Corey: Good afternoon everyone,
my name is Corey Patterson
and welcome to the CARS Authority Services webinar,
and demo.
I'm a Management Program Analyst
with the Engagement and Onboarding Staff, Fiscal Accounting.
Before we get started today
I'd like to go over a few items.
So you know how to participate in today's event.
If you joined using the computer
you are using your computer speaker system by default.
If you would prefer to join over the phone,
just select the telephone in the audio pane
and the dial-in information will be displayed for you.
If this is your first time using the go-to meeting platform,
there's a resource PDF attached
in the handout section covering general housekeeping points,
also attached as a PDF of today's presentation
that is available for download.
You have the opportunity to submit text questions
to today's presenter by typing your questions
into the questions pane of the control panel.
You may send in your questions at any time
during the presentation.
My colleague Holly Williams, Management Program Analyst
with the EOS staff, will collect these
and address these during the Q&A sessions
throughout the presentation.
I would now like to introduce
the fiscal accounting operations presenters,
Senior Accountants, Chad Morris,
Julie Snyder, and Stephanie Blair.
Chad, over to you.
Chad: Thank you, Corey and good afternoon and welcome.
And thank you for attending today's webinar.
Today we're gonna cover the new authority services module,
the ATM Authority Services,
which we'll refer to as AAS throughout this webinar.
As the new authority module that's being released,
we'll handle transactions and in the authority world
for borrowings year-end appropriation warrants
and an expenditure transfers.
So we are with the Budget
and Appropriations Analysis Section.
We will refer to ourselves as the BAAS team
here in Fiscal Service and Treasury.
Contact email addresses are in this handout for you.
So here's an overview of what we're gonna cover today.
We're gonna go
over the new look and feel of the AAS module.
Again, it covers non-expenditure transfers,
borrowings, appropriation warrants
and the year-end closing module.
So I wanna highlight upfront that the borrowings module
we will show you a comparison of screen inputs
from today's version compared to the AAS version
but the BAAS team will not go into any detail
on the borrowings modules,
that is not our transaction module to manage.
We will also cover just briefly
the appropriation warrant module,
agencies do not input to this module,
so we're gonna just briefly cover a few key points
as it relates to entering, receiving request letters
from agencies to input appropriation warrants.
And for the year end closing module,
we will have another webinar near
or during the GMC annual conference
that fiscal service hosts
to cover all of the details for the year end module.
The reason we're doing that is we want it to be fresh
in your minds when we go over the new attributes
and features related to that module.
So we'll spend the majority of today
covering the non-expenditure transfers.
All the new look and feel, how to input, the format
of the fields and all things related.
We will also cover a new feature we refer to as SHaC.
It's an acronym that means Short Handed Component.
That's a feature that allows you to put in seven digits
a three digit AID and a four digit MAIN
and it will push you, the TAS information
with the period of availability
in order to input a transaction.
We will also cover the new PDF functionality.
Currently in CARS today
when you pull a PDF, it opens in a web browser.
In AAS you'll have a feature
that will open a PDF document directly in Adobe
provided you're working in Internet Explorer.
We'll also cover the proactive features
with inline error messages, things that will notify you
of a problem with the transaction
before you get to the end of the transaction
and realize you can't certify it.
And we'll also cover the push TAS technology.
Part of this push TAS technology
exists in the borrowings module
which I stated earlier, we will not cover in detail today
but that push TAS technology
is also related to the SHaC functionality,
where when you put in certain information,
it will push a TAS to you
so that you know, you're able to transact with it.
So that's an overview of the things
we will cover in the webinar today.
Before we go any further,
we want to have our first polling question to the audience.
Corey if you would like,
if you would launch that first polling question please.
Stephanie: Hey Corey, can you please close the results
and display it for us and we'll go over the answer
of how many active treasury accounts exist in CARS.
If you answered D, more than 12,000,
this includes you are correct.
This includes a variety of expenditure accounts
such as general, receipt, special trust, revolving
and deposit funds,
as well as clearing and suspense accounts.
Before we go back to Julie, I'd like to remind you
you can enter your questions
into the chat feature at any time during this presentation
we'll have some short question and answer sessions
throughout the webinar with additional time at the end.
And now Julie will give you an overview of the new look.
Julie: Thank you Stephanie.
So we do not as BAAS have much to do
with the borrowing module.
We don't enter any transactions,
we don't approve any transactions
but we would definitely want to still at least show you
the new look and feel of our borrowing module.
Chad had said in the overview.
We are gonna focus this demo on the net module piece
but let's just go ahead
and take a quick look at the borrowing module
and the year-end transaction module
so you can at least see it today.
So on the left hand side
there is a current screenshot of our CARS module today
and how it looks.
On the right hand side,
there is a screenshot from the new AAS module
with the new modern look and feel of a blue and white theme.
And then down in the bottom left corner,
there is a new feature we have for entering a TAS.
When you enter a TAS now, you'll enter a three-digit MAIN,
or a four-digit MAIN and a three digit AID
in the order of the AID and then the MAIN
and it'll populate you a list of TAs
that you can choose from.
On the next slide, we have the year-end transaction module.
This is how it currently looks today in CARS.
And the next side we'll show you the new modern look
we have applied to it.
We do plan on having a more in-depth look and demo,
mid summer to late summer, probably in August,
that will be a little closer
to the year-end processes that you all will be completing
and we will be completing,
that way all the information will be fresh in your mind
of how that module functions.
So we hope to have that as I said late summer.
So next I wanna cover appropriation more.
I know this is not something that you all enter.
This is something that's the BAAS group at treasury enters.
But we wanted to kind of give you a glimpse
of some of the new enhancements we have.
So on the left hand side is a picture
of the current CARS module, on the right hand side is again
the new look and feel
with the new AAS released this weekend.
Now I'd like to show you, we have a bunch of warrant types
that have been kind of separated out.
Let me get the screen to switch over here.
Okay, so for the warrant types, there are currently in CARS
11 warrant types, and the new module,
this has been broken out into 26 warrant types.
And just as an example
here's the first set of the dropdown.
I will scroll on down.
I'd like to kind of go over the rescission.
In our current day
we only have one rescission warrant type.
In this new module, as you can see, there are several
depending on whether it's a definite warrant,
indefinite warrant, special trust fund warrants.
So these things have all been broken out now
so that we can do a little bit more accurate
accounting transactions.
What this will mean is we hope
that you'll be patient with us
for when you're submitting your warrant requests
we may have additional questions
that we may need to answer to make sure
that we're choosing the correct warrant type
for you all into the system.
So if you already know the warrant types,
you're definitely gonna need put as much information
that letter as you can for us.
And that way it'll eliminate
us having to reach back with questions,
but we definitely might still have some questions
going forward especially as we all the get used
to the new module.
I will turn this back over to Chad
and he will continue with the demo on the AAS net module.
Chad: Thank you Julie.
Before we continue, when we wanna pause for a minute
and see if there are any audience questions
we can answer up to this point
for the information we've provided.
Holly: Hi, good afternoon, this is Holly Williams,
for those, if you have a question
that you would like to ask,
just please raise your hand,
I'm sorry evidently we're having some issues
with folks hearing and been working on troubleshooting.
