How to Review Meals Without Attendance in ElderSuite

📝 Overview

Meals Without Attendance is the reconciliation list behind the meals-without-attendance banner on the Nutrition Center. It lists one row per client per past day that has a meal recorded but no attendance times at all.

Open Nutrition Center from the ElderSuite main menu. When days need review, the banner at the top reads “1 day has meals recorded but no attendance times.” or names how many days have meals recorded but no attendance times. Click Review Days to open the list.

Recorded meals count on the CACFP claim and on Attendance Calendar - Form ES3100 whether or not attendance times were entered. Settling these days before you run a claim or print the calendar keeps those totals aligned with the days behind them.

Meals on these days usually come from Meal Records. Calculate Meals is a separate path that selects meals from recorded attendance times. This Guide covers only the reconciliation list.

⚙ How It Works

1. Open Meals Without Attendance

From the Nutrition Center, click Review Days on the meals-without-attendance banner. A please-wait message appears, then Meals Without Attendance opens as a child window inside the ElderSuite main window.

That banner button is the only way into this list. The window looks back 90 days and never includes today.

2. Read the Days List

The middle of the window holds a read-only list with three columns: Client, Date, and Meals Recorded. Each row is one client on one past day that has at least one of Breakfast, Morning Snack, Lunch, or Afternoon Snack recorded and no pick-up or drop-off times of any kind.

Nothing in the list can be typed into. The only ways to change what it shows are Enter Times... or Remove Meals.

3. Enter Times When the Client Attended

Select the client’s row, then click Enter Times..., or double-click the row when that button is enabled. Attendance & Transportation Records opens on that date with that client focused so you can enter the pick-up and drop-off times and save.

Enter Times... works on the focused row only, even when several rows are selected. When you return to Meals Without Attendance, the list refreshes automatically and a day whose times were entered is gone.

4. Remove Meals When the Client Did Not Attend

Select one or more rows and click Remove Meals. The confirmation lists each selected day and asks whether to remove the meals, with No highlighted as the default. Answer Yes only when the client did not attend.

Remove Meals deletes the attendance record for each qualifying selected day, which removes the meals with it. A clean removal shows no success message — the rows simply disappear. The Nutrition Center banner count refreshes afterward.

5. Refresh, Confirm, and Close

Click Refresh to re-read the list after someone else has been working, or after you change meals on Meal Records. When nothing remains, the count text reads “No days to review” and the meals-without-attendance banner on the Nutrition Center comes down.

Click Close to return to the Nutrition Center. Settle listed days that fall inside the month you are claiming before you run the CACFP claim or print Form ES3100; see How to Print the Attendance Calendar (Form ES3100).

✅ Important Limitations

The list never includes today. Today’s meals without times are ordinary while staff finish the day.

Only days with no attendance times at all appear here. A day with a pick-up time but no drop-off time is a different problem and does not show on this list.

The days list is read-only. You cannot edit meals or times on this window itself.

This window writes no file and has no export. It reads the list and deletes qualifying attendance records.

Enter Times... needs the Edit Attendance & Transportation Records permission. Remove Meals needs the Edit Meal Records permission. A Limited Access user can still open the list, use Refresh, and Close; without the matching permission, only that action’s button stays grayed out.

⚠ Remove Meals Deletes the Attendance Record

Remove Meals does not clear one meal checkbox and leave the rest of the day. Meals live on the attendance record, so removing the meals deletes that day’s attendance record.

A day qualifies for deletion only when the record holds nothing but meals — no times, no units, a blank or Pending status, and no control number. If the client did attend, answer No on the confirmation and use Enter Times... instead. Once the record is deleted, that day has to be entered again on Attendance & Transportation Records.

💡 Need More Help?

For step-by-step assistance, click Ask Eddie from within ElderSuite.