Activity & Attendance Policy

Neztio operates on one rule: attendance establishes presence, presence enables care activities, and documentation can exist independently. This page explains how that rule is enforced across the apps and what auditors should expect to see in the data.

The Rule in One Sentence

A child must be checked in for the day before staff can log a care activity for them. Documentation activities — photos, videos, notes, observations, announcements — do not require check-in.

Care Activities (Require Check-In)

• Meal, snack, bottle
• Nap start and nap end
• Diaper, potty
• Health check, temperature, medication
• Incident reports
• Outdoor time, classroom or learning activities
• CACFP meal events and per-child meal outcomes

Documentation Activities (No Check-In Required)

• Photos and videos (parent and admin can see them at any time of day)
• Observation notes, mood entries
• Room-wide announcements and parent broadcasts
• Portfolio and assessment evidence

How It's Enforced

Enforcement happens in two layers so the policy cannot be bypassed by any client.

1. 1On the teacher iPad, Android tablet, and webapp: when a teacher selects a child who is not checked in for a care activity, the app surfaces a one-tap prompt — "This child isn't checked in. Check in & continue." There is no skip option for care activities.
2. 2On the server: every care-activity write is validated against the day's attendance records. Writes that include any not-checked-in child are rejected with a typed error ("ATTENDANCE_REQUIRED") that the client surfaces to the teacher with a recovery action.

CACFP Reimbursement

Meals can only be claimed for reimbursement when the child was physically present. Neztio's claim generation excludes any meal record whose child was not checked in for the same day. This matches USDA requirements under 7 CFR Part 226 (specifically 226.10(c) and 226.15(e)(8)).

State Licensing

Most states require attendance to be recorded as discrete, timestamped events tied to each child in care. Neztio's attendance records (in centers/{centerId}/attendance/{date}/records) are the source of truth for ratio and presence. Activity logs are supplemental documentation; they do not substitute for attendance in licensing audits.

Daily Admin Reconciliation

A scheduled report runs each morning and surfaces any activity logged the previous day that was not backed by a check-in. Center admins can review and resolve these in the dashboard. This catches grandfathered records written before the policy was enforced (May 2026 and earlier) and any edge cases.

Audit Trail

Every check-in fires its own attendance event with timestamp, actor (staff member), and source (teacher_ios, teacher_android, webapp, kiosk, or room_device). Every care activity carries the same provenance fields. Auditors can reconcile any activity to the check-in that enabled it. The Activity Log section exports both record types for inspection packets.