(vibrant descending music)
(light steady music)
-: We got just a few more sessions to get through,
and then the conference will be over,
so thanks everyone for attending.
Try to keep this as lively as we can.
We're talking about GTAS,
and some of the functionality in it,
and a subject as dry as learning how to enroll
in a system.
I don't know how interesting I'll be able to make it,
but I'm gonna try.
So, before I get into this presentation,
one of the things I wanna discuss
or at least give you guys a heads-up on is,
this presentation is intended...
The slide deck alone is intended
to give you kind of a primer on GTAS.
I think last year this was called GTAS 101.
We changed the name of it, just to change it,
and it's still basically the same presentation,
but the thing I wanna point across is,
we know there's turnover in your agency,
and we know that because of that,
there is a need to have continual training on GTAS.
So I just wanna plug that,
that's something that we offer.
We don't officially offer it,
it's not like you're gonna get CPE's for it or anything,
but if there's ever any instance
where you have multiple people coming in,
and you just want them to get an overview
of GTAS, its purpose,
how to get access to it if you're an agency,
new to an agency, please just reach out to us,
and we are more than willing to give you a session
or multiple sessions if need be,
because we feel like there's never enough education
that we do on our side,
in terms of how to use the application.
So with said, we'll go ahead and get into it.
So the objective is to gain information
about enrolling in GTAS, and then subsequently
navigating the application
and understanding the key aspects.
GTAS, when it was originally pitched to agencies,
it was conceived as a one-stop shop for accounting,
almost like the Amazon of financial reporting.
We hope that we've lived up to that reputation,
and one of the things that we try to do
with anything new that we put in the system,
is intuitiveness is always at the forefront.
We want things to be easy to use,
so we do a lot of usability testing.
We do a lot of testing with external agencies
about new functions to see if you like it,
to get your feedback.
Does that work with your business processes?
So if at any point, you come across functionality in GTAS
that you don't think is working as efficiently
or as effectively as it could,
please feel free to reach out to us,
and we'll do our best to make sure
that we can address that in a timely way,
and one of the reasons that we should be able to do that,
is that we've switched our development methodology
as we discussed in previous sessions, to agile,
so we're hoping that once we get that fully up and running,
that it's not gonna be months in between agency requests
for enhancements, and the time that it's developed
and put into production,
depending on the priority, of course.
There's only so much time and resources to go around,
but the plan for us in the future,
to be extremely proactive, and much more timely
with our reactive enhancements that we put into the system,
so please try to be patient with us
while we work through that,
but we think we're getting there.
So on the agenda, we're gonna talk about enrollment,
so steps for enrolling, and what role you should choose.
I think that probably the steps for enrolling,
we don't get a lotta questions on,
but what role to choose.
I feel like we get that question daily,
from either internal to physical service
or external agencies asking what role they should pick,
so we'll try to go over that.
And then we're gonna go over a lot
of the major points of GTAS.
This is not everything in GTAS,
but these are the things that,
when Dan and I took a look at what we wanted to convey
to the agencies,
what we do we think the most important features,
or what would we want agencies to know
if we only had an hour to tell them?
So we're gonna start with the home page.
That's gonna be kind of obvious.
That one is where we communicate to you
through the application,
and so we'll talk about some of the features
of the home page, that maybe people aren't aware of.
Some of them we haven't had to use, thankfully,
but I'll explain to you what those are.
And then the MY ATB Status page.
I think everyone should be aware of that
if you've used GTAS.
That reminds me, how many people in here
actually use GTAS in any way, shape, or form?
Okay good, so majority of you.
Hopefully if you've used it at any point,
a lot of this will be kind of retread information for you,
but maybe something you can take back to your agencies
and use as a learning tool for them.
So we're gonna talk about My ATB Status
and what you should do with that,
so hopefully most of you who use it
are aware of what My ATB Status is.
Also the Super Master Account File, SMAF for short.
You've probably heard us talk about that,
and if you wonder where that term comes from,
well I'll kind of update you on what that term means.
Bulk File Uploading, that one's kind of explanatory,
self-explanatory, how to upload a bulk file.
Manual Adjustments, which every time
we talk about manual adjustments,
the one thing I always say about it is
we spend a lot of time and money
developing manual adjustments,
and we don't anyone to use it.
So that's just gonna hold true
until we get rid of manual adjustments period
and no longer have a need for them.
And then Apportionment Cat B
and Program Reporting Category.
So the Cat B/PRC module for short, what we call it,
kinda gonna talk about,
we made some major enhancements to that last year,
and I just wanna reiterate how that works,
'cause it's still something that we work through
on a daily basis in our reporting windows
and still questions that we get on that.
And then the importance of certifying data.
Why do we always stress certifying data,
and what does it do for the data flow,
from GTAS to our other systems that compile the FR?
So GTAS enrollment.
So this is relatively simple.
It's just this is here for a reference,
so the first thing that you have to have,
is a Single Sign On account, a SSO account, for short.
So if you call the treasury support center,
that's the first question they're gonna ask you.
If you want access to the system,
you need to have an SSO ID first.
That's the first step in the authentication
of getting access to the system.
So to obtain it, go to that link that I have there
and self-enroll yourself.
The next step is going to be you need
to request access to the GTAS application within ISIM.