So I didn't get that information out
but if there are any questions, please raise your hand
and I will gladly take you off of mute
so you can ask your question.
So it looks we have a few folks here
and just making sure give it a second, Anita,
I have, I see your hand raised.
I'm gonna go ahead and take you off of mute
so you can ask your question.
Well Anita, it looks like you are self-muted
so I cannot take you off.
Anita do you still have a question
that you would like to ask?
Okay, well, if you do, we can come back to you.
Let me try the next person who has a hand raised here.
Charles, Mr. Matthews.
So it looks like we see your hand raised here.
I'm gonna take you off of mute, you're off of mute.
Charles: Yes, this is Charles Matthews.
The question I have is when you all break these selections
down in CARS, will there be assigned BETCs
for these also over those transactions
still roll up to the same BETCs that are currently in CARS.
Chad: So this is Chad.
That is a great question.
Each of these transaction types have their own BETC.
Charles: Oh, perfect, okay, thank you.
Chad: Yes, sir.
Holly: Sure, do you have any follow up?
Okay, sure, well, I appreciate it.
Thanks for your question.
The next person I see here is Derek Moore.
It looks like you have your hand raised.
I'm gonna go ahead and take you off of mute
so you can ask your question.
Derek: no question.
Holly: Okay sir, all right, thank you.
Let's see, it looks like we have one more today.
Right now, Georgette Thomson.
It looks like your hand is raised
so I'm gonna go ahead
and take you off of mute for just a moment
so you can ask your question.
Georgette, it looks like you were self-muted.
I cannot take you off for you to ask your question.
Oh, it looks like you're on hey.
Georgette: Oh how are you doing?
I think I hit it by mistake, I'm so sorry.
Holly: No worries, no worries at all,
I understand, right?
I'm just gonna do a quick run through
to make sure that pretty big group
we have about 500 in attendance.
I appreciate everybody being on today
and being patient, technology is both our friend and foe.
I'll let you...
Chad: Might have a question.
Holly: Yes, yes.
Lady: I apologize, I do not have a question.
Chad: All right, completely
Holly: And it looks like we have one last question here
for Michelle Bennett.
Michelle, this is Holly Williams,
I'm taking you off of mute if you have a question to ask.
Michelle: Yes, hi, this is Michelle.
I had a question, I noticed that there was a rescinded
from unappropriated and a rescinded from appropriated funds.
I'm not sure, was that rescinded
from appropriate or unobligated.
Excuse me, unobligated.
What is the difference between the two?
Chad: So that's another great question
and it would be kind of a lengthy answer.
I will tell you, there is some guidance coming out.
We worked in collaboration with OMB
and treasury to build these BETCs and transaction types.
There is guidance coming out in the A11
as well as TFM as to when each of the transaction types
would be appropriate to be used.
Michelle: Okay, so.
Chad: And a short answer, you can have appropriated funds
that are in and on obligated state.
Michelle: Right, right.
Well, sounds like you've got both appropriated
and unobligated and it sounded to me
like they were going to be one in the same, but that's okay.
I'll look at the reference when it comes out.
Chad: Yes mam.
Michelle: Thank you.
Holly: Thanks Michelle.
Chad, it looks like I do have
it looks like three more questions,
we had kinds of three more questions.
Chad: Yeah, we could probably get through them
really quickly.
Holly: Wonderful, so Robert,
it looks like I can see your hand raised
as well, I'm gonna take you off mute
to go ask her a question.
Robert: Yeah,
so there are user guides available
for the new module and if so, where can we find them?
Chad: That's a good question.
I'm not sure of a user guide at this point.
We are producing this webinar
which will be recorded and available for future use.
Then if there's any further needs for more training,
I'm assuming we can post information like that
but I'm not aware at this time
unless my colleagues from St. Louis can help me out
if we have any user guides available.
Roberts: Well, let me just add to that.
I mean, it's always good to have user guides.
And even if it's a general navigation
because not everybody can attend the webinars as needed
and it'd be nice to have these reference materials
to kind of help, you know, the people
that are gonna be expected to execute these transactions
to be able to review what they need to do
or answer any questions that they have come up.
So I think it's pretty important
that user guides be developed
if they're not already been developed and archived.
Chad: Yes, that's a great point.
Holly: Great, thank you, sir.
It looks like we have another question here
from Sharon
I'm gonna go ahead and take you off of mute
so you can ask your question, Sharon.
Sharon: Hi, earlier when you were talking about the PDF,
you said provided you are using Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer is going away.
So is that gonna be a problem,
the PDF feature and other browsers?
Chad: So we are aware of the Internet Explorer issue.
The difference is when you're in Google Chrome
or Microsoft Edge, one of those other browsers,
you can still open the form in Adobe
but those browsers force the file to be downloaded
and saved before they can be opened.
So that is being looked at for the future
but for now it functions in Internet Explorer
where you can open the PDF directly
without having to download and save it.
And some of those might be browser settings.
Yeah, our IT folks are telling us
that that end of service is eminent
and to stop using Internet Explorer.
Chad: Yeah, we're aware of that as well.
And again, the functionality still works
if you're in say Microsoft Edge,
that the browser itself and Edge
is gonna ask you to save the file,
download and save the file before you can open it.
Okay.
Chad: That's a great question.
Holly: Great, wonderful, thank you.
And here's the last question, Mr. Lukin, Richard Lukins,
I'm gonna go ahead and take you off of mute
so you can ask your question.
Oh, Richard, it looks like your self-muted
so I cannot take you off of mute.
So just in the future, so I'm gonna go ahead
and lower everybody's hands for now.
And if you would like to ask a question in the next round,
just please hold up, raise your hand
and I'll go ahead and get to next break that we have
for audience question, but for now,
I guess, Chad we're gonna go ahead
and give it back to you, thank you.
Chad: Okay, thank you very much.
We will continue on with the new look and feel
of the non-expenditure module.
So again, just like the other slides on the left-hand side
you can see the way it looks in CARS today on your input,
and on the right hand side
you can see what it looks like in AAS.
We've got improved navigation across the top
where you can put in a new transaction
or search a pending and postage screens.
You can see that it's got a cleaner interface,
it's larger font and it's column based.
So you got two columns to input information in.
So it's saving a lot of white space looking,
comparing to the old screen,
you see all this wasted space here on the screen.
So that's the way
the non-expenditure transfer input screen looks today.
You know, I'll demo this here in great detail.
The next screen is where we get into the SHaC technology.
So again, in this field here, we've got a format here.
If you entered a three digit AID
and the four digit MAIN, CARS AAS
will push you a list of TASs that are active
and open that you can transact with
for each different period of availability for that TAS.
Once you select that TAS, it will populate that information
into the component TAS fields.
And again, I'll demo that in great detail.
The thing to remember about this functionality
is you must enter seven digits, a three digit AID
and a four digit MAIN.
Most agencies that are used
to entering in string TAS format
especially if you're a large agency,
it's you use your agency code 20 or 75, 16,
whatever your agency code is.
You must put the zero in front of that.
If you don't get seven digits into that field
they will not populate anything for you to transact with.
