Read the CACFP meal service screens
Tom is looking at the CACFP screens before he trusts a single number on them. This page is how to tell, for each one, whether it was measured, whether it is structurally zero, or whether it is written into the page.
This is the same kind of page as the ones covering Attendance and Compliance earlier in this guide, its value is knowing which numbers to trust. It covers CACFP Meal Service, Meal Records, a meal record's detail page, Point of Service Entry and Reimbursement Rates. The claim screens are covered on the module landing page.
Everything on CACFP Meal Service
Subtitled "Track meals, validate USDA compliance, and generate monthly claims." Four panels.
| Panel | What it shows | Trust it? |
|---|---|---|
| Allergy Alerts | Child's name and allergy | Partly. Real data, but it shows every child with an allergy in the whole organisation, not this site's |
| Log Meal Count (composer) | The four-band entry form with a Validate button | The check's verdict is real. The save always fails, see Record a meal count |
| CACFP Monthly Claim | Four tiles and a daily breakdown | Two tiles real, two structurally zero, below |
| Meal Records | Every record for the site, grouped by date | Real, and it is every record ever, with no way to see one page at a time |
The four tiles on CACFP Monthly Claim
The panel is subtitled with the site name and the current calendar month. It is not tied to any claim, and it cannot be changed to a different month.
| Tile | Meaning | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Meal Days | Distinct dates with a meal record this month | Real |
| Total Served | Sum of meals served across this month's records | Real |
| Valid Rate | valid meals ÷ total meals, as a percentage | Permanently 0%. No meal record is ever marked valid |
| Est. Reimbursement | The reimbursement estimate | Permanently $0.00. Two independent reasons |
Valid Rate turns green at 90% and above and stays amber below, so it is always amber. It is not a warning about your site.
Est. Reimbursement is zero because the calculation adds up only valid records, and because it multiplies by a rate table that no screen in PTRS can fill in. A missing rate is silently treated as zero. The calculation in full is on The reimbursement arithmetic.
View daily breakdown opens a per-record table, Date, Meal Type, Served, Valid. The Valid column is a cross on every row.
Meal Records
Subtitled "Track daily meal counts by type and age group · USDA CACFP."
The date navigator and the five period cards
Arrows move a day at a time; a Today pill appears once you have moved away. Beneath it, five cards, Breakfast, AM Snack, Lunch, PM Snack, Supper.
An unrecorded period is a dashed card reading Not yet recorded with a +; pressing it opens the Log Meal sheet, which cannot save. A recorded period shows the total served, up to three menu items, and a tick or cross.
Each card shows a time, 7:00 to 9:00 AM, 9:30 to 10:00 AM, 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM, 3:00 to 3:30 PM, 5:00 to 6:30 PM. They are the same for every site, every day of the week and every season, they are not read from your site's own settings.
PTRS can hold a service window for each site and meal type, and can be set on Vended Meal Management, and nothing on this page reads it. Do not treat these times as your site's approved service window.
The three quick stats
| Stat | Meaning | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Periods Logged | Records on the selected date, out of 5 | Real |
| Total Served | Their summed counts | Real |
| Validated | How many of them are marked valid | Permanently 0 / N |
The three History tabs
All Records is every meal record for the site, ever, with no date limit and no way to see one page at a time, so a site with three years of service returns several thousand rows on every visit.
This Week narrows to the last seven days.
Needs Attention holds every record in PTRS, because no record is ever marked valid. It is not a shortlist of problems; it is the same list under a different name.
Each date group shows a validated count in the same permanently-zero form.
A meal record's detail page
Shows the date, the meal type as a coloured badge, the counts by age group, and the menu items.
The validation results block only appears once PTRS has stored a check result against the record. Nothing in PTRS ever stores one, so the block never appears, on any record, in any copy of PTRS.
The Back link returns to CACFP Meal Service, not to Meal Records, even when you arrived from Meal Records.
The counts-by-age-group block shows whatever was actually stored, and four screens write four different sets of age bands. A record you edited will often show more bands than you entered.
Point of Service Entry
Subtitled "Record daily meal counts and view real-time daily limit status." With no site selected it shows No Location Selected and nothing else.
| Panel | What it shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Limits | Max Meals/Day, Max Snacks/Day, Max Total Events | Real configuration, the site's own settings, or the 2 / 2 / 3 defaults when none exists |
| Record Meal Count | Six-band entry form | Fails on every save, sends your email address where a staff record is required |
| Daily Meal Roster | A table for today | Real, and misnamed, see below |
The heading promises "real-time daily limit status." The panel shows three configured ceilings and no usage against them, because the record of a child's meals for the day is never written by anything in PTRS.
The Override Active badge and the DDOE Approval Status block only appear once a site's limits have been changed from the defaults, and nothing in PTRS can change them from a screen, so today neither ever appears.
The panel is headed Daily Meal Roster and its columns are Meal Type and Count, and it shows the same day summary used elsewhere on this page, one row per meal period, not per child.
The real per-child roster exists in PTRS and is reachable from no screen, and it reads the same table that nothing ever writes to.
"No meal records for this date" here means no meal record for the day, not no children.
The page's own entry form is shown to everyone except a guardian. The Daily Limits and Roster panels are shown to everyone, without exception.
Reimbursement Rates
Subtitled "USDA CACFP reimbursement rates per meal type and eligibility tier," and shown with a fiscal year and the ARAS programme name.
It reads "No rates configured." in every copy of PTRS, with an instruction to load the USDA rates that nothing in the interface can carry out. There is no button anywhere that does it.
Two further things to know if rates are ever loaded:
- PTRS works out the fiscal year in your browser as running October to October. Before 1 October 2026 it asks for 2025-2026; from that date it asks for 2026-2027, and both rate tables built into PTRS are labelled 2025-2026. The page will empty itself on 1 October.
- The programme is fixed to ARAS. A Summer Food site cannot see its rates here at all.
- The list shows every rate marked active and does not check whether today falls inside its effective dates, so an expired rate still appears in the schedule alongside its expiry date.
The one-line summary
| Number | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Meal Days, Total Served, per-record counts | Real |
| Allergy alerts | Real, but organisation-wide rather than site-scoped |
| Daily Limits 2 / 2 / 3 | Real configuration, no usage measured against it |
| Valid Rate, Validated n / N, every tick or cross | Permanently zero / permanently a cross |
| Est. Reimbursement | Permanently $0.00 |
| Meal-period service times | The same for every site |
| Rate schedule | Permanently empty |
Related
Checked against PTRS on 7 September 2026.