Payment Justification Feature

Starting Monday, May 19, 2025, all payment requests submitted in ASAP.gov will require a brief written justification for each payment.

This field is mandatory, limited to 300 characters, and will be required in the first step of the payment request process.

If you have several payment justifications, please enter the requests separately, (i.e., individual payments).

View a narrated, recorded version of training about the new Payment Justification feature.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is this new Payment Justification requirement?
• All payment requests submitted in ASAP.gov will require a brief written justification for each new payment request. For questions or guidance about the specificity of the requirement, please contact your funding federal agency. Training detailing this new requirement can be found at: https://fiscal.treasury.gov/asap/asap.gov-payment-justification-recipient.html

• Why is this requirement being implemented?
• This requirement is related to a Presidential Executive Order that requires a brief, written justification for all payments (up to 300 characters is allowed) .

• What information is required to be in the payment justification field?
• Your funding federal agency may have more guidance for what to include in the payment justification field

• I’m getting an ERROR 9096: Payment Justification is required for payment requests. What does this mean?
• Starting Monday, May 19, 2025, the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service will require Recipient Organizations to include a justification for each payment. This field is mandatory and will be required in the first step of the payment request process. If you are getting ERROR 9096 it is because the payment justification field was left blank. Please enter a brief payment justification into the payment justification field.

• I’m getting an ERROR 9097: Payment Justification contains invalid characters. Correct and resubmit. What does this mean?
• Special characters are not accepted. The Payment Requestor needs to remove special characters from the Payment Justification field and resubmit the request.
  
  The following is a list of special characters that are allowed:
  :  __  `  ~  !  @  #  $  ^  (  )  -  +  {  }  [  ]  |  ;  :  ,  .  ?