Understand Types of Claim Paperwork

Your providers send you their claim information each month. For those providers using KidKare, this information comes in via the Internet. For those providers who use scannable forms or your pre-exisitng forms, this information comes in the mail, and, in some cases, is dropped off at your office.


KidKare Providers

If your providers use KidKare, your providers usually send very little paperwork to you. Unless you use eForms, you do receive printed child enrollment and income eligibility forms. However, KidKare generates a report with each new child enrollment.

Child Enrollment Reports

Providers can send child enrollment reports any time during the month. So, you could receive signed child enrollment forms throughout the month. When you receive a signed enrollment form, the provider has enrolled a new child, which means you need to activate that child before they are creditable in Minute Menu HX. 

We recommend that you do not deal with new enrollments until the second or third day of the month. At that time, run the Activate New Children function to activate these children.

Tracking Received Claims

You automatically receive KidKare providers's child and claim information in real time. 

Other Paperwork for KidKare Providers

Some states require that you have printed versions of the provider's claimed meals and attendance on file. If you operate in one of these states, we recommend that you require your providers to print the Claimed Foods and Attendance report when they submit their claims via KidKare. You then must file these reports once you receive them. Direct your providers to the Print the Claimed Foods and Attendance Report on the KidKare help site if they need instructions for printing this report.

Scannable Form Providers

Providers who use scannable forms submit all forms bundled together at the end of the month. They mail these packets in big enough envelopes (typically 9x12) so the forms are not folded. These packets include:

  • Signed Scannable Menu Forms
  • A Signed CIF
  • Signed Child Enrollment Forms

Tracking Received Claims

We recommend that you stamp the date received on the envelopes as you open them, or stamp the CIF and any Menu forms. You can also use the Track Received Claims function to note that the forms were received.

Sorting Scannable Forms

As you check each provider's claim, determine whether a provider is ready to be scanned or if their claim requires special attention. All provider packets that require special attention should be set aside in that entirety and dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Once the issue is corrected, you can insert those packets back into the batches for scanning and validating. As you stack provider forms, we recommend you sort them into form types:

  1. Full Bubble Menu Forms
  2. Attendance Menu forms
  3. Enrollment Forms (which may need to be separated if you have any very old version still in use)
  4. CIF’s

Keep in mind that a provider's claim paperwork should be kept together in roughly the same order in each of the piles you create. A provider's menu forms do not need to be in any particular order, but it can help to keep them in chronological order with infant menus on top.

You can also further separate these three stacks into multiple batches to make it easier to handle the large amount of paperwork involved. We recommend you limit your batch size to roughly 20 provider claim packets, or about 200 scannable menu forms in total. 

Note: If you use both Attendance and Bubble Menus, keep them in separate batches, as they cannot be scanned together. In addition, if you receive different versions of child enrollment forms, keep them in separate batches for the same reason.

While you sort your scannable claims, you should perform several spot checks on them. For more information, see Scannable Claim Spot Checks.

Manual Forms

You probably already have a good method in place to deal with handwritten forms received from your providers. Once you start using Minute Menu HX, you can still deal with your handwritten forms in the same way, even as they are being phased out. If you don't scan, if you don't use KidKare, or if you continue to have a small number of handwritten forms on an ongoing basis, you can process these claims a Direct Entry claims. This allows you to provide all of Minute Menu HX's detailed analysis on these claims. However, you must manually add any new child enrollments to the Minute Menu HX database. When you receive manual forms, use the Track Received Claims function to note this paperwork was received. 

To process this claim as a Direct Entry claim, you must:

  1. Review the submitted menus and note any meals that must be disallowed
  2. Use the Record Full Month Attendance function to enter attendance information.

If you are handling these claims as 100% manual, the claim totals are added to Minute Menu HX after meals and attendance are manually counted.