Carol: Good morning, everybody.
Thanks for joining.
We have just a few minutes remaining before we begin.
Good morning, everyone.
Welcome.
We will get started in about two minutes.
Just a couple of tips for you all.
We noticed on the last webinar
that folks were having greater success
if they were using Google Chrome.
Also, you may want to close other apps
that you're not using
just to make sure that you have
as much bandwidth as possible
as we go through the presentation.
And you'll find the handout in the handouts panel
on your GoToWebinar panel
on the right side of your screen.
And we'll get started in just a couple of minutes.
Good morning, everyone.
Welcome.
Welcome to the federal financial managers' year-end event,
achieving more together.
Let's go ahead and get started.
It's 11.
I'm Carol Lambert.
I'm director of engagement and onboarding
for fiscal accounting.
And I'll be your moderator today.
So please if you could join us.
If you guys know me,
you know that I love seeing those numbers increase
at the beginning of the webinar.
That's really awesome.
We've got a lot of great information for you today
so we're really glad
that you were able to take some time out
of your busy schedules and join us today.
All right, we do have a lot of information planned
and planned for you across the entire day.
So hopefully, some of you were able to join us
this morning at 8:30.
Of course now, the 11 o'clock session
is communication, collaboration and G-Invoicing,
three tools to reduce IGT differences.
If you haven't yet registered for the two o'clock session,
it's still not too late.
You can either go back
through the invitation that we sent you
or you can find the link on our training page
at fiscal.treasury.gov/training.
And as a matter of fact, we received a number of questions
about who all was invited by email
and we cast a pretty wide net,
but it's certainly not too late.
If you want to share
these event details with your colleagues.
So it's not too late for you or for them
to register for the two o'clock.
We would love to have you come back for that one.
Also, this webinar is being recorded.
So if you missed the earlier one
or if you want a revisit or a refresher,
the recordings for all three of these events
will be posted in about two weeks,
again, in that training area.
So fiscal.treasury.gov/training
and then you'll see this big horizontal button
that'll lead you to training videos.
All right.
So before we get into our session,
you know we need to cover some basic housekeeping items.
You should be able to see
that I'm sharing presentation slides
and this presentation is available as a handout
through your GoToWebinar panel.
All participant phone lines will remain muted
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so please send your questions, comments,
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however you want to communicate with us, whatever topic,
go ahead and send those through the questions tab
on the GoToWebinar panel.
Because we do have so much to cover today,
we've assembled a whole team of folks
behind the scenes to support you.
So my colleague, Yared and Brian
will be providing technical support today
and I really hope we don't need them.
But they're here in case we do need them.
My colleagues, Holly and Tom
will be eagerly awaiting your questions
and will facilitate the Q and A with our presenters.
Hopefully we'll get a chance to ask
at least one question after the first topic.
And the plan is to spend maybe as much,
hopefully 10 minutes at the end of the entire session
for more Q and A.
And as you can see on video,
Bobby Quinn and Kelly Stein
will be our sign language interpreters for today.
So if you're interested in getting closed captioning,
please let us know and include your email address
in the questions panel.
A couple more things, I'm almost done.
At the conclusion of today's webinar event,
you will be asked to complete an evaluation.
Please let us know how we did today.
We really do read those and we try
to incorporate your feedback into subsequent events.
So let us know how we did today
and let us know how we can do better in the future.
And finally, I want to thank everybody in advance
for being patient with us.
I know webinars are not a new phenomenon
but many of us are still getting comfortable.
We might have kids, we might have grandma,
we might have pets in the backgrounds,
we might have bandwidth and connectivity issues
that could interrupt even the best of plans.
So we're all embracing this technology
and we really appreciate your patience
and your partnership on this.
Okay, so now, without any further delay,
please join me in welcoming
our first two presenters.
Andrew Morris is Manager, Intra-governmental Transaction
and Reconciliation Branch
for the Financial Reports and Advisory Division
and Leah Delbaugh is Supervisory Accountant,
Intra-governmental Transaction and Reconciliation Branch,
also in the Financial Reports and Advisory Division.
So Andy and Leah will be providing for us
an update on IGT differences and your controls.
Thank you Andy and Leah for joining us today.
Take it away.
Andrew: All right, thanks Carol. This is Andrew Morris.
Can you hear me?
Carol: Sure can.
Andrew: All right, thank you very much.
So for the first part of our presentation today
related to intra-governmental activity,
we're gonna be going through some of our information
on intra-governmental activity as a whole, right?
Some of that is just briefly touching
on the IGT material weakness
as well as going into some of the accomplishments
that we've had in recent history.
We'll take a quick dive
into some of our subcategories statistics
as well as our overall IGT difference statistics as well.
We'll go into what's left to address,
some of these outstanding differences
that are still causing us major issues government-wide.
And then we'll touch on what agency controls
that you can make sure that you're doing
as well as your preparation steps
that are needed for a year-end.
And then lastly, we'll wrap up with some future plans
and some final thoughts
before we get into the question segment of this portion.
So if you go to the next slide,
just a brief overview of the IGT material weakness
and this is a slide that
if you were on this morning session,
that you also saw where we have three primary impediments
to receiving a clean opinion on our financial reports
at the government-wide level.
And one of those is our inability
to adequately account for
and reconcile intra-governmental activity and balances
between two federal agencies.
So we've made a lot of progress
on this material weakness over the last few years
but we still do have a little bit left for improvement
before we can really consider this
as not one of our primary impediments anymore
within the financial report.
So if you go to the next slide,
so in its simplest form,
the issue that we have
with reconciling our intra-governmental activity
is when two federal entities engage
in an intra-governmental transaction.
And if they do not record that transaction
in the same amount
as well as within the same time period,
usually our fiscal year
and it's not properly resolved,
then that results in errors to our financial statements
at the end of the year.
And that is what we are looking to accomplish
when we talk about reconciling
and resolving intra-governmental activity
at a government-wide level.
So if you go to the next slide,
you can see some of the accomplishments
that we have made over the last year.
One of the biggest accomplishments is that
we had no new audit findings
as it related to intra-governmental activity
and our intra-governmental material weakness
which is huge, right?
So we don't want to take two steps forward
and one step back in this process.
It is key for us as we resolve issues
that pertain to this material weakness
that we don't have new audit findings that come forward.
And the agencies, US agencies play a key role
in helping us ensure that
we don't have any new audit findings from year to year
related to intra-governmental activity.
We did establish two new reciprocal categories
and this relates to general fund activity whenever the,
specifically for prior period adjustments
as it relates to the expenditure of appropriations.
And what this allowed us to do
was remove multiple USSGLs from our support category 29
which was previously non reciprocating,
meaning only one agency reported the activity
and the other agency did not have the means to report it.
And it will also lead to
a resolution of some of those differences that did exist
prior to establishing these reciprocal categories.
We took a look at our treasury financial annual,
2- 4700
and we broke out our intra-governmental guidance
where it was previously primarily
in one appendix within that chapter, TFM chapter.
We broke that out into several different chapters
in order to assist agencies in finding the guidance
that they were looking for.
And then lastly, we're looking at,
we created proposed analytical edits
as it relates to your authoritative activity,
primarily your benefits with the Department of Labor
and the Office of Personnel Management.
The next step to this project would be
to get to a place where these can be fatal within GTAS
and will allow us to enforce
the matching to authoritative sources
such as the Department of Labor
and Office of Personnel Management
as it relates to benefits activity.
So if you go to the next slide,
we have our first poll question.
And the question is what is the amount
of raw Pre-JV IGT differences for 2019?
Is it A, 1.4 trillion,
B, 94.3 billion,
C, 1.0 trillion,
D, 213.8 billion
or E, 75.6 billion.
And just to shed a little bit more light into this question,
what we do here
is we take the reciprocal categories and by agency
and we take the absolute value of those IGT differences
which is really what we're trying to drive down
from year to year.