So if you'll give me one moment,
my demo module logged me out.
So give me one moment to log back in please.
Stephanie: Well, how about while you log back in Chad
we push out that second polling question.
Chad: That sounds great, Stephanie thank you
Stephanie: Corey, can you display that for us please?
Thank you, so the second question
for more audience participation
is how many authority transaction does treasury process
government-wide annually in CARS?
Now this will include your warrant, warrant journal vouchers
and non-expenditure transfers.
Looks like we've got about 30% participation.
We'll give you a couple more seconds
to get those votes cast.
All right, Corey, if you wanna go ahead
and close out those votes and show us the results.
That is correct.
For those of you that answered D,
there are more than 7,000 transactions processed annually
within CARS.
Thanks Corey for assisting with that poll question.
Next, Chad will tell us some more details
about the non-expenditure transfers in the new functionality
and this will all be deployed this weekend.
So those entering these non-expenditure transfers in CARS
will see these modifications
on Monday morning, December 14th.
Chad: Thank you Stephanie.
Okay, so now I'm gonna demo the AAS functionality.
So when you log into CARS,
your home screen will look identical
to the way it does today.
The entire program application of CARS was not updated.
Only the sub module for authority services was updated.
So all of your current way that you retrieve reports
or see accounts, things like that
will remain the same in CARS.
So when you go into your transaction module
which is your authority transactions for AAS,
again you will see the same screens that you see today
but when you click one of the links
to enter a new transaction,
you will see you will be entered into AAS.
Give it a second to come up.
So here is the input screen,
the new input screen for a non-expenditure transfer.
So what I will do during this demo
is I will show you
how to enter all the information correctly
so that you see what right looks like.
And then later in the demo,
I will go back and show you
how some of the error messages work,
to help increase your efficiency
when you're entering the transaction.
So you can start in your column based format.
You can start at the top left
and you see your transfer type.
You click anywhere in the box
and you'll get the selection to drop down
from to select from.
So that should be functioning similar
to the way it does today.
You can select say an appropriation transfer
for this example.
And then your sub transfer type will become an active field.
This is your USSGLs.
This is functioning similar to the way it does today.
So you can select one.
The transaction date and effective date will both default
to the current date that you're entering the transaction.
If you want to backdate a transaction
or future date transaction
you can do that just by clicking anywhere in the box
and you will get a date picker that you can go in
and take a future data transaction of a different date
or you can go backward in time,
you can navigate through your calendar here
by year and month to select a transaction date.
So I will leave it set for today's date.
The same is true for the effective date.
I could click anywhere in the box
and I will get a date picker
and navigate through months and years.
Now we'll leave that set.
The comment field is an optional field
that you can leave whatever comments you'd like
in on the transaction,
there are certain comments as many of you may know
that are required on certain transactions
but the field itself is an optional field
as far as formatting.
There are some things that I will go
over in the comment field later in this demo.
So I will come back to that.
Onto the top right on the column on the top right
of the screen is you'll see the accounting period.
The accounting period will default
to the month and year based upon the transaction date.
That is the way it works in CARS today.
So there was no change to that process
but I just want to call that out
because sometimes there is still confusion
over what drives the accounting period.
Is it the transaction date or the effective date?
I want to be clear that it is the transaction date
that drives the accounting period.
That is not an editable field
if you wanna change the accounting period,
you need to come over here and change the transaction date.
Agency reference is another one I'll come back to.
It is an optional field.
So many of you have your own internal control numbers
that you use for reference.
So you can enter that in this field.
Then in the legal authority field,
I will show you how a legal authority field gets entered
after we have our next polling question.
Stephanie: So Corey,
if you please push out the third polling question,
and it is what is the key characteristic
about the legal authority citation
that is needed to improve transparency and traceability?
Is it making it more complex, making it unique,
making it vague or none of the above?
I still see the votes are coming in
so we'll give you a few more seconds
to cast your final vote.
Great, thank you all for participating.
Corey would you like to go ahead and close that?
Show us the results?
The majority of you got it correct.
66% of you said the goal is making it more unique,
great job.
The law must be unique for tracebility and auditability.
I'd like to elaborate why the other answers are not correct.
First, making it more complex is not treasury's goal.
Together, treasury desires
to work with the government wide community
to lighten the burden upon entities, not to increase it.
Stat is available, able and willing
to assist with obtaining stat pages
and or providing stat versions of the bill passed.
For information, Please reach out to your point of contact
within our team for assistance.
And why answer C is not correct, making it more vague.
Vague legal citation will not be traceable as time passes.
In five to 10 years, while some of us may still be here,
may not be here.
These transactions and financial reports will be.
Therefore each non-expenditure transfer, warrant
and warrant journal voucher must be unique.
By using the PL number and the stat page published by Nora,
this meets the financial reporting requirements
for both our current and future needs.
The more direct the reference,
the easier it is to trace the legal authority.
And sometimes this may even include section numbers
and or other subheading references.
And now we're gonna go back to Chad
and he's gonna explain a little bit more
about the legal affiliate
in the new legal authority field in the AAS environment.
Chad: Thank you, Stephanie.
And before we go back to the input of the field itself,
we want to explain why the format of the field in CARS
is so important.
So we wanna just cover a few things to remember
as it relates to legal authority
as we've already mentioned.
Goal here is to increase traceability
and overall audit posture from a treasury perspective
as well as I believe from an agency perspective.
The legal citations that are unique are easy to find
far into the future because those numbers do not change
but we wanna call out about house resolutions or HR numbers.
Sometimes Senate bills, different things.
Those numbers are not unique.
They're reused by every single Congress
but the public law numbers
or we'll refer to them as PL numbers are unique numbers.
They are never reused.
Another thing to remember about HRs
is that they are not laws, but HRs can become laws.
And once they become law,
they get assigned a unique public law number
and they also get assigned their own page numbers
which are referred to a statute number,
statute pages, the statutes.
So again, that just helps bring the uniqueness
down to that tracing of that authority transaction.
Another thing to remember about being vague
in a legal citation is that sometimes
even if you reference a PL number,
sometimes in those omnibus bills, they're very large.
They can be over 1000 pages.
So those page numbers, which we refer to as the stat pages,
the stat references are needed
to identify exactly where in that large document,
that legal authority exists.
'Cause as we're talking about the authority module,
all transactions in the authority module are based in law.
So the ability to pinpoint where exactly
that legal authority exists, just helps everybody.
Another important item to note is
that the PL and the stat information are generally available
from Nora within one business day.
Now, we do understand that sometimes that one business
day may occur over a weekend.
If the law gets passed on a Friday,
we may not have the public law and stat information
until that Monday or Tuesday morning,
but generally within one business day,
that information is known.
Now, last thing we wanna point out here is that
the BAAS group as Stephanie mentioned,
we felt many agencies retrieved that stat information
that's needed to process those authority transactions
and we're willing to help any other agency.
Again, our goal is to work with agencies
to make us all more efficient
not to increase burden on anyone.
And just to provide a couple of examples here
to illustrate our point,
we went back in time a few years ago
but not a long time ago into fiscal year 2012
just to do a search because our auditors at treasury level
are looking back many years on some of these transactions.