So once you get the SSO ID, that's just the first step.
The second step is requesting it here,
so you're gonna go to the application within ISIM,
and you're gonna click on the Request Account link,
and then it's not gonna give your a dropdown or anything
in there, you're gonna have to type in GTAS,
and then it will pull that information for you.
That's every time I've ever requested access,
that's always been a tripping point.
Why does it not give me a list of applications
to pick from?
But for some reason we've decided,
or it's been decided to have to type that
into that page, so make sure that's something that you do.
The next step is you're going to click Search,
and then the Role field will come up.
So you need to select your role,
and I'm gonna have a slide, a few slides from now
that describes each role,
and if one of those roles within GTAS
describes what you're wanting to do,
that's the role you should select.
And you're search in the GTAS Role screen,
and select the appropriate role by clicking on it.
So that's, it's gonna show up here,
so you got Certifier, Executive, Preparer.
By default, this is only gonna show external roles.
We have also another set of roles
that are internal to treasury,
so if anybody in here that's internal to treasury
and is requesting an internal role,
you have to get confirmation that you should have
an internal role before that will show up.
So if you're internal, and you don't see this,
email the TSC and let them know
that you're internal to treasury.
So the next step is going to be,
you're gonna use the free form field
to fill out the following four criteria.
Now this one I kinda wanna hit on for a little bit,
because the fact that it's free form,
allows for some issues,
and Theresa and I have talked about these issues,
and it is an issue for us when we're trying to track down
who's responsible for certain Treasury Account Symbol.
So these four fields are Agency Name, Department,
Financial Report, FR Entity,
and Treasury Account Symbol Access.
So these two are not necessarily an issue,
but these two become and issue.
So if you have to access to any of the user ID's,
or any of the user information in GTAS,
one of the things that you'll see
is the result of having free form fields for this.
Agencies select and put in,
or individuals put in whatever they feel like putting in,
so one of the things I wanna encourage you to do,
when you're filling out this form,
is reach out to us if you're confused
of what you should put, or reach out
to the TSC, and we will help guide you
through this process.
If you don't know what agency you should be reporting for,
we will help guide you through this.
We'll either look up individual users
that match your access, or we'll just determine
that you should have department level access
or department level...
It's gonna help us filter down our contacts.
So some agencies put their bureau,
or some individuals put their bureau
as their agency name, and if you just don't know
what bureau that agency falls under,
or excuse me, what agency that bureau falls under,
it can be an issue for us searching for individuals.
If we're just trying
to contact the Department of Justice, for instance,
and all they've put on there is Bureau of Prisons,
as their bureau contact,
we don't necessarily know
that that's who we should be contacting,
so to help us out, please try to be consistent
when you fill out these two fields.
These other two should be relatively standardized,
so you should be able to tell us
which FR entity you're gonna reporting on behalf of,
and it could be multiple FR entities.
One thing to keep in mind here, I wanna point out,
is that you can actually request,
when you're asking for access through ISIM,
you can request to have your access mirrored
by another user ID.
So if you just wanna, if you're replacing somebody
who's maybe going to another area
of working in another part of the application,
just say, "I want my access to look like so and so."
And TSC will provide that.
So that's one thing, I'm not sure everyone's aware
that that feature exists,
but we try to make it as simple as we can for you.
So moving to the next step,
so you're gonna select a supervisor,
and then the supervisor will approve that request.
Once you've selected the approver,
the last step to your part as a request,
as the preparer essentially,
is to select the supervisor and send it on.
So something to keep in mind,
the process, the status of this request
is gonna remain in process until the supervisor,
signs off on it essentially.
Now the supervisor has up to seven days,
once the request is submitted,
to either reject or approve the request.
If they don't do anything during those seven days,
then you'll need to start over.
The request is essentially just removed,
as an active request.
So when you're working through getting access to the system,
make sure that you're in communication
with whoever your designation supervisor is
within the system, so that they know
they have a limited amount of time
to go in and approve it
so that we're not duplicating efforts.
The other thing that you might,
is the TSC has seven days after the supervisor approves
to then process the request to finally get your access.
Generally speaking, it doesn't take that long.
Generally in my experience with agencies
when they're going through this,
it's a couple of business days at most.
It could be a one-day turnaround.
So, hopefully you've not experienced any delays
in getting access once your request is approved,
but if you have, definitely let me know,
and we'll see if we can get that addressed.
So what role to choose,
this is a question that we get quite often.
So there's three main external roles.
So the way to think about this is,
the preparer is essentially going to be the person
who's doing the bulk of the work, within the system.
And by work, I mean uploading bulk files.
It's gonna certify ATB, I'm sorry,
if I'm looking this way, can you guys hear me?
Okay, certifying ATB's, periods two through 11.
So that's important, because you can't overlap those rules,
so I'll get back to that here in just a second.
You're gonna enter in manual adjustments,
if you've been designated to enter manual adjustments,
and also explain material differences
for the quarter ends.
So generally speaking, if you're an accountant
at an agency, and they say you need
to get access to GTAS,
nine times out of 10,
this is the role they're talking about.
Most people need prepare roles,
and when they say what level of access do I need?
They really are asking us,
which treasury account symbol should I have access to,
and that's up to the agencies to determine.
We do not designate or even imply what access
you should have as an agency.