All right, and I'll give you a minute to respond.
Carol: Can you see the results?
Andrew: Yes, I can see the results.
So according to these results,
the correct answer is B, 94.3 billion,
which looks like the majority of those results
did get that correct.
So if you go to the next slide, you can...
So, and then, yup, thank you, Carol.
So looking at this slide,
you can see our 2019 IGT differences
that are related to that poll question was $94.25 billion
which is significant progress made
from the year before in 2018
which was at $213.77 billion.
And then an even bigger accomplishment from 2017
which was all the way
a little above $1 trillion in differences.
So you can see over the last couple of fiscal years,
we've made tremendous headway
in reducing the absolute value
of our intra-governmental differences
which is key and cannot be done by us alone
and we require the help from agencies
to accomplish this.
So we thank you very much in the hard work that you've done
and will continue to do.
So looking at some of the key stats
that are at the bottom there, we did here at Treasury,
165 journal vouchers to the FR at the end of last year.
119 of those 165 journal vouchers
were related to resolving IGT differences.
And we resolved roughly 1.1 trillion.
Now, if you put two and two together,
we have our Pre-JV differences of $94.25 billion
but we resolved 1.1 trillion.
Well, there, is a little bit of a trick to that
where some of the differences that we have,
it's determined that both trading partners or both agencies
are recording the activity appropriately.
So it doesn't really count
towards our overall absolute value of differences.
However, in order to consolidate
those balances appropriately
and to our financial statements,
we do still have to do a JV for those.
So just a quick snapshot here on this slide
of the progress that has been made
over the last couple of years
in reducing our intra-governmental differences.
So in the next slide,
you'll see some similar charts that breaks out
the trends quarter by quarter from FY19 quarter three
all the way to FY20 quarter three.
And you can see that the trend line stays pretty stagnant
with the exception of quarter two FY20,
we did not have our best quarter there,
but it is looking like in FY20 quarter three,
we did get a lot of that resolved
at the government-wide level
which is good to see and gets us right back on track
where we were at last year
and even a little better than so
so that we can continue to see that improvement.
So looking at those two charts on the right,
we did break it out between our standard IGT differences
in comparison to the general fund category differences
so that you can see that breakout
and where those issues do reside.
So on the next slide,
you'll see we actually put this in numbers format
so you can see where those issues are.
So you can see what some of our biggest IGT categories are,
where we need to target some of those resolutions.
You see the general fund authority reporting fund balance
with treasury, our IGT buy/sell activity
and our nonentity transactions really lead those categories.
So jumping into those a little bit further
on the next slide,
three of those top four
were related to general fund activity.
So starting with that,
what is the general fund and what are they responsible for?
So what they're responsible for
is recording the assets and liabilities associated
with financing the government's operations, right?
So, and saying that they're also required
to complete the government's accounting model
and provide balances
to the government-wide financial statements.
So it is very important given the significance
of our differences within those general fund subcategories
that agencies are working with the general fund
to help drive those differences down.
And that's evident there in the last bullet.
It says 19 billion out of our total $169.8 billion
for FY20 quarter three differences was on the general fund.
So we did have more differences
in those general fund categories,
then that 19 billion, it was roughly 122 billion,
but the vast majority of it,
a little over 100 billion
was related to agencies miscommunication
or errors in reporting activity with the general fund.
So this is definitely where we still need agency help
and collaboration between themselves and the general fund
to ensure that we're driving down those,
continuing to drive down those differences.
And this could be anything from maybe not submitting
your general fund submission form timely
or maybe you submitted it timely
and then updated your balances
and then didn't get back to the general fund
to let them know that you made those changes.
So all of that communication can go a long way
in your quarterly reporting.
And then on the next slide,
we're gonna dive into our IGT buy/sell category,
which is our largest non general fund category, right?
So buy/sell activities are transactions between agencies.
This is all often facilitated
through an inter-agency agreement
or sometimes referred to as a reimbursable agreement, right?
So it does make up the vast majority
of our non general fund related differences.
It was roughly 30 billion, 30.9 billion out of the 169.8,
but it's really 30.9 billion out of the 40 or 50 billion
that is non general fund related.
So it is a very, very significant category
that we're focusing on.
That last bullet, we do wanna point out that
it is that 30.9 billion is a significant reduction
from last year at quarter three.
So we do wanna continue seeing that improvement
but as a goal last year at fiscal year-end,
we did have just under $25 billion in this category.
So we do have some work still to go
to see that improvement for this year-end
compared to last year-end.
And then just to touch base on it,
we did have a new phase type interpretation come out
related to the allowance for loss.
We did update our USSGL to allow federal agencies
to report an intra-governmental allowance for loss
stemming from that interpretation.
However, how we will handle that at a government-wide level
is that we will do a JV to back out that activity
so that both agencies are in sync at the end of the year.
And then on the next question, or the next slide.
So the, is our next poll question,
which I will turn over to Leah Delbaugh
who will go over this poll question
and then will take it on from there.
Leah.
Leah: Right, thank you, Andy.
All right, so my name is Leah Delbaugh,
and thanks for the introduction earlier, Carol.
To get started with my portion of this presentation,
I'd like to start us off with another polling question.
I'll read the question and options
and then you'll have about 30 seconds
to select your response.
So make sure to hit submit so your response is counted.
And this is referring to the $94.3 billion
at the end of FY19.
So the question is what category of IGT different types
was the largest issue at FY19 year-end?
And your options are A, reporting errors,
B, lack of guidance,
C, conflicting accounting methodologies
and D, communication / quarterly timing issues.
And I will give you time to select your responses now.
Okay and very good.
I think you all got the idea
with the name of the presentation.
So the correct answer
is communication / quarterly timing issues.
Ask to please move ahead to the next slide
where we'll discuss that further.
Okay.
So I've been serving as a member of this branch
for the past six years
and have spoken on this topic
or other intra-governmentally related topics
for the past four or so years.
If you've seen us present this material in the past,
you would have noticed last year for the first time,
we shared this table of information with you
that you see here on slide 57.
So each year we ask ourselves, what's left to address?
Every year, as I'm sure you noticed
on the slide Andy presented earlier
on the trend of intra-governmental differences
dating back to 2017,
we've exponentially reduced
our intra-governmental differences.
And every agency on the call right now
has been a part of that improvement.
So we thank you all for your efforts
that you put towards helping us clean up
that intra-governmental imbalance.
And I'll repeat what Jerome said
on the presentation earlier today
and give you all a cyber applause for those efforts.
So thank you very much.
If we had the chart dating back to 2014,
it's quite the drop in intra-governmental differences.
In Jamie's presentation earlier today,
she stated far back to 2014,
this figure was around $100 trillion.
I'm sure you're wondering,
how does Fiscal Service sit down and determine
what issues to work on to coordinate with USSGL
in order to update guidance?
Quarterly, the team that I'm a part of works together
to actively read each form you provide to us,
whether it be the material difference forms
you complete in GTAS,
a targeted difference form you completed
as a result of your intra-governmental scorecard,
a root cause analysis, corrective action plan
or simply an email identifying an issue that you're having.
We take each one of your responses
and categorize those responses
into types of intra-governmental issues causing differences.
And from there we determine what categories
have the largest differences.
On this slide are the results of FY19 year-end.
This is Pre-JV data
with the exception of a few agreed upon JVs
like Andy referred to earlier, that can be excluded.
I'm going to go into more detail
on the top three categorizations
of issues causing intra-governmental differences
on the next three slides.
But I wanted to point out that the issues
that are being identified as the top issues
are known to us because of the feedback
we received from you all as the federal entities
all year round
and they lead to what are identified as should be projects
to be focused further in on and addressed.
So as you can see on this slide,
all but $6 billion of the 94 billion at year-end
were categorized.
That's what you see on the unaddressed line.
These categorizations drive the projects
the team focuses on for the year
in hopes of coming to some sort of resolution
and reducing intra-governmental differences
in the years to come.