We look back to 2012 for public law, 112-55
trying to do some research.
So if you were to reference
on an authority transaction, the HR number,
it was HR 2112,
you go into congress.gov,
and you're trying to research this law,
if you search for HR 2112,
you can see at the top left here
that it produced 26 results.
And as you can see in the results, HR 2112
is used by every Congress, 116, 115, 114 and so on
and not all of these became laws.
So again, it adds to the complexity to do the research
because you have to dig through which ones were laws
versus not laws.
And then the next slide you can see out of HR 112 results,
four different times that HR number became law.
And of course, we only really wanted to see
this Continuing Appropriations Act for 2012.
But thinking about research capabilities,
if we had researched on public law, 112-55,
and then even further
into the stat page or paragraph number or section number
we would go straight to the legal authority
that supports that transaction.
So those are just some items to note
and keep in mind as it relates to legal authority.
Before we move back to the live demo
we wanna see if there are any audience questions
for anything we've covered up to this point.
Holly: Hi, it's Holly Williams,
and yes we do seem to have several folks
that have their hands up.
We're gonna start with Michael Feldman.
I'm gonna take you off of mute
so you can ask your question, Michael.
Michael: Hi, we were wondering where is the best way
to get the stat reference?
Because it takes a long time
for it to appear on the TPO website.
And when we call our contact at treasury, he usually,
he and his folks figured out some unique way
and give it to us.
But where's the quickest and easiest way for us
to find those ourselves.
Chad: That is a great question.
And I actually have a document prepared.
Give it a second here to populate on this screen.
I know this is kind of maybe hard to see at this point
but this is a document that we've prepared internally
for our own team 'cause as you know, when laws are passed,
appropriation laws are passed to fund the whole government,
it takes Nora, generally it can take them
at least six months sometimes
to put the stat information on the bill
for when you search it on congress.gov,
we obviously don't wanna wait six months or eight months
to process appropriation warrants.
So we follow this methodology
that we train ourselves internally, our team internally
on how to obtain that information
so that it is known to document
on the transaction at the time we enter it.
And this is the information that we've shared
with many agencies to try to help them out
so that they know how to obtain the same information.
So we are willing to share with anyone that would like it.
Yes, sir.
I will cover this just in a minute.
In a minute here, there is a link
in this document that we prepared that will take you
to NARA's website, to register for email notifications.
You can see that there's a subscribe button here.
And then when you subscribe,
that anytime a public law is passed,
you get an email notification is populated right here
on this part of the screen.
You can see my mouse hovering over this, circling it.
So at the time for this example, when this public law
116-20 was passed,
the moment it was passed within a few hours,
we had this email in our inbox.
So we knew the HR number was 2157.
We knew the public law number was 116-20
and we knew the stat page.
It started on 133 stat 871
and it ran for 32 pages.
So that's the first way we get the information directly
from NARA and that is open to any federal agency.
Now and then the rest of this document
I won't go into it right now,
but we identify to the agencies
how to take that information,
take the PDF of the HR number out of congress.gov
and insert the stat information onto the PDF
so that you have a static version of the bill.
And I'll just show you quickly
one that we used in fiscal year '20 for public law, 116-94.
You can see that we have the stat information.
This is an unofficial version
because it's just the one we use to process warrants
but we have this public law information
and we have the stat information.
And honestly it takes us less than 10 minutes to
once we know the information from Nora,
it takes us less than 10 minutes to produce this document
that we can work from.
Holly: Hi Chad, this is Holly Williams.
I noticed that there's many folks asking
if you could provide the document that you're showing,
if we can provide the handout.
So perhaps somehow we can get it bundled to Corey
and he can add it as a handout
or this could be just one part of the package
of information we send to folks after this webinar.
It's up to you.
Chad: Okay, we can, yes, we can look into that,
but to be clear we're willing to share it
with anyone because we're looking,
our goal is for the overall betterment
of the whole federal community.
Holly: Fabulous, I think they're looking for you just to,
I think send it out in its entirety
to the folks on the webinar today.
Chad: Okay.
Holly: Okay, great.
So the next question that we have is from Evan.
Evan, I'm gonna take you off of mute,
so you can ask your question.
Evan: Sure, yes.
Oh, well, my question was answered.
Thank you, I was going to ask about a better source
to access the of the public law and the citations,
but it was answered, thank you.
Holly: You're welcome, you're welcome.
Evelyn Baker, it looks like your hand is up as well.
I'm gonna go ahead and take you off of mute
to ask
Evelyn: All right, thank you, hi.
Holly: Hi.
Evelyn: I wanted to know about,
I am responsible for certifying a non-expenditure
transfer document after the Bureau has generated
and so there, will there be a different feature
for the agencies to go in and certify?
Chad: That is a great question
and that is coming up very shortly, I wanna
the screen.
Evelyn: All right, thank you.
Chad: You're welcome.
Holly: Okay, it looks like
we have another live question here for Ahmed.
Ahmed I'm gonna take you off the the mute
so you can ask your question.
Oh, you are self-muted
and I can't seem to get you off of mute.
If you could unmute yourself now would be the time.
Okay, okay, I do have quite a few questions here,
I think folks are getting a little shy
because I think they know that I'm gonna call on them.
So I'm getting tons of questions in.
There is a question here.
Please explain the difference
between the transaction date and the effective date.
Chad: I'm sorry Holly, did you say,
explain the difference between the two?
Holly: Yes, it says, please explain the difference
between the transaction date and the effective date.
Chad: So to be honest, there's not,
there really is not much of a difference.
The main difference would be say
I'll give an example of an appropriation warrant.
If an omnibus bill passed this week to fund the government,
we would input that transaction
in the December accounting period.
We would enter that say today
and it would have a transaction date of December the 10th.
And it would be in the accounting period
of December 2020 accounting period.
But we would put the effective date is 10/01 of 2020
because it's a fiscal year funding transaction.
So the effective date in that situation
would be October 1st of 2020 for the fiscal year.
That's the main difference in the dates.
Typically when you're putting transactions in,
that transaction date and effective date
will normally be the same date.
Holly: Ok, thank you
Chad: That's okay, it answers the question.
Holly: It sure does.
I just have one more, I think before we proceed.
Can you repeat again?
What is the official roll out date of these updates?
Chad: These updates will be rolled out this weekend
and we'll be live in production at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time,
Monday, December the 14th.
Holly: Okay, great, great.
Well we're gonna have a very healthy Q&A session.
The questions keep coming in.
So, but for now it looks like all.
Oh, okay, so we just have one last question.
Michael Kershaw is coming in with a last question,
Michael I'm gonna unmute you before
in your last one for the session.
And it looks like you are self-muted
so I cannot take you off of mute.
Okay, well, Chad, let's go ahead
and we'll resume
and I'll probably get with Michael offline then, thank you.
Chad: Perfect, yeah, so we'll get back into the demo
and just to remind everyone
there will be another opportunity
to ask questions at the end.
So back into the demo,
we'll go back to this legal authority field
where we broke before.
So again, if I enter that PL information,
I'm just making this up, I don't have it in front of me.
