A CACFP daily attendance record is the sheet you use to log which enrolled participants were physically present at your center or home each day, and it is the document that has to back up every meal you claim for reimbursement. Fill it in as the day happens, in ink, using your sponsoring organization’s template, and keep it consistent with the enrollment forms and meal counts you submit each month. Everything else in the process — the claim, the monitoring visit, the reimbursement — reads from this one document.
What the Record Has to Show
The federal recordkeeping rule for CACFP sits at 7 CFR § 226.15(e)(4). It requires each participating institution to keep daily records of the number of participants in attendance and daily meal counts broken down by type: breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks.1eCFR. 7 CFR 226.15 – Institution Provisions
For centers, meal counts have to be recorded at the time of service — you note who is eating during the actual meal period, not later. Family day care homes keep daily attendance and daily meal counts, and state agencies can extend the time-of-service meal counting rule to homes serving more than 12 children in a single day or to homes previously found seriously deficient for meal count problems.1eCFR. 7 CFR 226.15 – Institution Provisions
The federal regulation does not spell out specific fields like “full legal name” or “precise in and out times.” Those details come from your sponsoring organization or state agency, which can require more than the federal minimum. Use the template your sponsor provides rather than building your own — it already reflects whatever your state expects to see.
How to Fill Out the Form
Most attendance forms list participant names down the left, days of the month across the top, and space to mark arrival, departure, and which meals each participant received. Some sponsors combine attendance and meal counts on one sheet; others separate them. Either way, the point is the same: a real-time record that links each participant’s presence to the meals you claim.
Mark arrivals when children walk in and departures when they leave. If your form has meal count columns, tally them during the meal, not at the end of the day. Monitors compare meal counts against attendance, and counts written in after the fact are a red flag during reviews.1eCFR. 7 CFR 226.15 – Institution Provisions
A few practical habits keep the form audit-ready:
- Write in blue or black ink. Pencil entries can be erased, and that raises questions during monitoring visits.
- Correct errors visibly. Draw a single line through the mistake, write the correction nearby, and initial and date the change. Never use white-out or anything else that hides the original entry.
- Match every name on the form to a current enrollment form on file. If a child’s enrollment has expired, you cannot claim meals for that child no matter what the attendance sheet says.
Train anyone who touches the form on these rules. A sheet with missing signatures, pencil marks, or white-out corrections can trigger a finding, and the standard response is to recoup reimbursement for the affected meals.
Keep Enrollment Current or the Attendance Does Not Count
Attendance records do not stand alone. For childcare centers and day care homes, enrollment documentation has to be updated annually, signed by a parent or legal guardian, and include each child’s normal days and hours of care along with the meals normally received while in care.1eCFR. 7 CFR 226.15 – Institution Provisions
Monitors check that the number of children on your attendance record on any given day does not exceed the number with valid enrollment forms on file. A child who appears on attendance without a current enrollment form creates a discrepancy that leads to disallowed meals. Track expiration dates ahead of time. A child enrolled on March 1 is covered through the end of the following March, and the parent or guardian needs to sign an updated form before that date passes.
How Long to Keep the Records
Under 7 CFR § 226.10(d), records supporting a reimbursement claim must be retained for three years after the date of submission of the final claim for the fiscal year. If any audit findings are still unresolved at the three-year mark, keep the records until those issues are fully settled.2eCFR. 7 CFR 226.10 – Program Payment Procedures
All program records must be available for examination by representatives of your state agency, USDA, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office at a reasonable time and place.2eCFR. 7 CFR 226.10 – Program Payment Procedures In practice, that means keeping attendance forms organized and accessible on-site. Filing them by month in labeled folders or binders is the simplest system.
Electronic storage is generally acceptable, but check your sponsoring organization’s specific requirements. Digital files have to be retrievable quickly; a monitor who arrives unannounced will not wait through a cloud folder search. Back up electronic records regularly.
Submitting the Claim
Your daily attendance data feeds directly into the monthly reimbursement claim you submit to your sponsoring organization. The federal deadline is firm: claims must be submitted no later than 60 days after the last day of the month they cover.3Food and Nutrition Service. 60-Day Claim Submission and 90-Day Reporting Requirements for Child Nutrition Programs The 60-day rule applies to initial claims and to any upward amendments. A claim or amendment submitted after day 60 is generally denied outright, and there is no routine appeals process for late claims under most state procedures.
Your sponsor will set an internal deadline well before that federal cutoff, often by the 10th or 15th of the month after the claim period. Meeting the sponsor’s tighter deadline protects your cash flow, because a late submission to the sponsor delays your reimbursement even when you are still inside the federal 60-day window. Most sponsors use a secure online portal. Before you submit, reconcile your compiled meal counts against your attendance records so the two numbers agree.
What a Monitor Looks For
State agencies and sponsoring organizations conduct unannounced monitoring visits to check that your records match what actually happens in the room. During a visit, the monitor compares the number of children physically present against your daily attendance form and checks whether your claimed meal counts line up with attendance.
The main tool is the five-day reconciliation. The monitor picks five consecutive operating days, usually from the current or previous month, and compares total meal counts against daily attendance for each meal type across those five days. The logic runs in layers: meal counts for any approved meal type cannot exceed attendance on that day, and attendance cannot exceed the number of participants with current enrollment forms on file.4Food and Nutrition Service. A Quick Guide to CACFP Five-Day Reconciliation
If your Tuesday lunch count shows 18 meals but attendance shows 14 children present, the four extra meals will be disallowed unless you can explain them. Unexplained patterns across multiple days can escalate the review. The monitor may schedule an additional unannounced visit or refer the matter for further investigation.4Food and Nutrition Service. A Quick Guide to CACFP Five-Day Reconciliation
Recording attendance and meal counts honestly, in real time, is the reliable way through a reconciliation. Numbers captured as the day unfolds line up naturally.
What Happens When the Records Fail
Problems with attendance records produce a predictable chain of consequences, and the severity tracks the seriousness of the problem.
Minor issues — pencil entries, missing initials on corrections, a few unsigned days — get documented as findings that require corrective action. You fix your procedures, retrain staff, and the matter closes. Meals that cannot be verified from the flawed records may still be disallowed, so you repay the reimbursement for those specific meals.
Persistent or serious recordkeeping failures move into the serious deficiency process. Your sponsoring organization issues a formal declaration of serious deficiency and gives you a chance to submit a corrective action plan. Correcting the problems within the allowed timeframe can resolve the matter. Failure to correct leads to a notice of proposed termination and disqualification, with a right to administrative review before an impartial official who was not involved in the original decision.
Providers who are ultimately terminated go on the USDA’s National Disqualified List and are barred from CACFP and other Child Nutrition Programs for seven years. Early removal is possible in some cases, but not when the termination resulted from falsified records, false claims, or other conduct indicating a lack of business integrity.5Food and Nutrition Service. Child and Adult Care Food Program Falsifying attendance to inflate meal counts is the fastest route to that outcome, and it is exactly what the daily attendance record is built to prevent.