRIPS, CLOSURES AND SCHOOL RELEASE DATE TRACKER We have re-named the dashboard button from “Field Trips/Closures” to the more accurate “Field Trips, Closures or School Release Dates” (1). In addition, when you view field trips, closures and school release dates, we have divided them into the appropriate categories to reduce confusion (2).
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Added a check during claims creation to make sure a participant was active on every day that they were checked in for a meal or snack.
- Corrected calculations for participant count in child care centers that also participate in the at-risk afterschool meals program.
- Fixed a bug so that sponsors can add enrollment forms to a participant account as long as a claim is not created.
- Increased the speed of loading the Favorite Foods list.
- Added a cross-check on the multi-day meal pack feature to ensure that additional meal counts are not entered after a month has been submitted to sponsor.
- Added a site flag to allow sponsors to hide the full “Claim Summary Report” that includes the amount set aside for sponsor admin funds and only display the “Sponsored Claim Summary Report” that includes only the funds being distributed to the center.
- Added the “Normal Work Hours” to the Time Distribution Report.
- Corrected a bug so that all enrollment forms for a month are included in the Household Report.
Update 21.11.1
IMPROVED PARTICIPANT STATUS CHANGES AND HISTORY We are updating the way that we handle participant status. First, a reminder that in My Food Program we look at enrollment form dates and not participant status in determining if a participant is enrolled. Also keep in mind that only sponsors can add enrollment form effective and expiration dates. So even though a provider or center can make a participant active, we still will look at enrollment form dates and not participant status in determining enrollment. We have made the following changes to participant status:
- Instead of a drop-down with participant status, we now have an indicator right by the participant name that will alert users to their current status.
- Instead of changing a participant status using the drop-down menu, you will instead click a button to change their status.
INCLUDE LINKS WITH MESSAGE TO SITES USING THE MESSAGE CENTER We have added the ability to include hyperlinks when you send a message to one of your sites using the Message Center in My Food Program.
- To add a link to a message, just enter the URL in the field for Hyperlink on the message page.
- Users can click the link when they first view the message.
- Or view the link any time afterwards when they view all messages from sponsor.
PROVIDERS OR CENTERS LINKED TO QUICKBOOKS For those sponsors using our free QuickBooks integration to send claim payments directly to QuickBooks for payment, we have added a helpful column on the Claim Payments screen that confirms which providers or centers are currently linked to a QuickBooks vendor.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Added the infant formula offered by the provider or center to all infant feeding preference forms.
- Users can now delete parent/guardians as long as they are not associated with an invoice or Ready Records-generated income form.
- Added Attendance to the 5-Day Reconciliation Report.
- Condensed the Site Summary Report by improving page breaks.
- Added the Claims Status report to the sponsor report section so that it is available to Sponsor Reporter users.
- Added a “select all” button to each meal type for the monthly entry by name screen.
- Added consistency to the food item order on the Meal Count and Menu Claim Documentation report.
- Added columns to the site export report for family child care homes to track the dates that providers are allowed to claim their own children as verified by an income eligibility form.
- Improved the page reload functionality when adding an additional set of in and out times.
- Added an error message at the top of the attendance screen for providers and centers using in/out times to indicate if saving the attendance entry was unsuccessful.
- We’ve added a new method for determining whether a participant is included in the Free/Reduced/Paid count for the month. This method s called “All Participants” and it includes all children that are in the system except those that are inactive.
Update 21.10.2
IMPROVED: INCOME ELIGIBILITY CALCULATOR We have added a helpful feature to our income eligibility calculator that will annualize the different household income amounts and frequencies. This can make it much easier for you to cross-check the calculated income with our suggestion for the income eligibility category into which the household should be placed.
IMPROVED REPORT: ZERO MEAL COUNT REPORT We have switched the Zero Meal Count Report from a list of dates/meals and rosters to an easier-to-read and understand chart. Each roster, day and meal is indicated with a box that is either gray (for closure or holiday), yellow (for a zero meal count) or white (indicates at least one meal count was entered for that roster, day and meal). Download a Sample Report >
PARTICIPANT CHECKED IN ON ANOTHER ROSTER IN WEEKLY ENTRY BY CLASSROOM We have added a proactive designator for children that are assigned to multiple rosters. If they have been checked in for a meal on another roster for the same date and meal, the boxes for meals will be greyed out. The hover text will inform you which roster that participant was checked in on.
MILK AUDIT FOR FLUID MILK SUBSTITUTES We have enhanced our milk audit function to include assessments of fluid milk substitutes. In order to have the option for milk audits for fluid milk substitutes, it must be selected as an option in the milk audit section of Sponsor Setup. A few notes about milk substitute audits:
- The audit is done by participant and includes those marked as “Served milk substitute” under their special diet page.
- A milk substitute must be added to the menu.
- We have added the additional reason of “Parent-Provided” to give the centers credit for additional milk on-hand that was provided by parents.
- Any disallows for substitute milk shortages will be tied directly to the participants who are served milk substitute.
AUTOMATIC CARRYOVER OF LEFTOVERS Sites doing headcount meal counts now have the option to carryover leftovers from the prior day automatically. For example, if there were 5 meals leftover on a Wednesday, you would see those 5 meals appear as “Meals Available from Previous Days” on the following day (Thursday).
NEW REPORT: MEALS ORDERED VERSUS MEALS RECEIVED For sponsors who want to ensure that the correct number of meals are being supplied to sites, we have a new report that compares the number of meals ordered to the number of meals received/prepared. Any times when the vended meal provider has supplied fewer meals than ordered, the row is filled in red. Download a Sample Report >
FOODS SERVED WITH A CN LABEL OR PRODUCT FORMULATION STATEMENT This new report provides information on foods served during a date range that require a CN Label or Product Formulation Statement in order to be creditable. The report provides the date and meal at which the food item was served, the exact food item name and whether it is CN-labeled or an item with a product formulation statement. If the item is a CN label we have also included the expiration date of the CN label according to the USDA CN Label Verification Report. Download a Sample Report >
NEW REPORT: FOODS APPROVED BY SPONSOR THAT NEED A CN LABEL OR PRODUCT FORMULATION STATEMENT This new report is used by sponsors that have chosen to restrict their providers or centers to only “favorite foods” and disabled the food item search function. This report is a spreadsheet and lists the site name, food item approved, whether the food item documentation is a CN label or product formulation statement and the CN label expiration date from the USDA CN Label Verification Report. Download a Sample Report >
ENTER MEAL ORDERS FOR MULTIPLE DAYS For sponsors that provide meals and snacks directly to their sites we have added the ability to enter meal orders for a date range instead of requiring users to do daily meal orders. Sponsors need to turn on this feature in Site Details by clicking the checkbox “Enable Bulk Meal Orders”. Once that box is checked a new button appears at the top of the Menu Calendar called Meal Orders. Users enter a date range and the meal order quantity for each meal type and age range. If there are existing meal orders in the system, it will prompt the user to overwrite or retain the existing meal orders. Download our Training Guide page to learn more.
ABILITY TO SET A SPONSOR ADMIN PERCENTAGE OTHER THAN 15% For sponsors that retain less than 15% of meal reimbursement to support administrative functions, we have added an option in site details to select a percentage less than 15. The default for all sponsored sites is set to 15% so no change is needed for those sponsors that retain 15%.
ADD THE 5-DAY RECONCILIATION REPORT TO A SITE VISIT Sponsors can now add the 5-Day Reconciliation Report as an attachment to a Site Visit with just one click! There is now a new button on the Visits page to Attach 5-day Rec. My Food Program will run the 5-Day Reconciliation Report for the visit date.
PAGE IMPROVEMENT: PARTICIPANT LIST We have added the most recent participant enrollment form start and expiration dates to the participant list. Any participants missing an enrollment form will just have a blank space.
AUTOMATICALLY DISALLOW MEALS SERVED TO THE SAME CHILD IN MULTIPLE SITES We have built on the report that identified when the same meal was served on the same day to two participants with exactly the same first name, last name and date of birth. We are adding the option for sponsors to automatically disallow meals in this case. Note that meals will be disallowed at BOTH locations at which the child was claimed. If the sponsor would like to allow one site to claim the child, the sponsor needs to over-ride the claim error.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- For newly-created sites, we are calling the default roster simply Default Roster instead of “Unassigned”.
- Fixed a loophole where site-level users could change meal times using the time picker.
- Added the ability for any site type to record food temperatures. Sponsors need to check the box for “Enable Food Temperatures” in site details and the food temperature recording functionality will be turned on.
- Corrected the logic behind the option to restrict site-level users from adding participants to allow sponsor users to add participants.
- Corrected milk audit calculations for shortages in whole milk from being applied to all types of milk.
- Repaired the logic and added prefilled fields on the Delivery Receipt Report.
- Participants marked as drinking milk substitute are excluded from the claim error for “no milk for participant age range”.
- Improved speed of save on Multi-Day Meal Pack feature.
- Added a visit type “At-Risk Afterschool Meals Program”.
- Updated calculation of total attendance to match the rules used to determine if a participant should be on the participant report.
- Added an option to the Participants Enrolled in Multiple Sites to include only participants that match on name, date of birth and parent/guardian name.
- The current site is checked by default on the menu copy feature.
- Added the claiming method “Claiming Percentage” to the existing options of “Actual Meal Count by Type” and “Blended Per Meal”.
- Fixed a bug so that attendance data shows up on the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance page for after school programs before meals have been checked for errors.
- Fixed a broken link on sponsor-level special diet dashboard alert.
- We added the option to require sites to fill in the “Meal Received/Prepared”.
- We have added an option for sponsors to require centers or providers to select a roster when adding a new participant.
- We have expanded the options of the data users can include on the Missing Forms Report.
- Fixed a problem in which participants were listed multiple times on the Participant List.
- Added an option for “meal totals only” to the sponsor-level claims summary spreadsheet.
- Fixed a problem with column offsets in the sponsor-level claim summary spreadsheet for family day care homes.
- Ensured that only active sites are included in the Missing Forms Detail Report at the sponsor level.
- Added batch selection to state agency export file for sponsors of centers in Texas.
- Added Site Identification Number to the Daily Meal Count with Attendance Report.
- Updated the “Days Missing Meal Counts” button to ignore meals that are no longer on a site’s schedule even if they had entered a menu for that meal prior to it being removed from the schedule.
Update 21.10.1
MESSAGE CENTER We have added a new Message Center feature to allow you to send messages directly to your sites. These can be reminders, requests or updates. There will be a new “Message Center” button on your main dashboard and you will be able to create and view your messages there. Your sites will receive a pop-up when they first login with the message and be able to access all previous messages as well. Download our Training Guide pages to learn more
MULTIPLE HOUSEHOLD INCOME CALCULATOR We have improved our Income Category Calculator used by sponsors to enter household size and incomes. In the instance where a household has multiple earners, you can add the additional earning and click “Add to Total” and My Food Program will do the math for you. Note that we only store the final results (i.e. total household size and total income by frequency) and sponsors are responsible for the final determination of the household income category designation.
PARTICIPANTS ENROLLED IN MULTIPLE SITES We have added a new report to our options for identifying participants that are enrolled in multiple sites. The original report listed participants by last name. This new report breaks up the data into individual sites with page breaks in-between. We hope this makes it easier to identify potential double-claiming. Download a Sample Report >
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Sponsors are allowed to choose whether to display “Use Typical Times” on the time in/time out attendance method.
- Fixed a bug that was requiring users to enter an end date on a staff hourly wage rate.
- Added new disallow reason for “Duplicate Child Claimed with Another Site”.
- Users can now run the Facility License Report for all active sites or select only those with missing licenses, expired licenses or licenses that will expire in the next 30 days.
- Added a report that combines all income and enrollment forms that were uploaded into the system into one PDF for the selected month.
- Updated the way rows were totaled in the sponsor-level claims summary spreadsheet to ensure consistent rounding.
Update 21.09.1
RECORD LOG NOTES Sponsors can now add record log notes individually in Site Details. These notes are NOT viewable by the provider or center but can help coordinate communication among sponsor staff. You’ll see these notes at the very bottom of the Site Details page.
ENHANCED MENU COPY We have updated our menu copy feature to allow the copy of a partial week (previously the entire week had to be empty in order for a successful copy). The days you are copying TO still need to be empty, but not the entire week. We have also added the ability to copy one day of menus to another day of menus. You’ll see that added as the “Copy Single Day” feature at the bottom of the menu calendar:
DISPLAY A CALENDAR ICON TO ASSIST WITH TRACKING SCHOOL AND NON-SCHOOL DAYS We have added the option for sites to have a reminder displayed on their menu calendar about when they have indicated that school is in session versus when school is not in session (for example, for summer vacation or other school release dates). If this feature is enabled a school bus icon will display on each day the center is open UNLESS the center or provider indicates that it is a summer or school release date in Field Trips/Closures. If the center has indicated that school is not in session that day, the school bus icon will have a slash through it. On days when school is in session, we will look at the typical participant schedule. If it is a school release or summer day, then we look at the alternate schedule.
TIME DISTRIBUTION REPORT This report provides even more details than our Staff Hours Detail Report. This is used by sponsors that need their centers to divide up their CACFP tasks into even more detail. Download a Sample Report >
NEW MENU ICON FOR FOOD ITEMS THAT REQUIRE A CN LABEL OR PRODUCT FORMULATION STATEMENT We have added a menu icon that will appear on the menu calendar when a food is added that requires additional documentation in the form of a CN Label or Product Formulation Statement. This will help centers and providers identify foods that need labels on-file and make it easier for sponsors to confirm that they have the proper documentation from their providers or centers.
STAFF HOURS FOR MULTIPLE DAYS Our new feature allows users to record multiple days of staff hours at once. This is especially helpful for staff with a consistent schedule and time spent on CACFP tasks. To find this feature, click on Record Hours and then select “Record Hours for Multiple Days”. Enter the first date and last date and the details on the daily tasks and the software creates all the daily entries. Individual daily entries can be edited after creation of multiple days.
AUTO-EXPIRE ENROLLMENT AND INCOME FORMS IF PARTICIPANT IF WITHDRAWN We have added two new options on Sponsor Setup:
- When a participant is withdrawn, set the enrollment form expiration date to the date of the withdrawal.