So if you notice here in our legal authority format examples,
there are examples here for a public law and a US code.
If you follow the example
that is listed right here on the screen,
you won't have any problem getting it added
into the transaction.
In CARS today, you'll notice that the PL information
and the stat information can be on separate lines.
The reason it was formatted
to be put on the same line going forward is again
because we didn't want the information to be too vague.
We didn't want a PL number to be cited,
to be able to be cited with no stat information
and then the only information
we have to go off of is a 1200 page document.
So by putting, by forcing the stat page
to be on the same line,
it makes it to where it's easy to be traced
and it's referenced right there together.
So if you get it in correctly, you can click the add button.
It'll put it in.
If you wanna do a US code, you can do a US code
as long as you follow the example again.
And if I have information on here,
if I had the public law in the US code,
and I realized the US code took precedence
because it's codified law, I could go back,
I could highlight the law didn't want on there
and you can see my remove button became active
and I can just take it out.
I will get a little inline message.
It says are you sure you wanna remove the legal authority?
And I can just say yes.
So again, I'm just showing you what, right looks like,
I'll circle back to this
when I show you all the inline error messages.
So down to the bottom, on the left side
you have your From account for a non-expenditure
and at the bottom right, is the To account.
So I'm gonna show you the SHaC functionality.
So again, if I pick an account
and if I get the three digit AID
and a four digit MAIN listed,
I will get a list of active, open periods of availability
for that account to transact with.
So let's say for this example,
I wanted to pick the 2021
beginning and ending POA to transact with.
So you'll see when I made that selection
that it populated that component TAS information
into the component TAS fields,
and this just same I'm moving $50.
On the To side on the right-hand side of the screen,
it operates the exact same way.
So if in this situation,
I was moving this to say my x year account,
I could type in three digit AID and four digit MAIN.
I could select my X year account right here at the bottom
and it populates it
into the component TAS information fields.
And again, I can put in an amount
make sure the amounts match
and this transaction is now able to be certified.
So now I'm going to display all of our inline error messages
and how this would function to help you be more efficient
and to know what's wrong with the transaction
before you get all the way to the end
and realize you can certify it.
And then also, if you can't certify it,
you actually get relevant error messages
to tell you specifically what's wrong with the transaction
as opposed to the old vague messages we used to get,
where you didn't,
you may not really know what was wrong with the transaction.
So let's just start, let's say for the effective date.
So you can future date transaction date
but you can't future date an effective date.
So if I had a transaction date of November 9th,
that's our date in our test region here,
and if I tried to put that, I wanted to future date,
the effective date to the 12th,
I'm immediately gonna get an error message.
Give it a minute to pop up.
And it says an effective day
cannot be after the transaction date.
So immediately I've got a red box
around that field and an inline error message
to tell me something is wrong with it.
And if you also notice my certified button,
if I hover over the certified button
and give it a second here,
not sure if you can see the little circle X there
but my certified button is not an active button.
So I can go back to this transaction,
the effective date and fix that.
And as soon as I fixed it,
the inline error message goes away
and my certified button is now an active button again.
Another thing in the comments field,
so the comments and the agency reference
both operate the same way.
They're free text fields, but there are certain characters
that are invalid that will not accept.
So if you attempt to enter an invalid character,
I attempted to enter an at sign.
And an at sign is not a valid character for CARS
because it's associated with email addresses.
So if I attempt to enter an invalid character,
I'm going to get an immediate pop-up that says
you've tried to enter an invalid special character.
And then it'll give me a list of the valid characters
that AAS will allow.
So if you were wondering what it will allow,
it will give you the list right here.
So that comment field
is the same as the agency reference field.
I'll click OK and just to demonstrate,
I'll go to the agency reference field.
I'll try to type the at sign in there as well.
Give it a second, and you'll see,
I'll get the same error message.
It's an invalid character,
and it tells me the list of characters
that AAS will allow me to insert.
We went onto the legal authority field.
If I attempt to enter a public law with no stat page.
Give it a second.
You'll see, I'll get an immediate red box
that says the legal authority is not in the correct format
and it is because it's missing it stat page.
And please follow the example,
make sure you get the comma space for the stat page,
PL whatever, comma and the stat page.
If I fix this and put in just some stat information
and as Stephanie addressed
so you can see when I get it in there
with at least a stat information
it will allow it to be accepted.
Give it a second.
But as Stephanie said, the more detail that we can have,
the better it is for everyone.
Makes it easy to trace, easy to reference,
easy to find, you know, 10 years into the future
when you're looking backward,
it's easy to find out where that legal authority existed
that far back, and if I had a stat information.
And I had, it was in section 709 and section 710.
I'll give that a second.
And you'll see, I wanna demonstrate a long text
There is a character limitation,
number of characters allowed for this,
but it would take a lot to get to that character limitation
but I just wanted to demonstrate how it looked in the box.
Once I added as a legal authority,
it simply just wraps the text.
So if I had several stats,
a stat page with several sections referenced,
it would just wrap the text here.
And for the inline error messages
for the SHaC functionality.
So if I was entering a TAS and I forgot,
let me first demonstrate something else.
If I had this TAS in here as a component TAS,
and this is not the account
that I actually wanted to transact with,
I could just hit this little x
and it's gonna clear the TAS information and reset it.
So now I can go back in to enter it again,
enter the correct data.
And let's just use an example that I forgot to put my zero
in front of my two digit agency code.
And I just entered a 160106.
It's probably very hard to see on this screen right now
that right next to this x,
there's a little spinning wheel
that acts like it's searching the database
to try to find this TAS.
It will search for forever because it will not find anything
because it doesn't have the correct number of digits
to even begin its search.
In order to get this SHaC functionality to do anything,
you must get seven digits entered.
The three digit AID and a four digit MAIN.
That's the minimum information
that must be entered to get the TAS information to populate.
So you can see it'll just sit here and spin forever.
But if I go back to it and I'll put that zero in front
and get the correct number of digits,
it will give me this list.
Let me pick one that's got a long list.
So you can see it, there is a scroll bar here.
So in this particular account,
there are many many open accounts,
annual years, multi years, x year.
So it's a long list.
If I scroll down through here,
there are probably 20 or so in here.
If I didn't wanna search through that whole list,
if you notice here at the bottom on the format,
and it says to narrow search results,
you can enter the three digit AID plus the four digit MAIN
plus either the beginning period of availability or the x
and it will narrow those search results even more.
If I only wanted to see the ones that had 2020
as the beginning period of availability,
you can see that my list is much smaller now.
I only have five accounts to pick from that
at the beginning period of availability of 2020,
or if there was only one X year account,
if I put that X in, give it a minute.
You see, I only have one account to pick from,
and again if I make that selection,
you'll populate the component TAS information
into the component TAS fields
and this account is now ready to be transacted with.
Something else to demonstrate.
If I wait there, it is one more time.
If I were to enter a TAS or an account
that I did not have access to.
So I entered a TAS that was not part of this agency,
I get an error message that says TAS not found.
That is identifying to me as a user
that I cannot transact to that TAS.
If I get this back in here, and this is ready to go.
