P.O Box 28487, Austin, Texas 78755-8487
August 26, 2008
«ProviderFirstName» «ProviderName»
«MailingAddressLine»
«MailingCityName», «MAILINGSTATECODE» «MailingZipCode»
Re: Texas Department of Agriculture’s SNAP (Special Nutrition Automated Payment System) causing delays in
provider payments
Dear «ProviderFirstName»:
On July 1st, 2008, Texas Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Division implemented a new financial
system for processing claims (SNAPS) for the USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program. This new system
replaced the one that had been used for claims processing when the program was administered by the Texas Health
and Human Services Commission. All child nutrition programs were moved to the Texas Department of Agriculture
in October 2007.
We have received two communications from the Texas Department of Agriculture regarding the issues that have
caused delays in payments to child care providers in Texas. The first communication received from the Director of
Operations, Don Mann, read:
With the implementation of SNAPS on July 1, submitting claims was initially slowed down for the following
reasons.
1. To ensure accuracy of all warrants, Financial staff reviewed all claims to determine that SNAPS was
correctly determining the correct reimbursement rate. This manual process has slowed down payments
making some contractors receive payments approximately 2 weeks later than normal but within the 45 days
required by USDA.
2. The INAPP system reconciled advances and overpayments at the end of the fiscal year. SNAPS
reconciles at the end of every month. This results in many contractor who received advances larger than
their claims during FY2008 to be kicked out of the automated system and placed in a manual process. The
manual process does take longer to process and contractors have had to wait up to a two week period to
have their claims processed.
These changes have slowed down payments for some contractors. Contractors were not made aware of
these billing differences prior to the implementation of SNAPS as TDA did not realize the implications of
some of the programming done in SNAPS. When a contractor submitted a claim, SNAPS went back to
FY2006 claims to reconcile their payments. These changes were made to prevent the large amount of
money that some contractors owed and the end of the year. In many cases the reconciling at the end of the
year placed a huge financial hardship on some contractors to the point that a few would not be able to
repay the difference and therefore, went out of business. With SNAPS reconciling every month, this should
lessen the burden on our contractors.
We apologize for some of the inconvenience this new payment system has caused but it is a much better
system than INAPP and now allows us a payment system that we can grow with and use for much of our
federal reporting requirements. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Don Mann
Director Field Operations, Food and Nutrition Division, Texas Department of Agriculture,, Email
don.mann@tda.state.tx.us
Page Two – Payment Delays for USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program participants
The second communication we received from Angela Olige, Director of Financial Services , Food and Nutrition
Division, Texas Department of Agriculture, on August 18 th, 2008, read as follows:
Advance claims are not being delayed. If a payment was delayed that included an advance payment it was
probably due to another issue. Claims submitted electronically by 6:00 pm Monday are processed by TDA
and sent to the Comptroller on Friday for additional processing. Payments usually( are posted) in the
contractor's account by the following Friday if not sooner. Amended claims submitted for prior months
will be manually processed. .That process currently adds two additional weeks to the standard processing
time.. This will occur even if claims are submitted electronically . The process to deduct the installment
is manual. These processes will be in place until further development of SNAPS occurs. This will occur
over the next year or two. Angela.Olige@tda.state.tx.us
Given this information, we anticipate that our organization should receive your payment for your July 2008 claim by
the Texas Department of Agriculture on September 5th, 2008. Direct deposits would be expected to post on
September 8th, 2008. Going forward, you should expect future payments to go out the second week of each month.
We would ask that you plan your child care business activities with the expectation that there will be delays in
payments, and the payments to child care providers will continue to be delayed until the Texas Department of
Agriculture stops processing claims manually. We would also like to suggest also that you contact your financial
institution or bank if you are currently set up for automatic withdrawals from your accounts.
We would also ask for you to check our website www.swhuman.org for updates on payment status. We will also be
sending out an email to all providers when we have confirmation of payment from the Texas Comptroller of Public
Accounts. Additionally, if we do not have your email address, please forward it to us at info@swhuman.org and
include your name and email address so we can update our files.
While legally the State has 45 days to pay claims submitted by our organization, any unnecessary delays create a
hardship for child providers in our state. If you would like to send a letter to the Commissioner of the Texas
Department of Agriculture to describe the hardship that the new SNAPS payment system has on your ability to feed
the children in your child care facility, please write to:
Todd Staples, Commissioner
Texas Department of Agriculture
P.O. Box 12847
Austin, TX 78711
Thank you for participating on the Program. We know personally how hard you work to ensure that the children in
your care receive the best nutrition possible.
Sincerely yours,
Blake Stanford
President
Southwest Human Development Services Corporation.