Carol: Good afternoon, everybody, welcome.
We're close to our start time.
We'll just give it a few more minutes and then we'll be
ready to go at two o'clock.
Luke: Hi, this is Luke, can you guys hear me?
Participant: Yes Luke we can hear you, thank you.
Luke: Thank you.
Carol: Okay, good afternoon, everyone, welcome.
Welcome to the Federal Financial Managers' Year-End Event.
Achieving More Together.
It's two o'clock let's, go ahead and get started.
I'm Carol Lambert, Director of Engagement and Onboarding
for Fiscal Accounting,
and I have been your moderator all day.
I hope you've been with me all day,
raise your hand, if you've been with me all day.
(giggles)
Great numbers in this event,
I love if you were with me earlier, you know how much I love
to watch the numbers climb as you guys enter.
So thanks again for sharing your day,
your afternoon with us.
We really appreciate that.
We have shared so much great information today.
So welcome to this final event today.
Auditability of data starts with BETCs and ends with GTAS.
Welcome to a grand finale.
If you missed the first two sessions, no worries,
all three of these recorded sessions will be posted
in about two weeks or so
in the training area of the website.
So fiscal.treasury.gov/training, and then you'll see that
large horizontal button in the middle of the page
that says training videos.
You'll be able to find, all three of these there.
Before we get into our session,
let's cover a few housekeeping items by now
you guys can probably recite these with me.
You should be able to see that
I'm sharing my presentation slides.
This presentation is available as a handout through your
GoToWebinar panel.
All participant phone lines will remain muted to avoid sound
quality issues, but we do want to hear from you.
So go ahead, you don't have to wait until the end.
You know, whenever you think of them,
please send your questions or comments,
or if you having technical issues,
or maybe you have suggestions for topics we can cover at a
later date, whatever you got for us.
Go ahead and send those through the questions tab on the
GoToWebinar panel.
Because we have so much to cover today, in this session,
we still have our team assembled.
We've got a whole team of folks to support you and to
support this webinar.
So my colleague, Yared and Bryan
will be providing technical support
this afternoon, this is,
we had pretty good luck on the first two.
So hopefully we can sustain that luck or maybe do even
better this time around in the technical area.
My colleagues, Holly and Tom will be monitoring your
questions in the, in the questions tab, and we'll facilitate
take the Q&A with our presenters when we get to those
portions, so again, don't feel like you have to wait
until the end, go ahead and whatever you have questions,
serve them up for us.
And on video
Bobby Quinn and Kelly Stein
will be our sign language interpreters for today.
If you're interested in getting closed captioning,
let us know by including your email address,
also in the questions panel.
At the conclusion of today's webinar event,
You will be asked to complete a survey, an evaluation.
Please let us know what you thought of today's webinar and,
you know, give us, how else we can do better.
And finally, I'm just gonna go ahead and thank you
in advance for being patient with us.
I know webinars are not new, this is not new,
but many of us are teleworking.
We're still getting comfortable with the technology.
You know, now that kids are back to school,
there could be bandwidth or connectivity issues
that we haven't had to previously deal with.
So we're, you know, we're intent on embracing
this technology, clearly, it's part of our new normal,
and we appreciate your patience
and your partnership with us in this.
Okay.
And now, without any further delay,
please join me in welcoming our first presenters.
Our session here on Audibility of Data
Starts with BETCs and ends with GTAS,
we'll have on this panel, Joe Gossett
Accountant, Cash Accounting Branch,
Central Accounting, and Reporting Division.
Joel Erb, Supervisory Accountant, General Fund Accounting,
Branch, General Fund Division.
And Abby Flaherty, Senior Accountant Consolidated Financial
Reporting Branch, Financial Reports and Advisory Division.
Thanks you all for joining today and take it away.
Joe: All right, good afternoon and thank you, Carol.
for that introduction.
You can flip up the first slide please.
Today's agenda, yeah, this is Joe Gossett,
I'll be opening this afternoon session,
talking a little bit about BETCs, in general,
what are they, what do they do, et cetera, things like that.
And then we'll spend a little time highlighting the BETC
guidance that my team published earlier this fiscal year,
which is now available to agencies.