- When the last household’s participant is withdrawn, set the household income form expiration date to the date of the withdrawal.
ATTENDANCE AND MEAL COUNT ENTRY WHEN PROVIDING MULTIPLE MEALS AT A TIME (USDA WAIVER CHILD NUTRITION RESPONSES # 87, 88 89) If your sponsorship is taking advantage of the flexibilities offered by the USDA waivers for non-congregate meal service and meal times and the provision for parents to pick up meals for children, we have the feature for you! We have added the option to record attendance and meal counts when meals are distributed as a multi-day pack. You will find this new entry method in Site Details. Simply select the date of distribution, meals and snacks included in the packs, the number of days included in the pack and we do the rest!
ARAM-ELIGIBLE MEALS ALLOCATION We have always had the ability for sponsors to designate a meal as eligible for the at-risk afterschool meals program when entering meal counts. However, we have found that sometimes a child should have been marked as eligible for the entire month and was not. This new feature will allow sponsors to ensure that all meals eligible for the At-Risk Afterschool Meals program get included on the proper claim. To designate meals and snacks as eligible for the At-Risk Afterschool Meals program at the end of the month, go to “Review Claim Errors and Disallow Meals” and click the green ARAM Allocation button. A new screen will appear that will confirm the meals eligible for the At-Risk Afterschool Meals program and the number of participants that are eligible. When you click “Allocate”, all eligible meals served to participants enrolled in the At-Risk Afterschool Meals program will be allocated to the At-Risk Afterschool Meals claim.
SPONSOR CLAIMS PAGE ALERTS ABOUT MILK AUDITS We have added a new column on the Sponsor Claims page that alerts users about whether a milk audit has been completed for a center for the month. This column is visible only for sponsors that require a milk audit before claims creation (1). Sites that have completed a milk audit have a green check. Sites that are required to create a milk audit but have not done one yet have a red exclamation point. In addition, if you try to run claims for the month and a site is missing a milk audit, we have added a message at the top of the screen alerting you that the claim for that site was not created (2).
IMPROVED: INFANT MENU BY NAME We have improved our infant menu by name function (also called individual infant feeding records or infant meal production records) to link the infant formula or breast milk for each infant. We have transitioned the formula type field on the participant to be a dropdown of choices from our food database instead of a text box (1). This allows us to link the participant formula type to the menu and auto-fill the infant menu by name (2). Note that a child needs to have an “Infant Meal Notification” on-file for this feature to work. If you select that the child drinks the formula provided by the center or provider, then we populate the infant menu by name with the center/provider formula. If you select that the child drinks the formula provided by the parent, then we populate the infant menu by name with the parent formula. Users still need to go into the infant menu by name and confirm the formula, food items and amounts that the system suggests based on the meal pattern requirements.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Ensured that inactive rosters are hidden from view on Participants & Rosters screen.
- Ensured that inactive rosters were hidden from the selection box on the mobile app.
- Added Sponsor Name and ID to all existing reports.
- Food items are now listed in order by food group on the monthly print-ready menu. The order is milk, meat/meat alt, vegetable, fruit, grain.
- We added a claims cross-check to ensure that the food items listed on the menu match the food items on the food production record and disallow if there is a mis-match.
- We repaired a bug that was causing the print-ready menu to fail if too much text was entered into the “Description for Print View” box.
- Added the claim export file for child care centers in Texas that interfaces with TX-UNPS.
- Changed the wheat stalk icon in the lower-right corner to be RED if there is no whole-grain rich food on the menu and GREEN if there is a whole grain-rich food on the menu.
- Re-named the field called External Site ID to “Participant ID” and the field “External Group ID” to be simply “Group ID”.
- Added a new sponsor setting that restricts centers from adding hourly wage rates. This allows the sponsor to verify the hourly rate based on payroll verification and ensure those rates are not edited by centers.
Update 21.08.1
SET DEFAULT DATE FOR INFANT DEVELOPMENTAL READINESS FOR SOLID FOODS Sponsors can now select the default date for infant developmental readiness for solid foods. The system defaults to setting developmental readiness at 6 months, but sponsors can also select to set it at 7, 8, 9, 10 or 11 months. You can find this setting in Sponsor Setup (1). When the default age is set, these boxes for infant developmental readiness for solid foods are filled in for newly-enrolled children (2). Sponsors can always change these dates. Providers or centers can also change the dates if allowed to do so by their sponsor.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Users are asked to select the month and year they want to check for errors or submit to their sponsor before the page loads. We are hoping this reduces the occurrence of providers or centers accidentally submitting the current month instead of the prior month.
- Added current calendar year to Payments by Calendar Year report.
- Improved logic for claim adjustments in claims reports.
- Sponsors can now restrict centers from entering expenses (this is used if the sponsor enters all expenses to document a nonprofit meal service or if another method is used for tracking expenses).
- Sponsors can now hide the “Description for Print View” box. This means that the printed menus will always be a list of food items on the menu and cannot be over-ridden by the user. Providers or Centers can still add Menu Notes to supplement the food item list if needed.
Update 21.07.1
RUN ANOTHER CLAIMS CHECK AFTER SPONSOR CHANGES We have added a new button on the Review Errors and Disallow Meals Screen called “Resubmit with Sponsor Changes”. This new button will allow sponsors to correct any recordkeeping mistakes related to attendance, meal counts, menus or add additional enrollment or income forms and re-submit the claim WITHOUT changing the date/time that the site originally submitted their information to the sponsor. (Note that if a new date/time stamp on submission is needed, the “Withdraw Meal Submission” button can be used for that purpose).
This button will appear after a provider or center has submitted their claim to the sponsor but a claim has not been created yet.DOUBLE FEATURE: SET DEFAULTS FOR NEW SITES AND MANAGE CONFIGURATIONS FOR ALL EXISTING SITES ON ONE PAGE Under Sponsor Setup, you will find a new button called Manage Site Configurations. On this page, you can set default settings for newly-created site and also manage configurations for all existing sites.
SETTING DEFAULTS
On the left column is a list of settings for which sponsors can set a default value. You can see those settings below.CHANGING SETTINGS FOR EXISTING SITES
On the right columns, users can select from existing sites and apply the same settings listed above. This could be used to either ensure that all sites have the same configuration or to change one of the settings for all sites without needing to go into each site individually.FILTER READY RECORDS REQUESTS We have added a new filter view on the page that lists Ready Records forms (income, enrollment and infant forms) awaiting sponsor approval. The filter view applies to both the centers to which you are emailing requests for paperwork and the list below of centers with pending forms.
IMPROVED INTERFACE: VISITS We have changed the information displayed on the Visit screen. You will now see the following:
CENTER DIRECTORS CAN SEE STATUS OF READY RECORDS REQUESTS TWe have added information for center directors so that they know when a parent/guardian has started a Ready Records request and when they have completed the request. You will find this new information displayed on the Household page:
IMPROVED CONTROL OVER SITE PERMISSIONS We have added checkboxes for sponsors to indicate whether Providers or Centers can perform the following functions:
- Add or Edit Infant Meal Notification Forms
- Enter Dates when Infants are Developmentally Ready for Fruit/Veg and Meat/Alt
- Add or Edit Special Diet Forms
IMPROVED REPORT: SPONSOR-LEVEL CLAIMS SUMMARY REPORT We have improved the visual display of the Claim Summary Report spreadsheet that is available from the sponsor-level Claims Report page. Instead of separating each meal type and free/reduced/paid type or tier type into their own columns we have stacked them in rows.Download a Sample Report >
IMPROVED INTERFACE: FAVORITE FOODS We have separated the list of favorite foods from infants from favorite foods for non-infants. For current sites, favorite foods have not changed – this is just a display change and not a functionality change.
IMPROVED INTERFACE: SPONSOR REPORTS Our reports for sponsors has grown so much that we needed to divide them into categories. When you go to the Sponsor Reports tab, you will now be prompted to select a report category:
ABILITY TO COPY FAVORITE FOODS FROM ONE SITE TO ANOTHER We have added the option to copy favorite foods from one site to another. This may be especially helpful to sponsors that want a custom favorite foods list. After adding a new provider or center, just copy over favorite foods from another site! You will find this feature in Menu and then Favorite Foods.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Corrected the problem in which the Create Saved Menu was missing from the Meal Details screen if the Description for Print View box was filled in.
- The box for Primary Guardian is now checked by default when adding a new parent or guardian.
- Site Names that are listed on the sponsor-level claims page are now hyperlinks.
- Invoices to parents/guardians that have not been matched with a full payment can now be edited instead of needing to be deleted.
- Added a cross-check to ensure facility license dates do not overlap.
- When adding a new provider or center, the physical address will be copied to the mailing address automatically upon save.
- The rates charged by providers is now hidden from sponsor staff.
- Added clarification on the Claim Summary Report about whether the adjustment was a positive or negative change.
- Sponsors can now prevent providers and centers from adding participants.
- The correct meal type is now displayed on the Visit Summary screen.
- Improved the error messages related to modification of site hours and meal times.
- Added participant age to the Five Day Reconciliation Report.
- Moved the Save button on the Nonprofit Food Service Account Status page from the bottom to the top.
- A column for User Status has been added to the Staff Training Report.
- Added a button for Monday-Friday on Participant Schedule page.
- Corrected the Monthly Portioned Menu for Summer Food site type.
- Set the Household Report to look for the enrollment form with the latest expiration date if a participant has overlapping forms.
- Added grey shading to inactive sites and inactive participants.Added a sponsor disallow reason “Over Licensed Capacity”.
- Sponsors now receive an email when a site enters text into the “Allergies” box on the participant page.
- Added date ranges for hourly wages to assist with more accurate expense tracking.
Update 21.06.1
ADD A SUMMER SCHEDULE We now have the ability to create an alternate schedule for participants, which can be applied during summer holidays and school closures. This means that the provider or center can simply record the days of a school closure or summer holiday and My Food Program will look at the alternate schedule for that participant. To set an alternate schedule, go into the participant page and click the button that says “Create Alternate Schedule”. You have the option to copy the standard schedule so that you have a starting point or you can build the schedule from scratch. Here is what the schedules look like:
MISSING FORMS DETAIL REPORTE This is a new sponsor-level report that provides more details information about missing, expired, or expiring income or enrollment forms. When running this report, you will have the following options to select:
- Month/Year
- Whether to include all forms that are missing OR Include all forms that are expired OR Include all forms that are expiring OR Include all forms across all households
- Whether to run the report for Enrollment Forms OR Income Forms
- Whether to sort the contents by site or by monitor
FACILITY LICENSE REPORT This new sponsor-level report provides information about facility licenses. It lists the name and ID for each active site in your sponsorship and the license number, effective and expiration dates. Any licenses that are missing or expired are highlighted in red. Download a Sample Report >
IMPROVED FUNCTIONALITY: FOOD PRODUCTION SCREEN We have split out the columns on the Food Production Screen into three:
- Numbers for Production Record: these are the numbers that are manually entered by the center to be used in food production calculations
- Estimate from Schedule: these numbers will be filled in for dates in the FUTURE and will include our estimates for how many participants we expect in each age category based on participant schedule
- Actual Meal Counts: this column will be filled in for dates that are TODAY or in the PAST and will include the actual counts of each participant in each age category.
IMPROVED FUNCTIONALITY ON MENUS We have add two new improvements to managing provider and center schedules.
- The ability to navigate between days and meal types without returning to the main menu calendar.
- We are showing the shorter/friendlier “Display Name” for the menus instead of the more technical terms.
- We have added the ability to delete menus for multiple days.
- We moved “Print Menus” from the bottom of the page to its own page.
IMPROVED FUNCTIONALITY ON SITE SCHEDULES We have added the ability to fully customize site schedules, including different open and close times for different days of the week as well as different meal times on different days! If the provider or center has the same hours and meals on each day of the week, it is easy to duplicate the days and meals as before.
ADJUST PAYMENT AMOUNTS TO MATCH FUNDS RECEIVED FROM STATES Sponsors in states using the Blended Per Meal method for calculating reimbursement sometimes see a small discrepancy between the claim estimates calculated by My Food Program and the claim amounts received from the state agency due to rounding protocols. We now have the ability for sponsors to enter the total amount of funds received from the state and My Food Program will automatically re-calculate the individual site claim amounts.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- The participant flag “Related/Non-Residential” is now only displayed for family child care homes and hidden for other site types.
- The “Description for Print View” is now deleted when a menu is deleted.
- Sponsors can prevent their providers or centers from creating new rosters or editing existing rosters.
- Condensed the Site Summary Report and added the option to include or exclude the additional pages relating to site visits, training and facility closures.
- Site-level users that are assigned to multiple sites can now copy menus from one site to another.
Update 21.05.1
DISALLOWING MEAL COUNTS IN BULK We are excited to announce our new feature that allows you to disallow meal counts in bulk from the Review Claim Errors and Disallow Meals screen. You can choose to disallow “By Participant” or “By Meal”.
Download our Training Guide pages to learn more.
DISALLOW MEALS WITHIN A SPONSOR ON CERTAIN DAYS This new feature will allow a sponsor to input days that no sites should be able to claim meals. The error message that displays will read “Meals claimed on days that a sponsor is closed”.
WEEKLY MEAL COUNT WITH ATTENDANCE BY FPR This report pulls together attendance and meal counts for each week and summarizes them by income eligibility category (Free, Reduced or Paid). This report can be run with rosters separate or combined. Download a Sample Report >
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Added a cross-check to ensure that a role is assigned to each active site-level user.
- Added the assigned monitor for each site to the export of claim information.
- Provided more clear instructions on how to set or reset passwords by adding a box to reveal the password and password confirmation fields.
- Added a message on the Menu Details screen to alert users that individual infant menus do not appear on that screen – only planned facility infant menus.
- Added a column for assigned monitor to the Training Report at the sponsor level.
- The Bulk Enrollment Form report now includes participants with forms that expire in the next 60 days (it was 30 days) in addition to those with expired or missing forms.
- Made the sponsor signature and date field larger on the default income/enrollment form.
- Added an alert for sites recording infant menu by name to let them know if no infants have been checked in for a meal yet.
- On the Site Summary Report for family child care homes, we added a list of provider’s own children that are eligible to be claimed along with the effective and expiration dates of the provider’s income form.
