A normal part of a review of a day care home or sponsored center includes a comparison of three critical elements – enrollment, attendance, and meal counts – for a five-day period. Reconciliation of meals counts is effective as a quick spot check to highlight red flags in claiming procedures, without requiring the collection of multiple sets of records.
Why Conduct Reconciliation?
Five-day reconciliation is a simple way for sponsoring organization monitors to look for consistency and determine that meal counts and claims are reasonable. Attendance serves as an edit check for meal counts. Enrollment serves as an edit check on attendance. The reconciliation works because meal counts can never exceed the number of children recorded in attendance at the day care home or center.
Making the Comparison
To provide basic assurance of the integrity of claims for reimbursement, sponsors have long been required to compare information contained on enrollment documents with data on attendance and meal counts:
- Are enrollment and attendance records current and accurate?
- Are meal counts consistent with attendance for all meals?
- Does attendance ever exceed enrollment?
If the data are consistent, it is likely that the day care home or sponsored center is keeping accurate enrollment and attendance records and the number of meals served each day is correctly reported. If the data show unusual patterns or inconsistencies, the monitor must try to determine the reasons for the discrepancies and take additional steps to decide corrective action and whether any meals should be disallowed or an overclaim should be established.
Sponsors should instruct monitors to follow State agency guidance to resolve discrepancies and determine whether to disallow meals or recover claims for reimbursement. Having written policies and procedures helps ensure consistent resolution of discrepancies.
Review Steps
The monitor’s task is to determine whether the meal counts are consistent when compared to the daily or shift attendance for all meal types for the selected five-day period.
For all reviews, monitors choose five consecutive operating days from the meal count record, usually from the current or previous month, or some combination of days from the current and previous months if the review is conducted early in a month.
Getting Started
- Choose five consecutive days prior to the day of review from the meal count record, including week-ends and holidays, when the facility was open and serving meals.
- Gather records of:
- Meal counts for this period,
- Current enrollment forms, and
- Number of children or adult participants in attendance during this period.
- Follow the steps that fit the type of facility under review:
- In a day care home, child care center, or adult day care center, the monitor compares aggregate daily meal counts for each meal type to attendance and enrollment records.
- The monitor compares meal counts to both attendance and enrollment records, except in at-risk afterschool care centers, outside-school-hours-care centers, and emergency shelters where enrollment forms are not required.
- If no enrollment forms are required, the monitor would reconcile meal counts to attendance records.
- If no enrollment or attendance records are required, the monitor would conduct a general review of the facility’s meal counting and claiming procedures that would not include a five-day reconciliation.
Conducting Reconciliation
- Identify the number of children or adult participants in attendance during the five-day period.
- Compare total meal counts to daily attendance to ensure that meal counts for each approved meal type did not exceed the number of children or adult participants in attendance on any day.
- Where enrollment forms are required, compare total enrollment to daily attendance to ensure that the number of children or adult participants in attendance did not exceed the number who were enrolled.
Completing the Review
If the meal count, attendance, and enrollment data are consistent the reconciliation is complete. If meal counts cannot be reconciled with enrollment or attendance data:
- Determine the source of the error and if there is a valid reason for the discrepancy.
- If necessary, take additional steps, such as:
- Reconciling the records of individual children or adult participants, by name; or
- Expanding the reconciliation beyond five days; or
- Initiating a household contact; or
- Conducting an additional unannounced visit.
- Address the need for appropriate corrective action to resolve the difference.
- Determine if any disallowance of meals or establishment of an overclaim is necessary.
Resources
Review these ideas and adopt the strategies that seem reasonable to you and fit with your program. For additional questions, CACFP participants and the general public should contact the state agency for help. State agencies should contact
their FNS regional office.