National CACFP Week

March 20, 2013 by 2 Comments

This week is National CACFP Week.  No one will dispute that our nation’s children need nutritious food to grow to their healthy, full potential.  This article from Time magazine highlights how difficult this can be in a childcare setting.  All across the country these small businesses are challenged with balancing the need for nutritious food and the need to keep their child care businesses operating in the black.  The CACFP can help them bridge the funding gap, but as this article illustrates, the complexity of the program can be difficult for child care providers to navigate without advocates and mentors to help them along the way.  Our software is one of the ways that participants can help manage the complexities of the CACFP.  But even with good tools in place it is still important for us to advocate for measures that make program participation easier and make the program itself more accessible to those who need it most.

Filed under Center Sponsor, Homes Sponsor, Minute Menu, Minute Menu CX, Minute Menu HX, Minute Menu Kids, Provider Tagged with

Electronic Payments for Child Care Available with Minute Menu Kids Pro

February 20, 2012 by Leave a comment

By Tom Copeland, Former Director of the Redleaf National Institute, http://www.tomcopelandblog.com/, May 2007

 
It’s the day parents are supposed to pay their family child care provider and some providers worry: Will the parent forget their checkbook? Will the parent tell me she’s run short of cash and ask me to accept payment later? Will the check bounce?

Getting paid on time is one of the child care industry’s biggest headaches. No one likes to wait until the next day, next week or their customer’s next paycheck to be paid for services they provided last week. Yet having to approach your customers for timely payment is often more awkward than the wait. Read more of this post

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Meet Lori Johnson: Professional Online Claims Booster!

August 20, 2010 by Leave a comment

Early this year, Lori Johnson joined us as our new Junior Implementation Specialist. She’s part of a team that works to make sure that both new and existing clients get the most out of their Minute Menu HX software.  Since January Lori’s been working hard with sponsors just starting on Minute Menu HX to get them going and to get their providers claiming online as fast and as problem-free as possible.  She’s been doing a fantastic job, and we wouldn’t expect anything less.  Before Minute Menu Systems, Lori worked for a CACFP sponsor in Indiana that has a phenomenal 96% of their providers claiming online!  Lori was a big part of achieving that feat and loves sharing her experience with other sponsors and strategizing with them over how they can increase their online claiming percentages, too.

Recently Lori has also started working with sponsors who already use Minute Menu HX to help them create plans to move even more providers online.  We’ve helped sponsors achieve 10-20% increases in just a few months, even if your agency already has online claimers.  If your agency is interested in working with her, she’d love to hear from you, too!  Give Lori a call at 972-671-5211 or email her at lori@minutemenu.com.

Filed under Homes Sponsor, Minute Menu, Minute Menu HX, Minute Menu Kids, Provider

Did You Know? Merging Provider Accounts & Importing Children into Minute Menu HX

February 10, 2010 by Leave a comment

Do any of your providers use 2 separate Minute Menu Kids accounts—1 to submit their claim and a different account to use the Pro invoicing and tax tracking features?  We can help combine the accounts so that providers only have to use 1 login for everything—and their personal accounting data remains private.  Also, if a provider comes on to your program and already has a subscription to Pro—either because they bought it themselves or it was purchased by another sponsor on their behalf—we can help import their child information into your system and save the provider additional data entry time.  (Please note, we cannot import children from incoming providers who only used the free WebKids version.  They have to have the Kids Pro system with child data that belongs to them, not to their former sponsor, in order to import the children.)

The process of combining the accounts is called “merging.”  And merging can have its pluses and minuses.  The huge advantage is that providers don’t have to do double entry into 2 systems to keep their accounting and food program records.  The one consideration before merging is that historical menu & attendance data on the provider’s side may be lost.  The sponsor’s data—what you have in your system—will replace any menu & attendance data that the provider may have recorded under the 2nd login.   So, when a provider wants to merge accounts, just refer them to tech support.  We can evaluate both accounts and determine what old data (if any) they will lose.  We also have the provider give us approval before we do the merge and advise them to archive their old data on paper before it is removed in the merge.

When a provider comes to your agency and already has a subscription to Pro, we can import the child data from their Pro billing records into your Minute Menu HX database.  If we do this import, all children will import in Pending status.  You will then need to do a one-time “cleanup” to temporarily activate and then withdraw any duplicates that you may already have entered into your Minute Menu HX database and any children that the provider no longer has in care.

Filed under Homes Sponsor, Minute Menu HX, Minute Menu Kids, Provider

Tax Time is Upon Us!

January 13, 2010 by 1 Comment

As the memories of holiday feasts, wrapping and unwrapping gifts, and spending time with family and loved ones begin to recede, it’s time to look forward to a New Year and to …..

 ……. Filing Your Taxes.