And once I finish I'll turn things over to Joel and Abby,
where they will talk more about the,
the newest BETCs that were released this spring,
that deal with General Fund disbursements and loan activity.
Next slide please.
So let's begin.
What is a BETC?
Well, it stands for Business Event Type Code.
First of all,
a BETC is a code that the central accounting and reporting
system or CARS uses for the type of activity you are
reporting such as payments, collections, investments,
funds held outside of treasury, et cetera.
A BETC, along with the treasury account symbol and amounts,
are used to report the type of activity and the effect that
activity has against the agency's Fund Balance with Treasury
for that identified Treasury Account Symbol.
All of this in turn dictates the budgetary impact as well as
the impact on the Monthly Treasury Statement or the MTS and
the Financial Report of the U.S. Government or the FR.
It also populates the GTAS system to facilitate the edits
within that system.
BETCs replace the transaction codes and standards subclasses
that have been used in the past.
And that is what we used to know a string TAS reporting.
BETCs, they play a crucial role in the preferred method of
component format recording.
BETCs provide a more intuitive breakdown of events.
When you see when you use string TAS,
nearly all transactions become classified as either
disbursement or collection.
And when I say more intuitive level, for example,
was it a collection to a closed account?
Or was it an adjustment to an unavailable receipt
versus an available receipt?
It gives you more details with simply an increase
or decrease the balance.
And the BETC allows the transactions to be at a greater
level of detail, to not only source system reporting,
but for account statement detail as well.
Next slide, please.
Now I would like to speak briefly on the BETC guidance
that my team has developed and published this year.
So a little background on that.
For fiscal year, 2018,
the U.S. Government Accountability Office or GAO
they cited in their audit findings that fiscal service
does not have comprehensive BETC guidance available to
federal entities that defines, indicates proper usage
and identifies the accounting implication of each BETC.
So the BETC guidance was created in response to findings
related to the audit of the General Fund.
We developed the guidance through a collaborative effort
where we involved as many program areas or BETC owners,
BETC SME's as possible.
Some BETCs are grouped under business lines and get
reported primarily only by certain program areas or offices.
For example, federal investments, federal borrowings,
warrant journal vouchers, et cetera.
So possible, we went straight to the source
to define a BETC.
The BETC guidance was created through a collaborative
effort, utilizing various program areas, BETC handlers,
and SME's within GWA.
We put together a comprehensive listing of all active
BETCs and tried to include as much reference data as
possible, such as TFM references,
GTAS edit information and related adjusting BETCs.
Next slide please.
So the BETC Guidance, A Look Ahead.
We're gonna continue to review existing BETCs to
identify potential areas where uniformity can be obtained
through perhaps the activation of certain BETCs.
We discovered situations where duplicate BETCs have been
created throughout the years that fulfill the exact same
reporting purpose.
So we're in the process of trying to reevaluate all BETCs
that would fall under that category,
and it's a bit of a slow process,
so it takes some time to deactivate BETCs,
but you may be hearing from us in the near future as we weed
through that list and try to make these deactivations.
We're going to continue to update the guidance with new
BETCs as they are established.
And look for ways to improve overall functionality
to assist FPAs, Federal Program Agencies,
with their questions related to BETCs.
Next slide please.
The BETC guidance and where to find it.
You can find the BETC guidance directly using the link
provided in this slide.
If you're out on the Fiscal Service Website,
it is also located in a couple of different places.
It's under systems and then CARS,
and then Frequently Asked Questions,
but also under resources, reference and guidance
and then GWA reporting.
Next, we're going to take a few moments to do
a polling question related to the BETC guidance.
Have you seen or used the new Business Event Type Code
guidance since it was released?
Click A, if you have yes or B for no.
We're gonna have about 30 seconds
to have the poll to run here.
Should be plenty of time, while we're waiting,
Let me go ahead and mention that the new General Fund
disbursement and loan BETCs that Joel and Abby
will be covering next, they could be currently
found in the BETC guidance.
So as you evaluate your agency's position regarding
the adoption of those new BETCs,
you can find their official description of usage
in the BETC guidance.
So we should be coming up on our 30 second window
and getting our results.
