Maryann Durrant (USBE):
The money that is received as reimbursement on the food program is coming from tax payer dollars. Because of this, it’s important that money be spent on what it is intended for. 100% of your monthly reimbursement must be used towards operating your food program. You wouldn’t ever be earning a profit from the reimbursement you receive. Costs that you can include as food program costs would be the food you purchase, the paper goods that you use in the meal service, the cost of your employees time when they’re purchasing, preparing, and serving the food, as well as the cost of your time when you’re taking care of the paperwork involved with the food program. There’s no set rule about how much of your reimbursement is spent on food and how much goes toward staff time, but remember that the purpose of the food program is to help participants have access to nourishing food. We would encourage you to spend at least 50% of your reimbursement on food. Try to serve as much fresh, healthy food as you can.
When our office comes out to do a review, we will need to verify that you’re operating a non-profit food service. Keep all of the receipts from any food and non-food items (such as paper goods used in meal service) that you purchase. If that amount adds up to your reimbursement amount, you wouldn’t need to keep track of anything else. If you still have extra reimbursement that didn’t go toward food and non-food items, you would need to show payroll documentation indicating the wages that paid for CACFP duties.
In addition to keeping receipts of food purchases to show a non-profit food service, you’ll also need to keep receipts to show that you purchased a sufficient amount of food to meet the meal pattern. Keep track of your receipts! Think of them as cash. If we come out on a review and find that you didn’t purchase enough food to meet the meal pattern, whether you really didn’t purchase enough food or you just lost a receipt, we would need to take money back.
It’s also easiest for review purposes if you separate your receipts by month. You’re welcome to make copies of the receipts for record keeping, but make sure that you copy the ENTIRE receipt. We have to be able to see the date and time and all of the items that were purchased on the receipt.
When you’re doing your purchasing, you’ll need to separate out your food program purchases from other purchases. For example, let’s say you’re at the store and you’re picking up the groceries for the week, paper plates and cups, and some replacement books for your center. You would purchase the food and paper plates and cups in the same transaction, but you would purchase the books in a separate transaction. If for some reason an item that is not related to the food program is purchased with food program items, simply cross off that item when you get back to your center. We would not use that item’s cost in determining your non-profit food service. If we notice that you are regularly purchasing food program items along with items that are not allowable as food program costs, it could be a finding for your center. If you have questions about what would be an allowable cost on for food program money, contact our office.
A recent change in the financial requirements is that you are unable to use food program funds to purchase non-creditable foods. We’ll discuss what foods are creditable and not creditable in the operational training, but an example of this would be if you were planning on serving granola bars as an extra, you would not be able to use program reimbursement to pay for those graham crackers because they’re not creditable. You would need to purchase them in a separate transaction or cross them off your receipt. Just as with the example of the books purchased, we would not use the cost of non-creditable food items in determining a non-profit food program.
A tool that you can use to keep track of your non-profit food service is the monthly ledger. This is optional, we won’t ask for it on a review, but it can be helpful for you to ensure that you’re spending the reimbursement money on what you’re allowed to spend it on. You would record the information from each food program purchase you made to add up how much you’ve spent on food and non-food items. Don’t be confused by the column labeled non-food program items. This is referring to non-food items such as paper plates, cups, utensils, etc. that aren’t food, but are allowed as food program costs. You can find this ledger on our website if you would like to use it at your center.
There are a few different things to keep organized with financial requirements. Although we didn’t talk about it earlier, you will need to keep the reimbursement stub – meaning the check stub you get when you get your CACFP reimbursement. You can keep that either in a separate folder just for reimbursement stubs or else in the folder for each month with other financial documents. If you receive direct deposit, keep the email that tells you the reimbursement has been deposited and be able to access it. As already mentioned, you’ll want to keep your receipts separated by month, we’d recommend storing them in a manila envelope so none of the receipts fall out and get lost. If you keep a ledger you’ll want to keep them separated by month along with the other financial information for the month.
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