Next slide, please.
At year-end, so this is going back to our polling question,
communications/quarterly timing issues
between entities caused 15 billion
or 16% of intra-governmental differences.
The title of the categorization
can give you a very good idea of the reasoning
was for the various differences
that made up the combined $15 billion.
But the lack of communication with the general fund
by a few federal entities led to 5.3
of the $15.1 billion of intra-governmental differences.
Something that I would like for everyone
who deals with intra-governmental transactions
and trading partners to hear
is that we talk so much about communication
in the various presentations we provide.
Last year during my presentation at GFMC,
I harped on having effective communication.
And I generally think that agencies get
the point that communication is necessary
and I very much hope that is the case.
So I'll say it later in the presentation,
but communication and furthermore,
meaningful and effective communication
is essential to doing our jobs well
and it's absolutely necessary.
Misses in communication can cause billions of dollars
in intra-governmental differences.
Also, please note that one third
of the differences categorized
as communications/quarterly timing issues in FY19
have been re-categorized in 2020
as entities system issues.
Earlier in 2020, Fiscal Service worked closely with DOD
and determined that due to a current system limitation,
DOD is unable to correctly identify
the trading partner assignment for one of its components.
Those of you that have differences with DOD though,
know that we put these intra-governmental differences
into a corrective action plan process
and differences related to this issue are currently excluded
from intra-governmental scorecard process.
And also, please note, even as of last week,
we were having discussions with DOD
as to how to alleviate this issue in the future.
Next slide, please.
The next highest category of intra-governmental differences
which I'm not going to go through all of these,
just the top three, is FICA.
All federal entities that have federal benefit expense
for their employer's share of FICA
should currently be reporting it as 6400Z and 2213Z.
The Z represents that this is non reciprocating activity.
What that does though,
is create an intra-governmental imbalance
on our unmatched schedule
of the financial report of the US government.
It is the correct way to report this information though,
as far as the guidance is currently written.
Seeing the materiality of the amounts
being reported by federal entities
has led Fiscal Service to continue down the path
of exploring what potential there is
to have these amounts reciprocated in the future
or could this potentially be due to legislation
or other reasons become a difference
that can be agreed upon for the future
potentially decreasing our intra-governmental differences
by $15 billion.
Next slide.
Okay, the intra-governmental difference category
I will speak to next and last for this section
is lack of guidance
and perhaps that is an incorrect way of phrasing it.
But there was an instance during FY18, FY19,
and here today, FY20
where a certain type of very large activity
that didn't currently have specific guidance written.
The agency had done their due diligence
and worked with OMB on the budgetary side,
but the way it was being reported on the proprietary side
was causing an intra-governmental difference of,
at the time, approximately $9 billion.
Fiscal Service works this year with the federal entity
as well as the general fund
which will reciprocate the activity in the future.
And it is anticipated that this amount,
which is now approximately 7 billion or so
will be reciprocated by fiscal year-end.
The remaining $1 billion of intra-governmental differences
were related to new legislation
and is currently awaiting legal authorities to opine
from those entities that are involved.
Now, before we move on to the next subject,
I just want to say all this to explain
that the information that you give to us at Fiscal Service
is absolutely necessary and it does drive
what actions we take
to address the intra-governmental issues that exist.
Next slide please.
Okay, now we'll get into the updates
to the treasury financial manual
that relate to an intra-governmental activity.
You should have noticed in the June publication
that the intra-governmental transactions guide
has been transformed
and separated out into seven appendices
that start with appendix five and end with appendix 11.
I've listed those out on this slide.
What this has allowed us to do at Fiscal Service
is to focus in further
and fine tune the information being presented
about the various subcategories
of intra-governmental activity.
It's our aim and these efforts were made
in order to provide you as the end user,
a more user friendly experience
with an easier flow to the information.
If you have a question regarding transfers,
you will know that you can go to appendix nine
to learn more about transfers.
And let's move on to the next slide
where I'll dive into guidance updates.
So this slide displays the intra-governmental updates
to appendices two and three.
Two additional reciprocal categories were added
as Andy said before, RCs 31 and 32.
These are a part of the general fund authority subcategory.
Previously, the USSGLs involved were non reciprocating.
They were in RC category 29.
But as you all should be aware,
we're constantly reevaluating
the activity reported in RC 29,
which is why we ask you all
to complete the material difference reports part three
to explain that activity
with the end goal of eventually having
all federal transactions reciprocated.
The USSGLs can be found
for these reciprocal categories in appendix three,
but I haven't listed them on this slide.
Next slide, please.
In addition to RCs 31 and 32
being added to appendices two and three,
there was another addition to appendix three,
which is the appendix that breaks out
the USSGLs per reciprocal category.
Following the clarifying position put forth
by FASAB earlier this year regarding allowance for loss
as it relates to intra-governmental receivables,
the following USSGLs were added to RC 22,
which is your accounts payable, accounts receivable
reciprocal category.
You have there 1319,
allowance for loss on accounts receivable,
1367, allowance for loss on penalties and fines receivable
and 1377, allowance for loss
on administrative fees receivable.
In anticipation of this ruling
and also as a result of the ruling,
we determined at Fiscal Service
that exclusion should be provided
to all federal entities reporting an allowance for loss.
So you would have heard us discuss this
in your Q3 scorecard meetings
but these differences were not counted against you.
Next slide, please.
For the newly appointed appendix six,
which is now guidance
on intra-governmental investments and borrowings,
there was an update in guidance
pertaining to gas securities, the carrying value,
as well as gas securities, fiduciary fund reporting.
There was also an update made to the table
which discusses limited use accounts for investments
and the removal of the table for limited use accounts
in the borrowing section.
In appendix seven,
which now discusses intra-governmental benefits,
there were various updates made,
but something I want to point out and emphasize
is that when updating the benefits appendix,
we worked with OPM and DOL,
and they were able to provide us with contact information
for specifically their benefits activity
that could be contacted if when reviewing
your inter governmental benefits differences in GTAS
or from a result on your IGT scorecard
or when pulling the authoritative source files
from the Fiscal Service website.
If your agency had any questions or concerns
with what is being reported with your agency
as the trading partner,
you can contact these groups at DOL and OPM.
And I was able to list this information
right here on this slide,
but it's also included in the body of appendix seven.
And so I would recommend you read that as well.
Next slide.
Okay.
So I realized that TFM is large and there are many parts,
and it's a very thorough document.
On this slide, I have a few brief updates
about the buy/sell category.
I know you'll get a lot of good information
in the next portion of this session
with Wes and Keith regarding G-Invoicing.
Incorporated within this section are due dates
for the G-Invoicing agency implementation plan.
They were previously in a treasury bulletin,
but now they are part of the TFM.
Some updates made to the G-Invoicing guidance
can be found in appendix eight,
include changes to the business rules
for performance transactions, receipt and acceptance.
We also talked about this earlier
but also the updated position
on intra-governmental allowance for loss.
Next slide.
Now we're to our last slide covering TFM updates.
In appendix 10, the custodial and non-entity section
was updated to reference
the custodial activity USSGL implementation guidance
that is posted on their website in the proprietary section,
as well as the updates to general fund transactions
in appendix 11 which added additional guidance
on continuing resolution
and appropriation bills awaiting warrants.
There was also additional guidance
pertaining to general fund non-entity transactions.
I would greatly recommend if you have
any questions regarding your general fund activity
to meet with the general fund
and we can always attend those meetings with you,
but the general fund team is a great resource
and good people, good group of people to work with.
They're extremely responsive
and willing to work with all federal entities.
I've experienced meetings
where the general fund is working through issues
with federal entities that are extremely large and complex
all the way to meetings
where the general fund is simply explaining who they are,
what they do, their general process.
So I can say more so of an educational experience
but I can't say enough good things
about their communication skills.
Next slide.
So now we're to the current initiatives.
