Who can do what with meals and claims

Fifty-four things PTRS can do around meal counting and the monthly claim. PTRS can do 251 things in CACFP in total; the rest belong to Who can do what with enrolment and records (41) and to the menu, inventory, procurement, civil rights, training and monitoring screens not yet documented in this portal.

Who can do this, read this first

Staff members, site directors, regional directors, organisation administrators and super admins can do every one of the fifty-four things on this page. Nobody else. PTRS checked every one of the 251 things it can do in this module, and only one of them narrows that list further, the procurement spend report, which is refused to staff members, and it belongs to a part of the module not covered here.

So for all fifty-four things on this page, that one list of five roles is the whole answer.

There is no line between reading and approving

The same one rule covers everything in CACFP, from looking at a meal count to approving a federal reimbursement claim, and it admits staff members. Creating a claim, submitting one with a signed certification, approving it, rejecting it, adjusting it, creating or amending a rate, creating a vendor and approving a purchase order are all allowed for the most junior working role in PTRS.

The menu hides Create New Claim, Approve, Reject and Run Reconciliation from staff members. That is a menu choice, not a real control: PTRS accepts the same actions from a staff member's own account. This is recorded for the PTRS team and is not changed by this guide. See the module landing page.

Every one of these also requires your account to belong to an organisation. Without one, PTRS refuses with "Organization context is required."

How to read "Reachable" below

A screen means a page or dialog in PTRS genuinely uses this action in normal use.

No screen reaches it means PTRS was built with the pieces needed to offer this from a screen, most of the plumbing exists, and nothing in the running product ever calls on it.

Either way, nothing in the product you can open today reaches the action.

Twenty-nine of these fifty-four have no screen that reaches them.

Meal records, 8 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Look up a site's meal records	Every meal record ever recorded for the site, plus organisation-wide allergy alerts. No date limit, no paging	CACFP Meal Service, Meal Records, and two dashboard pieces
Look up one meal record	The full record	A meal record's own detail page
Look up allergy alerts	Every child with an allergy in the organisation	CACFP Meal Service, two dashboard pieces, the urgent action strip
Log a meal count	Records a meal count	The header's + → Meal Count, and the two composer forms and the point-of-service form. Only the header dialog succeeds
Correct a meal count	Within 60 days of the meal date	The Edit button on Meal Records
Delete a meal count	Removes the row entirely, within 60 days	The Delete button on Meal Records
Check a menu against the meal pattern	Runs the real check. Stores nothing	The two composer forms
Preview the current month's claim	The figures behind the CACFP Monthly Claim panel	CACFP Meal Service, two dashboard pieces

Note that PTRS uses the same web address for two different things: looking up a site's meal records takes a site's id, while correcting or deleting one takes a meal record's id. Same shape of address, different subject.

Field rules for these are on Meal and claim fields. The arithmetic behind the claim preview is on The reimbursement arithmetic.

Claims, 13 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Start a claim	Creates a Draft	Create New Claim on Claims Management. Always fails, it sends a programme name PTRS does not recognise
List claims	Filterable by site, status and month	Claims Management
Look up one claim	The full detail, with its line items	A claim's own detail page
Check a claim without submitting it	Runs every validation rule	No screen reaches it, the check panel says "Run validation to check this claim" and offers nothing to press
Submit a claim	Certifies and submits it	The certification form
Approve a claim		A claim's detail page → Approve
Reject a claim		A claim's detail page → Reject
Amend a claim	Creates a new Draft revision	No screen reaches it
List a claim's check results		The validation panel
Override a failed check		No screen reaches it, the Override button does nothing when pressed
List a claim's status history		The status timeline
List a claim's adjustments		The adjustment table
Add an adjustment		No screen reaches it

Six of the seven reachable actions act on a claim that already exists, and no claim can be created, so in practice only the list runs, and it returns nothing.

The state machine behind these is on How a claim moves through its lifecycle.

Claim analytics, 5 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Monthly claim trends	Claims grouped by month, year and programme	Claim History & Analytics, and the page reads four figures the response does not carry
Revenue forecast	A flat average projected forward	Claim History & Analytics, and the page reads three figures the response does not carry
Meal pattern analysis		No screen reaches it
Sponsor summary		No screen reaches it
Fund reconciliation		No screen reaches it

The forecast is a flat average, and the page labels one of its figures a percentage

The forecast averages every Approved or Paid claim's totals across the whole organisation, all sites and all months together, and repeats that single figure for each month ahead. There is no trend, no season and no per-site split. Every claim's totals are zero, so the average is zero.

The last figure the forecast returns is a count of distinct claim months. Claim History & Analytics shows it as a confidence percentage, a figure the response does not contain, in a slot where the nearest real value is a count, not a percentage. Both are hidden only because the forecast list is empty.

Consolidated claims, 4 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Create a consolidated claim		No screen reaches it
List consolidated claims		Consolidated Claims
Look up one		No screen reaches it
Submit one		No screen reaches it

The only reachable one is the list, and nothing can create a row for it to show. Consolidated Claims is permanently "No consolidated claim data available" and is not in the sidebar, reachable only by typing its web address.