Update 21.04.1
HIDE PORTION SIZE REMINDERS ON THE MENU PAGE Some sponsors have requested that portion size reminders be hidden for their sites. We know have a sponsor setting that does just that. If you click the button “Hide portion size reminders on menu page” your sites will see a simplified screen when entering menus (1). For those of you that want to continue providing portion size reminders, we improved the formatting and the new display will look like this (2).
AUTOMATED EMAILS TO MONITORS WHEN SITE CLOSURE/HOLIDAY/FIELD TRIP IS ENTERED Site Monitors will now receive an email alert when a site records a closure, field trip or holiday. Note that in order for this feature to work properly:
- Monitors (Sponsor Reporter users) need to be assigned to sites.
- The Monitor (Sponsor Report user) needs an email address entered into their profile.
SELECT ALL BUTTON FOR ATTENDANCE AND MEAL COUNTS Sponsors can now allow sites to “select all” for attendance and meal counts entered on the web app. Please contact My Food Program if you would like this feature turned on for your sites.
DISALLOW MEALS IF FACILITY LICENSE IS MISSING OR EXPIRED We have added a new option in Site Details that allows sponsors to disallow meals if the facility license is missing or expired. You will find the setting in Site Details along with other site policies. All current sites have been set to “Ignore” so if you do not use this feature, nothing will change. Should you change the setting to “error” and the facility license is missing or expired, you will see the below claim error.
IMPROVED REPORT FOR MONITORING VISITS We have made some great improvements to our Monitoring Visits Report.
- We have automatically assigned visits to each of the standard trimesters (Tri 1: Oct-Jan, Tri 2: Feb-May, Tri: 3 June-Sept) and listed those on the report.
- We have changed multiple visits made to the same site as additional rows instead of additional columns.
- Monitoring Visits are grouped as “Regular Monitoring” or not, for example a CAP Review Visit or pre-operational visit.
DISALLOW MEALS IF FOOD PRODUCTION RECORDS SHOW FOOD SHORTAGE Sponsors now have the ability to ensure that the Food Production Records indicate that sufficient food was prepared at each meal and snack. In sponsor setup under “Food Shortage Policy” you will see three options. With the first option, everything stays the same as it has been. The system will not check for food shortages and will not disallow meals for missing food production records or food production records that show that not enough food was prepared. If you choose the second option, the sites will be alerted of meals that have food shortages and the system will allow them to go back and revise those food production records to show the accurate amount of food prepared. The final option will alert the site that meals are going to be disallowed for a food shortage but restricts them from editing the menu or food production record. In this case, it is just providing information to the site to let them know about a meal disallowance. Note that this check will not happen if you are skipping all meal validation and does not apply to family child care homes.
ALLOCATE ALL USER HOURS TO CACFP For those staff that have only CACFP-related duties (for example, food service staff), there is now a button on the Record Hours screen that will allocate all working hours as CACFP. This button appears on both the mobile app and web app.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Repaired the bug that was causing meals on the first day of the month to be displayed on the prior month on the Check for Errors page.
- Added additional verification for infant menus if children are marked as developmentally-ready for solid foods.
- Added the new Infant Feeding Form from TDA to the Participant Registration Packet for child care centers located in Texas.
- Added clarity to the Check for Errors page by adding the statement “New Meal Attendance Entered Since last Check for Errors”.
- Users can now edit the hours of CACFP Direct and Admin Hours they have entered.
- Changed the Bulk Enrollment Form Report to include forms that will expire in the next 30 days instead of those that have already expired or are missing.
- Fixed a bug on Infant Menu by Name that was causing the food items to not be deleted when the menu was updated.
- Added a warning if file size for an imported file is more than 10MB.
- Added the ability for sponsors to hide the link that allows site users to download a pre-filled income and enrollment form. Sponsors using only electronic forms or only their own paper forms may want to take advantage of this feature.
- The “Birthdate Estimated” field is hidden for family child care home site types.
- Added a date/time stamp to the last “Check for Errors” and a clarifying sentence about which meals have been checked.
- Added an automatic page reload after creating claims at the sponsor level.
- Added the state agency export file for sponsors of family child care homes in Colorado.
- Added the Meal Batch File for sponsors of family child care homes in Illinois.
Update 21.03.1
BRAND NEW ELECTRONIC VISIT SYSTEM We’ve replaced our My Food Program for Reviewers app with a new, easy, user-friendly system right within our software. You can now access electronic visits right from the Visits button on your dashboard. In order to get started, the first thing we need are your visit forms. Once we have the forms entered into the new system, there are three easy steps to the process:
- Get your link to the electronic form right in My Food Program.
- Fill out the forms electronically with our easy-to-use interface.
- Visit results are populated right onto your state form including electronic signatures with date and time stamps.
FILL OUT THE FORM WITH OUR EASY-TO-USE INTERFACE
VISIT RESULTS ARE POPULATED RIGHT ON YOUR STATE FORM INCLUDING ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES WITH DATE AND TIME STAMPS
CHECK FOR NEWLY-ADDED ENROLLMENT FORMS AFTER PROVIDER OR CENTER HAS SUBMITTED THEIR CLAIM We’ve added a new button for Sponsors on the Review Disallowed Meals screen that allows the sponsor to specifically look for enrollment forms that have been added to the software in the time between when the provider or center clicked “Submit to Sponsor” but before the claim is created. This button will disappear once a claim is created and is hidden from the provider or center.
IMPROVED SITE SUMMARY REPORT We have improved the formatting and added additional information about Tier Status on the first page of the Site Summary Report and the License Type. We also added list of children with Special Needs (that are allowed to be claimed over the age of 13) and children with Special Dietary Needs. In addition, we added a claim total to the Claim History table.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Separated active and inactive sites on the sponsor-level Claim Summary and Disallowed Meals Report.
- Added the count of active participants to the roster page.
- The bulk food production record is hidden for family child care providers.
- Added the header to every page of the Site Hours Detail Report.
- Changed the “Show Inactive Participants” from a button to a toggle switch.
- Made some bug fixes to expense tracking regarding allocation of operating and admin and handling of Non-Allowable Expenses Included on Receipt.
- The 5-Day Reconciliation Report now includes multiple times in and out for children that leave the site to attend school and then return again after school.
- Renamed button in Sponsor Setup related to disallowances for meals not listed on enrollment forms and the ability for sites to over-rides those disallowances by clicking “Meal Outside Schedule” and providing a reason.
- Sponsors can now edit meal attendance after the site has clicked Submit to Sponsor.
- Fixed the time zone application on the Submitted to Sponsor date/time stamp.
- Changed the “View Inactive Participants” from a temporary checkbox to a permanent toggle slider option.
- Added a second Phone Number field in Site Details.
- Pulled the Special Diet Report to the sponsor level so sponsors can run it for all centers at one time.
- If site records a Closure or Holiday, it is displayed on the Monthly Print-Ready Menu as “Closed”.
Update 21.02.1
ALLOW CENTER DIRECTORS TO DELETE EXPENSES We have added the ability for center directors to delete expenses, except for those months for which a claim has already been processed. In addition, we have restricted the ability for center directors to enter expenses for a month with a claim unless you specifically authorize them to do so. You will find both of these settings on the “Staff” page.
ENROLLMENT FORM ONLY FOR TIER 2 PROVIDERS We have added the option for sponsors of family child care homes to include only the enrollment form in the participant registration packet instead of automatically including the income eligibility form as well. You will find this setting in Sponsor Setup:
CALENDAR ICON FOR INDIVIDUAL INFANT FEEDING RECORDS We have added a new calendar icon for those providers and centers that need to record specific foods and amounts offered to infants. We call these Individual Infant Feeding Records. When a provider or center checks in an infant for a meal, there will be a red icon on the menu calendar like the image below on the left. Once each infant checked in for a meal has an individual infant feeding record, those icons will turn green like the image on the right.
USE TYPICAL TIMES FOR IN/OUT ATTENDANCE For providers and centers that need to record arrival and departure times in My Food Program, we’ve added a feature to make that easier! You can now use the button “Use Typical Times”. When you click the button, the software will pre-fill the arrival or departure time from the enrollment form participant schedule and the provider or center can make adjustments as needed.
MEAL COUNT AND MENU CLAIM DOCUMENTATION This report combines meal counts, child menus and infant menus into a single PDF document. This report can be run for one provider or center at the site level or for multiple providers or centers at the sponsor level. The meal counts are color-coded to indicate if they are included in the claim or whether they were disallowed. If a provider or centers uses individual infant feeding records, those are included in this report. If a provider or center uses infant menu by date, then the general infant menus are included. If the provider or center has an electronic signature on-file, that is included on this report as well. Download a Sample Report >
INACTIVE PARTICIAPNTS HIDDEN BY DEFAULT We have hidden any withdrawn participants from the participant list and roster list by default. If you wish to view inactive participants, click the “Show Inactive Participants” button. If you want to hide them again, simply click the same button, which now says “Hide Inactive Participants”.
PAYING BILLS THROUGH QUICKBOOKS We are excited to announce that My Food Program now connects to QuickBooks. This means that you can now send ACH transfers or mail checks for FREE by using QuickBooks Bill Pay powered by Melio.
ABILITY TO TRACK NUMBER OF TRAIING HOURS Sponsors now have the option to enter the number of hours of training provided when recording center staff or provider training. Training hours recorded are available on a Staff Training Report available at the site level for an individual center or provider or at the sponsor level for all sites combined. Download a Sample Report >
5-DAY RECONCILIATION REPORT This report pulls that most recent 5 days of meal counts when the user selects the visit date. In addition to the meal counts, the report also provides information about the participant’s normal times in care and typical meals eaten while in care for an easy comparison. 5 day meal count totals and average are also included. Download a Sample Report >
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Added additional validations to prevent creation of duplicate participants.
- Added a category for training costs allocated to operational expenses.
- Removed the requirement to select a roster before entering in/out times.
- Changed rules to allow editing of past menus for centers or providers who are required to enter a menu before a meal count.
- Added dates to the summary table on the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance report.
- Fixed typos in the Infant Meal Pattern Print-Ready.
- Changed the timing of the page re-direct when a required food temperature is missing (after school and summer food sites only).
- Added “No Income” as a reason for categorizing an income form in the Free eligibility category.
- Allow milk audits to be run for the current calendar month instead of only prior months.
- Allow milk audits to be run for the current calendar month instead of only prior months.
- Fixed bug related to expense category “Non-Allowable Expenses Included on Receipt”.
- Formatting changes to Daily FRP Count by Meal Type Report.
- We’ve added a new site setting for traditional child care centers that also operate the at-risk afterschool meals program. If you check the box “Do not include ARAM participants in income and enrollment form reminders” then participants marked as participating in the at-risk afterschool meals program will not appear on the Missing Forms Report or be included in the dashboard button prompt regarding participant with missing, expired or expiring forms.
- Added new disallow reasons including Program records not available during monitoring visit; Program and claim records received after the deadline; Report does not match monitor review or parent audit; Site not available for monitoring review; Failure to attend Required Training; Unrecorded school holiday, offsite, closure, or virtual learning, etc.
- Inactive site users are no longer included in the count of staff needing training.
- Allowed the Reimbursements by Calendar Year Report to be run for all site types and also be run at the site level.
Update 21.01.1
TRACK PAYMENTS TO SITES Our new Payments to Sites screen allows you to track whether you have sent payment to your sites for a claim month. This screen displays helpful information for each claim allowing you to make adjustments where necessary and keep detailed track of your payments.
EXPENSE SUMMARY BY SITE This report provides a snapshot of how each site’s expenses are spread across the available expense categories for each month. The report also calculates the percentage of reimbursement spent on food. You can select any date range and a row will be populated on the spreadsheet for each site for each month. You can filter, sort and subtotal the spreadsheet to focus on the data relevant to your operations. Download a Sample Report >
FOOD PRODUCTION SPREADSHEET WITH MEAL PATTERN We have added a fourth report to summarize food production information. This version is a spreadsheet and includes the following information:
- Meal Pattern Requirements
- Menu
- Quantity of Food Prepared
- Planned Meal Participation by Age Range
- Actual Meal Participation by Age Range
HEADCOUNT ATTENDANCE FOR AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAMS ONLY We now accommodate a simple head count for attendance rather than requiring names. Having attendance by name is still a requirement of the At-Risk Afterschool Meals Program, but this allows after school programs that have paper participant sign-in sheets more easily use My Food Program. With this configuration, it is not necessary to enter any participant information into My Food Program in order to collect attendance and meal counts. .
ABIILITY TO PUT A CLAIM ON HOLD Sponsors now have the ability to put a “hold” on a claim that they do not want to process yet. To create a hold, navigate to the Process Claim screen at the site and select the month/year and click “Create Hold”. That claim will now be skipped. To release the hold, just click the blue “Remove” button.
ALLOW SITTE MANAGER/DIRECTOR TO MANAGE PARTICIPANT ELIGIBILITY FOR THE AT-RISK AFTERSCHOOL MEALS PROGRAM We have a new checkbox on the Site Staff page that will allow Site Managers/Directors to check or un-check the box on the Participant Page that indicates a child’s eligibility to participate in the At-Risk Afterschool Meals Program. This box is unchecked by default as sponsors may want to retain full control over children that are authorized for participation in the At-Risk Afterschool Meals Program.
DAILY FREE/REDUCED/PAID COUNT BY MEAL TYPE This report goes day-by-day and meal-by-meal and provides a count of the number of Free/Reduced/Paid meals and snacks that were included in the claim. Since this report is based on Income Eligibility Category, the report must be run for dates within the same calendar month. If the report is run for the entire calendar month, the meal count totals will match the claim. Download a Sample Report >
SPONSOR MANUAL ADJUSTMENTS AND CLAIM ERROR OVERRIDES FOR ADDITIONAL SITE TYPES Sponsors of child care centers, adult day care centers, afterschool programs, and emergency shelters now have the ability to make claim adjustments. Sponsors can either (1) override specific errors (such as missing enrollment forms) or (2) make a manual adjustment to the number of meals or snacks included in the claim.