As explained earlier,
our aim is to address the IGT material weakness
of the financial report of the US government.
We're taking on this goal by doing the following things
and please keep in mind,
this is just a portion of what's being done
though many of these
are very large initiatives in of themselves.
Starting with G-Invoicing,
which will be covered more extensively later.
Please note G-Invoicing is aimed at increasing communication
between trading partners
and will house all buy/sell agreements.
From my experience,
that is something that is absolutely needed.
I have had the experience of requesting an agreement
from an agency and then they had to go
to their procurement department or figure out
who to contact in the area.
It took a month or so to get one buy/sell agreement.
So that was a lot of lost time
that I do think G-Invoicing could help improve.
Okay.
And also, so you're aware,
we have also started including a section
on the intra-governmental scorecard
that displays red or green,
whether an entity met
the G-Invoicing agency implementation plan
status update deadline for the specified quarter.
Another initiative is the expansion
of general fund guidance.
Starting in 2021, additional USSGLs and RCs 38 and 39
will be added relating to the reporting
of expended and unexpended appropriations.
And next, I know I have several more slides, so sorry.
Additional projects may include,
different ones I've already spoken of during this session,
but it'll list them out here on this slide,
including FICA.
There are several federal entities specific projects
that have to do with intra-governmental categorizations
that we already spoke of.
Open dispute resolution cases
and a capital lease working group
that the USSGL advisory team has put together.
So in my experience,
there's never a shortage of intra-governmental issues.
What has changed though
is the dollar amounts we're addressing.
And through the work of many people,
we're working with smaller
and smaller intra-governmental differences.
So while I don't necessarily believe
we have a shortage of projects or items
to address by any means,
the amounts and materiality to the financial report
of the US government continues to decrease.
Next slide.
So you may be wondering
when we're gonna address agency controls.
This is a quote
from the US Government Accountability Office,
independent auditors report.
Auditors for several significant component entities
continue to report that the entities
did not have effective processes
for reconciling intra-governmental activity
and balances with their trading partner.
So this is something that
your auditors have told our auditor, which is GAO.
So it is important to note that this material weakness
isn't just my material weakness to fix
or a specific agency's. it's all of ours.
It's the federal government's material weakness.
So we're all in this together.
Next slide.
In order for federal entities to support
that there are effective processes in place,
please make sure you have documentation and support
to show your using USSGLs correctly.
This includes transactions,
reclassified financial statements,
your attributes and domain values used
and ensuring you're in compliance with USSGL guidance.
I also recommend you participate
in the Fiscal Service IGT processes
meaning that if you are an agency
that's subject to complete a material difference report
or some other sort of form,
please don't always respond consistently with researching.
Eventually we would like for you to provide us
with the reason why you're having this difference.
And these are documents that your auditors
may start reviewing as well.
So it's not just a us
at Fiscal Service reviewing your documents,
your auditors may be reviewing them as well and wondering,
did you ever come to a resolution for this issue?
Next slide, please.
As part of your agency controls,
please ensure you're maintaining sufficient documentation.
Federal entities must be able to provide reconciliations
of intra-governmental activity and balances
with supporting documentation.
They will be compared to financial statements
and what you report to treasury.
And that also includes forms
that you return back to my team.
There also needs to be evidence
that you communicated with your trading partner
throughout the year and not just in the 11th hour
so that they have time to reciprocate.
And next slide, please.
This is the last slide in our agency control section.
It's one you may have seen before.
But we can only eliminate the material weakness
through the federal entities doing the following.
Documentation, so document the support
for your transactions.
And there's our next bullet here.
Thank you, reconcile with your trading partners
and ensure you have the support for that.
And lastly, please communicate with your trading partners
often, early, continuously.
And I'd like to include that that communication
is with Fiscal Services as well.
If we don't know your issues we, we can't help address them.
So yes, we absolutely need you
in order to address this material weakness.
Next slide.
I'm gonna run through these pretty quickly here
so we have time for questions in the next session.
But your year-end material difference reports
must be explained and certified in GTAS
just like every other quarter of the year.
Clean up your interdepartmental differences.
So differences with your own agency by year-end.
Important dates to remember,
material difference reports
will be available in GTAS beginning November 16th,
that's when you can begin explaining them.
CFO representation forms
will be due to Fiscal Service on December 1st,
and they must be signed by your CFO, not a designee.
Lastly, material difference reports
should be certified in GTAS December 1st by 5:00 PM.
Next slide.
A change that will be made
on the year-end intra-governmental scorecard
is that the GTAS reporting metric will be increased
from 90% of all TAS being reported to 95.
So that is the metric you need to meet
in terms of your GTAS reporting for this year-end
in order to receive a yes and not a no.
Expenditure TAS will remain at 100% as in prior years.
Please, just as I went over earlier in the presentation,
inform trading partners of all pertinent information
as soon as it is determined.
Don't wait, don't contribute
and be a part of the $10 billion
of intra-governmental differences
related to lack of communication.
Another change from a process
as from the Fiscal Service side this year-end,
is that what we will be doing journal vouchers
a little bit differently.
So pay close attention
when the confirmation emails are sent to you.
Make sure you agree and understand our proposed entry,
which you always do.
But I do want to note
that it could look a little different than prior years.
So please just pay close attention
before you send your confirmation.
Next slide.
Thank you.
So hopefully we can end on an encouraging note.
Here is our list of our future plans.
We're going to continue our IGT scorecard program,
monitor cap documentation provided by agencies
and also the material difference reporting
and certification.
Evaluate the usage of non reciprocating USSGLs,
continue to enhance our TFM guidance,
improve or develop USSGL guidance impacting IGT
and support the G-Invoicing initiative.
And Jamie touched on these earlier,
though I'm you may have not attended that session,
but she did a good job touching upon those as well.
So I'll move on to the next slide.
Okay, to leave you here,
we have a few final thoughts.
Our ultimate goal, if you haven't got that so far
is eliminating IGT differences at the government-wide level
for the consolidated FR.
Another quote from the FY19 GAO independent auditor's report
says addressing the intra-governmental transactions problem
remains a difficult challenge
and will require federal entities'
strong and sustained commitment
to resolving differences with their trading partners timely
as well as Treasury and OMB's strong
and continued leadership.
So we're definitely in this together
and it will be a shared success when we get there.
Next slide.
To leave you here on my final thoughts,
focus on substantiating your balances
and not chasing exclusions.
Improve your internal controls surrounding IGT activity.
Document communication attempts with your trading partners.
Leverage your Fiscal Service IGT accountant.
And if you're not sure who that is, let me know.
Participate in working groups and collaborative efforts
to resolve intra-governmental issues and differences
and really participate.
Give your opinion before the guidance is published.
Provide accurate information
to all federal trading partners timely.
Perhaps the emphasis there
should be on the timely part and communicate.
Next slide.
And these are just references.
You can go back to them later.
There'll be in the handouts for you to refer to.
And next slide, please.
Here is our contact information
and we appreciate you attending this session
and we will have a second part.
So I will go ahead and turn it back over to Carol.
Carol: Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Well, lots of really great content.
Thank you, Andrew and Leah.
Let's let's sneak in one quick question from Holly.
Holly, do we have a question?
Holly: Oh, we sure do. Thanks Carol.
We have a question that's come in for our speakers.
We know that GF deadline
is in the middle of the GTAS reporting window
and balances could change for agencies.
So my question is,
if we send the GF form in on time
and then a revised GF form,
will the scorecard be marked as not submitted on time?
Leah: And I can take that one, Andy.
No, the general fund does document,
as long as the initial form was sent by the due date
which is the eighth business day after the quarter closed,
it will be counted on the scorecard
as meeting that requirement.
But we do request that you do make your best effort
to provide the numbers you know at that time
that are the most accurate.
But no, we would reflect that as meeting that requirement.
Carol: Right, thank you.
All right, let's,
we probably better power through.
So you guys keep the questions coming.