We allow the agencies to designate that themselves.
One of the reasons we do that is for flexibility.
So we would expect agencies to have as many preparers
in the system that they feel necessary
to accomplish the task.
We, in the past, in some of our other accounting systems,
would will only allow a certain amount of preparers
to be assigned to one account.
That was a maintenance nightmare,
and it became an issue with when someone was sick,
and when someone had an issue
that they needed to be out of the office,
that we're having to keep windows open
longer than we needed to,
because there was simply nobody else
that could do it, and we couldn't get is assigned
to another preparer.
So, with GTAS, we have put flexibility,
and we've put the illness on the agencies
to work out their internal structure for reporting,
and to, if you want 50 preparers
to be assigned to 50 different treasury account symbols,
that's your discretion.
You can do that.
So that's been a little bit of an issue.
I mean not for the last couple of years,
but when we first implemented GTAS,
that was an issue agencies had
where we more dictated in the past
how preparers and supervisors and approvers
should be set up,
but we no longer do that with this new setup.
So other role that most,
well every agency needs to have this role, is certifier.
So the certifier really serves
kind of a, the purpose of saying
that this data is certified and signed off on,
and is ready to be transmitted to another outlet
with the exception of OMB data,
to data that we send to OMB,
nothing gets sent to another application in GTAS
that is not certified.
So if you're on your quarter ends,
and you wanna send data to the DATA Act.
Excuse me that's incorrect.
The DATA Act, data also gets sent.
That's not certified.
You will not get material difference information,
if you're data is not certified on the quarter ends.
Also, GFRS will not receive financial statement data
from any of the treasury account symbols
that you've reported that are not certified.
So what the certifier is,
if you look in our TFM, we kinda define this.
The certifier is essentially the CFO designee,
saying that I sign off on this data,
and that it's good to be transmitted
to whatever system we're gonna use to compile the FR.
That's kinda how we look at it,
and also to explain material differences.
So the executive, the way to look
at the executive role, is essentially
it's a read-only role for an agency.
So for some reason, your auditors,
say want access to GTAS to look at all the reports.
We request that they ask for the executive role.
You can't change any data as an executive.
You can't break anything in the system.
You can't modify anything.
So if you want a read-only role,
the closest thing that we have to that
is the executive role.
Man in Audience: How many (muffled speaking).
-: I'm sorry, what was the question?
(muffled speaking)
Is there a limit on the number of persons
who can certify?
(muffled speaking)
Oh, executives.
No, there's no limit on the number of executives
you could have.
Yeah, so, I mean yeah,
whoever needs access to the system, can get it,
at your agency.
Okay, so that was actually a good place to stop,
because that's really all I was gonna go over
in relation to enrollment.
Lemme go back on slide or two slides.
This right here, sorry.
This right here tells you everything you need to know
about getting access into the system.
It'll give you the phone numbers for TFC.
It'll also reference the GTAS POC's,
if you wanna go through them.
So if you don't learn anything from this presentation,
you don't take anything,
just have this link available or in your system,
and this will give you everything you need to know
about how to get access into GTAS.
Okay, so moving to the GTAS overview.
The first thing we're start with is the Homepage.
So the Homepage is pretty self-explanatory,
what it is, it's the first place
that you're gonna be in the system when you log in.
And so this is what our GTAS Homepage looks like,
and I know we've got a...
We kinda throw a wall of text at you,
but we've had some issues that we needed
to make sure agencies were staying up to date on
in the system, and the most efficient way
for us to do that, is through the Homepage.
So please, when you log into the system,
don't become accustomed to just not reading this.
I understand any time you log into a system,
and you see a wall of text like that, you're not reading it,
I get it.
I do the same thing, but we try to,
we try to put information that we think
is very pertinent to the agencies,
and we try to put a timeline on it,
so that you know where the most pertinent information is.
We have a new function on the homepage
that we've never had to use yet.
But if that, if we use that function,
you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.
So we have what we call Urgent Homepage Messages,
which is no matter where you are in the system,
if you're logged in, and we have some critical function
that goes down, we have the ability
to push out a notification, and it'll appear
as an orange ribbon underneath here.
If you see one of those, please do me a favor
and make sure that you read that
and follow the directions,
because that means that we really urgently need you
to read this, and it's one of those things
that we promise when we developed it,
that we would not use it or not abuse it.
So that's why you've never had to see it,
'cause we haven't had a critical issue,
thank God so far, that we needed to do that.
Some other key points of the Homepage
is the Quicklinks over here.
So this is gonna give you essentially
that you need to know about
how to do anything in the system.
So we reference the USSGLTFM,
the reporting schedule here.
TFM 2-4700 is referenced here.
Any phone numbers that you might need,
so there's our message, our email address
for the GTAS team,
and the TCS's phone number
if you're having technical issues.
Also we have our frequently asked questions documents.
Every time we have a major release,
we create a frequently asked questions document
that probably answers any question
that you may think about picking up the phone
and calling us about.
So generally speaking, one of the things
that we're gonna do is reference the same document,
if you're asking us questions.
So it'd be helpful to have more people
look at things like this,
and I'm not sure one of those things
that you see a thousand times,
you don't really realize how helpful it is.
So I just wanted to point that out.
Another thing, and this is really kind of a copy over
from My ATB Status,
is for your individual user ID,
we're gonna give you a snapshot here,
of where your treasury account symbols are.