So another new functionality that we have
is on the To side,
you see that you can enter more than one To account.
So let's just say I wanted to enter three accounts.
I wanted to go from one account to three different accounts.
So I can put a three in this box on the right hand side,
click the check box, and it will give me three rows of data
that I can enter in.
They all function the same way.
On each row, you would have to enter your seven digits,
your three digit AID and your four digit MAIN,
when that comes up, you can select each one of them.
So I'll put in for a multi-year account
and for an x year account
So my amounts are not gonna match right now
for demonstration purposes, but let's just say
I realized after I was building this
that I did not want this middle row of data.
I wanted to take that middle row of data out.
If I go back up to the top,
if I leave everything the way it is on the screen
and I go back into this right above
where it says the two accounts,
and I take my three and I say, I only want two rows of data,
if I change that to a two and click the check box,
give it a minute, it's gonna ask me
or tell me that I'm about to remove data that contains,
I'm about to remove a row that contains data.
And it'll ask me if I'm sure.
If you do this, it's gonna take off the bottom row of data.
So for demonstration purposes,
I'll show you what that looks like.
I'll click Yes, and you see,
it took away my x year account.
It took away the bottom row of data.
Let me quickly get this back in here
so I can show you the functionality.
So in this situation
I didn't wanna remove the bottom row of data,
I wanted to remove the middle row of data.
So the way that you can do this is again
on each row of data, you have an X, I can click the X
on the middle row of data and it will remove,
it won't remove the row,
but it will remove all of the data.
So now I have row one filled in with information
and I have row three filled in with information.
So now, if I go and save this transaction incomplete,
CARS will automatically remove the empty row of data.
So now my middle row
that I had removed all the data from
is now removed from the transaction.
So now I can simply go back in to my edit button.
And now I only have two rows of data.
Both with the right taxes that I wanted to transact with
and this will now be ready to move forward.
So now, as you notice here, I've got $50 on my from side
and I've got $70 on the to side.
Those amounts don't match.
If I attempt to certify this transaction
I'm gonna get an inline error message.
It says the sum total from the from and the to are not equal.
Please adjust your totals.
And there'll be a red box around the total.
And I will get a red banner message at the top
saying the sum total from the from and to are not equal,
please adjust.
So these are very specific error messages
that we're gonna get throughout.
If I wanna clear my banner message here at the top
at the top, right, there is a little X I can click.
It'll clear my red banner message off the screen.
And then if I want to fix the transaction
or what the problem is
I can change one of the totals to make a match.
And as soon as I tab out of the field
the inline error message goes away, the red box goes away
and now this transaction is ready to be certified.
Another example is in the legal authority field.
If I remove all legal authority,
remember all authority transactions are based in laws.
So this is a mandatory entry.
If I attempt to leave my legal authority blank
and try to certify this transaction,
again I'm gonna get a banner message.
It says a illegal authority is required.
And I'm also gonna get a red box
around the legal authority field
and an inline error message
that says legal authority is required.
Same function, I can go to the banner message, click the X,
close my banner message
and as soon as I enter a valid legal authority
and get it added, all my error messages are cleared.
And now this transaction can be certified.
And if I click certify, this is also a nice feature.
You get an update
that says you have successfully updated
the non-expenditure transfer.
Sorry, that banner message disappeared on me.
So the next thing you can do from this screen
now this transaction, you see here in the status field
on the right hand column,
it says that it's agency certified.
Give me a second to highlight.
So now I can, on the bottom left, I have two options
because I'm in a view only for this transaction,
I can view my audit log,
see my audit log.
If I close that,
here's the functionality where you can create your PDF.
And again, for now, when we're in Internet Explorer,
you get the option down here at the bottom to open
or save the document.
If I click that I wanna open the document,
it will open directly in Adobe.
Give it a second.
So you have a sensitive, but unclassified cover page.
And if you scroll down,
the second page will be the actual transaction.
Okay, Holly, I think we're gonna take one more break
for some audience questions
for the information we've covered at this point.
And just keep in mind
before you start asking your questions
we will have another final question
and answer session at the end of this webinar.
Holly: Fabulous, thank you.
Wow, tons of great information.
Okay, hands are just flying out.
So we're gonna go in order here, John Stover,
it looks like we have a question from you,
John. I'm gonna take you off of mute,
you need to ask your question, John.
John: Yes, I was wondering
if you have a role as preparer,
I'm assuming that you won't be able
to do the agency certifications.
You'd have to have the agency certified a role in order to do that.
Chad: That is correct.
That is correct.
Expediency to just show it all the way through.
But yes, if you're an agency preparer
you will only be able to prepare the document
and an agency certifier would have to certify it.
John: Thank you.
Holly: Okay, thank you very much.
Lynette, your hand is up, do you have a question?
Oh, wait, no, it's gone.
Lynette, do you have a question?
Okay, Michael, it looks like you're on mute, just unmute
to ask your question.
Michael: Yes, I am muted.
My question is, if this is rolling out on Monday
and we have issues,
are we just calling the national service desk
or is there gonna be a special team there?
What kind of support is gonna be provided?
Chad: So it'll be a collaborative support effort.
I would say that if it's something simple
you're just something formatting
that you're having a problem with
that you can call your BAAS analyst
or anyone on the BAAS team.
We are prepared to start fielding questions on Monday
if anyone's having problems.
Michael: Where do we get that contact information from?
Chad: Let me flip back here on the handout.
The very first slide, sorry.
Michael: I can just throw it in the chat there for you.
Chad: If you can throw it in the chat
on the handout within the PowerPoint presentation,
our BAAS group email is on the front page,
and there's the group and everyone on the team
will get that request.
Holly: Okay, wonderful, thank you.
And I'm sorry, this is, I apologize
if I'm gonna mispronounce your name, but
do you have a question?
I'm gonna take you off on mute hopefully, but you're self muted.
So if you'd like to ask the question now
is a good time to take off the mute.
Okay, will do.
We're gonna go ahead to the next question here.
How about Ms. Theresa Bryant?
It looks like you have a question as well.
I'm trying to ...looks like you're self muted as well.
Trying to take you off of mute.
Do you have, now's a good time.
If you want to take yourself off of mute
to ask the question.
All right, Theresa, feel free to put your question in the,
go ahead and put in the app
and we can ask it a little bit later on.
Let me go through miss Lynette.
You have a question, I see your hand up.
Ooh, another self muted person,
Lynette or Ms.,
you have a question I'm able to take you off of mute.
Lady: Thank you.
Holly: Oh, you're welcome, glad it was answered.
Okay and let me see here.
Nope, the other two, well, Malina,
it looks you have a potentially a question as well
and if that is the case, you are self muted as well.
And I can't take you off.
So if you have a question, let me know.
And then that last one is Valerie Jones.
Valerie, let me see
if I can take you off of mute and I cannot.
So if you have a question
just go ahead and put them in the questions module.
Other than that, why don't we just go ahead and get started?
It looks like these other folks,
we're just gonna carry on
and we'll get to the question and answer session.
Chad: That sounds great, Holly.
So we're almost wrapping up here.
I'm gonna demo a few more functionality traits.
We'll have one more polling question
and then we'll summarize
and have another question and answer.