Definitely continue to put them in the questions tab
on your GoToWebinar panel.
Let's go ahead and move on
to the next topic in this session
which is communication, collaboration and G-Invoicing,
three tools to reduce IGT differences.
So please join me in welcoming our expert panel.
Andrew's gonna stick around.
Thank you, Andrew Morris.
We also have Wes Vincent, Supervisory Accountant,
Intra-governmental Transaction and Reconciliation Branch,
Financial Reports and Advisory Division
and Keith Jarboe, Program Manager
for Engagement and Onboarding.
And with that, I will turn it over to Andrew.
Andrew: Thanks Carol.
So I'm gonna give a brief overview of what G-Invoicing is
before I pass it over to Wes
who's going to go into some of the key dates
and timelines involved with G-Invoicing.
So we talked to in our last presentation
about our IGT buy/sell differences,
attributing to roughly $30.9 billion
out of our $46 million
non general fund related IGT differences
for quarter three of FY20.
And G-Invoicing is meant to target
specifically those IGT buy/sell differences.
Well, what Fiscal Service is considering is
our longterm sustainable solution
to bettering the reporting around that activity.
So I just wanted to give that brief overview
before tossing it over to Wes,
who will take you through the agenda
as well as the new implementation deadline.
And then he will pass it over to Keith
for some additional information.
Wes.
Wes: Thank you Andy.
So what this slide, the agenda for the rest of this session.
We are going to cover the new implementation deadline
as well as well as some key future enhancements
that we have received through our implementation plans
from the agencies.
And then I will pass this over to Mr. Keith Jarboe,
who will be covering the release 4.0
and how you guys can be preparing
for that major release coming up later this calendar year.
Also what are the next steps for agency implementation
and how to be getting ready
for the G-Invoicing implementation deadline.
Next slide, please.
So on this slide,
the key thing that we want to portray here
are the four key concerns
or the four key challenges
that we have that have been identified
through implementation plans submitted by the agencies.
So on the left hand side of the screen,
this provides a little bit of background
before we jump into these concerns.
So the background is that we issued
a TSM bulletin number 2018 dash one zero
that was published back in September of 2018,
which seems like a while ago.
What that TFM bulletin did
was establish the implementation date of June 30th, 2021,
for all orders with a period of performance extending
beyond the June 30, 2021 date.
And the key thing there to keep in mind here
is that that was for all orders
and we'll touch base on a little bit more detail
in a few slides up for the new state's approach.
The background that we have with this slide talks
about the implementation date
and how that was vetted through the FMSC
or the Financial Management Standards Committee
back in the summer of 2018.
And based off that implementation date of June 30, 2021,
agencies were submitting their implementation plans
and provided valuable feedback to us as a program team,
as it worked towards that
new implementation date of June 30, 2021.
So the four key items that we have here
that were noted as concerns from the agencies
were readiness, conversion,
enhancements and prioritization.
So the key concern with readiness was that agencies,
only a few agencies were able to meet
the current mandate for new orders
and only three were able to meet in-flight,
or the June 30, 2021 date for the inflight orders.
The conversion concern that we heard
was that agencies were needing assistance
with converting their in-flight activity
or orders that are ongoing now,
but that would be going into G-Invoicing
in an active state come that mandate.
The enhancements piece here were,
we've received numerous requests for feature enhancements
that would help businesses
or agencies with their business activity.
And these system enhancements
to help agencies ease themselves
into this transition to G-Invoicing through onboarding
and help change their management activities.
And then lastly on this slide is a prioritization.
So as you all are well aware,
we have many different initiatives and activities going on
which include the current state of,
with the COVID-19, with the UEI,
the QSMO project going on as well.
So agencies have stress through the implementation plans
that we need to align G-Invoicing
with other implementations
of these additional initiatives going on as well.
Next slide please.
So the key piece with this slide
is literally laying out the new phased approach.
So the previous slide discussed the June 30th, 2021 date
and what we were able to come out with
based off the agency feedback that we received
was a new phased approach
that G-Invoicing will be implementing to help facilitate
a successful government-wide implementation
of the G-Invoicing application.
So we were able to revive implementation date
from June 30th, 2021
into a new phased implementation of G-Invoicing.
The first section there of the chart
is the fiscal year 2023.
And this is for new activity.
So the new first phase approach
is for specifically new activity going into G-Invoicing.
And this is regarding new orders
with the period of performance beginning on
or later of October 1st, 2022.
The second part of this phase approach
is around in-flight activity.
And that will begin in fiscal year 2024.
So this is going to be the mandate of
all orders with a period of performance extending
beyond September 30th, 2023.
So as you can see on this slide,
there's two key pieces here, two phases.
The first one being the new activity beginning
in fiscal year 2023.
The second piece being in-flight activity
for orders extending beyond September 30th, 2023 beginning
in fiscal year 2024.
Next slide, please.
So we were able to come up with a new phased approach
for the G-Invoicing implementation dates.
We just kind of wanna give you
an example of sort of things that were discussed
with the previous June 30th, 2021 mandate
and what we took into consideration
regarding the new phased approach
with our two phase approach
for the new implementation dates.
So on the left hand side of the screen,
this specifically covers the June 30th, 2021 date.
That was the old implementation date
which considered the entire system lifecycle,
which was a very large scope.
It had a lot of work involved regarding
the development and getting the program up and running
from the beginning.
This also allowed a lot of the vendors 18 months
to develop the solution
and then a lot of the agencies 12 months
to consume that solution.
The final specs were delivered back in April of 2019.
And the major vendors of software providers
were able to meet that timeline ranging from
around 12 to 18 months in length.
So on the right hand side of the screen
is specifically targeting our new phased approach
that we just covered in the previous slide.
And the scope of this work
really is around the newly requested enhancements
that were submitted by the agencies
to the implementation plans.
And this is the much smaller effort
than the initial development
to get G-Invoicing up and running.
And what we did there was we took the,
we looked at the FIDS
or the federal intra-governmental data standards
and we realized there would be a roughly 5% increase
in the FIDS to help meet these enhancement requests
from the agencies
and this will also allot additional 15 months
for the vendors to incorporate these new enhancements.
And then that allots the agencies additional 12 months
to consume the solution.
The final specs were delivered back
a couple of months ago in June, 2020.
And then at the very bottom of this slide,
just kind of gives you an overview of,
and a timeline example of what we did
with the June 30th, 2021 mandate
and ultimately leading into our new phased approach.
So the timeline at the bottom simply reads that
we have a TFM guidance come out in September of 2018.
We provided the specs for this mandate
back in 2019 in April.
The vendors had the solution ready in June, 2020
and then the June, 2021 original mandate.
That slotted line there, as you can see,
represents the change to this new phased approach,
which then took into account
the vendor solution readiness for October of 2021,
and ultimately leading into the first phase
of the implementation date of October 22 or fiscal year 2023
for the new mandate for new orders.
Next slide, please.
So this slide dictates the advantages and risks
associated with the implementation approach
and the considerations that we took into account.
So some of the advantages that we wanna highlight here
was that it gave additional time to ensure the readiness
for the G-Invoicing application for agencies
as well as the software providers and the vendors.
We know that that was one of the key pieces
that we've heard implementation plans,
was the fact that agencies weren't going to be ready
by the June 30th, 2021 date.
It does give additional time for the software providers
to develop these new enhancements
that we've received and implementation plans.
Also, it reduces the burden of converting existing orders
into our G-Invoicing application.
It also allows the treasury
to explore potential conversion tool
that we're actively engaged in right now with the agencies
to assist agencies to convert these new in-flight,
I'm sorry, to convert the orders that are in-flight
for that second phase of implementation date.
Also it allowed agencies to prioritize
as we've covered in the past couple of slides
with competing initiatives ongoing now
along with the G-Invoicing initiative.
There are a few risks that we took into consideration
while developing implementation plans
in the mandates for new phased approach.