So this is for when you went into ISIM
and you requested access,
and say your agency has 500 accounts,
but you're only assigned to 75 of 'em,
you will see a status here of those 75,
because we're only gonna show you your A group
so keep that in mind.
-: [Man In Background] Hey Luke.
Just wanna point out the email address on there
is for the support center.
That's not our team one.
-: Oh, okay, sorry.
Yeah I got new contacts, and I can't really see that well.
So I apologize for that.
(audience laughs)
-: [Man In Background] Wear your glasses.
(Luke laughs)
-: They're in the ocean.
Okay.
So, now we're gonna talk about...
So with that, did anybody have any questions
about the Homepage before we go on?
Okay, so now we're gonna talk about My ATB Status
and the purpose of My ATB Status.
So we overhauled this one, this module,
a couple of years ago to make it more user friendly,
and to give it a lot more functionality.
So I do wanna kinda highlight some of that.
So it's gonna give you a breakout.
This is what My ATB Status looks like.
It's gonna give you a breakout in individual tabs
of the ATB statuses.
One of the major things that we did with My ATB Status
was we gave you a lot more functionality
in terms of search capability.
For whatever reason when it was initially designed,
the only thing you could search for
was essentially fund family,
and that limited people's access to,
of dial down to what they need to look at.
So we've added essentially the same functions
that we had internally, since GTAS was designed,
and we've also given you the ability
to see more than one period.
So you can go in here, and you can search the My ATB Status,
of any period in the system that you reported for.
So in the past you only had access
to the current one, and it became obvious
that we need to give agencies the ability
to see the history of how they fell out
in My ATB Status, and also being able
to see any edits or validations that they had issues with.
So again, what you're gonna see here,
is the different statuses,
and you're gonna see a breakout,
kinda the same as what you're see on the homepage
of the account symbols that are assigned to you.
So you can see in this example,
there's seven not submitted, one in failed validations.
And, sorry I can't...
Does that have zero that's certified?
-: [Man In Background] Nine.
-: Nine (laughs).
Yeah.
I need to fire my eye doctor.
(audience laughs)
So, so the other thing I wanna point out in here,
is this new functionality,
and I've brought this up in two different presentations now,
but I don't think I could communicate it enough.
This is where the Management Activity button is.
So what's gonna happen here when you click this,
is GTAS is gonna perform a little bit of logic
on the treasury account symbols
that you're assigned to,
and it's gonna go through some checks.
It's gonna say this fund amounts of treasury is zero.
Its net outlay is zero.
Are there any transactions within the last 12 months?
Are there any BETC balances or business line balances
that could result in this no activity not being true?
So then if all those things are true,
if all those questions that I just ask are true, or yes,
then GTAS will populate a list
of treasury account symbols that then you can move,
depending certification,
without having to upload a bulk file.
So this should save anyone who has hundreds
of these no activity accounts out there,
this should save you a lot of time
from producing that file and uploading it,
and making sure it has the correct file length,
and all the things that go along with uploading bulk files.
Really it's a bunch of things
that you don't even really need to worry about,
because all we're asking for is this account,
really no activity, and by that we also
include accrual activity,
so keep that in mind when you're certifying these,
that you are certifying the fact
that there is no accrual activity.
We do not have a system that tracks accrual activity
that feeds into GTAS,
so when you certify to that,
there's a statement that comes up
after you click the Manage No Activity,
that tells you that you're attesting to the fact,
or you're certifying to the fact
that there is no accrual information
that would not be reported in the system
if you certify this.
So please keep that in mind.
-: [Woman in Audience] Luke?
-: Yeah?
-: [Woman in Audience] Can I ask a question?
-: Yes.
-: [Woman in Audience] What's the difference
between that and Not Submitted?
-: Well not submitting, it doesn't tell us anything.
So, because if you think about it
from our perspective,
just because you didn't submit something,
we can't rely on the fact that you didn't submit it
to say, "Well that means that there's no activity
"for this account."
It could be an error that there's no activity.
It could be that you just didn't realize
you needed this reported,
and you have multiple SGL's that maybe sum to zero.
Maybe you had a transfer in and out
from that account, where there is no fund miles
to treasury or net outlay impact,
but that you have SGL's that we need to report
to show the proper eliminations.
So there's a bunch of reasons why
we need you to tell us that these accounts are no activity.
That's just a couple of 'em.
The other one is the accrual.
We need to make sure that
there's no long, outstanding accrual
that you have booked that you have not
been reporting in GTAS,
and that we're missing, in terms of compilation of the FR.
So that's why for us, it's very important
that No Activity accounts get reported as such.
Make sense?
(muffled speaking)
(Luke laughs)
-: [Woman in Audience] In other words
you have to still upload the bulk file,
but then you elect to say No Activity?
-: No, this is in lieu of uploading bulk files.
So one of the big things that we heard from agencies,
was why do I need to go through all the effort
of uploading bulk files,
just to show you a zero-line file?
Well implicitly that meant that you agree,
that that was a zero-activity account.
So that was good for us that you were doing that.
But the burden that we're putting on you
to report those No Activity tasks,
was too high, so we developed this function here,
to not make report bulk files on those.