ALLOW STAFF TO RECORD THEIR HOURS IN THE MOBILE APP Site users (center directors, teachers and kitchen staff) can now record their hours worked using the mobile app (in addition to the web app). To enable a site user to record hours using the mobile app, click on “Staff” and then the user’s name and check the box next to “Allowed to record hours on mobile”. This checkbox defaults to unchecked for all existing and newly-created site users.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Negative milk balances are not carried forward on the milk audit.
- Added column totals to the Claim Summary Report for Sponsors spreadsheet.
- Added the option for sponsors to print only the Claim Summary Report for the Site or Claim Summary Report for the Site plus Disallowed Meals Report.
- Added the non-discrimination statement and Site ID to the Monthly Child Menu Print-Ready and Monthly Infant Menu Print-Ready.
- Added visit type “Preoperational/Intro Visit”.
- Corrected infant roster time restrictions on side-by-side entry screen.
- Fixed milk audit-related claim adjustments for After School Programs to display meals/snack disallowed on the Milk Audit screen.
- Added footer and the shortened non-discrimination statement to the Child Menu and Infant Menu Print-Ready.
- We’ve made a one page PDF version of the Infant and Child Meal Pattern available for download on the Menu Calendar page.
- Allowed the upload of expense receipts with special characters in the file name.
- Improved speed of loading Menu Calendar page.
- Improved speed of loading side-by-side attendance and meal count page.
Update 20.12.1
New Report: Daily Meal Production Record
We have added a third version of food production records to complement our Daily Meal Production with Leftovers and Dietary Accommodations and our standard food production record. This compact version of the report fits one day per page.
Site Dashboard Buttons are now Clickable
The dashboard buttons that provide information about claim status and missing records can now be clicked and will take the user to the place to get relevant information.
- Claim Status goes to Review Disallowed Meals Page
- Days Missing Meal Counts and Days Missing Menus go to the Menu Calendar
- Participants Missing Income Forms and Participants Missing Enrollment Forms go to the Missing Forms Report
- Staff Need Training goes to the Staff Training Report
Ability to Cross-Check Multiple Expense Entries to a Receipt Total
When users enter receipts with purchases from multiple categories, they now have the ability to enter a receipt total and cross-check the sum of expenses to the total on the receipt. (1) The receipt total will also populate on the Expense Detail report. We have also added a category called “Non-Allowable Expenses Included on Receipt” in order to make the receipt total balance. The “Applied Amount” in this category will always be $0. (2)
List of Active Staff When Entering Labor and Benefits
Users now have a list of active staff to select from when recording expenses under any categories related to labor and benefits. In addition the name of active staff members, you will also see the default selection “Staff Expenses/No Staff Name Specified” and also the option to record “For Multiple Staff”. The staff-person name selected will be auto-filled as the Description for the expense entry.
Sponsors Can Require Users to Enter Menus and/or Food Production Records Before Meal Counts
There are two new flags in Site Details:
- Require menus before meal counts: if this flag is checked, then users are required to enter a menu before they can check children in for a meal. They will receive a proactive message on the web and mobile app telling them that the menu is required. In addition, menu cannot be edited after a meal count is entered.
- Require finalized food production record before meal counts: if this flag is checked, then users are required to enter a menu, create a food production record and finalize that food production record before children can be checked in for a meal. They will receive a proactive message on the web and mobile app telling them that a finalized food production record is required. In addition, the food production record cannot be deleted after a meal count is entered.
Note that these restrictions do NOT apply to infant rosters.
Automated Disallows for Milk Shortages
Sponsors can now automate the process of disallowing meals for milk shortages. In Sponsor Setup, check the box that says, “Milk audit required before claim and adjust claim if milk is underserved”. And then there are three options for how to calculate the claim adjustment:
- Adjust the claim by a percentage
- Adjust a claim by a certain amount of underserved milk
- Adjust certain meals and snacks based on receipt dates
You can also add a leeway percentage if your state agency allows for one. Meals and snacks that are disallowed for a milk shortage appear on the Disallowed Meals Report with error code “Disallowed by Sponsor – Milk Shortage” and are also viewable as disallowed on the meal count screen. The claim adjustments made for milk shortages will be summarized on the Milk Audit page after the claim is created.
In the example below, the center was short by 13% on 1% milk. Therefore, the number of breakfasts, lunches, and snacks with milk were reduced by 13% in each FRP category. The center was short by 9% on whole milk, so each breakfast, lunch and snack with milk was reduced by 9% across each FRP category.
New Report: Participants with Special Dietary Needs
We have added a report at the site level that lists children with special dietary needs. It includes all active participants and summarizes the information entered on the Special Diet screen.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Added buttons to the menu page to go to the next month or prior month.
- Corrected the display of Early Snack on Site Details and Participant Schedule.
- We re-named the dashboard button “Submit to Sponsor” to read instead “Check for Errors or Submit to Sponsor”.
- Added the total participant count on the Claim Summary Report.
- Added a drop-down list of staff.
- All active sites are included on sponsor-level Monitoring Report.
- Updated the logic for the “Days Missing Menus” and “Days Missing Meal Counts” to account for closures and holidays.
- Users that have multiple sponsor accounts can toggle between them more easily.
- If a child care center or adult day care center has a claiming percentage below 25%, the software will automatically set all meals to non-payable and create a “zero” claim.
- Option to include uploaded receipts as an addendum to the Expense Detail Report.
- Formatting changes to the CACFP Meal Benefit Income Eligibility Form for centers located in Texas.
- Changed rounding protocol on average daily attendance for Indiana family child care homes claim export file.
- Corrected a text-wrapping error on the site-level Claim Summary Report.
- Bug fix in Disallowed Meals Report that listed “Meal Over Claim Limit” in addition to “Milk Shortage”.
- Improved error message if a user tries to record more hours in breaks + working hours than total hours.
- Sponsor admin users can now edit or delete a training entry.
Update 20.11.1
Sponsor Admin and Site Managers/Directors Can Now Record Staff Hours on Behalf of Others
This feature allows Sponsor Admin users and Site Manager/Directors to tally hours on behalf of site staff in order to track CACFP labor expenses to demonstrate a nonprofit meal service. When Sponsor Admin and Site Manager/Director users click on “Record Hours” from the main site dashboard, they will now notice a dropdown menu with all active staffpersons listed and the ability to view and record hours.
New Sponsor Options for Participant Status
We know that there is confusion for users switching from CACFP software in which participant status has an impact on claims. (In My Food Program, we look at enrollment forms and income forms rather than participant status). To clear up confusion, we are giving sponsors the option to simplify participant status to just Active or Inactive. Sponsors can select the participant status options they want to make available to their sites in Sponsor Setup.
Ability to Ignore Missing Infant Menus for Children Under 6 Months
Some states waive the requirement to maintain infant menus for children under 6 months since the “menu” is simply iron-fortified infant formula or breastmilk If this is the case in your state, you can now set My Food Program to ignore missing menus for children under 6 months while still enforcing the menu requirement for children ages 6-11 months old. You’ll find these setting in Site Details.
Ability to Store Electronic Signatures for Providers or Center Directors and Apply Them to Meal Count Forms
Some state agencies require a signature on meal count and attendance forms. If your state accepts electronic signatures, then we have an easy way to accomplish this! Site-Level users with the permission level “Site Manager/Director” can now add their electronic signature to their account. These signatures will then populate on the Daily, Weekly and Monthly Meal Count with Attendance Reports along with the date that the site submitted their claim to their sponsor.
Added a “Menu Notes” Field
On the menu planning page, we now have the ability to make notes about a menu without replacing the entire list of food items.These menu notes appear on the Child Menu Print-Ready Report.
Sponsors Can Restrict Sites from Claiming Meals Outside of Participant Schedules
We have added more versatility to the options around recording and claiming meals that are not indicated on a child’s enrollment form. Sponsors may now select from the following four options:
- Allow meals outside of the participant’s typical schedules without additional recordkeeping
- Allow meals outside of the participant’s typical schedule, but ask that sites note those meals and provide a reason
- Disallow meals outside of the participant’s typical schedule unless a site provides a reason
- Always disallow meals outside of the participant’s typical schedule
Sponsors will find these options in Sponsor Setup.
Hyperlink to Infant Menu by Name on the Attendance and Meal Count Page
Sites that are recording infant menus by name can now save several clicks by going directly from the meal count screen to the infant menu by name screen for that date and meal type.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Our meal validation (aka “Check for Errors”) goes lightning fast now! We’ve improved speed by over 90%.
- New report for users in Indiana: Nonprofit Overage Allowance. This report adds up all expenses ever recorded and divides them by the number of claim months.
- Making a participant inactive in an after school site no longer removes the ARAM participation flag.
- Meal Recap Report now separates meal counts by shifts.
- Child Care Centers in Texas will notice that we replaced our default income/enrollment form with a format that matches TDA.
- On the Sponsor-Level Claims Summary spreadsheet, we only fill the columns for blend rate or actual meal count by type in accordance with the site setting.
- New report for users in Illinois: CACFP Master List. This form matches the formatting of ISBE 67-95. Located at the Site Level under Participant Reports.
- Sites using Infant Menu by Name and create pre-planned menus will now see that those pre-planned food items automatically populate onto the Infant Menu by Name screen for children ages 6-11 months old. Users must still select the formula or breastmilk offered and verify the amounts served, but this should speed infant menu recordkeeping considerably.
- Cash-in-lieu of Commodities is now broken out separately on the Claim Summary Report for site types other than Family Child Care Homes.
- Added a reminder to the enrollment form that prompts parents/guardians to write in the names of additional children in the household.
- Improved the error message when decimal entries are made for milk expenses.
- Created a better visual separation between infant meal notification and infant developmental readiness.
- Moved the “Save” button to the center of the page for sites marking attendance and meal counts on the same page to prevent the need for horizontal scrolling.
- The Disallowed Meals Report can now be run with either the detailed version or the summary version.
- Sponsors can now disallow all meals for a roster, date and meal using the side-by-side attendance and meal count entry screen.
Update 20.10.1
Nonprofit Food Service Account Status Page
We have new functionality for tracking the balance in the nonprofit food service account to ensure that the CACFP reimbursement is being appropriately spent. You’ll find this new screen by clicking on “Expenses” and then “Nonprofit food service account status”.
- Sponsors can set the opening balance. Either type a number in or click the green button on the left to copy the closing balance from the prior month
- Reimbursement for Operating (85% of meal reimbursement plus cash in lieu of commodities) is populated based on the claim data but can be edited if necessary
- Reimbursement for Admin (15% of meal reimbursement) is populated only for self-sponsored sites and is based on the claim
- Operating Expenses are drawn directly from the receipt ledger
- Admin Expenses are drawn directly from the receipt ledger and only available for self-sponsored sites
- If you edit the opening balance or change the reimbursement amounts, you can re-calculate the ending balance for a month by clicking the green button on the right
New Sponsor-Level Report: Nonprofit Status Report
We have a new sponsor-level report to track the reimbursement received in a month with the approved expenses. Similar to the Nonprofit Food Service Account Status, the reimbursement for operating expenses is separated from the reimbursement for Admin and expenses in each category are also reported along with the monthly profit or deficit. Any values that are positive, which indicate a profit, are in RED. We also report the ending balance in the Nonprofit Food Service Account for that month.
Allow Headcount Attendance for At-Risk Sites
After School Programs that keep daily sign-in sheets to verify the names of children can now enter an attendance count instead of needing to add each child into the software. Note that the software will prevent the entry of a meal count that exceeds the attendance count, but there is minimal reporting available with this setting since there are no participants entered into the software.
Infant Form is Added to the Prefilled Income/Enrollment Form if the Household has a Participant less than 12 Months Old
When a household has a participant that is under 12 months old, the pre-filled income/enrollment form now has a third page to collect the information about whether the center or the parent/guardian is providing formula and food.
Enhanced Sponsor Control of Food Items
We now offer the option for sponsors to have complete control over food items on a PER SITE basis. This is on top of the feature we have to exclude foods for ALL SITES. If you want to manage the foods available to sites, check the box in Site Details called “Enhanced Sponsor Control of Food Items”. When this box is checked,
- Sites are restricted to adding only Favorite Foods to their menus (the food search feature is hidden)
- Sponsors have control over the Favorite Foods List
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Users can see the password that they’ve typed in. Just click on the “eye” icon on the login page
- Sponsor can hide the “Check for Errors” button on a site. This means that the site cannot see their claim errors prior to submitting their claim to their sponsor
- Added a deduction to total hours worked for breaks
- Changed the formatting on the prefilled income/enrollment forms for child care center
- Printed the parent/guardian name on the first page in case page 1 and page 2 get separated from each other
- Added a place to designate categorical eligibility for children who are homeless, runaway, or migrant
- Made it more clear which federal program a case number was associated with
- Added column for parents/guardians to write in net income from self-employment
- Option to generate the Weekly Meal Count with Attendance Report with all participants combined or a separate page for each classroom
- Ability to set the Claiming Method (Blended Per Meal or Actual Meal Count by Type) in Site Details. This means that users no longer need to designate the claiming method when generating the Claim Summary Report.
- Removed the requirement for household information if a site type is after school or emergency shelter, even if the sponsor is set to require household information for other site types within the sponsorship
- Added additional reasons for placing a household in the A-Free category
- Direct Certification
- Extended Direct Certification
- Homeless
- Migrant
- Runaway
- The sponsor-level Site Export Report now includes the most recent facility license, even if that facility license is expired
- Condensed the Disallowed Meals Report for readability. If a participant has multiple errors for the same reason, for example a missing enrollment form, the participant will be listed once. Details about which meals are disallowed can also be found on the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance Report
Update 20.09.1
Claim Summary Report – Fresh New Look
Our Claim Summary Report has gotten a full makeover! Our goal was to include all the information that sponsors need to enter their claim and make it easier to locate relevant claim information. Each site type has a slightly different report format and there are differences between claims calculated using the Blend Rate method and the Actual Meal Count by Type method.
The claim summary report includes:
- Claimable meal counts for Blend Rate Method; Actual Meal Count by Type has meal counts by income eligibility category as well
- Participant count each income eligibility category
- Total participant count
- Total attendance, days open & average daily attendance
- Claim estimate for operating funds (85% of meal reimbursement + cash-in-lieu) and admin funds (15% of meal reimbursement) and the total claim amount
You can click on the report for your specific site type below to see an updated full report sample!