So we knew that it would be a very impactful piece
to the software providers,
as well as determining new requirements
for these enhancements that we received from the agencies.
Also agencies potentially needed to gather new data
for existing orders.
And also we were aware that agencies
could potentially have legacy orders
that extended beyond one year.
So we just wanted to take a few minutes here
to show some of the advantages
as well as some of the risks associated
with the implementation phased approach
that we are moving forward with.
Next slide, please.
So on this slide,
we just wanted to show everybody the chart that we have.
We do receive some questions about,
does this order need to be in G-Invoicing?
Does this order need to be in G-Invoicing?
Possibly this slide
can be used to help facilitate that discussion.
There's a couple of orders that we point agencies to
to help them figure out
whether certain orders need to be transitioned
to G-Invoicing by the new phased mandate.
The first one being implementation deadline rule
for new orders
is the beginning period of performance on the order
on or after October 1st, 2022.
The second key piece or the second rule that we have here
is implementation deadline rule for the in-flight orders
or the second phase of the phased approach
is the ending period of performance extending
past September 30th, 2023?
And as you can see on the chart below,
it gives you some examples here
with the period of performance.
If your orders begin before October 1st, 2022
and ends before September 30th, 2023,
those orders do not need to be implemented into G-Invoicing.
The second piece here,
if you have a period of performance
that begins on or after October 1st, 2022,
and it ends before September 30th, 2023,
it meets the first rule.
So that needs to be implemented by the first phase
of the mandate of October 22.
Then the third and final piece here
regarding these implementation dates
is resulting in the second phase approach.
So this would be if you have period of performance
that began before October 1st, 2022
and extend beyond the September 30th, 2023 date.
So that would hit the second rule there.
And that would be implemented by the October 23
or the second phase of the phased approach.
So that's a valuable chart that we have
that we that point agencies to.
It just kind of helps lay out the different situations
in a chart form that we have received input from agency
that this is a helpful tool
as they onboard towards the new implementation deadlines.
Next slide, please.
We wanna switch gears a little bit
from the implementation dates
to the feature enhances that we've discussed.
So during the implementation plans review
that we received from agencies,
some of these key enhancements
that we have received from agencies
include the seller facilitated orders,
the GT and C workflow, refunds
as well as accrual functionality.
These are all major enhances to the application
that we believe will help agencies
with their business activity
and ultimately resulting in lower differences
between trading partners.
So seller facilitated orders
will allow both trading partners,
not only as the buyer as they do in today's world,
but both the buyer and the seller,
both are requesting a social agency
to negotiate on a GT and C
who's responsible for creating
that initial order in G-Invoicing.
And that would allow both the buyer and the seller
to start creating orders
once this enhancement has been developed.
The second key enhancement that we've received from agencies
is GT and C workflow.
And this would allow agencies
to establish additional optional approvals for GT and Cs.
The third enhancement that we've located
from the implementation plans are refunds,
and this functionality would allow sellers
to be able to make adjusting entries prior to
the delivered performed, performance transaction types,
to initiate refunds
even if the buyer or the requested agency
has completed a receipt acceptance file
or performance transaction type
within the G-Invoicing application.
Finally, the last enhancement that we have made here
is the accrual functionality
which we definitely believe is a major piece
to the differences that we have
and then what Leah and Andy has covered
in the previous slides.
So the accrual functionality is going to introduce
the new performance transaction type,
I'm sorry, take advantage
of a new performance transaction type of deferred payment.
And that deferred payment transaction type
would communicate work that has been performed
but not yet been billed or collected.
And that would also result
in the transaction not resulting,
I'm sorry, this transaction type will not initiate
on settlement through the IPAC application.
So as with other performance transaction types
that initiate on settlement flowing to IPAC,
deferred payment would not create on settlement
and help create these accrual transactions with G-Invoicing.
Okay, so next slide, please.
We do have a polling question
that we would like you all to respond to.
The question is
how many agency locations codes or ALCs
have established production G-Invoicing accounts.
Option A is none.
Option B is zero to 100.
Option C is 101 to 200.
Option D is 201 to 300.
Option E is more than 300.
We'll give you about 30 seconds or so to respond
to how many agency location codes.
Okay, so it looks like we have a mixed bag of responses
with the leading answer being option B, zero to 100.
Actually the correct answer is letter D.
We approximately have,
we have approximately 255 ALCs of about 570 targeted ALCs.
So we're at about 45% of ALCs
that have a production account established
within G-Invoicing.
Okay, with that question, thank you all for responding.
I am going to pass that over to Mr. Keith Jarboe
who's our program manager for our IGT agency outreach
in our engagement and onboarding staff.
So Mr. Keith Jarboe, go ahead, please.
Keith: Okay, thanks can you hear me, Wes?
Wes: Yes, I can hear you fine.
Keith: Okay, just making sure.
Thanks for that.
So just a little connection
back into that survey question there.
So interesting to see the responses.
Remember some agencies have more than one ALC
and we're definitely looking at
a large swathe of folks here.
So 500, approximately 570 ALCs
that we're looking to implement.
And just a little additional information
that kind of leads into what I'm gonna cover for you today.
We have about 123 production accounts
that have actually been established.
And 43 of those are actively engaging
in general terms and conditions brokering today.
So for those of you who think this is a couple of years off,
what that means is that
there's a lot of your trading partners
that are out there right now,
actively working in the G-Invoicing system, doing agreements
and likely looking for you as a trading partner
if you're not there yet to do some work with.
So with that, I'm gonna dive off here into
just kinda covering what's coming up here in the near term
as far as release work for our system.
We've done a lot of activity this year
even in the current environment
with us all sort of being remote.
It's unfortunate that we can't be together today
to do this session.
We usually have a lot of fun with these discussions.
But our team has been busy.
I know that you all have been busy.
The numbers as far as the enrollment for ALCs
and in production accounts speaks to that.
Coming up here in the very near term
in the first part of December,
we have our release 4.0 that is gonna go live.
I wanna talk a little bit about
some of the functionality that's in that.
This is definitely something that plays
into the hands of those folks
who have production accounts with us.
Definitely an impact to anyone
in the production environment,
but everyone actually is impacted
by what's being done here overall.
This release has been directly driven
by the engagement that we've had
with those folks who have sort of worked with us
to create those production accounts
with our team or agency implementation team
and some of the things that they've learned
in working with agencies over the past few years
to get those accounts created.
So the fruits of, and sometimes the pains of those scenarios
have led to what we're coming up here
in December with release 4.0
and we've actually led into this with a couple of releases.
This calendar year already are 3.3
and back even to 3.2 earlier this year,
these are all things that have led into
what's coming in which release 4.0
related to the new organizational model.
So really what that means
is that there's a whole new approach
to how we're structuring the ability
to control access to process activity
within the G-Invoicing system.
And it's really closely aligned
to how you define your organizational model.
Prior to this, we had some very flat line type structures.
This is much more dynamic.
It more closely aligns to how organizations are structured
and will definitely allow for better control
and better work, not only within your own organization,
but also for your trading partners
to understand how to engage with you
and do these IGT buy/sell transactions.
So I'm not gonna kill you with the details
on everything that's involved in 4.0,
but just basically know that we've re-wrapped
on our approach to the organizational model.
We've put some new roles in here.
So new administrator roles
that sort of control your account,
they're listed there on slide 90
which are master administrator,
your user administrator and your organization administrator.
You can just sort of think of those as a tree structure.
Obviously, a master administrator up at top,
your user and your organization administrators controlling
how data and permissions are granted to both users
and how your organizational structure is set up.
There was,
previously there's been a couple of modules
that you had to pick from
when you first came into G-Invoicing.
If you're a production user, you're familiar with that.
We've combined those together now.
So a single entry, it's a little more seamless
to get into the system.
And then that bottom bullet is actually something that's,
something that I mentioned that we've learned internally
on how to allow our production support team
to better control and support our agency users.
