My Food Program questions, answered
The questions admins actually ask about the My Food Program sync, from "why is this child unmatched" to "did my corrected time make it over".
Setup lives in Connect My Food Program. This page is for the questions that come up after you are connected.
Who is my "sponsor", and why do they keep coming up?
A CACFP sponsor is the umbrella organization that holds the food program agreement with your state. The sponsor collects the income eligibility forms from families, enrolls children in My Food Program, and files the monthly claim. Several of the answers below end with "ask your sponsor" because those pieces belong to them, not to NestliCare and not to you. If you are an independent center with your own state agreement, you play the sponsor role yourself inside My Food Program.
A child shows "Not matched". What do I do?
NestliCare can only match children who already exist as participants in My Food Program, and it never creates them there, because enrollment is the sponsor's job. If a child is missing from the matching list, ask your sponsor to enroll them in My Food Program. The next time you open matching, they appear.
A Possible match means the birth date lines up but the name only partly does, usually a nickname (Max in NestliCare, Maxwell in My Food Program). Check it and accept if it is the same child.
A sync says a meal was "not accepted". What does that mean?
My Food Program only takes counts for meals your site is set up to serve. If your site's schedule there defines breakfast, lunch, and a PM snack, an AM snack count comes back as not accepted, and the sync log names the meal and the reason. Two ways to resolve it: ask your sponsor to add that meal to your site in My Food Program, or stop logging that meal type in NestliCare. Until one of those happens, NestliCare retries it on every send, so nothing is lost once it is fixed.
A meal never showed up in My Food Program at all. Where did it go?
Work through these in order:
- Is the child matched? Only matched children are sent. Unmatched children's records stay in NestliCare quietly, by design.
- Is the room matched to a roster? Meals in an unmatched room are skipped, and the sync log says which room needs matching.
- Is the meal claimable? A meal marked not claimable is never sent. Check the Claimable toggle in Meals, then Records.
- Has a send happened since? The nightly send runs overnight. Send now on the connection card covers yesterday and today immediately.
I corrected a check-out time. Did My Food Program get the fix?
Yes. A record that changes in NestliCare after it was sent goes out again as an update on the next send, and the corrected times replace the old ones in My Food Program. You do not need to fix it in both systems.
If I press Send now twice, will meals get counted twice?
No. NestliCare never re-sends a record that has not changed, and My Food Program refuses duplicate records on its side too. Send now is always safe to press.
Where do the free, reduced, and paid income forms live?
In My Food Program, with your sponsor. NestliCare never sends or receives income eligibility information. The eligibility fields on a child's NestliCare profile exist for centers that run CACFP reporting without My Food Program; if you are connected, your sponsor's records in My Food Program are the ones that count.
What about enrollment forms?
Two different things share that name. The CACFP enrollment form (the child's typical schedule: usual arrival and departure times, days in care) is program paperwork that lives in My Food Program with your sponsor. Your own daycare's enrollment paperwork lives in NestliCare and is never sent anywhere. The sync moves attendance and meal counts, not forms.
My menu did not import. Why?
- The import only brings over dates that actually have a menu planned in My Food Program. Days without one are counted in the import summary as days with no menu.
- A day you already planned in NestliCare is never replaced. The summary counts those as already planned here.
- A meal type NestliCare does not have yet, such as an evening snack, is skipped and listed in the import notes.
The coming week imports automatically every night. For anything else, use Import menus on the connection card with a date range.
The times in My Food Program look wrong
NestliCare sends check-in and check-out times as your center's local wall clock time. If they look shifted in My Food Program, compare your center's timezone in NestliCare (Settings, then General) with your site's timezone in My Food Program, and ask your sponsor to correct the My Food Program side if they differ.
What happens if I disconnect?
Sends stop and every child and room match is cleared. Nothing is deleted on either side: records already in My Food Program stay there, and everything in NestliCare stays put. Reconnecting needs your API key again, and matching starts fresh.