 

It’s a daunting and time consuming task, and it always comes with pre-loaded with guilt and stress.  But it doesn’t have to be this way at all!

 

By upgrading your basic Minute Menu Kids account to the “Pro” features, you will unlock and unleash the powerful and user friendly accounting tools found within the Kids Pro software.

  Read more of this post

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Sponsors Who Purchase “PRO” Features Keep Providers 44% Longer!

November 6, 2009 by Leave a comment

Based on the data that sponsors have entered  in to Minute Menu HX, Sponsors who purchase access to Minute Menu Kids Pro (with its excellent accounting and tax tracking features) keep providers for an average of 14 months longer than Sponsors who don’t.  Here are the statistics:

Average Length of  Program Participation for Providers Now Withdrawn:

Sponsor Provides Pro: 46 months

Sponsor Does Not Provide Pro: 32 months

Average Length of Program Participation for Providers Still Active:

Sponsor Provides Pro: 75 months

Sponsor Doesn’t Provide Pro: 52 months

Sponsors have told us the many reasons why they choose to purchase Kids PRO for their providers, including:

- helping their providers professionalize their business

- encouraging the providers to maintain records

- strengthening “partnership” with providers

- competitive advantage in outreach

Any way you slice it, the statistics are there.  And while your providers can purchase Kids PRO for themselves, we very deep discounts for Sponsors who purchase Kids PRO for all of their online claimers.  For as little as a one-time $49 subscription fee, Sponsors can give these valuable tools to their providers for as long as that provider stays with their agency!  No renewal fees, ever.

Feel free to call us or email Natalie@minutemenu.com if you are interested in how you can provide these PRO features to your providers!

Filed under Homes Sponsor, Minute Menu HX, Minute Menu Kids Tagged with ,

Provider Record Maintenance Requirements and Minute Menu

May 15, 2009 by Leave a comment

USDA also issued a memo in March of 2009 clarifying record maintenance requirements for providers.  Providers are required to retain claiming records under their control for 3 years after the close of each fiscal year, which means they may be required to keep up to 3 years and 11 months worth of records at one time.  Providers may not rely on their Sponsors to retain these records for them.  The memo can be found at http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Care/Regs-Policy/policymemo/2007-2009/CACFP03-2009.pdf

Minute Menu has compiled a list of “best practices” regarding provider record maintenance, organized by provider claiming method.  This list is available for download in the Documentation area of the Minute Menu Sponsor website.  You can log in to www.minutemenu.com using the same login information that you currently use to access the Minute Menu HX software on your computer.

Providers who use any Minute Menu eclaiming method (WebKids, Minute Menu Kids, Minute Menu Kids Pro, or C-K Kids) will always have access to the menu and attendance information that they have saved online, as long as they have Internet access and remain active with your agency. They must always, however, retain hard copies of signed child enrollment forms.  Unsigned reprints of child enrollments will not satisfy the record maintenance requirements.

Filed under Homes Sponsor, Minute Menu HX, Minute Menu Kids Tagged with , ,

National Association for Family Child Care and Minute Menu Systems Partner to Promote Quality and Professionalism in Family Child Care

March 16, 2009 by Leave a comment

Each and every weekday, over a million of America’s children receive child care from one of over 250,000 family child care providers across the United States. The National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to promoting quality child care by strengthening the profession of family child care, has worked for years to help these caregivers offer the highest quality of care to the next generation of Americans. Minute Menu Systems, the leading provider of quality, low-cost business management software for family child care providers, has now partnered with NAFCC to further promote this mission.
Read more of this post

Filed under Minute Menu, Minute Menu Kids, Provider Tagged with , ,

Clarification: “Staff Mode” view in Minute Menu Kids

September 16, 2008 by Leave a comment

When a provider downloads the Minute Menu Kids program, they receive a 30-day free trial for our “Pro” features.  These new sections of the software let providers enter and track private, personal information related to their business (including bank account information) that is unrelated to the food program.  In order to ensure the security of this data, when they log in to Minute Menu Kids for the first time, they are prompted and advised to change their password.

The new password they create is a “hidden” password, and only they know what it is.  However, the password that you have on file for them will still work.  When this old password is used, you will log into Minute Menu Kids in “Staff Mode.”  In “Staff Mode” you will only see the food program sections of the software; the “Pro” sections will be hidden.  This protects the privacy of the providers information while still allowing you to help them with food program related questions.

If your provider sees a message saying she’s in “Staff Mode,” that means that she created a new password for herself but is using the old password to log in.  If the provider has forgotten her new password, a clicking on the link on the login page will email them the new password.  Providers do not need to tell you (and should not tell you) their new, secret password.

Filed under Homes Sponsor, Minute Menu Kids

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