So definitely some central administrator improvements
on our end that all are coming with 4.0.
So this may not be one of the more glamorous releases
in terms of a lot of new screens and buttons
and neat things that you get to play with
but the core underlying foundation
of what release 4.0 does is really paramount
to us being able to move forward.
And it's a result of a lot of things that we've learned
from our customer base over the past couple of years.
So we can go down to slide 91.
All right, so a couple of things
that are important leading into the 4.0 release in it,
I believe we're targeting the first weekend in December.
We don't have the exact data on here
just 'cause we kind of prepped these slides
a little bit early, but we're looking very early in December
for that release to hit.
And stepping into that,
I mentioned that we had
a couple of releases earlier this year we've already done.
Certainly some things that we need
to work with our production account holders with,
and actively that is going on right now.
I would hope there's some heads out
there nodding that you know that you've been working
with your representatives on our program
to kind of go through these things.
And even back into the QA environment,
because our quality assurance environment,
the area where some of you do some testing
and sort of playing around in the system,
this applies back there as well.
This is something that applies to all of our environments.
But coming up in October, we're gonna do a few webinars
to kind of run top to bottom
through what the changes are coming with 4.0.
So definitely be on the lookout
for registration there on our Fiscal Service website.
And I've got some links to that later on
in the presentation here.
As well as into November, by the first part of November,
we really wanna be at a stable place
where everybody's set
and has done the pre-work leading in
just so we have a month there to be stable
and kind of air out anything leading
into the December release.
So just something to do there,
don't forget if you've got a production account,
some things to remember.
Down the next slide, on 92.
We can kind of look through just some of the quick,
just real quick, some of the things that you should be doing
as far as these prep steps for 4.0
not only the things that I've mentioned so far,
at least plugging into the webinars,
but make sure that you've got
a disburser administrator assigned in your current account
because that's a key role.
That's gonna be doing a lot of the activity
as far as building out that structure
that you see there in that second block.
Building out your structure to hopefully mirror
not only your organizational structure,
but to some of your existing account group assignments
that you've created.
Definitely you need to look at
any general terms and conditions
that you've created in the production environment
and make sure that you're aligning those
to the new groups that you're creating
so that access to those remains there.
If you do have any existing groups
that you've created access groups today,
you wanna work with our team
to make sure that you're mapping those properly
and then definitely, mapping the permissions
to your master administrators as well.
So it's really, it's sort of a look in top to bottom
and back and forth,
making sure that your existing agreements,
any activity, any users that you have
are being mapped over properly,
and then anything that you've done
as far as organizational structure before
has sort of a new line drawn to the new point
that you'll have in the 4.0 system.
And that'll be a lot more apparent
as you work through some of our webinars in October.
And hopefully for those that are in production,
you've been doing this actively
with your agency implementation team representatives.
So just some takeaways for what you should be doing
as far as 4.0,
and for those that aren't there yet,
we've got some things for you to be doing as well
as we get into the next few slides here.
You can jump down to 93.
Okay, so just one more thing
for those who are in production,
the next three slides really focus on,
if you are in production, if you're not in production
and then just a slide for sorta everybody overall.
These are my homework assignments for you today.
All the kids are back virtually at school.
So you guys are virtually at school today too.
So some things for you to take away and do.
So I talked about 4.0,
if you're in production, if you're in QA,
if you have some account establishment done with us,
make sure you're working through those things
that I just hit on.
You're not gonna lose your functionality when we get to 4.0,
it's just a lot more difficult
if you don't do the pre-work to get there.
So definitely plug in
with your agency implementation team rep
and work through that.
If you're in production,
we also are strongly encouraging you
to broker general terms and conditions.
We're coming up on the start of a fiscal year, right?
Today's September 1st,
so we are 25 months away from G-Invoicing being mandated.
So think about that for a minute, 25 months away.
That's just about two fiscal years.
If you're not stepping into this
and you're starting to get yourself enrolled
and get your agreements rolling,
those 25 months are gonna go really quickly.
So if you are in production,
definitely encouraging you to start to reach out
to those trading partners who are ready
and willing trading partners
who are out there in production as well
and really transition the GT and C creation
over into G-Invoicing.
Definitely look at your internal stuff first.
You're controlling that.
We've been preaching that for years.
Look in house first in the end where you control
sort of both sides of those transactions
across your organization,
and then start to look outward as well.
All right, down on 94.
So you're not in production.
What are the things that you should be doing?
I've mentioned agency implementation team representatives
quite a few times today.
So the first step is get in touch with our program.
If you're just at square one,
you just don't know where to go,
send us a note to the IGT mailbox,
you'll got the links later on in the deck here,
plug into us through some of the various offerings
that we have be that the webinars or office hours
or the ITWG work group and just get in touch with us
so that we can get some folks assigned to you
to start pushing you forward.
And I have some more information about the AIT group
later on in the deck.
Get yourself a QA account
so you can go in and start to play around.
After you've done some of our training
which is virtual now
and I've got some information on that
in a minute here as well.
Get an account set up, start to play,
start to understand how the system works.
Definitely, get your feet under you and get ready
for when we hopefully can get you into a production account.
And then that leads into the last bullet there,
establish a production account.
If you feel comfortable, if you'd gone through the training,
chances are you've got a trading partner
that's ready to do some activity with you
in the production environment.
So definitely encourage you
to get that production account established
as quickly as possible.
Should know here that getting a production account
doesn't mean you're immediately locked
into doing everything in G-Invoicing.
You can create the account, get yourself comfortable,
get your groups established back to all at 4.0 stuff.
Maybe do a couple of agreements internally,
just start to get yourself comfortable in the environment.
But you wanna definitely beat the rush
as we go through the next 25 months,
work your way into that
and establish, follow your implementation plan
which hopefully you're doing
and we'll talk about that in a second here as well.
So go down to slide 95.
Okay, if you,
no matter whether you're in
or whether you're out of production,
there are certain things that we absolutely,
we need you to be doing for us.
First off is submitting this quarterly implementation plan.
So I've mentioned it a couple of times already today.
You heard Wes talk about it,
about how we get the information out of those
and use those to drive where we're going forward.
I believe Leah talked about it as well
as an item that we're starting to score,
on the scorecards for those entities
that receive IGT by sell scorecards
as to whether you're submitting these plans.
They're required by chapter 4700 in the TFM now.
We need them on a quarterly basis.
We've got one due here in 29 days.
So make sure that you put that together
and that you're sending us those updates to them.
We've got pretty good response rates.
I think we're creeping up towards about 80%
in terms of the response rate
on the plans that we're looking for.
All of our significant reporting entities,
those that received scorecards or are reporting to us.
So we're definitely getting good information
and as you see, from what Wes and others have covered today,
we're definitely using that
to drive the direction of the program.
Engage with your trading partners.
You've heard communication about 50 times already today.
I can't say it enough.
Communicate with the trading partners, reach out to them,
figure out where they are.
This is a unique system rollout here
where this is not just in your court.
You've got to have a training partner there.
It takes two to dance
and it's very important that you engage
with those trading partners
and then leverage our team.
Like I said, if you haven't plugged in with our team,
definitely reach out to us and we can help you.
So let's look at these in a little bit of detail.
I'm not gonna go through all the bullets
on these next slides
'cause I know we're getting tight on time,
but we can at least go down to the next couple here
and I can hit the high points
on what you should be doing for us.
Plans, just talked about those.
Definitely, make sure
that you're getting those into us on time.
September 30 deadline is coming up here in a few weeks.
We have added some new features
for the September submission
so be sure to check the website
for the new templates for attachment A
as well as take a look at
some of the language that's out there
as far as what we're looking for.
Looking for some information on your ERP system now
and sort of a readiness expectation
of when you're gonna be ready internally
within your organization
as well as more at the government,
the intra-governmental government-wide level.
So a couple, just twist on what we've been collecting,
just trying to get a little more data
to help us understand where everybody's at.