New Sponsor-Level Report: State Claim Summary Report
This report is for sponsors of family day care homes and aggregates claim information for all providers for the month. Data includes:
- Number of providers in each tier (Tier I, Tier II High, Tier II Mixed, Tier II Low)
- Attendance & Participant Information
- Total Attendance
- Days Open
- Average Daily Attendance
- Enrolled Children
- Participating Children
- Meal Information
- Number of Tier I and Tier II meals and snacks
- Number of meals and snacks served by Tier I and Tier II providers
See a sample of this report here >
New Filtered View: Claim Payment Amounts Only
This report is for sponsors that just want to know the amount of the reimbursement check to be sent to the center or family day care home. This is just a truncated version of our comprehensive Sponsor-Level Claim Summary Report. To get the payment amounts, just click on “Claims” then “Claims Report” and check the box that says Payment Amounts Only.
For Family Day Care Homes, the fields displayed will be:
- Site Identification Number
- Site Name
- Payment Method
- Claim Batch
- CACFP Claim Estimate
- Claim Adjustments Date(s) and Amount(s)
For All Other Site Types, the fields displayed will be:
- Site Identification Number
- Site Name
- Payment Method
- Claim Batch
- Claiming Percentage
- CACFP Blend Rate Estimate
- CACFP Actual Meal Count Claim Estimate
- ARAM Claim Estimate
New Sponsor-Level Report: Site Closures
This report lets sponsors know which sites have recorded a site closure, holiday or field trip for a given date range. The fields include:
- Site Name and ID Number
- Monitor
- Date
- Closure Type (Closure, Field Trip, Holiday)
- Meals/Snacks affected by closure
NOTE: if a Sponsor Reporter runs the report it will include only the sites assigned to them.
See a sample of this report here >
Expense Groups Added and Used in Reports
Expense categories are now sorted into five different groups.
- For Family Day Care Homes: Schedule C, Form 8829 and Form 4562
- For all other site types (Child Care Center, Adult Day Care, After School, Emergency Shelter, and Summer Food): Operating and Administrative
Expenses recorded in these categories will also be grouped together in the Expense Detail Report.
New Participant Flag: Served Milk Substitute
We have a new indicator for participants with special dietary needs related to milk. The new flag is called, “Served Milk Substitute”. If that flag is checked, then that participant will not be included in the milk requirements calculations used in the Milk Audit or the Milk Served Report.
Progress Bar Added to Check for Errors and Submit to Sponsor
After users click “Check for Errors” or “Submit to Sponsor” a progress bar is now displayed on the screen. Once the check of meals and attendance is complete, the page will automatically refresh and the results will display on the screen.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Inactive rosters are no longer displayed as an option on the participant page
- Sponsor Admin users can now make manual adjustments to milk audits even if site-level users are restricted to certain entry methods
- Changed formatting on Weekly Meal Count with Attendance Report to include more participants per page and eliminate unnecessary page breaks.
- Additional fields are filled from the system for enrollment forms
- We added a progress bar to the Check for Errors/Submit to Sponsor function. Now instead of getting the “Meal Validation in Progress. Please check back later.” users will see a horizontal green bar that keeps them informed about the progress of the error check.
- Users can upload a form when recording a Field Trip, Closure or Holiday. This is helpful for sponsors in states that require specific forms to be completed related to closures.
- Invoicing rate of “monthly” has been added to our invoicing system
- Date Withdrawn is now set automatically when a participant is set to Inactive
Update 20.08.2
Improvements to the Milk Audits – Sponsor Policy Settings
Our new milk audit feature has been received very well. We’ve recently improved it by allowing sponsors to customize the milk audit units, calculation methods, audit types, delete permissions and fields for manual increases and decreases. You will find these setting in Sponsor Setup at the bottom of the page:
Additional Information Added to Participant Report
The Participant Report is the go-to report for getting your monthly claiming percentage. For child care centers, we’ve added important information to this report, including Age, Start Date, Withdraw Date, Enrollment Form Dates, Income Form Dates and whether an attendance was recorded in that month.
Improved Print-Ready Menu
We’ve added a field for “Display Name” and used that for all food items in our database. If a sponsoring organization or state agency has additional questions about a specific food item, that can be found on the Meal Detail page or on Food Production Reports. But this method means that the print-ready menus are much easier on the eyes. (Note that if you type text in the Description for Print View then the software uses that text instead of the Display Name). Here’s an example of the improvement.
New Report: Portioned Menu Report
We’re adding a THIRD way to print out your menus in addition to our versions in Excel and PDF. This portioned menu report lists each food item and the portion guide for each age range. Below is the example for child care centers. Other site types display only the age ranges that are relevant for their site type. You’ll find this new menu report at the bottom of the menu calendar page.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Children are listed alphabetically by last name on the Daily Menu, Attendance & Meal Count Sheet
- The site logo has been added to the Paper Back-Up report
- A review visit type “Desk Audit” has been entered
- Milk audits can now be finalized and manual increases or decreases can be deleted
- User Hours Detail Report had column added for Non-CACFP Hours and we re-named Direct to Operating
Update 20.08.1
New Report: Annual Re-Enrollment
This report includes a list of all enrolled participants along with their date of birth, race/ethnicity, schedule and typical meals. It includes a place for the parent/guardian to sign and date that the enrollment information is still current. This report can be used in lieu of printing new enrollment forms for each enrolled child.
Record Date of Infant Developmental Readiness
We have added the ability to record a date on which an infant is developmentally ready for fruits and/or vegetable and when they are developmentally ready for grains/meat or alternate. If the site is entering infant menus by name, then the meal planning screen will remind users that they must offer a solid food if the infant is developmentally-ready. We have a double-check during our claims processing and meals will be disallowed if they are missing a component for which the infant is developmentally ready.
Improvements in Manual Claim Adjustments for Family Child Care Homes
Manual claim adjustments are now linked to meal errors. Sponsor admin users can now see a list of claim errors and opt to “over-ride” those errors and make a manual adjustment to the claim. Below is an example of the manual claim adjustment screen when a participant had an expired enrollment form. The manual claim adjustments, along with the dollar value of the adjustment is also listed on the sponsor claim summary report.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Invoicing Summary Report is now run by Guardian and not Household
- Time-saver! There is now a link to the Disallowed Meals Report right below the summary of claim errors
- Corrected permissions for site-level users to change participant flags and add/edit income and enrollment forms
- Hid the ability to record CACFP Administrative Hours for sponsored centers
Update 20.07.1
Ability to Add Additional Tier Status Determination Dates
Sponsors of family child care homes can now enter multiple tier determinations for a provider to ensure continuity in tier determinations. Tier determination dates cannot overlap and you cannot enter a new tier determination for a month that already has a claim.
Enrollment Form Policies
We have added the ability to track the parent signature date and sponsor signature date on enrollment forms. Neither of these are required fields. In addition, sponsors can now set their policies for enrollment form effective and expiration dates based on signature dates. Choices for effective date:
- Sponsor signature date
- Parent signature date
- First day of the month in which the parent signed
- First day of the month in which the sponsor signed
Choices for expiration date:
- Exactly 1 year from the effective date
- One day prior to 1 year from the effective date
- End of the month 1 year from effective date
- End of the prior month 1 year from effective date
- Specific date: for example, if you always renew paperwork in October, you may want all forms to expire on 9/30 of each year.
Sponsor policies on enrollment form effective and expiration dates are in Sponsor Setup. This is the new screen displayed when enrollment forms are created:
Income Form Policies
We have added the ability to track parent signature date and sponsor signature date on Income Forms. Neither of these are required fields. In addition, sponsors can now set their policies for income form effective and expiration dates based on signature dates. Choices for Effective Date:
- First day of calendar month in which the form was signed by the parent
- First day of calendar month in which the form was signed by the sponsor
Choices for Expiration Date:
- 12 months
- 13 months
- Specific date: for example, if you always renew paperwork in October, you may want all forms to expire on 9/30 of each year.
Sponsor policies on income form effective and expiration dates are in Sponsor Setup. This is the new screen displayed when income forms are created:
Additional Fields on Invoices to Parents
For those of you using our feature that allows you to generate invoices to email or print and give to parents, we now have the ability for you to set the invoice date (rather than it defaulting to the creation date).
Licensed Capacity Checks Using License Types
Sponsors now have a choice of methods for checking license capacity. The method currently in place uses defined age ranges and sets capacities within those along with limits based on combinations of age ranges. Our new method will instead allow sponsor to define license types and apply those license types to site. Here’s how it works:
- The first step is to define license types. Sponsors can define as many license types as they wish (1).
- The second step is to define the capacities and distribution for each license type. As an example, below is the definition for Group Family Day Care (C1 License) in the state of Minnesota (2). The configuration below means that no more than 10 children (School Age and non-School Agers) can be in care. Only 8 can be non-School Agers, only 3 can be infants or toddlers and only 2 can be infants.
- The last step is to assign a license or licenses to a provider. Note that you CAN assign more than one license to a provider (3).
During our meal validation process, the software will look at the combination of children checked in for each shift for each meal. If the combination of children is in compliance with a license, then no meals are disallowed. If a combination of children passes for one license but fails for another no meals will be disallowed. If the combination of children is out of compliance with the license(s) associated with that provider, then meals are disallowed to bring them in compliance with one license while disallowing the fewest meals possible. When meals are disallowed we record which meals were disallowed and which license type the combination was ultimately in compliance with.
See below for video instructions to walk you through the process of setting up either method for Licensing Capacity Checks. You can also download the training pages here.
New Report: Reimbursements by Calendar Year
This report is for sponsors of family child care homes. It generates a statement of the reimbursements sent to providers for a given calendar year. It includes claims that were created within the calendar year. For example a December 2020 claim that is created in January 2021 will not be included in the 2020 version of this report since the claim was created and paid in 2021.
New Sponsor-Level Report: Bulk Enrollment Forms
This report pulls the participant registration form for each household. If the site is a family child care home with Tier 1, then just an enrollment form is generated. If the site is a family child care homes with Tier 2 or an adult or child care center, then a combination income/enrollment form is generated. Users can select to include:
- Any participant who has a missing/expiring income form
- Any participant who has a missing/expiring enrollment form
- Any participant who has either a missing/expiring income or enrollment form
- All active participants in active sites
Be warned that if you run a large sponsorship, it may take several minutes for the report to generate.
New Sponsor-Level Report: Participants with Duplicate Meals in Multiple Sites
This report is a companion to the existing sponsor-level report: Participants Enrolled in Multiple Sites. The new report will look for any participants with the same first name, last name and date of birth that was checked in for the same meal on the same day in multiple sites. Disallowances are not automatic since the sponsor would need to confirm which meal count was authentic.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- The sponsor-level Site Summary Report and Menu Report are filtered for Sponsor Reporters to only show the sites that they are assigned to monitor.
- For sites with different hours on different days of the week, the menu calendar, Paper Backup Report and attendance and meal count entry screens now reflect the meals served on each day of the week.
- The calculator for using household size and income to estimate the income eligibility category has been updated with the most recent rates from USDA which are effective July 1, 2020 to June 20, 2021.
- Prevent deletion of enrollment forms if they were in effect during a claim month. Also prevent adding an enrollment form if a claim is already created for that month.
- Moved Tier Status to the bottom of the Site Details page and linked Census Tract or School District Name with the tier status determination.
- Changed the Participant Registration Form to use the Idaho template for sites located in Idaho.
- Sponsors can now run the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance Report for all sites for a given month in one PDF.
Update 20.06.1
New Report: Daily Menu, Attendance and Meal Count Sheet
This new site-level report is intended to be printed daily and completed by hand as a record of the infant and child menu as well as attendance and meal counts for each participant. Participant names are pre-filled.
Record Log for each Site Viewable by Sponsor Only
We added a section on Site Details for sponsors to record information or correspondence with the site using a free-form text box. Unlike the “Notes” box, the Record Log is not viewable by the provider or center
5 Different Methods for Determining Your Monthly Claiming Percentage
State agencies have five different methods for determining whether a participant should be included in the monthly count of participants and the claiming percentage (# of participants in categories A-Free/B-Reduced/C-Paid or Tier I/Tier II). Sponsors can now set their policy regarding the calculation of their monthly claiming percentage. The selection is found in Sponsor Setup and includes the following options:
- Include any participant that attended at least once during the month
- Include any participant that ate a meal or snack at least once during the month
- Include any participant that attended at least once during the month AND had an enrollment form that was valid for at least one day in the month
- Include any participant that ate a meal or snack at least once during the month AND had an enrollment form that was valid for at least one day in the month
- Include any participant that had an enrollment form that was valid for at least one day in the month (it doesn’t matter if the participant attended or ate a meal or snack during the month)
After setting the sponsor policy, the process will be automatic and your Participant Report and Claim Summary Report will provide an participant count based on your sponsor policy.
NEW Feature: Automated Milk Audit
Sponsors can now conduct a milk audit without needing to print and compare reports. The Milk Audit is available from the site dashboard. Users need to select the month/year for the audit as well as:
- Calculation Type
- Calculated from Attendance: this will take the minimum portion size for milk times the number of participants in each age range and calculate how much milk you should have used.
- ood Production Amounts: this will take the usage amounts right from your food production records. Ensure that you have entered a food production record for each of the meals with milk so you have accurate amounts.
- Audit Type
- By Day: this version gives you a running balance by day and meal of how much milk is on hand.
- By Month: this version gives you a bottom line for the entire month.
Any milk purchases entered using our Expense feature will be automatically pulled into the report. Users also have the option to manually increase milk amounts to reflect an opening balance or purchase not entered in our Expense tracker. Users can manually decrease amounts if there is spoilage/waste or additional servings of milk. See below for a sample report as well as video instructions to walk you through the process. You can also download PDF instructions here.
New Sponsor-Level Report: Payable Meals by Tier
Some states require that meals be reported by the week instead of by the month. To accommodate this reporting method we created the Payable Meals by Tier Report. Users can select a custom date range for this report.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Added middle name to the Paper Back-Up Report.
- Display contents of the Notes field from Site Details on the Site Summary Report.
- If no claim errors are found, the Review Disallowed Meals screen displays a message that confirms no claim errors were found.
- Directors/Managers at child care centers are prevented from deleting expenses.
- Site Hours and Meal Times are now required at Site Setup.