So this will move if these,
say these seven accounts here were No Activity accounts,
and you hit Manage No Activity,
and it populated in this list,
and you said Move to Pending.
Then you'll see these seven accounts
go from Not Submitted to Pending Certification.
And then if you're in periods two through 11 as preparer,
you can go in and certify those accounts,
and then you're done with that reporting.
So that tells that those treasury account symbols
are truly No Activity.
And that we can use that information,
and we can rely on that information
that we are not missing any data that we would need
to compile the FR.
Man in Audience: I have two questions.
-: Yeah.
(muffled speaking)
Man in Audience: Should I leave it as Not Submitted,
or what do you recommend?
-: So the IPAC occurred right?
Man in Audience: Yes.
-: Then yes, you should report that as...
Even if it's an error, that's still, that's,
in our view, that's what happened.
(muffled speaking)
Yeah.
So in our view, that's something that needs
to be recorded, because essentially
what are we saying, when we're saying
what we're accounting for things?
And I understand that that's not something
that necessarily you--
(muffled speaking)
Yes, so we would need you to report that as such,
and the fixed for that going forward
is to work with whoever did that
to ensure that that doesn't happen again in the future.
So there's not controls,
as you know, as you're aware, in IPAC to limit that,
so on the other side that means,
on GTAS side, that means that we still need
to have that reported, because that's where
that money is sitting,
and so we need that information,
because that's a true picture
of that treasury account symbol.
Whether it was in an error or not, is not really--
(muffled speaking)
Yeah.
(muffled speaking)
They say support the outlay?
(muffled speaking)
So, from a GTAS perspective,
I would want you to report that.
Man in Audience: Okay.
-: Now in terms of defending that to your auditors,
I don't really know what to tell you there,
because that is gonna be a kind of a shortcoming
in the reporting process,
and a breakdown in communications
between you and whoever IPACed that to you,
so I think those things are gonna happen,
and if you want, we can talk more about
maybe how to mitigate those,
after the presentation, if you wanna meet me
after the presentation, we can talk about that.
Man in Audience: Maybe we can get a system together
where you can have controls over what gets IPACed,
like an agreement between agencies somewhere.
(all laughs)
Anybody got any ideas for us?
(muffled speaking)
Man in Audience: I just wanna know (muffled speaking)
-: So strictly speaking for GTAS reporting,
we'd want you to show that transfer happening,
and we'd want you to report it.
(muffled speaking)
Yeah, so thank God.
Theresa concurs, whoo!
(all laugh)
Yeah?
(muffled speaking)
Man in Audience: We cannot support that transaction.
(muffled speaking)
-: Right, understood, and I would encourage
to work on those business processes,
and if you want our help with that,
definitely we can support that
and help with coming up with those processes,
but as for, as of how it's gonna work
in today's environment, yeah unfortunately
if that happens, we need you to report it
as you showing that outlay.
-: [Woman in Audience] Can I respond?
He's asking for audit support?
Basically, are you not gonna correct it eventually?
(audience chatters)
I mean once you correct it,
that you should basically just tell your auditor,
"It's wrong, we know it's wrong,
"and here's our process to correct it,"
and then show them where it was corrected,
any of the subsequent period.
-: Right.
(muffled speaking)
-: [Woman in Audience] The same thing.
But you would be, it would be reported
as a prior year correction, since your cross fiscal years.
(muffled speaking)
But that's not GTAS-related.
That's audit-related, and I'll give it back to Luke.
(muffled speaking)
I think I'd look at it as a reporting error,
not to report it.
(muffled speaking)
Yeah, so just as a general rule,
you should never look at GTAS reporting.
I'm only gonna report the good stuff.
(audience laughs)
So, we wanna make sure...
(audience applauds)
I mean, but I say, I understand why you guys are laughing.
I don't mean it in a condescending way.
I'm just saying that when we're talking about accounting
and what we're trying to do in GTAS,
we're trying to show the whole picture, flaws and all.
We're not really, necessarily trying to...
And I understand where you're coming from,
in terms of that there is flaw in the process,
where somebody can IPAC you at any time.
And that's why we encourage you, as Dan was saying,
we encourage you to communicate with your trading partners,
even if someone is inadvertently trading with you,
and they shouldn't be, to make sure that doesn't happen.
And as the lady was saying, yeah,
it should be corrected and noted as such
once it's corrected, so.
Sylvester: I wanted to make a comment.
-: Yeah.
Sylvester: I'm Sylvester Reed.
I work with Hood in the accounting,
and accounting department, FHA.
I think if that happened with us,
we would show it as a unconfirmed disbursement.
It left treasury, so we wouldn't have recorded
in the general ledger, as a disbursement to cash.
It would be a unconfirmed transaction,
a way to research, and if the auditors did ask for support,
we would actually show 'em,
here's the entry for unconfirmed.
We're doing research on it,
and once we did our research,
we can identify who actually charged our account,
and I think that would be acceptable.
-: I would think so too.
I mean I don't have any issue with that.
I mean I think it really just depends on
what your agencies, what you want to provide
to your auditors and what they're asking for.
So again, we don't wanna necessarily prescribe
how you should handle your auditor request,
but we would definitely support any request
that you get from your auditors.
So I'm gonna need to,
if I'm gonna get through this,
I'm gonna need to kinda get through the next few.
