MCS Suite: Report & Audit Guidelines

Owned by Robin Rodrigue
Last updated: Jun 08, 2017
4 min read

Coordinated Review Effort (CRE)
&
School Meals Initiative for Healthy Children - Nutrition Standards (SMI)

CRE reviews have three primary goals:

1.  To ensure that free and reduced price meal benefits are provided in accordance with the regulations.

2.  To ensure that proper meal counts are taken at the point of service.

3.  To ensure that complete, reimbursable meals are being offered.


SMI review goals are:

1.  To ensure program meals meet nutrition standards and are reimbursable.

2.  To ensure that SFAs receive the necessary technical assistance and resources to meet those standards.

DataFlow and Processes to Student Eligibility to Claim Reimbursement

Download the Student Eligibility to Claim Reimbursement in PDF format

Student Eligibility to Claim Reimbursement

MCS Software provides a School Nutrition software package of completely integrated modules residing on a Wide Area Network (WAN).

Student Information System Interface

Central Office AdminConsole manages software upgrades and program users.

Central Office DataCenter is used to control standard data elements.

Free & Reduced (Franklin) Application Processing is used to determine student eligibility, parent notification, and all aspects of managing the necessary information to meet State and Federal requirements.

Point of Sale (Newton) is used to maintain student account payment information and generate the required State and Federal reports. It is also used to accumulate daily sales activity for each school, providing numerous reports for management analysis, and Federal Claim reimbursements.

The Point of Sale line (Newton POS) is used to process sales activity.

Menus & Inventory (Edison) is used to maintain menus, inventory, and productions records.

 

Changes in the DataCenter database, such as student demographics, are passed to the other programs through scheduled jobs.

Franklin determines eligibility information and passes the data to DataCenter, which passes the information to Newton.

Newton and Newton POS handle account payment activity such as sales and payments and generates a multitude of claim reports for reimbursement required at the State and Federal level.

The Community Eligibility Program (CEP) is handled across DataCenter, Franklin, and Newton by the following standards:

  • School CEP percentages are established in DataCenter and passed through to Newton
  • CEP schools are identified in School Maintenance in Franklin
  • Students enrolled in CEP schools maintain their application status in Franklin and Newton
  • CEP students promoted to a non-CEP school during the End of Year process have the option to maintain a Free status through Prior-Year Expiration grace period
  • CEP schools are identified in Newton
  • CEP schools appear on claim reports as free while reporting Total meals served to enrolled students

Point of Sale

A student is displayed by using a pin pad device, bar-coded card, fingerprint scanner, palm scanner, or a manually entered name or number.

WinFSFR, Franklin, Newton and WinFSIM

WinFSFR:

 1. The schools should print:

  • State Review Report
  • Student Adds and Drops

 2. If the audit occurs on-site, run the following report:

  • Audit/Review Applications

In addition to the recommended reports, you can run the Status Change Review report to prepare for an audit.

Franklin:

 The schools should print/export:

  • Audit/Review Processed Applications

Additional documentation for the auditor to navigate exported files is located in the Franklin Audit subpage.

In addition to the recommended reports, you can run Adds & Drops, Merged Students, and Status Changes reports to prepare for an audit.

Newton:

You will probably need to include the claim information for the most recent submitted claim.

1.  The schools should print:

  • Federal Edit Check
  • Recap/Reconciliation Report

2.  If the school is shown to have over claimed Free, Reduced, or Paid eligible counts, the following report can be printed to document the reasons:

  • Function Key Sales
  • Items Sold to Inactive Students
  • Posting Detail - Lists all students that were served a reimbursable meal
  • Record of Attendance - Only good for showing participation in lunch it does not display the status of each meal sold. It shows participation at lunch. The meal counts at the bottom of the report are the same as the claim. The report does not reflect the status changes for a given student.

3.  If a school is shown to have low claimed Free, Reduced, or Paid eligible counts, the Record of Attendance can show a pattern of low counts on a given day.

In addition to the recommended reports, you can run Deleted Transactions, Duplicate Customers, Adjustments to Student Accounts, and Cross-Site Multi-Reimbursable reports to prepare for an audit.

WinFSIM

1.  Production Reports 

2.  Menu Production Worksheet with information recorded from kitchen staff or other report to tell the kitchen staff what to prepare for a given day.

3.  Daily Food Cost

4.  Perpetual Inventory report may be needed if an item was accidently left off the production report, but on the Menu Production Worksheet to show the food item was available on a given date.

5.  Leftover Tracking report to show leftovers that may have been used on a given day but not recorded properly.

6.  Scaled Recipes for the review date should be printed.

7.  Nutrient Analysis - Although not required for the SMI, it is a good idea to check these to make sure the meals are within guidelines prior to the site visit.

8.  WNA Planning Count Export - This report documents, by school, the planned counts used by the schools to justify the weighted counts for analysis.