So definitely take a look at that.
The templates are out on the website.
We can go down to 97.
Trading partner connectivity.
We've said this a lot today.
Make sure that you understand
where your trading partners are as far as their progress.
We've got a couple of utilities
that we provide to help there.
Certainly you can leverage just working groups
that we have in our office hours platform
to have those conversations.
Bring your trading partners to office hours.
We talk about that. If you've got a trading partner
that you're struggling with how to engage with
or how to step forward with,
bring them to one of our office hour sessions
and we can facilitate a good conversation there.
We've got some information out on OMB Max,
we have a trading partner directory
that we continually update to provide status
of where those with production accounts are
as far as their readiness.
We put our plans out on Max as well.
I've got a dashboard out there
that relates to some of the data
that we're collecting through those.
Tons of information on our G-Invoicing website
which you see the link to there.
So between our website and OMB Max,
there's a lot of data out there
related to what's going on with your trading partner.
So definitely take advantage of that.
We go to the next slide.
Collaboration opportunities.
You've seen probably this slide from me
at least a few times over the last year or so.
These are just reminders of places
that you can engage at a very government-wide level.
Our intra-gov transaction work group that we manage.
The link is there to that
as well as the financial management standards committee,
which has a little bit of a flavor
more towards the vendor side and collects you
with your respective peers under a certain vendor.
They've got a new link to their website
that I updated on the deck here.
So if you had this slide from years past,
make sure you look at this new one
with the new link to their website
We can go down to 99.
Okay, and then we're,
you're not alone, right?
We're here to help you.
That's really the reason that our entire support team
is here as far as the agency implementation team.
I've mentioned them a lot today.
For those out there who have production accounts,
you know these names
when I say George or Lena or Shelley or Robert.
You know those names,
those are folks that plug in with you
on a very regular basis and help you through.
One bullet on here that I definitely wanna focus on
is that last one,
the assistance with agency-led implementation teams.
If you're just standing up
your internal implementation team,
definitely make sure you reach out to us
even if you're not ready for production account yet.
We can plug into those
and help you kind of get those things up and running.
We do that for some of our larger organizations,
we're an active participant in those groups.
So it's definitely a place
that we can kind of help you get things up and running
if you're just not sure how to get folks pulled together
in your organization.
So definitely touch base with us on that
so that we can help you there.
And I think we'll go down to, what is, slide 100.
We're up into the triple digits, up to slide 100.
Just one quick reminder related
to the offerings that we have.
I wanted to bring in some images of what these look like.
We get some questions from folks
on how to find things on our website sometimes.
We're kind of spread across
just the Fiscal Service training area
as well as our own location within a G-Invoicing portal
within our website there.
So when you go out to the G-Invoicing website
and you click on our training link,
it's gonna take you over to the broader training offerings
from Fiscal Service overall.
And there's a lot of stuff in there.
So it plugged for other areas within Fiscal,
roll down through that screen
and see if there's some areas,
other areas in Fiscal that you need to do some training on,
but definitely look for G-Invoicing.
That's where you register for our webinars, for training
'cause we can't do those in person right now.
Also office hours,
you register for office hours there as well.
So some links there and some images of what you'll see
when you get to those pages.
Definitely take advantage of that and engage with us.
Plug in and just start to gather knowledge
if you haven't done that yet.
And if you have been engaged with us for a while
and we've got some new releases coming up,
it's definitely an opportunity to jump back in
and get yourself refreshed
on anything that maybe has changed.
Okay, we can go to the next slide
which I think might be our polling question, yes.
So real quick, we just wanna know,
have you engaged with our agency implementation team
to assist with your onboarding efforts?
And before I read the responses,
I wanna remind you that engagement with our team
is not necessarily face to face.
Or actually talking to our team
because our team does a lot for you.
All those webinars, all those materials on our websites,
the training, the things that we do
through our working groups,
those are all things that our implementation team
and our program team do to help support you.
So think about that broadly
when you answer as to whether you've engaged with our team.
Yes, no or not applicable.
We recognize that not everybody on the forum today
is in the IGT buy/sell world
so this may not be applicable to you.
So your choices are, A, yes, B, no or C, not applicable.
We'll run the survey for a second here.
Probably can bring it back pretty quick
'cause I know we're getting tight on time
and this should hopefully be an easy question.
Hopefully I'm seeing good answers.
Carol: Looks like folks need a little more time.
There we go, now we're rolling in.
Keith: Okay.
Okay.
So answers back.
Yes, that's good to see.
A lot of not applicables.
I had some anticipation,
we probably had some folks
that this didn't directly apply to you, so that's good.
And a few no's.
I'm glad I didn't, I should have prefaced it
or maybe I shouldn't have, but Carol is my supervisor.
So answering no to this might get me in trouble.
And maybe it was probably good thing
that she did not say ahead of time
so that you guys didn't sabotage me,
but definitely good to see that you're engaging with us.
for those no's, there's some links there
throughout this deck today
that really help you find a way to us.
We really encourage you to do that now
as we can help you get up and running
and make use of these 25 months that we have ahead of us
before we get to that first mandate timeline.
For those that are not applicable,
if you heard something today that you do think applies
to someone else in your organization,
be sure to let them know.
Be sure to pass this across
or at least ping them and say, hey, do you know about this?
So that you're at least sharing the information accordingly.
So with that, I'll stop.
I think we had our contacts linked in
but I don't need to cover that slide.
I think we probably have a couple minutes
just in case we got any questions that came in
during the course of the discussion today.
Carol: Holly, I'll turn it over to you for questions.
Holly: Oh, fabulous, okay.
Thank you.
There are some great questions that came in today.
Let me start with the first one here.
Will the 95% GTAS goal include CTAS?
We were told to leave CTAS as not submitted
if they are not used.
And that would be for any of our speakers today.
Leah: Yeah, and this is Leah,
I'm sure I should be answering that one.
That information came to me from Alex,
who was the supervisor in that area though.
So if that's what they told you,
let's just go back and check with that team.
If whoever sent in that question could send an email
to the GTAS team and I'm sure you have their email address
so we can get you an answer. Holly: I do, I do.
And we can absolutely connect with her afterwards.
Leah: Thank you.
Holly: Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, let me go on,
I know we have time for another question, hoping.
Oh, when will a sandbox be available for G-Invoicing?
And that would be for any one of our panelists.
Andy: I'm sorry, I was
on the last question, I was trying to find unmute button
but so as far as sandbox I'm thinking that
as somewhere you can test your environment.
And for that question, I may need Keith's help to answer.
Keith if you...
Keith: Yeah, yes it's Keith,
so we definitely have a quality assurance,
that QA region that I mentioned
is definitely a sandbox to go in and do some activity in
as far as through the UI.
We also support system testing
of our data transmission APIs.
It's a little bit more of a process there
to make sure that we've got you plugged in
and have your account set up properly
to be able to accept data files into our QA region,
but our team can definitely work with you on that.
Carol: Great, thanks so much, Keith and thanks Holly.
Yeah, thank you to our entire panel
for this mid-morning session.
Really appreciate you guys.
So it looks like we're at time
and I think we're, it's been so much fun,
but I think we're gonna have to wrap up.
So thanks again, everyone for joining us
and thanks to our presenters, Andrew, Leah, Wes and Keith,
and a few brief items in closing, we covered so much.
We hope that you come back at two o'clock.
It's not too late to register for that event
or to share the link with colleagues.
The final webinar recording will be posted
in our training area.
So fiscal.treasury.gov/training
and you'll see a button for training videos on that page.
We will get back to you on unanswered questions.
If you need the handout, let us know.
I think some of you have already,
let us know in the questions tab
and we can send that to you.
At the conclusion of this webinar will be a brief survey.
Please complete that for us
so we know how we did and how we can do better next time.
And finally, on behalf of the team,
wishing you a great day and good health.
Stay safe.