So what I've covered at this point is how to enter
and get a non-expenditure transfer certified.
And again, to the gentleman's question before
that could be two different roles at your agency
or it might be one person, but that is how you enter
and certify a transaction for a non-expenditure transfer.
Now I'm gonna go, I'm gonna show you that the functionality
between the pending and posted screens.
So I'm gonna go into pending first.
Give him a minute to load.
Okay, so in the pending screen,
you'll see the default to a screen,
it looks like what's on my screen.
There are no transactions
if you look down at the very bottom,
nothing is open right now.
So I have many different options to filter upon.
I'll go through these in order,
so starting from the top left,
I can find a transaction by control number.
If you happen to know the control number,
you can just enter that information in,
click Go To Transaction.
You can click on a transaction category.
So if you're looking for a non-expenditure transfer
that should be the only one
you would have the ability to search on at the agency level,
we have different ones here at our level
that you could put a transaction category in.
You can look for a date range,
you'll have a starting date range and an ending date range.
So these are also date pickers.
If you click in the box, you get a calendar.
So you can pick dates, a from and a to, if you pick dates,
there's a further filter option
to filter those dates by either accounting period,
effective date or transaction date
simply by putting check marks in those boxes,
you can search by all of them
or none of them or any of them.
The other thing that you can do
is if you know the short-handed TAS,
if you know the three digit AID
and four digit MAIN of the account
that you're looking for the transaction for
you can enter that information.
On the right hand column,
you can enter the transaction type.
So if you know it's an appropriation transfer
or a balance transfer whatever the transaction type is
you can select that as a filter option,
you can check on current status, so if you click on the status,
you can search on the ones
that have been certified, rejected
at the treasury level, at the agency level and so on.
And if you're in a shared AID situation
and you have access to multiple agencies,
you can click the agency
and select for whichever agency you wanna report.
Many of you only have access to your own agency
so that would be defaulted just to your agency.
So those are all just filter options
in order to find a pending transaction.
If you leave everything set to all and blank
and just click the search transactions button,
you will see everything that's pending.
Remember the search criteria above
is just to narrow your search.
So if I just click that,
I wanna see everything that's pending.
And you'll see down here at the bottom,
let it catch up a second
That there are 42 pending transactions right now.
So if you are an agency certifier,
and this is where you would see your transactions.
If an agency preparer had entered the transaction,
you will see the the transaction
that's meeting your attention in the pending queue.
On the search criteria,
you'll see that in the column format,
you'll have the control number,
you'll have all the component TAS information,
it's current status, status date,
all of the information from the transaction,
such as effective date, transaction date,
accounting period, what the transaction type was and so on.
If you get all the way to the right hand column,
you see an action column,
an action column has the ability
to have two different icons.
There's a little eyeball, if I hover over it,
you should be able to see that it says
that I can view this transaction.
I cannot edit that transaction,
I can only view that transaction.
On the second row of data, I've got both icons.
I can view it, or I have a little pen and paper
that says I can edit the transaction.
So if you're an agency certifier and an agency preparer
had put a transaction in, you would see
that transaction with an edit icon available to you.
I'll demonstrate both functionalities really quickly.
If I click the view icon for this transaction,
I can view the transaction,
and because I also had the edit capability,
I can click the edit button directly from this screen
and edit the transaction.
Have the same opportunity to produce the audit log
or produce a PDF as well.
So if I click that, I wanna edit the transaction,
it'll take me into edit mode.
And from there I can save
and complete or recertify it again.
There's also a new functionality here,
I didn't really cover much
but you can just delete the transactions.
If you realize you didn't need the transaction at all,
on the bottom right, you have the ability
to just completely delete that transaction.
For now, I'm just going to cancel this.
I'm gonna go back to my pending screen.
This is also neat functionality.
From the screen I'm in, and if I go back,
and I just wanna go back to my pending screen,
I don't have to rerun my search filters.
It'll take me back to the search results that I had
before I entered a transaction.
So that's another nice functionality.
So on that same row of data
that second row of data, I had the edit button.
So from the view screen,
from the pending screen,
I can click that I wanna edit that transaction
and go directly into the edit mode of that transaction.
Again, we'll cancel out of that.
I can go back to the top to my navigation screens
and go back to pending and back to my pending authority.
Give it a second, it is being a little slow, okay?
So I'm back to again,
I didn't have to rerun my search filters.
It took me back to the screen
I was in before I entered a transaction.
So you also have the ability to download
an Excel XML format.
We in BAAS we don't use this format
but I know several agencies do.
So you still have the ability to download an XML format.
If you have any issues with the formatting
between your system and the new AAS system,
just please reach out to someone for assistance.
And then you also have the ability
to download into Excel format.
Again, similar to how it produces in CARS today,
if I click that, I wanna download into Excel,
I'll get a little banner message at the bottom.
It asks me if I wanna open or save the file.
If I clicked that I wanna open it,
give it a second to open here.
This is the format that it comes in.
So now that you've got all your transactions
and a pending in an Excel file,
you know Excel lets you set your own filters
and you can filter on different criteria within Excel.
So that is another nice feature.
One more thing on the pending screen.
If you notice here on my search results,
I have empty boxes right below those column headers.
So you can see here that I've got transactions
in this particular group for AID, 016, 020
and several others.
If I wanted to filter, this is another filter option.
I can click in that box and if I said,
I only want to see the transactions for 016,
as soon as I type that three digit AID in there
you see it narrows my list of 42 pending items to only five.
The same is also true on the control number,
I could click the control number.
I'll just do the one that's on the first row.
So you can see it, I type that in,
it narrows my search results
to the one with that control number.
Same for all of these fields.
It's a very nice feature,
so if you wanted to just look at certain things,
you can easily filter once you have search results.
And if you make any changes to the column,
clicking on the link,
clicking on the link will sort,
right now everything's sorted in,
you can see the blue box around control number,
everything is sorted by control number.
But if I wanted to click to sort by AID,
I can click the little hyperlink that says AID
and it will resort my list.
So now I'm in AID sorting.
Then you can see the blue boxes around AID.
If you make any changes like that to the sorting,
or if you're running filters here,
there is a button here
that says reset column filtering and sorting.
I can just click that and it'll reset it back
to the way it was sorted by control number.
So those are some nice new features on the pending screen.
I won't spend a lot of time on the posted screen.
I will show it to you,
but it behaves very similarly to the pending screen.
Again, you have all your search options here at the top,
you can search and sort by date range,
I will just show you briefly what this looks like
from a date range perspective.
So I can do from September through November
in this environment, click search transactions,
and then you can see the list of posted transactions.
If you notice, when you're in the posted screen
on the action column, no posted transactions
are gonna have the ability to be edited.
So these will all be a view only icon.
So those are all of the functionality
that we were gonna demo today.
Before we get into a summary and more audience questions,
we wanna launch our fourth polling question.
Stephanie: Good afternoon everyone.
And thank you for participating.
We have one final question for you.
How many people in Treasury can approve warrants,
warrant journal vouchers
and non-expenditure transfers for posting in CARS?