- Added a new field for the sponsor to record preferred language for a provider or center.
- Added a summary of expenses by category to the Expense Detail Report.
- Family day care providers can enter and modify their own space-time percentage without involving their sponsor.
- Refreshed the icons on our dashboard.
- Added facility phone number to the Site Orders report.
- New Report: Alabama Claim Summary Report.
Update 20.05.1
New Sponsor-Level Report: Expense Summaries
This new sponsor-level report is most helpful for sponsors of unaffiliated centers which must demonstrate a non-profit meal service. Sponsors can now run the Expense Summary Report for all active sites within a sponsorship. Each site is on a separate page.
Progress Bar for Sponsor-Level Claims Processing
When a sponsor admin user clicks “Create Claims” a progress bar will now appear to track which claim is currently processing and how many claims are left. Even better, if any user (even the one that didn’t start the claims creation process) visits the page, they get the same update!
Create Claim Batches
Sponsors can now group their claims into batches in order to track multiple claims submissions to the state agency. To turn on batch claiming, check the box for Batch Claims in Sponsor Setup (1). On a monthly basis, running claims in batches has two steps:
- Step 1: Name your claim batches.
On the sponsor dashboard, click “Claims” and then “Manage Claim Batches (2)
That will bring you to a screen where you can name the Claim Batch (you can use a simple 1, 2, 3 system or you can use a date or any other batch naming convention you would like!) and also designate the date that the batch is being submitted to the state and the date your centers or providers can expect payment (3). - Step 2: Assign each claim to a batch.
When you run claims, you will be prompted to assign each claim to a batch (4).
Family Child Care Providers Can Record Hours for Space-Time Percentage Calculations
To record hours, providers just need to click on the dashboard button called “Record Hours”. There are two categories for the hours (shown below). The information entered in this screen populates a Staff Report called the User Hours Detail Report that will sum up the hours in each category and allow the provider to easily calculate their space-time percentage
Monthly Bulk Entry by Name
We have added a FOURTH way to configure the screen to enter attendance and meal counts! In addition to our traditional layout with attendance and meal counts on separate screens, side-by-side interface with attendance and meal counts on the same screen and our weekly entry by roster we now have monthly entry by name. See below for what that interface looks like. Users just need to select the month and the participant and enter the attendance and meal counts. We hope this new interface provides an efficient method to enter data.
Added Site ID on the Main Site List and Made it Searchable
For those sponsors with many providers or centers, we have made it easier to navigate our main site list by displaying the site identification number and allowing that field to be searchable.
Print-and-Post Menus
We now have the ability to create print-ready menus in PDF. To find this feature, go to Menu then scroll to the bottom and click on Monthly Child Menu Print-Ready and click on the download link. Below is what the menus will look like. NOTE: these menus look much, much better if providers or centers make use of our “Description for Print View” box on the menu planning page. If no Description for Print View is entered, then the system will pull the technical food item name and the menu can get very cluttered.
Sites Alerts for Claim Creation, Submission and Payment Dates
On the Submit to Sponsor page, we’ve added a series of icons that lets the provider or center know the date when they submitted their attendance, meal counts and menus to their sponsor and when the claim is processed by the sponsor. You can ALSO alert providers or centers of the date their claim was submitted to the state system and when they should expect payment if you make use of our Batch Claiming feature.
Ability to Hide Expense Categories
Sponsors now have the ability to restrict users to specific expense categories. You will find the list in Sponsor Setup. Check the expenses that are allowed and those will be the only ones that will appear for selection at the site level:
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Fixed the alphabetical listing of infant foods.
- Added facility license number and effective dates to the Site Summary Report along with any upcoming facility closures or field trips.
- Added additional visit types to assist with tracking monitoring visits. They can now be categorized by trimester.
- Sites using shifts can now designate a start and end time for each shift.
- Removed Food Production Record reminder for family child care homes on meal submission screen.
- Ability to record a mailing address that is different from a physical address.
- Added state upload file for family child care homes and direct certification file for Idaho.
- Site Manager/Directors of adult day care centers and child care centers now have permission to run the Household Report.
- Added the number of times a claim has been adjusted and the most recent adjustment date to the sponsor-level Claims Summary Report.
- Moved sponsor-level claims reports (State Claim Export Files and Sponsor-Level Claims Summary) to the Claims tab on the Sponsor Dashboard.
- Changed when the meal type name turns green. It will now turn green if there is only an infant menu and any meal count.
- Added Meal Type, Day of the Week, Follow-Up Required, Not Home and a Claim Summary to the Site Summary Report.
- Added date of claims creation, submission to state and expected payment date to the bottom of the claim summary report at the site-level.
Update 20.04.2
Ability to Customize Food Lists
We now have the ability for sponsors to exclude foods from being included on menus! For example, if your state agency does not allow the breading on chicken nuggets to be counted toward the grain/bread component, you can prevent providers from adding them to their menus. Foods to exclude are designated in Sponsor Setup. Note that sponsors are not able to add foods to our database – that is a function available only to My Food Program staff. If you need a food added to our database, please contact us and we will get it added right away.
Save Infant Menus
Users can now save menus for infants just as they can for children. After planning an infant menu, simply click the “Save Menu” button and give the menu a name. You can select from saved menus when planning infant menus as well.
Site Closures Displayed on Menu Calendar
We have added a red “X” on the menu calendar to remind sites of days that were recorded as closed or a holiday. Attendance and meal counts cannot be entered for days recorded as closed. If a site closure is recorded after meal counts have been entered, they will be disallowed as part of the claims processing.
Track Serious Deficiency Events
Sponsors can now record events associated with serious deficiency using My Food Program. Sponsors will find this feature in the “Visits” section. (1) Select the date, event and reason. (2) All Serious Deficiency Events recorded for a site appear at the bottom of the Visits page. Only Sponsor Administrators can enter or delete serious deficiency events. Centers or Providers can view the serious deficiency events, but cannot edit or delete them.
Manually Adjust Claims (for Family Day Care Homes only)
Sponsors can now record a manual claim adjustment in lieu of rolling back and re-processing the claim. This allows the sponsor to retain the original claim information while making an adjustment for additional information collected after the original claim was created. To create a manual claim adjustment, click on the “Process Claim” button and select “Sponsor Manual Adjustments” and enter the requested information (shown below). Sponsor manual adjustment cannot be deleted so use them with care. Also, since the original meal counts and attendance are not modified by a manual adjustment, reports detailing attendance and meal counts will not reflect the manual adjustment.
New Options for Infant Meal Notification
We have made changes related to infant meal notification (i.e. whether it is the center/provider or the parents that are supplying formula and food for infants under 12 months old). Summary of changes:
- Additional field to designate the formula offered by the center or provider.
- If the infant meal notification indicates that the parents are supplying BOTH formula/breastmilk AND solid foods, then meals will be disallowed when the child turns 6 months old until they are 1 year old.
- Added the ability to disallow meals for missing infant meal notification. All meals for infants without an infant meal notification on-file will be disallowed if this is set to “Error”.
Daily Notes Field
Providers or centers now have the ability to write a note to the sponsor on their attendance page ((1) if using the traditional meal entry method) or the attendance/meal count page ((2) if using the side-by-side meal count entry method). These notes feed into a new sponsor-level report that lists the notes submitted by the sites (3).
Option to Require Sites to Ensure Comprehensive Participant Information
All sites are required to enter first name, last name, birthdate and start date. Sponsors can now ALSO require sites to enter:
- Household Address
- Parent/Guardian Name and Phone Number
- Participant Race & Ethnicity
- Participant Schedule
This option is configurable in Sponsor Setup:
Changes to Pre-Filled Income and Enrollment Forms for Family Day Care Homes
For family day care homes, we have made the following additions to the enrollment form:
- Providers Own
- Residential
- Related/Non-Residential
- Infant Feeding Preferences
- Parent or Provider is supplying formula
- Brand of parent formula
- Brand of provider formula
- Parent or Provider supplying solid foods
Also, if a provider is Tier I, then ONLY the enrollment form is generated. If the provider is Tier II, then the combination income and enrollment form is generated. Parents may, of course, decline to provide income information and simply sign the form.
To create an enrollment or combination income/enrollment form for a household, click on Participants & Rosters, select the parent/guardian name and then click the blue “Create Participant Registration Form” button.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Site level users are prevented from designating a participant as a foster child
- Fix to Site Summary Report to include children in pending or incomplete status
- Added visit type and day of the week to the sponsor-level Site Audit Report
- Added columns on the sponsor-level Claims Summary Report for tier status, total participants and all snacks combined (AM snack + PM snack + Evening Snack)
- Added Age and Date of Birth to the Weekly Meal Count with Attendance Report
- Users are now preventing from creating enrollment forms with the exact same start and end dates
- Upload file for the state of Indiana – both homes and centers
- Corrected a bug that was preventing Food Production Record estimates from being created in summer food sites
- Added date of birth and age to the Weekly Meal Count with Attendance Report
- New sponsor-level report: Serious Deficiency
- Changed wording on invoice discounts to more clearly explain to enter them as negative numbers
- Removed days of the week that that the site is not open from the Paper Back-Ups report
Update 20.04.1
New Sponsor-Level Report: Site Menu Report
Some state agencies require that sponsors keep a printed copy of menus for each site. This report solves that problem! It is a list of each active site and the child and infant menus for the month. It also notes if the site was closed that day or recorded no menu. This report uses the food item descriptions from our database and not the “Description for Print View”. This is a sample of the report:
New Sponsor-Level Report: Participant Export Report
This report generates a spreadsheet with each of the attributes from the participant page, including:
- Participant Name
- Date of Birth
- Participant ID Number
- Start Date and Withdrawal Date
- Gender
- Status
- Roster
- Parent/Guardian Name, Address, Phone, Email
- Race/Ethnicity
- Foster Child, Special Needs, Providers Own Child, Related/Non-Residential and Claimable Status
- Schedule of Typical Days in Attendance and Meals Eaten
- Enrollment Form Effective and Expiration Dates
- Infant Notification Date and Details
- Special Dietary Needs Notification Date and Details
New Report: Current Claims Status
We have added the ability to download the information from the sponsor claims screen into a spreadsheet. You’ll find a new button called “Export as .csv” in the upper-right corner of the claims screen.
New Function: Add Multiple Expenses on the Same Screen
We have added the ability to record multiple expenses for the same date on one screen. This is especially helpful if you have one receipt/invoice that you want to distribute across several categories. Upload the receipt image once and it will be associated with each of your expense entries.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Generate the family day care homes monitoring form pre-filled with sponsor and provider information. Find that new report at the site level under Reports/Recordkeeping Reports
Update 20.03.2
Create Food Production Records in Bulk
We can now create food production records for all meals and snacks within a date range with one click! You can find this new feature on the Menu page:
Once you click the Food Production Estimates button, you will be provided with the option to enter the date range and the method you want to use to generate the estimates.
- Use Schedules: if you use this option, the system will use participant schedules to generate estimates in the future. This can help with food procurement! (Note: if meal counts are already taken, then the system will use those instead of schedules).
- Enter Estimates: use this option if you don’t have participant schedules entered. This allows you to input an estimated attendance by age range for each meal type.
Remember that you MUST enter menus before generating food production records!
Ability to Designate ARAM Special Days
Typically ARAM breakfast, AM snack and lunch can only be claimed on the weekends. But with the COVID-19 pandemic and the waivers in place, we have added a feature for sponsors to designate dates on which ARAM breakfast, AM snacks and lunches can be claimed. You’ll find this new feature in Sponsor Setup.
Track the County for each Site and Designate a Group Family Child Care License
We have added two new fields to Site Details. The first field allows you to enter the name of the county. For family child care providers, we have also entered a flag for Group Family Child Care License:
New State Claim File Section
We have been adding more and more state agency claim upload files. To clean up the list of sponsor-level reports, we grouped them together as “State Agency Export Files”. Just select the state and site type for your sponsorship to generate the file. We have added Kansas and New York to our list most recently.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Reasons for Tier I have changed to Census, School District or Provider Income. Census and School District used to be combined together.
- Sponsor users can now use one login credential to login to more than one sponsor. Contact us if you an administrator for more than one sponsor and we can get you set up.
Update 20.03.1
Brand-New Sponsor Claims Screen
The sponsor claims screen has a completely refreshed look and tons of new information for sponsors! Instead of a summary of the claim, we have included information that helps you manage your sites.
Each active site is listed on the screen along with the status of their claim:
- Attendance & Meal Counts
- Red if no attendance or meal counts have been entered for the month
- Green if attendance and meal counts have been entered for the month
- M symbol if it is a manual claim site
- Site Submitted to Sponsor
- Red if the site still needs to submit their attendance and meal counts to sponsor
- Green if the site has submitted their attendance and meal counts (along with date/time stamp)
- M symbol if it is a manual claim
- Claim Errors
- Red if there are claim errors
- Green if no claim claim errors
- Claims (CACFP, ARAM and SFSP) have a date/time stamp if a claim has been created
Disallow Meals Outside of Participant Schedule
Sponsors can now choose to disallow meals that are outside of a participant’s normal schedule as indicated on their enrollment form. To activate this feature, login as a sponsor user and click on Setup and then select the button “Disallow Meals Outside of Schedule”. Meal will be disallowed outside of the normal schedule unless a reason is provided by the site.
Assign Sites and Specific Monitoring Forms to Staff
Sponsor Admin users can now assign the centers or providers in their sponsorship to particular staff (Sponsor Reporters). In addition, Sponsor Admin users can restrict the monitoring forms available to Sponsor Reporters on the My Food Program for Reviewers Mobile App. This means that a Sponsor Reporter can’t accidentally submit a review for the wrong center or provider or accidentally use the incorrect form! To assign sites and forms to Sponsor Reporters, click on “Users” on the sponsor dashboard and select from the dropdown choices.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Fixed date picker on Daily Meal Production with Leftovers and Dietary Accommodations
- Added a participant flag for Related/Non-Residential
- Renamed the button to generate income and enrollment forms to “Create Participant Registration Forms”
- Added a header with site information to the visit report
- Added site address to the Claim Summary Report
- Fixed food production display on mobile browser
- Renamed the checkbox on the participant page called “CACFP” to the very specific “Include in claims (if unchecked, attendance and meal counts can be recorded but will not be included in the claim)
Update 20.02.2
Change from “Attendance on a School Day” to “Meal Outside of Schedule”
We are changing the name of the box “Attendance on a School Day” to be more inclusive of daily notes that providers want to share about participants attending outside of their normal schedule. Here is what the screen will look like:
***PLEASE NOTE: For those providers using our invoicing system, checking the box “Meal Outside of Normal Schedule” will still flag the days as “School Days” and applies the “School Day Rate”. They should carefully review their invoices before printing or emailing them to parents.