We can talk afterwards if you want,
and we'll help you out with anything that we can.
Okay, so moving to the SMAF,
or the Super Master Account File.
So this one, the title for this is kind of,
it's kind of a goofy title,
but the point of it is,
is that we had in the past, we had two different systems
that we used to capture budgetary
and proprietary treasury account symbol information.
Those two different systems had a listing of accounts
that were called MAF's,
so we combined the two,
and somebody in their infinite wisdom
decided to call it Super Master Account File.
And so what this is, is a listing
of very treasury account symbol
that should be reported
on an individual agency's financial statements,
and should be included in the financial report
of the United States government.
So that's approximately 13,000 treasury account symbols.
There's somewhere around,
I think it's slightly less, 8000 expenditure accounts,
and we have four or five
other different predominant account types
that fall under there.
I exclude C TAS's from that list,
because C TAS's are strictly derived from GTAS,
so we don't look at them as valid treasury account symbols
in the traditional sense.
They're really just there to help agencies
report longterm assets.
So there is a little bit,
there's some information out on our external website,
about when to use C TAS's,
under what circumstance it's appropriate.
We get a lot of agencies asking us,
"Can I just report this in the C TAS?"
99% of the time, the answer is no.
C TAS's are not to be used as a dumping ground
for where you don't know where the activity should go.
They're really just used for longterm that have,
that still need to be reported,
but do not actually have an active treasury account symbol
in cars, that to report against.
And so there's, like I said,
they contain all attributes that would be applicable
with budgetary or proprietary for a given task.
There's two different reports,
and I'll go ahead and go to the next screen.
There's two different reports that you can run,
for this SMAF.
It's gonna give you a lotta useful information.
So the Run Download my SMAF report,
is gonna give you everything that you need to know
about the treasury account symbols
that you're assigned to.
So when I say that it's gonna give everything,
it's literally everything,
with the exception of the bulk file.
So if you wanna know what OMB sub-function code
is assigned to your treasury account symbol,
that's gonna be listed on that file.
I think there's something like 27 or 28 different attributes
that will be listed out on the Excel file.
So I encourage agencies when they're doing
a SMAF reconciliation, which hopefully you guys
are doing at least semi-regularly,
that you're using this report
and checking each one of those attributes,
and you agree with those attributes,
and if you don't reach out to us,
if it's an O & B provided attribute,
then we'll get with Theresa or Rob,
and we'll try to get to the bottom
of where the discrepancy's going to,
or where it's coming from,
and we'll try to get it resolved.
If it's proprietary, just reach out to us,
and we'll work on getting that attribute corrected,
or getting to the bottom of where the discrepancy came from.
-: [Man In Background] One of those
that he's talking about, reporting type code,
this is where you might have it
as dedicated to collections
or undesignated, this is one we'd definitely like it
if you'd review these and let us know
if we need to change any of those reporting type,
because that makes a difference in other areas
of where that feeds to.
It makes a difference with your notes and things like that.
So, and that's one of things that,
if that changes, and you have to re-upload
to make sure that everything gets updated.
So that's one of the attributes among many
that we definitely get a lot of questions
or come across a lot of times
where something's not showing up in the right area,
and it's because the reporting type code
is not correct.
-: Yeah, that's a really good point,
and that's extremely important even more so this year,
because of the way that we're deriving data
for the notes, for FUNSIM dedicated collections,
and for the fiduciary notes,
and so it's even more critical this year
than it has been in years past.
So definitely, if you take nothing back
from this portion of it,
go back and look at those attributes
and make sure that the treasury account symbols
that you've marked, fiduciary or dedicated collections
or undesignated, actually tie out
to what you have in your system.
(muffled speaking)
Yes?
(muffled speaking)
Man in Audience: This report,
will they include the entire population,
or only those TSIMS that I applied for initially?
-: Only those TSIMS you applied for initially.
Man in Audience: So there may be a,
there may be a possibility then,
that I'm not capturing the entire thing.
-: Correct, yes there's a possibility,
and so that's one of the things
that you might have to work out with your agency.
Do you have every treasury account symbol covered
for your individual FR entity
to make sure that if you do a SMAF reconciliation,
it's not just your piece of the SMAF
that's been reconciled.
It's the entire agency's SMAF.
And we can give you a list
if you wanna know what the entire list
of treasury account symbols for your FR entity,
as long as you have an email address
from that agency, we'll send you that list
so you can check it off if you need to.
(muffled speaking)
No problem.
-: [Man In Background] And with that,
what they set up as the user access group for you,
and I don't think that's down to like the exact TAS level,
more it's like--
-: [Man In Background] Fund family.
-: Fund family or beyond that even, maybe sub-accounts.
So there's a certain level where you don't have
to list every, "Oh I need the 2012 and the 1313,"
like that would all get pulled in with that fund family.
-: Okay, so we're gonna move to Bulk File Uploading.
So, one of the most critical pieces of GTAS
is Bulk File Uploading.
It's certainly one of the most important things
that we can think of in terms of
what do we have this system for?
It's for you to have a automated or semi-automated way
to upload data to us that represents
your financial statements.
So definitely the most critical piece I think of
is Bulk File Uploading.
Just wanted to highlight a couple
of file limits.
This is not correct.
That should say 1000 or 1K unique TAS.