Now I wanna remind you
we will have one last polling question
after this polling question,
we'll have one more final question and answer session.
All right, looks like we have the majority of our votes in.
Corey would you like to close that survey
and show us the results please?
Corey: Sure thing
Look like, then we'll go and close it out.
Stephanie: Yeah, it looks like there was a lot of people
that thought there were three
and we had several that said none of the above.
The answer was A, the BAAS team
consists of three approvers and seven analysts
plus our one supervisor.
It's important to note that the BAAS transaction volume
is heavier at month end, quarter end
and obviously at fiscal year end.
In question number two,
we asked how many authority transactions
does treasury process government-wide annually in CARS?
BAAS processes over 7,000 warrants, warrant journal vouchers
and non-expenditure transfers annually.
Please remember all of these transactions ultimately
have to flow through the seven analysts
and then filter down to the three approvers.
If you have an urgent item,
the best course of action is reaching out
to your point of contact within BAAS to escalate.
Be sure to provide a reason for urgency
such investments are required by 2:00 p.m.
Our team uses the entities reasoning
in prioritizing these requests.
Written requests can be sent to our entire team
via emailing the group that was on the first slide
it's the baasgroup@fiscal.treasury.gov.
As we conclude this afternoon,
we'll have more time for question and answer
after Chad does a quick summary, back to you Chad.
Chad: Thank you, Stephanie.
So just to summarize what we went over today, again
this is our postcard that we had sent out to most agencies.
So today on the webinar we did cover the new look and feel
of the AAS, new ATM Authority Services module.
We did cover the SHaC functionality
and how to get the three digit AID
and four digit MAIN into the TAS information fields
so that you can select an account to transact with.
We did cover the PDF functionality
that it had opens in Adobe,
as opposed to opening in a web browser.
We covered the proactive approach.
The fact that the AAS gives you inline error messages
and banner messages that are much more clear
and potentially notify you of problems with the transaction
before you get all the way to the end of it.
And then of course
we also covered the push TAS technology
where the goal of AAS is to give users a list of TASs
that are available to be transacted with
as opposed to having agency enter all of that information
and it potentially not being an active account.
So that's what we covered today.
And at this time we're gonna open up
for our final question and answer session.
Holly: Now, this is Holly, thank you.
Yeah, we've got quite a bit of questions out here.
So I am going to ask for some assistance
from Julie and from Stephanie,
given all of the questions that have come in,
could you help me prioritize them,
let's go ahead and get started.
So feel free to take yourselves off of mute
and so we can make sure and kind of provide the best,
you know, we only got about five minutes left
but I make sure to answer
probably the most important questions if possible.
So Julie, Stephanie, do you have any recommendations?
Chad: And Holly, this is Chad, while they're doing that,
I just wanna say to the audience,
if your question doesn't get answered today,
we don't want to overlook that.
So please take a moment to email that question
to the BAAS group
and we will endeavor to get that answered for you.
Holly: Yes that'd be great.
Well, I'm gonna go out and get started.
And Julie and Stephanie just happen when need be
but here is one question here from Michael,
which fields are editable
when a net transfer has been submitted
from an agency user to the agency certifier?
Chad: That is a great question.
I'm not logged in with that role.
So I don't know if I can show it to you directly
but let me go back to my pending queue.
Hopefully I can show it to you.
So if an agency preparer
put it in and an agency certifier goes in,
again, I'm not in that role,
it would take me a minute to switch roles,
so I'm not gonna better show your live,
but you should be able to enter a comment
and then you should have a button
to either reject the transaction
or certify the transaction.
And the only other field
that you can edit besides the buttons is a comment field.
And while they're asking another question,
I may be able to switch roles and show that to you.
Stephanie: Well, this is Stephanie.
And one of the questions we received a lot
is about the agency roles.
So there are three different agency roles.
There's agency certifier
or let's start with agency preparer, agency certifier
and then the agency all role.
And now these roles will not be changing.
So if you're currently have the agency all role,
you will still have the agency all role on Monday.
The agency all role allows the same person
to prepare the transaction and certify the transaction.
Now, the agency preparer
can prepare the transaction and save it incomplete.
If you save it incomplete
then you can go back and edit that transaction
make any changes to it, or save it for a future date
if that's what you want to do.
You cannot, your agency certifier cannot certify it though
until you complete it.
If it's saved incomplete,
the agency certifier cannot process it.
And then one of the other questions we had
was if this was going to impact any of the reports
it was gonna have any impact
on the reclassifications or any of the impacts
and this deployment that's going out this weekend
is only impacting our warrants, warrant journal vouchers,
and non-expenditure transfers.
So those, if you do not work directly with those
in the current authority transaction module
then you probably will not see any changes.
And the third question I saw a lot of
is what if I can't see the TAS I need to,
that I'm trying to get my to are from,
and it's not showing up
but I am entering it in the right format.
So if you cannot see your TAS next week,
most likely your A group is not set up correctly
and you'll wanna contact treasury support.
And then when need to just make sure
that you have the right A group assignment
and that that TAS is assigned to your user ID.
Hey Julie, I'll see if you had any that you wanted to cover
Chad: Really quickly before Julie jumps in
for the gentleman's question before
this is an agency certifier role for a pending transaction.
All everything on the transaction is not editable
except for the bottom.
You can select a reason for rejection.
You can enter an optional comment and you can either certify
or reject the transaction review the audit log.
So I hope that answers your question.
Go ahead Julie.
Julie: And if Chad were to try and reject this,
it would require a rejection reason, just so you know
and there are some Pat rejection reasons there
if you would click on that dropdown arrow,
you would be able to see those.
He went really fast when there's more than one.
This one's only showing one, thanks Chad.
I'm thinking of some of the other authorities.
Chad: Yeah, but at least it's correct.
Julie: Thank you Chad.
Chad: If you select to reject
you are forced to put a comment in.
Holly: This is Holly Williams,
I think we have run out of time.
We do have many, many, many more questions.
And like you said,
I believe you folks will be following up
Corey: Yes, and Holly,
we do have one more quick admin note for the audience.
We're asking all agencies to get all pending transactions
through your queue by the end of the day today.
The BAAS group is gonna endeavor
to clear all pending transactions no later than tomorrow,
so that the AAS can roll out over the weekend.
It's important to note that AAS
will not transition any pending transactions into AAS.
So if it's in any kind of upending state,
it will be deleted.
So if you cannot get your transaction in today
for processing, please hold them until Monday.
Corey: Thank you Chad, I appreciate that.
And to be mindful of everyone's time,
we'll go ahead and conclude the webinar for today.
I'd like to thank everyone for attending
the CARS, authority module services and services demo.
If you have questions,
please contact the BAAS group
at baasgroup@fiscal.treasury.gov.
I also added that to the chats.
So if you need it, it should be able to find it there.
Once you leave today's webinar,
you will receive a survey of the presentation
and we would appreciate if you would complete their survey
and provide your feedback.
A video recording of today's webinar will be available
in about a week and we will forward everyone
a link to the location of that video
once it is available.
On behalf of the engagement and onboarding staff
and our presenters, thank you for joining us today
and have a great rest of your day.
Holly: Wonderful, thank you everyone.