Minute Menu Blog

Managing Policies in Minute Menu CX

Minute Menu CX has been designed to be highly customizable in order to meet a variety of needs.  There are “policies” in the software that control how Minute Menu CX will behave in certain claiming situations.

Throughout the month, meal counts, attendance, and menus (and possibly more) are entered into the Minute Menu CX program.  At the end of the month, this data will need to be “processed” by the software (by going to Claims>>Process Claims).  When a claim is processed, the system applies “edit checks” to the submitted meal count, menu, and enrollment data and creates an error for any edit check that did not “pass.”  Each error is documented on a report called the Office Error Report (OER).  So for example, the system will check to make sure that an any individual child is not reimbursed for more than 2 Snacks + 1 Meal, or 2 Meals + 1 Snack.  If a child was claimed for additonal meals (which is perfectly acceptable using the Minute Menu CX software), the extra meals will automatically disallowed, and the OER will contain a notification message, or claim error(s), noting each disallowance.

(Side Note:  Minute Menu CX will automatically select the meals with the highest reimbursement rate to include on the claim.  The meals with the lowest reimbursement rate would be the ones to be disallowed.)

Some “policies” cannot be changed within the software – such as policies mandated by the federal government (i.e. the 2+1 rule mentioned above) that apply to all agencies across the nation.  HOWEVER, local & state regulations (which vary from state to state) are controlled by the Manage Policies function located in the software.  Each policy usually has 3-4 options that will determine which errors will be generated on the OER, and the outcome of those errors.

You have access to this function in Minute Menu CX by going to Administration>>Manage Policies.  To use the function, click the [+] sign to expand a category.  Click the [+] sign again to see the explanation of a specific policy.  Sometimes the explanation runs off the page and the statement isn’t completely visible – double click on the words and the entire statement will come up in an easy-to-read dialogue box.  Click the dropdown box to change the policy value.  Some policys may allow users to enter a numeric value.  Don’t forget to click [Save] before leaving the screen.

PLEASE NOTE: Please be careful when changing policy settings!  Edit these settings with extreme caution. If you have any questions about the impact of a preference change, we suggest that you contact Minute Menu.  This task should involve a main decision maker in the company who is familiar with food program regulations and has the authority to make major company decisions regarding policy.

I would suggest that when making changes to policies, note exactly which policies were changed (and their previous setting) so that if an error was made, you can easily go back and correct it.