Minute Menu

Author: Michael Radigan

  • Tax Time is Upon Us

    As the memories of holiday feasts, wrapping and unwrapping gifts, and spending time with family and loved ones begin to recede, it’s time to look forward to a New Year and to …..

     ……. Filing Your Taxes.

    It’s a daunting and time consuming task, and it always comes with pre-loaded with guilt and stress.  But it doesn’t have to be this way at all!

    By upgrading your basic Minute Menu Kids account to the “Pro” features, you will unlock and unleash the powerful and user friendly accounting tools found within the Kids Pro software.

    Did you know that the Minute Menu Kids Pro software comes pre-loaded with all sorts of time saving tax documents?   Instead of digging out your file folders, shoeboxes or your recipe boxes, crammed full of a whole year’s worth of receipts, you could have all of that information already stored and easily available to print out and hand to your accountant.

    Instead of going online at the end of March in a last ditch effort to find some sort of tax software to help you pull it all together, you already have all the help you need right at your fingertips.

    With Minute Menu Kids Pro, you have the ability to record all of the expenses incurred in running your child care business.  You can easily figure out various time-space scenarios you need for your tax deductions..  You can figure out vehicle mileage and you can also figure out how much of a deduction you can take for your vehicle.

    The accounting and tax preparation tools built in to our Kids Pro line of software are second to none.  All of the reports you need are available for you to print out at any time.

    Here’s what Cara S. of Hillsboro, Oregon has to say about the Kids Pro Software:

    “I just wanted to take a second to thank you for this wonderful program. As a new provider, I was completely overwhelmed with the task of keeping track of expenses, deductions, time-space percentage, attendance, and keeping accurate records. I reviewed many (expensive) child care programs that didn’t offer half the child-care specific features that your program does. After finding Kids Pro, I am now more organized with my business records than anything else I’ve ever had my hands on — you make it SO easy…… Tax time will be a breeze and before finding your program, I was SO stressed out about keeping accurate tax records. I will continue to recommend this program to every provider I encounter.”

    Minute Menu knows that you have a choice when it comes to purchasing software to help you manage your child care business.  But no other child care software on the market today will provide you with the features that Minute Menu Kids Pro has AND save you money.   And only Minute Menu brings you the time and tax saving expertise of Tom Copeland.

    It makes good financial sense to invest in child care software that will save you time and money!

  • Translate Scannable Menus into Any Language with Free Template Download!

    Minute Menu HX scannable forms come in English and Spanish, but many Sponsors also service providers whose primary language might be Russian, Hmong, French, or any other language.  We’ve provided a menu template that can be used to translate the labels and text on the menu into any language, and you can download it for free from the Sponsor area of our website.  To take a look:

    • Go to www.minutemenu.com
    • Log In with your Minute Menu HX login
    • Click on Documentation
    • Scroll down to the Scanning/Forms section
    • Click where it says “Translate Menus Into ANY Language with this Template”

    This tool can help you bring automation to providers who you may currently have to accept manually-validated claim documentation from currently.  With templates you can ensure that all of your claims, regardless of the provider’s primary language, are subjected to the same strong, automated integrity checks as the rest of your claims!  Instructions on how to use the template are included in the document.  So, take a look and see if it’s something that might help you to better serve your providers!

  • The Child Care Assessment Project (CCAP) Reports are In

    The Child Care Assessment Project (CCAP) was designed to assess whether the USDA regulations that were implemented to address the problems found by OIG during Operation Kiddie Care (http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/kidcare.pdf) have been effective in increasing CACFP program integrity.  The good news is that overall the rules have worked, and the CCAP report states that “almost all sponsors assessed by CCAP were aware of the many new program requirements in the two rules, and had made a genuine attempt to come into compliance with those requirements.”

    The report did state areas where more improvement is needed, and the good news is that Minute Menu HX already assists you in these areas!  The report listed the following needs for improvement:

    –Too many providers fail to keep up-to-date meal counts and menu records;

    –Too many sponsors are not fully meeting the regulatory requirements for monitoring providers; and

    –Too few sponsors appear to be employing the serious deficiency process for providers as intended.

    Minute Menu HX has ways to help sponsors address all 3 of these concerns, included in the software at no extra charge.  For more information on how your agency can proactively address these new USDA “hot issues,” email us at hx-support@minutemenu.com or call 972-671-5211.

    You can read a copy of the full report at http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/care/Management/pdf/CCAP_Report.pdf

  • Food Frequency Rules in Minute Menu HX

    Minute Menu HX can be configured to check that certain foods—or certain groups of foods—are not served too often.  For example, Minute Menu HX can check to ensure that cookies are not served more than twice a week.  However, until you set up Food Frequency Rules, Minute Menu HX doesn’t know that you want to check for these situations.

    You can use Food Frequency rules to check for individual foods served more than a certain number of times per day, per week, or per month.  Also, you can check for this frequency by meal or, more specifically, by individual child.

    Food frequency rules are created and managed by you, directly in the Minute Menu HX software.  You can find instructions on setting up food frequency rules under “Managing System Food Preferences” in Section XVII of the Minute Menu HX User Manual.

  • National Association for Family Child Care and Minute Menu Systems Partner to Promote Quality and Professionalism in Family Child Care

    Each and every weekday, over a million of America’s children receive child care from one of over 250,000 family child care providers across the United States. The National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to promoting quality child care by strengthening the profession of family child care, has worked for years to help these caregivers offer the highest quality of care to the next generation of Americans. Minute Menu Systems, the leading provider of quality, low-cost business management software for family child care providers, has now partnered with NAFCC to further promote this mission.

    Minute Menu offers Minute Menu Kids, an on-line software system that helps child care providers plan activities designed to spur child development, plan nutritious meals, prepare their taxes as home-based businesses, help parents pay via automated direct deposit, and give parents daily or weekly reports on the status of their children. Now, Minute Menu will also encourage existing users to join the NAFCC for ongoing professional development – including help pursuing a Child Development Associates degree. Additionally, NAFCC is able to offer Minute Menu Kids at a discount to all of its members. By raising awareness of the tools available to family child care providers for professional development and business management, these two agencies hope their partnership will improve the quality child care in the US.

    The potential impact of this partnership on the larger child care community is considerable. The National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) is the national leader of a network of state and local associations that work across the country to promote quality family child care by giving child care providers access to educational and professional resources and by providing the opportunity for independent accreditation—a key indicator for parents of quality child care. Through its own national membership and via special relationships with the many regional and local associations, the NAFCC agenda reaches thousands of providers around the United States. Minute Menu’s software is currently in use by more than 100,000 family child care providers around the country for daily recordkeeping.

    “We’re not aware of any previous partnership between technology and advocacy that has the potential scale of this agreement,” said Natalie Clark, Chief Financial Officer for Minute Menu Systems. “It’s possible that, through the combined efforts of NAFCC and Minute Menu, we’ll reach more than half of all the family child care homes in the US, with the goal of helping them improve the quality of care for the children in those homes.”

    Through this partnership, NAFCC members receive a 10% discount on subscriptions to the Minute Menu Kids Pro child care business management software—which was designed by child care experts to specifically meet the needs of family child care providers. Additionally, Minute Menu will be adding NAFCC-specific resources for providers within its Minute Menu Kids software. Minute Menu will also provide sponsorship for the 19th Annual NAFCC conference “Defining New Horizons: Charting a Course to Quality Early Learning” to be held June 25-27, 2009, in Baltimore, Maryland.