Food service costs, 2 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Record a food service cost		No screen reaches it
List food service costs		No screen reaches it

Nonprofit food service cost accounting, a federal CACFP requirement, is built completely and has no screen anywhere in PTRS.

Reimbursement rates, 5 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
List rates	Does not check whether today falls in the rate's effective window	Reimbursement Rates
Create a rate		No screen reaches it
Amend a rate		No screen reaches it
Find the current rate for a meal, tier and programme		No screen reaches it
Load the standard rates for a fiscal year		No screen reaches it

Four of the five have no screen, and the four include every way of adding or changing a rate. The only way to get a rate into PTRS is through someone with direct system access, which is why Reimbursement Rates reads "No rates configured." in every copy of PTRS, with an instruction to load the USDA rates that nothing on the page can carry out. The rate figures and their two disagreeing sources are on The reimbursement arithmetic.

Point-of-service counting, 5 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Record a point-of-service meal count	Writes a meal record with an empty menu and announces nothing	No screen reaches it
Look up a day's meal summary	Meal types and totals for one day	The roster panel on Point of Service Entry
Look up a day's per-child roster	The real per-child roster	No screen reaches it, and none was ever built for it
Correct a point-of-service count		No screen reaches it
Withdraw a point-of-service count	Keeps the row and records why	No screen reaches it

The screen called Point of Service Entry does not actually use any of these five. Its form saves through the ordinary meal-count action above, and its "Daily Meal Roster" panel calls the day summary, not the roster, so it lists meal types and counts, never children. The real roster reads a table that nothing ever writes to.

Meal record corrections, 4 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Correct a meal record properly	60-day window, takes a stated reason, records the previous and new counts	No screen reaches it, and none was ever built for it
Request an override outside the window		No screen reaches it
Approve an override request		No screen reaches it
List a record's correction history		No screen reaches it

All four are unreachable. The properly recorded correction path, with a stated reason, sits unused; the interface uses the plain Edit button instead, which enforces the same 60-day window and records no reason and no before-and-after values.

Daily limits, 4 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Look up a site's daily limits	The configured limits, or the 2 / 2 / 3 defaults	The Daily Limits panel on Point of Service Entry
Change a site's daily limits		No screen reaches it
List a day's per-child logs		No screen reaches it, and none was ever built for it
Look up how long records are kept	Record count, oldest record, years retained	No screen reaches it, and none was ever built for it

Reconciliation, 4 things

Action	What it does	Reachable
Monthly reconciliation report	Meals against attendance for a month	Attendance-Meal Reconciliation, and it asks for every site at once, which PTRS refuses
Daily reconciliation detail		No screen reaches it
Resolve a discrepancy	Needs to know which staff member is resolving it	No screen reaches it, and no screen tells PTRS who is resolving it anyway
Run reconciliation for a day		Run Reconciliation on the same page, also asks for every site at once

Both actions the page calls fail before PTRS even looks at them, because the page asks for every site rather than naming one. The page has no site picker.

Messages PTRS can give

What you did	What PTRS says
Your account has no organisation	"Organization context is required."
Sent a programme PTRS does not know	"Invalid program type: X."
Sent a meal type PTRS does not know	"Invalid meal type: X."
Sent a date PTRS cannot read	"Invalid date format: X."
Sent counts PTRS cannot read	A message naming what is wrong with the counts
Tried to log a duplicate meal count	"Duplicate meal record. Edit existing record instead."
Asked for a meal record that does not exist	"Meal record was not found."
Tried to correct a meal record past its window	"Meal records older than 60 days cannot be corrected."
Asked for a claim that does not exist	"Claim was not found."
Tried to submit a claim that is not a Draft	"Claim must be in Draft status to submit. Current status: X." (and three similar messages for other actions)
Submitted without acknowledging the certification	"Certification statement must be acknowledged before submission."
Submitted a claim past its deadline	"Submission deadline has passed. A late submission exception is required."
Submitted a claim that fails a blocking check	"Claim has N blocking validation error(s) that must be resolved before submission."
The approver and the submitter are the same person	"Approver must differ from submitter (separation of duties)."
Tried to start a duplicate Draft	"A draft claim already exists for this site for this month."
Asked for a rate that is not configured	"No active rate found for ARAS/Lunch/Free."
Tried to create a duplicate rate	"An active rate already exists for this combination."

PTRS holds a better set of messages for claims than it uses

PTRS defines a fuller, more precise set of messages for the claim actions than the ones the claim actions actually send, including a clearer separation of duties message, and none of the five claim actions uses that better set. They build their own messages instead, and those are the ones listed above. If you are matching text in an integration, match what is listed here, not what a reading of PTRS's error definitions would suggest.

Summary

Group	Things PTRS can do	Reachable from a screen
Meal records	8	8
Claims	13	9
Claim analytics	5	2
Consolidated claims	4	1
Food service costs	2	0
Reimbursement rates	5	1
Point-of-service counting	5	1
Meal record corrections	4	0
Daily limits	4	1
Reconciliation	4	2
Total	54	25