So you can up to five megabytes.
So it's a text file,
so five megabytes is an enormous file,
if you're talking about a text file.
100,000 line limit,
and up to 1000 unique treasury account symbols.
If you exceed this, you just won't be able
to upload the file.
You'll have to cut it down a little bit,
before you can upload it,
so you might have to split it into a couple,
so just keep that in mind,
if you're have new treasury account symbols
that you're reporting on, that may be an issue.
We have some common upload issues.
So this file encoding,
generally speaking, this should not be an issue,
but if you upload a treasury account symbol,
and you get errors, and for whatever reason,
you cannot figure out what that is,
one of the first things we're gonna look at
after we've checked off all the other things
that we know of, is this file and coding.
So the ANSI's there just to kinda remind you
of what kind of encoding you should have,
if you're for whatever reason,
your text file does not code that way,
we'll check that, and we'll let you know
that that needs to be changed.
TAS assignments, so you cannot upload
a treasury account symbol that you have not
requested access to,
before you upload it.
So sometimes there are issues
where an agency will ask to be assigned
a new treasury account symbol,
and we will assign it and let them know,
or not we, but the TSC will assign it
and let them know that it's been assigned.
If for some reason during that process,
they were logged in the whole time,
that account will not automatically be updated
to their access group.
They'll need to log out and log back in.
So sometimes we see agencies say,
"Well I called the TSC, I got this account assigned to me,
"but I still can't upload it, so it's invalid."
In that case, you just need to log and log back in,
and then you're user access group will refresh,
because the system that actually manages your access group
is not GTAS.
GTAS pulls that from a database in CARS.
So if we have to have that,
in order to initiate that,
you have to log out and log back in.
And then another common one
is Bulk File line length.
I believe the character length of the file now
is 93, 92.
-: [Man In Background] Well it's 92,
but if you're looking at your text file,
just put your cursor in the line,
it should say 93, because that would be
your next character.
So I say that because I don't think you'd believe
how many times we get a file,
and it can be uploaded, and there's 1000 lines on the file,
and there's just one that has 91 spaces in it.
So we have to check that,
and then we fix it and send it back,
and they can upload it.
So it's one of the common things
that agencies should check for,
before they either call the TSC or call us.
-: [Man In Background] And the easy thing to do
is like hit Control A to select everything,
highlights it blue, you scroll down,
you'll find one where the blue is a little bit longer,
a little bit shorter, that's your problem.
At least that's how I do it.
-: Okay, so this is what the Bulk File Upload screen
looks like, and to upload a file,
you'll just click here.
It'll bring up the Browse function,
that everyone's used to seeing in their applications.
You'll browse through the file, click Upload,
and then over here, they'll be a kind of a queue,
if you've got four or five files
that are in flight, and you'll see a status here.
So once the status pops up as done or complete,
that's when you know you can go into My ATB Status,
to check to see where your treasury account symbols
fell out.
So if you're curious why you're aren't see something
in Past Required Edits,
generally speaking, it's 'cause the file's still processing.
Happens a lot less now than it used to.
We've overhauled how we process files.
We've kind of compartmentalized it,
and it's become a lot more efficient.
So most files, I'm hoping you guys will agree with me
when I say this, and maybe I see some head nods.
Most files process pretty quickly.
Now whereas it used to be five or six minutes
for some files when we first started GTAS.
So that obviously, people were getting impatient
with waiting that long,
so that was one of the things
that we've worked hard to overhaul over the last few years.
-: [Man In Background] Do you wanna
mention the overriding ones that were already in there?
-: Go ahead
-: Okay so one other thing
you'll see on this page.
If you've already a TAS that's made it
to at least Failed Edits,
if you try to resubmit, you'll get a message.
It'll have like TAS Exception,
and that'll open a little box.
When you hit the details, show you all the TAS
that are already, the data's already stored,
and asking if you wanna overwrite those.
Any time you re-upload a TAS,
and you overwrite it, it's gonna completely overwrite
what you have in there,
so you have the option to either select those
or not select them.
Maybe they're on your bulk file,
which you're uploading, re-uploading the file
because of a different TAS,
but it's just one other message
that you may see on that page.
-: Okay, I only got a few minutes left here,
so I'm gonna try to go through this pretty quick,
'cause I wanna get through the whole thing,
and then if there's any questions afterwards.
So manual adjustments, we introduced those in 2016.
A short way of explaining manual adjustments are,
we understand that the two different systems
that produce both the GTAS Reclassified Financial Statements
and your internal accounting system
that produces your audited financial statements,
in some instances, there could be discrepancies
that can't be resolved timely,
meaning that you couldn't upload a bulk file to correct it.
So we limit or limit as much as we can,
the amount of manual adjustments that occur
or on-top adjustments that occur
in the system, and we want to have very specific reasons
why they occur, and very robust justifications
why they need to occur.
So, we do our best to make sure that no manual adjustment
is getting into the system
that has not been diligently reviewed for its...
For it's veracity.
We wanna make sure that we're not just letting any agency
put in a manual adjustment.
One thing I wanna mention here.
So we have pre-approved manual adjustments.
So these two split treasury account symbols.
So that is just an agency shares
in its treasury account symbol with another agency.
For whatever reason, there aren't multiple accounts
set up for that particular program,
and neither one of the agencies can agree
who's gonna upload the bulk file in total?