Check of Participants Enrolled in Multiple Sites
We have a new sponsor-level report that checks all participants across all sites. If it finds a participant with the same last name and address, it displays it on this report.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Last day of the calendar month is now showing on the meal submission screen.
- Dashboard icon for enrollment forms has been renamed to provide clarity.
- The Meal Count by Age Range now also includes infants ages 0-5 months and 6-11 months.
- Headers were corrected for the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance.
- Meal Recap Report is categorizing participants by income eligibility category prior the creation of the claim.
Update 20.02.1
Added Helpful Information to Submit to Sponsor Screen
We have divided the Submit to Sponsor screen into three sections:
- New Meal Counts: these are meals that have not been checked for errors yet.
- Meal Counts with Errors
- Checked Meal Counts: these are meals that HAVE been checked for errors and did not trigger any disallow codes.
In addition, we put a large statement at the top of the screen to confirm that meals have been submitted to the sponsor. This is what the new screen looks like:
Updated the Enrollment Form Dashboard Indicator to Include Enrollment Forms that are Expiring in the next 30 days.
Improvements to Reports
- If no meals are disallowed for a claim, a blank Disallowed Meals Report is generated that confirms that there were no claim errors.
- Added the number of claimable meals and snacks by tier to the sponsor-level claims summary spreadsheet.
- Updated the Disallowed Meals Report to accurately report counts when an entire meal is disallowed.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
We made a few small tweaks to improve the user experience:
- The date and time that a site closure or field trip was entered is now displayed on the screen.
- It is now possible to create a printable infant menu if using infant menu by date.
- Inactive children are removed from parent invoices.
- Added more information about how to use the “Description for Print View” box on the menu planning page.
- For sites that operate meal shifts, we fixed a bug related to participants being checked in for multiple shifts.
Update 20.01.1
Individual Infant Menus
We now offer the ability to record the food items and amounts offered to each infant in care. The infant must be checked in for the meal first. Infants are listed, along with their ID number and age in months. Users select from the appropriate food components for that meal or snack.
At My Food Program, we work hard to design software that catches errors before they happen. That’s why we have the following safeguards in place for infant menus:
- You cannot record an amount of iron-fortified infant formula or breastmilk that is less than the minimum portion size.
- When you select a food item, the quantity displayed defaults to the minimum portion size for that age range.
- You cannot save the infant menu until you have recorded at least iron-fortified infant formula or breastmilk for each infant checked in for that meal or snack.
Track Facility License
Within each site, you can now add a facility license, including the effective and expiration dates. Sponsor users can also upload an image or scan of the license.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
We made a few small tweaks to improve the user experience:
- Renamed the dashboard button “Side-by-Side” to “Attendance & Meal Count Entry” and the field “Present” to the more precise term “Daily Attendance”.
- Fixed a bug on the Site Summary Report stating that a facility was open on Sunday when it was not.
- Renamed the checkbox “Provider’s Own Child” to “Provider’s Own or Residential Child”.
- Added a legend to the Monthly Meal Count with Attendance Report.
Update 19.12.01
New Interface for Food Production
We’ve combined the screens for food amounts and milk amounts into the same set of age ranges. No more entering age range estimates twice! Remember that the units that appear on the food production screen are driven by the units you select when adding food items to your menu. All food items have the unit in parentheses after the name of the food.
Record and Report Milk Purchased by Type and Amount
Users can now record milk purchases by fat percentage and amount (using cups, ounces, half-gallons or gallons). You’ll find this new feature in “Expenses”. When you select “Add Expense” and then “Milk”, you’ll see some extra choices appear:
Expense entries for milk are combined together in a new report “Milk Purchased Report”. In order to conduct a milk audit, you can now generate the Milk Purchased and the Milk Served reports and conduct the comparison.
For Paper Entry: Start with Participant’s Scheduled Meals
For those sites recording attendance and meal counts on paper and then using our weekly interface to transfer those counts, we have a time-saving step. You can now populate the meals normally eaten by that participant based on their schedule by clicking the button “Copy Schedule Meals”. You still need to mark attendance manually and adjust the meal counts based on participant schedule to those meals actually eaten. Remember that meals should only be claimed if they meet all the criteria for eligibility. This button is hidden by default – please contact us if you’d like to use this feature.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Estimated meal attendance by age range is now included on the Food Production Report for dates in the future
- Formatting changes to the Site Summary Reports for Manual Claims for ease of reading and a more reasonable report length
- Added ability to delete Special Diet Statements and Infant Meal Notification Forms
Update 19.11.01
Record Attendance on a School Day Using Side-by-Side Configuration
For family day care homes, we’ve added the ability to record the reason for a school-age child being present at an AM snack or Lunch. The meals and the reasons are aggregated into the sponsor-level report “Attendance on School Day”.
Enhancements to the Sponsor-Level Site Audit Report
We’ve converted the Site Audit Report from a PDF to a spreadsheet so that sponsors can sort and filter. We’ve also added fields for
- Monitor name
- Meal Observed (B, AM, L, PM, S, Ev, None)
- Announced (Y or N)
- Follow-up Required (Y or N)
- Not Home (Y or N)
- Next review due
Bulk Creation of Site Summary Reports for Manual Claim Providers
For those sponsors that use manual claims, the Site Summary Report is helpful to print to be reminded of licensed capacity, approved meals and participant schedules. Now sponsors can run the Site Summary Report for manual claim providers in bulk at the sponsor-level.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Corrected calculation for ARAM attendance
- Displayed manual claim disallows on the claims view screen
- Included manual claim disallows on the sponsor-level Claim Summary and Disallowed Meals report
- Added licensed capacity for each licensing age range to the Site Summary Report
Update 19.10.01
New Report: Claim Summary and Disallowed Meals
This sponsor-level report pulls together all the claim summary reports and disallowed meals reports for all sites into one PDF. This is helpful for sponsors who mail these documents to their sites.
New Report: Site Export File
This is a comprehensive spreadsheet of all the configurations for all of the sites under a sponsor. Sponsors can use this report to create mailing labels through mail merge or gather data on their sites. The report can include only active sites, only inactive sites or both. Since it’s a spreadsheet, sponsors can filter and sort the data however they like.
New Report: Sites with Missing/Expired Training
This report can be run three ways:
- Current Fiscal Year
- Current Calendar Year
- Last 12 Months
It lists the site name, site identification number and user name of any site-level user who does not have Civil Rights and training on CACFP required elements recorded in My Food Program or their training on these topics has expired.
New Report: Site Summary
This report is useful to print prior to a monitoring visit. It has the following information:
- Site Name
- Site Identification Number
- Address/City/State/ZIP
- Phone Number
- Email Address
- Hours and Days Open
- Meals and Service Times
- Licensed Capacity
- Monitoring visits from the past year
- Training in the current fiscal year
- For each active child:
- Name
- Date of Birth
- Age
- Schedule (Days and Typical Meals)
- Resident Child (Y or N)
- Enrollment form dates
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Fixed logic associated with dashboard button about staff training
- On pre-printed income/enrollment form, inactive children have the “enrolled” box un-checked
- Renamed the checkbox “Is enrolled or attends school” to the more accurate statement “Include in school age licensed capacity”
- Added whether a claim is online or manual to the sponsor-level claims summary for sponsors of family day care homes
- Added new fields for a monitoring visit: Meal Observed, Follow-Up Required, Not Home
Update 19.09.01
Ability for Family Child Care Home Sponsors to Create Manual Claims
Manual claims are used by sponsors that allow home providers to record attendance and meal counts on paper and manually add up the information needed to create a claim. Below is what the manual claim processing screen looks like in My Food Program. We have special pricing on manual claims. Contact us today for more information if you are a sponsor of family day care homes.
Designate Sites/Providers as Being Paid by Check or Direct Deposit
Sponsors can now designate the payment method for their sponsored sites in Site Details. This information is included in the claims summary spreadsheet (which summarizes all claims information for all sites and includes claim estimates by blended or actual claiming method). Sponsors can use this report to easily know which providers to generate checks for and which to include in an ACH file. My Food Program does not have a built-in system for processing provider payments or generating checks, but we’re happy to show you how you can use our claims summary spreadsheet and your current accounting software to accomplish the same thing.
New Reports: Enrollment Form Creation Date
If you allow sites to enter/upload their own enrollment forms, it can be difficult to know which ones you need to review. The enrollment form creation date report will help sponsors identify the enrollment forms that need to be reviewed. If the enrollment form is incomplete or inaccurate, the sponsor can delete the enrollment form and notify the site/provider of the need for a new form. If all is good with the enrollment form, then there’s no further action that a sponsor needs to take. Find the new Enrollment Form Creation Date report on the sponsor dashboard under “Reports”.
Other Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Designate family day care homes as Tier I, Tier II High, Tier II Mixed or Tier II Low. If designated as Tier I, the ability to enter effective and expiration dates.
- Claim upload file that works with TX-UNPS (claiming system for Texas Department of Agriculture) for family day care homes.
- Modified features that are viewable and/or editable by family day care homes, including site visits, hours open and reports that would identify specific children eligible for Tier I meals.
- Site-level users assigned to multiple sites now have their site list in alphabetical order.
Update 19.08.1
New and Improved Interface for Reports
Our reports have grown so much that we needed to sort them into categories so you can find the one that you want! The new report categories are:
- Attendance and Meal Count Reports
- Claims Reports
- Financial Reports
- Food Service Operations Reports
- Participant Reports
- Recordkeeping Reports
- Staff Reports
You will be asked to select a category before you can run the reports. While we were working with the report page, we also re-named a few reports to better describe their functionality.
- Meal Count by Name is now Monthly Meal Count with Attendance
- Five Day Meal Count Report is now Weekly Meal Count with Attendance
- Income Eligibility Information by Household is now Household Report
- Bulk Entry Sheet is now Paper Back-Ups
- Non-CACFP Participant List is now Ineligible Participant List
Improvements to the Sponsor Dashboard
The Sponsor claims tab has been simplified and now contains just a list of the sites with a claim for the month along with the number of reimbursable meals and snacks for the month. Detailed information about average daily attendance, claiming percentages and claim estimates have been moved to our enhanced claim summary (see New Sponsor Claims Report below!). We’ve also added the date and time that the site sent their data to the sponsor.
New Sponsor Claims Report
Our new claims report for sponsors is a one-stop shop for information related to claims for all your sites in one place. To generate the report, go to the sponsor dashboard under Reports. Select the method of claiming (blended or actual) and My Food Program will give you a full report for claims, including:
- Number of reimbursable meals and snacks
- Average Daily Attendance (Blend Rate Method)
- Number of participants in the A-Free, B-Reduced, C-Paid or Tier 1 and Tier 2 income eligibility categories (Blend Rate Method)
- Total claim estimates and estimates helpful for sponsors of unaffiliated centers
- Number of meals and snacks recorded for non-CACFP participants
- Number of meals and snacks disallowed for the month
Update 19.07.1
Copy Menus to Multiple Sites
We’ve enhanced our popular menu copy feature to include the option to copy to multiple sites with just one click. When you scroll to the bottom of the menu page, you’ll now see a drop-down list with your sites in alphabetical order. Click the sites that you want to copy the menu to and you are set!
Accurately Report Whole Grain Rich Requirements for Sites Using Offer Versus Serve
Offer versus Serve is a meal service option available to afterschool programs, adult day cares and summer programs in which participants are given choices instead of being required to take all the food items. In sites that use Offer versus Serve, all the grains must be whole grain-rich at the meal or snack that is intended to satisfy the requirement for offering one whole grain rich food per day. If a site is designated as “offer versus serve” in site details, then the whole grain rich requirement will only be met if ALL grains offered at a meal are whole grain rich.
Bug Fixes & Small Enhancements
We’ve cleaned up a few software bugs and tweaked some reports related to:
- Calculation of average daily attendance for sites using headcount meal count method
- Delivery receipts: added site address
- Display Medical Assistance number on Household Income Eligibility Report
- Daily Meal Count with Attendance Report includes only participants with meal counts in the report period
Update 19.05.1
Income Eligibility Category Calculator
My Food Program can now provide a suggestion for the income category into which a household should be placed based on their household size, income and the federal poverty guidelines. Since sponsors take final responsibility for household income determinations, you will still need to select the income category. You’ll find the new calculator on the household income statement page.
New Report: Meal Production Records with Leftovers and Dietary Accommodations
This report is especially helpful to our customers in Texas! This new report allows the site to record dietary accommodations made for specific participants as well as document the use of leftovers.
At the bottom of the Food Production screen, you will see two new buttons. The first one says “Record Use of Leftover/Recycled Food”. When you click on it, you will be taken to a screen that asks for the date the food was first served and how much you are using.
The second new button on the Food Production screen says “Record Substitution for Special Dietary Need”. When you click on that, a list of participants with Special Dietary Needs will be populated and you will be prompted to enter the substitution information.
The leftovers and substitutions for special dietary needs then flow through to the new report “Daily Meal Production Record with Leftovers and Dietary Accommodations”
Update 19.04.1
Meal Order Feature for Sponsors Using a Central Kitchen
Sites are now able to send orders for meals to their sponsor right through My Food Program! Sites can do this by going to the Menu page from the main dashboard and opening the date and meal for the order. Click on the blue “Edit Meal Order” button. Sites are able to enter meal orders up to 24 hours in advance of the meal and can designate what age range they need the meals for.
Sponsors can run a new report, Site Food Orders, so that they can produce and distribute the correct number of meals to each site!
New Report: Household Income Eligibility Report by Household
Our newest report allows you to see the relationship between participants and households and pulls together all the income and enrollment form information in one place. You’ll find this report in the “Participants” category of the Reports page.