So one agency just takes over uploading that,
but they only upload their piece.
Obviously that leaves one of the other agencies
out of the mix, and then their financial statements
will not match by the amount that is shown
in this split treasury account symbol.
So we have to allow in those instances,
we have to allow an agency to manually adjust
in order to reconcile.
This is very rare across the government.
I think there's only two or three instances
of the treasury account symbols
that I'm aware of currently where two agencies
essentially share reporting in an account.
The other one is Split Dedicated and Split Fiduciary.
So is sort of the same idea, except it's...
If you've designated an account,
dedicated or fiduciary, generally speaking,
all of that information should be either fiduciary
or dedicated.
But for some instances, that's not true.
A portion of what's in that account
could not be non-dedicated.
So whatever that portion is,
would probably need to be manually adjusted,
so we'll approve in those instances.
This last one, is a presentation issue.
So in the past, we've presented the funds
from dedicated collections at a combined level.
This year, we're switching,
and we're gonna present funds from dedicated collections
on the FR at a consolidated level.
This means that we will not be approving
any manual adjustments that were requested as a result
of combined versus consolidated presentation.
The reason being is if we allowed you
to do a manual adjustment for this, you would just put your,
'cause we're gonna show the consolidated amount.
You're gonna mainly adjust it to the combined amount,
then we're gonna have to do a JV
to remove that combined amount off.
And that's a lotta work,
and a lot of confusion that we don't need to go through
in order to get to the presentation that we need.
So as far as your Note 44 presentation goes,
those two lines will show a discrepancy
between your funds from dedicated collections
and then funds other than dedicated collections,
but in total, your net position will still tie.
So that would be something that you would note
on your supplemental crosswalk
as to why those two totals don't tie.
So this is just an example of manual adjustments
and kinda how we pre-authorize them.
So that's something I wanna bring up.
Manual adjustments have to be pre-authorized,
and you have to, in that authorization,
give us not only the justification,
you give us the SGL's that are gonna be adjusted,
and also a designated preparer and certifier
for that account.
It can have, it can be more than one preparer
that does the manual adjustment,
but it can only be one at a time.
So if you have one preparer's doing three different lines,
and you have another preparer who's doing
another three lines, you need to let us know,
and we'll go in and quickly switch it for you.
So I got two more minutes,
so I'm gonna kinda go through this.
So the Cat B/PRC Module overhaul that I talked about,
that was a result of an OMB request,
to put more strict enforcement of Cat B and PRC reporting,
so we've created a connection
between your Cat B's and PRC's
that did not exist before.
We have one kind of concatenated table
that's checking for all the valid permutations,
where in the past, you could report a Cat B,
and then independent of that, report any PRC.
That is no longer the case.
That has to be one string of data,
so you can't just report zero, one PRC,
with just any Cat B code.
That needs to be something that we designate as valid.
So with that you can use codes 90 through 99
at your discretion to do any other program report,
category reporting that you need
outside of what OMB has provided to us.
The big piece that I wanna get to
for the Cat B/PRC, is the Continuing Resolution Logic.
So obviously we spend a lotta time nowadays,
under continuing resolution,
so this kinda plays an important role in GTAS,
in terms of validating the information.
In a nutshell, what happens is,
under a continuing resolution, L & B is not
apportioning a majority of the treasury account symbols
they're afforded.
So GTAS still needs to have a list to validate against.
Well what we do here, is under continued resolution,
we go back and look at
any other treasury account symbols within that fund family,
any prior years, and we'll start
with the most recent year,
and we'll go back until we find a permutation
that matches what you're reporting.
If we don't find a permutation,
or GTAS doesn't find a permutation,
then you're gonna fail,
and we'll need to either get with L & B
to adjust the list that we have,
or you'll need to adjust the code that you're reporting.
And so the only thing I really wanna point out
on this screenshot here,
is some people might be asking,
"Well the continued resolution just passed,
"during the middle of the reporting window,
"what does that mean for what I'm reporting
"for my apportionments?"
It doesn't change in the middle of the reporting window.
It'll change in the next one.
One way to tell if you're under continuing resolution
is to come into this module
and it'll tell you right there
if continued resolution logic applies,
or if we're just straight using the validation list
that we have here in the Cat B/PRC module.
And then I think I've kinda talked about,
and we're running out of time here.
I've talked about the importance of certifying data.
This is really just a screenshot of where
you would certify that.
You would come to Pending Certification.
Once you select it here,
this button will become a darker green.
You click Certify, and it'll move it
to the Certified tab.
When you certify though, the thing to keep in mind
is GTAS is actually gonna run it through
all of the edits one more time.
The reason being that BETC can change.
There could be a transaction that was posted
in the intervening couple of days
before pending certification and the move to certification.
So if you go here, and you try to certify,
and it does not certify and actually moves
to Failed Edits, very likely that's because
something hit your account that you're not aware of.
So we run this check twice,
and we do that so that we make sure
that the data that we're getting certified
is the most timely data and includes all the transactions
for that reporting window.
And so here's our contact information.
I apologize for not having any time for questions.
I'll let you guys get to your next one,
but if anybody has any questions,
feel free to reach out to our individual emails
or to these two emails here.
So thank you everyone.
(audience applauds)