New Report: Non-CACFP Participant Report
This report is for sponsors that have participants that are NOT included in the claim – for example, staff that need to be tracked for documentation of non-profit meal service or children who are not included in a claim because their parents provide food. You’ll find this report in the Participants section of the Reports page.
Other Minor Enhancements and Bug Fixes
- Food production amounts are now automatically rounded up to the nearest quarter unit
- Changes to the way the page loads for side-by-side attendance and meal count entry
- Repairs to the juice icon on the menu calendar
- Totals have been added to the Active Participants Report
- Meal counts are not allowed to be saved if attendance is not entered (this use to be a flag and then was disallowed during claims – now we’re being more proactive to prevent this mistake from occurring)
Update 19.02.1
Participant IDs added in more places!
Participant IDs are an easy way to track your participants, resolve duplicates, and help trace participants all the way from meal counts all the way down to the claim. You’ll now notice the Participant ID is displayed on the following screens:
- Attendance (web and mobile)
- Meal Count (web and mobile)
- Participant Page
- Household Page
We hope this is helpful to you in tracking and managing participants and households!
A new way to take attendance and meal counts!
We’ve implemented a new “side-by-side” option for web and mobile options, in which attendance and meal counts can be taken on the same screen. A participant MUST be marked as “present” before a meal count can be entered. This prevents any errors in which meal counts are marked with a corresponding attendance. Find this option in “Site Details”.
Our newest comprehensive report
Daily Meal Count with Attendance can now be run for All meals, CACFP meals only, or ARAM only meals.
Mistake-free meal counts for child care centers also operating the at-risk afterschool meals program.
Sponsors must now designate a roster as eligible for at-risk afterschool meals. When a roster is designated as at-risk afterschool, then it can only be used to mark at-risk afterschool meals for those meals eligible (meals not eligible for at-risk afterschool are marked as CACFP meals). Don’t forget: a site, meal and participant must also be marked as eligible for the at-risk afterschool meals in order to be included in the at-risk afterschool meals claim.
Mark specific meals as requiring food temperature entry prior to meal count entry (afterschool or summer sites only).
For each meal type, you can require food temperatures at time of dispatch, time of delivery and/or meal service times.
Disallow meals that are outside of a temperature range (afterschool or summer sites only).
Meals that are not at a safe temperature, as configured by the sponsor, can be disallowed during claims processing.
Generate a delivery receipt (afterschool or summer sites only).
Delivery receipts are meant to be printed and sent along with the delivery driver from a central kitchen or caterer. The delivery receipt has information about the menu, food production amounts, food temperatures and a place for signatures for both the delivery driver and the site.
Better reporting for those sites using our parent/household invoicing feature.
Our W10 report provides a summary of invoices paid by households printed on the IRS W-10 form and pre-filled with provider name, address and TIN. Our Revenue Summary Report lists each household and the amount that they paid for the calendar year.
New Report: Missing Infant Meal Notification
This report helps you track documentation of whether a parent is going to provide formula and food or whether they will accept the formula and food offered by the child care center. The report includes each participant who is under the age of 12 months that does not have “infant meal notification” recorded in their site details. The report displays their name, ID and parent/guardian name.
Update 18.10.1
Helpful Calendar Icons for the New Meal Pattern.
We’ve added icons to the menu calendar to make it easier and quicker for you to monitor compliance with the new meal pattern.
- The “whole grain” icon is grey if you don’t have a whole grain-rich food on your menu and it turns green once you do.
- A “juice” icon appears on any day in which you serve juice. Our menu planning system doesn’t allow you to add juice to a menu twice in one day.
- A “meat/meat alternate” icon appears if you substitute meat/meat alternate for grain at breakfast. Our menu planning system doesn’t allow you to do this more than three times in one week.
New Report: Daily Meal Count with Attendance
Officially this report is titled “Daily Meal Count with Attendance”, but around the office we’ve started calling it “The Whole Enchilada” report. This report pulls an incredible amount of information into one place and is especially helpful to show to state agencies during reviews. This report includes a list of all active participants with their age and ID along with their attendance and meal counts by day (similar to our current Meal Count by Name and Five Day Meal Count Report). It can be run for any 5-day period with any combination of rosters.
On the final page is a full reconciliation by day. We start with the “Payable” meals that made it to the claim and then also list the number of meals:
- Disallowed
- Over the claim limit
- Recorded for non-CACFP participants (such as staff or participants who bring their own meals)
- Raw total meal count
New Report: Grocery List
We added a report that helps you do your food shopping. It adds up how much you will need of the items on your menu based on participant schedules and produces a shopping list separated by food group. Below is a sample of the report.
We also made additional small improvements based on customer requests:
- Added parent/guardian name to the Missing Forms Report
- Made it easier to merge participants
- Prevented the creation of Food Production Records if all quantities were zero
- Created a new report to track monitoring visits
Update 18.09.1
On Monday, October 1st the transition period to the new meal pattern ends.
You will notice that the button in Site Details that says “Ignore Whole Grains” is now gone. Sponsors now have the choice of either full menu validation for the new meal pattern or no validation of menus. This checkbox is in Site Details and named “Ignore menu validation”.
We’ve added some other exciting features with the 2.0.0 release*!
- Sponsors and sites can now delete a menu, including an infant menu. Look for the red “Delete Menu” button on the menu planning page. Keep in mind that deleting a menu will also delete the associated food production record.
- Sponsors can now delete an income form. A blue hyperlink called “Delete income form” now appears on the far right of any income form that is eligible for deletion. If an income form was included in a claim, it cannot be deleted.
- Participants are automatically numbered using the External Site ID box. Every time you create a new participant from now on, they will automatically be assigned an ID. Contact us if you would like us to populate IDs for your existing participants.
- One of our most-requested features – the ability to prevent staff from adding participants using the mobile app! This has been a common way for duplicate participants to be created. If you’d like to restrict staff from adding participants using the mobile app, uncheck the box in Site Details that says “Allow staff to add participants using the mobile app”.
- We’ve separated the dashboard icons for income and enrollment forms. If you set enrollment forms to “Ignore” in Site Details, the enrollment form dashboard box will turn grey so that sites know that enrollment forms are not necessary.
Update 18.08.1
Download an income and enrollment form with participant and parent/guardian information pre-filled!
We’ve designed a single form that collects all the enrollment information required by USDA (participant’s normal days and hours in care as well as the meals normally received) along with the income information needed to place a household in an income category. Before using this form, we strongly recommend that you send it to your state agency for approval. Our form has already been reviewed by several state agencies. Please contact us if you need assistance sharing information with your state agency. Click here for instructions on how to generate these forms.
Sponsors can disallow meals recorded by a site.
Meals can be marked for disallow for a variety of reasons, including:
- Meal counts not current
- Meal counts not taken at point of service
- Meal served is not creditable
- Parent-provided meal
- Special dietary need not correctly accomodated
- All components not served at the same time
- Participant not eligible for CACFP
These meals will be excluded from the claim and will appear on the disallowed meals report as “Disallowed by Sponsor”. Click here for instructions on how to disallow meals. At this time, the disallow feature is only for sites using meal count by name (roster-based) meal count entry. We will be creating this feature for headcount meal count sites in the near future.
Ability to accommodate more complicated licensed capacity arrangements.
In some states, there are additional restrictions on licensed capacity that go beyond a simple count. For these situations, sponsors can add additional restrictions, such as “not to exceed 12 infants and toddlers combined” to their licensing age range configurations. Click here for instructions on how to set these additional limits.
Report Enhancements.
We’ve added the following new reports:
- Lapsed Participant Report: a list of participants who have not been checked in for attendance or meal count for at least 90 days. This will help sponsors and sites keep track of participants that should be set to “inactive”.
- Duplicate Case Number Report: this report searches all the households in a site and lists those with duplicate case numbers. This is helpful if a sponsor is trying to identify duplicate households.
- Sponsored Site Claim Summary Report: if you sponsor unaffiliated sites, then this report is for you! It is a simple summary of the number of meals/snacks included in a claim along with the amount that the site will receive (i.e. the full cash-in-lieu plus 85% of meal reimbursement).
- Sponsor-Level Claim Summary for Sponsors of Unaffiliated Centers: this report is also for sponsors of unaffiliated sites. It breaks down the reimbursement by the amount going to the sponsor and the amount going to the site. This can assist with bookkeeping and claim entry.
We’ve added the following new features to existing reports:
- Disallowed Meals Report: you now have the option of running the report to include or exclude meals that were not payable because they exceeded the daily claim limit.
- Meal Count by Name Report: for Texas sponsors, we added a paragraph to certify the accuracy of the counts.
- Expense by IRS Category Report: added additional expense categories and added a description column. This makes the report more useful for documenting nonprofit meal service.
Update 18.07.1
The USDA recently released a memo CACFP10-2018 which specified that sponsors using electronic systems can forgo the five-day reconciliation! However, meal counts cannot be used to generate attendance records for the purposes of the 5-day reconciliation. This is currently our default setting (since a participant must be in attendance in order to eat a meal), and regardless of how the site is configured:
- attendance records can always be manipulated separately from meal counts
- and
- participants can be checked in for attendance but not for meals.
In order to accommodate sponsors that wish to require attendance to be taken before entering meal counts, we are introducing a new feature!
After the upgrade has taken place*, you will see a new checkbox in “Site Details” called “Attendance Records kept outside of My Food Program”. After the upgrade, all of your sites will have this box checked by default. If the box is:
- CHECKED then attendance and meal counts work as they do today.
- UNCHECKED then the site must take attendance before entering meal counts.
If the box is UNCHECKED, the really exciting part is that only participants that are checked in for attendance will appear on the meal count list! For those sponsors that struggle with sites checking in the wrong participants for meals or have lengthy rosters, this could be a great option. However, be sure to train your sites carefully as they may be tempted to create a duplicate participant if they forget to mark a participant in for attendance and therefore don’t see them on the meal count list.
Update 18.06.1
We have more multi-site sponsors than ever using My Food Program. To meet the needs of our customers, we have created a new report that aggregates the claim information for all sites in one PDF document (shown below). You will find this report on your Sponsor Dashboard under “Reports”.
Simply select the claiming method used in your state (blend rate or actual meal count by type), select the month/year* and click “View Claims”. If you are going to print the report, we recommend you click “Download PDF” instead of trying to print directly from the web browser.
*The reports will only populate correctly for claims created after this feature was implemented. Disregard any reports for prior months.
Update 18.04.1
We’re releasing a new version of My Food Program that now includes the Summer Food Service Program! Sponsors of child care centers, family day care homes, emergency shelters and adult daycare facilities should not notice any changes. Sponsors of afterschool programs will notice that you now have the ability to track food temperatures.
Update 18.03.1
On the Web Application
We’ve updated the functionality for participants that are assigned to more than one roster. If a participant is already checked in for a meal on a different roster, their meal count box will be grayed out and there will be a note about the roster on which they were already checked in.
*Note that My Food Program has never allowed a participant to be checked in for the same meal twice. This new feature provides the information up-front. Prior to this update, if you tried to check a participant in twice for the same meal, an error message would appear and the duplicate count would need to be adjusted prior to saving the meal count. This new feature will prevent that problem from occurring in the first place!
On the Mobile Meal Count Application
We have added a new feature that allows the user to configure the length of the “auto-submit” time window. With some sites having large rosters, 20 seconds wasn’t enough time to scroll through all the names! To set this option, log into the mobile application and click on “info” in the upper-right corner. Use the slider to set the desired auto-submit time. The default auto-submit time is 20 seconds. The maximum auto-submit time is 180 seconds.
Update 18.01.2
Sponsors can now hide the “Submit to Sponsor” button until a calendar month is complete.
Sites are now required to resolve the error triggered when meal counts are greater than attendance before proceeding with the claim.
If they attempt to click “Submit to Sponsor” with this error in place, My Food Program will generate a reminder that this particular error must be fixed before proceeding.
Sponsor are stopped from entering income eligibility forms that are effective during a time period in which a claim has already been processed.
This locks in the income eligibility percentage and Participant Report. If a sponsor wishes to enter a household income statement that is effective during a month that already has a claim, they need to rollback the claim and reprocess it.
Continuous improvements
Both on menu validation and food production reports.
Update 18.01.1
Meal counts and attendance entry is locked-out after meal counts for the month have been submitted to sponsor.
This impacts site-level staff. Sponsors are still able to adjust meal counts and attendance after data has been submitted by the site.
Any meal can now be designated as eligible for the At-Risk Afterschool Meals Program.
At the site level, sponsors can designate which meals are eligible for reimbursement through the At-Risk Afterschool Meals Program. While any meal can be marked for the At-Risk Afterschool Meals Program, our claims processing system still ensures that reimbursement is only requested for one meal and one snack per participant.
Continuous improvements.
Bug fixes for Meal Participation, Milk Served and Bulk Entry Reports, allowing participants outside licensing age range to be set to “inactive” and recording CACFP hours for staff allocation.
Update 17.12.1
Option to hide the “Attendance” button.
This can be changed at the site level and was created so that teachers do not accidentally enter meal counts as attendance. This feature is available on both the website and the mobile app.
Option to restrict all staff to point of service.
Sponsors may now select if they want to allow center managers/directors to be able to change data submitted in the past, such as correcting an inaccurate meal count or attendance. (As always, attendance and meal counts can never be entered for future dates).
New Report: Average Daily Participation.
This report is at the sponsor level and allows sponsors to continuously monitor the average number of meals served per day. This is especially useful for sponsors that provide meals to their sites.
New Report: Zero Meal Counts.
This report allows sponsors to quickly identify any meals or snack that have no meal count entered at all.
Update 17.11.1
New Features include:
- Ability to create a claim without entering menus (click the box “Ignore Meal Validation” in site details – more about that feature below!)
- Optimized the way meals are disallowed if a whole grain-rich food is not served during a day
- Missing forms report can be run to check for missing enrollment forms, missing household income forms or both
- Go directly to meal count entry from a menu (go to any meal on any day and click the blue “Edit Meal Count” button)
- Various bug fixes related to new meal pattern, food production records and reports
Update 17.04.1
Customize Site Details
Sponsors now have the option to decide whether or not to:
- Activate the invoicing feature
- Check whether meal counts exceed licensed capacity
- Disallow meals for missing enrollment forms
- Disallow meals that are missing infant menus