Participant: Sure.
-: Okay.
We have, 43, nearly half of our audience says, yes,
they've accessed it, used it or seen it.
A little more than half have said no.
Well, not too bad.
Hopefully after today's presentation and the free
publicity, the guidance will start to get more hits.
We feel it can be a useful tool for assisting with our BETC
classification questions.
Now I'm gonna turn things over to Joel
for his portion of the presentation.
Joel: Thanks Joe, can you hear me just before you
transition off there?
Joe: Yes, I can hear you loud and clear.
Joel: Perfect, all right.
I wanna start off by thanking you Joe,
for opening and opening this up and Carol for having us,
we really appreciate this.
As Carol talks about you know, this is a newer for all of us
this year, so I appreciate your patience
in going through this.
Normally and I know last year was the first year
I presented at DSMC.
I was a little nervous for sure.
And I'm just as nervous today, but we'll get through this.
One thing I do want to say is normally like open this up
and say, you know, feel free to interrupt me,
but I guess today, since everyone's on mute
and just the format that we're going through,
you won't necessarily be able to interrupt,
but please do use that question feature.
(coughs)
I know that Holly will be taking down those questions
and getting those to us, so definitely you wanna
get any questions answered that you can.
And my last little thing to open up with is hopefully this
isn't the first time you've heard my voice over the last,
you know, 12 to 15 months.
We've been trying to get this information out to as many
agencies and folks from across all kinds of different
departments agencies within those departments or the departments
within those agencies all over the place.
So if this is the first time you've heard it.
So be it, if not, if it isn't then
please just sit back and listen and get
those questions ready.
So I'm just gonna open it up by kind of talking about what
the General Fund is, just little introductory,
the General Fund, if you were in one of the
presentations this morning, I know Andy kind of touched on
this as well in the ICRB presentation.
So, the General Fund of the U.S. Government is responsible
for recording and reporting assets and liabilities
associated with financing government operations.
So your appropriations, a lot of those are gonna be
flowing to the General Fund.
We're gonna be providing assets through, you know,
the debt program within treasury.
They're actually providing that cash, you know,
lending money or borrowing money daily
and that's flowing through the General Fund.
This is required reporting, so it's, intra-governmental
reporting that is required to complete
the government's accounting model.
So this is gonna be key, for receiving an opinion on the
financial report of the U.S. Government.
So the General Fund, one of its sole purposes
is to complete that intra-governmental reporting.
It's to make sure all that information is there
and that we can get to that, that
clean opinion on the FR, it's gonna work through us.
So we're doing our best to try to get us there.
So next slide please.
See, slide number 116.
So we were audited for our very first time in 2018,
it was the inaugural audit of the General Fund.
And we did have some limitations.
So they were unable to express an opinion on our financial
statements, which is called a Disclaimer of opinion.
So we had a disclaimer of the opinion of the opinion
on the schedules of the General Fund and the disclaimer,
the opinion on internal control over the financial
reporting and there were also some limited tests
of compliance with laws, regulations, contracts,
and grant agreements.
So the best news,
the silver lining on this is that we can
only grow up from here and we are
working diligently to try to do that.
So I know I've been with the General Fund for about 15
months now, we've taken huge strides in trying to
tackle the things that are limiting us
in that opinion that we haven't achieved yet,
but we will in the future.
Next slide please.
So the reasons for the disclaimer,
identifying and tracing transactions and schedules of the
General Fund, from the general ledger.
So this is the key, and this is what we're gonna
be talking about today related to the new BETCs that were,
that were developed in response to this finding.
Evaluating and resolving certain differences
reported in the schedule.
So this is another underlying significant proficiency
on the schedules of the General Fund relating to that
disclaimer of opinion, and then supporting the beginning
balances for the liability Fund Balance treasury.
That's something we're working on internally.
And some of you may have, have been involved in as well,
maybe some data calls from and, that kind of thing,
but we are definitely working on all of these findings all
at once, but today our focus is on that top one.
Identifying and tracing transactions
and the schedules of the General Fund.
Can go to the next slide, please.
Okay, so just a little background
on how the General Fund works.
The General Funds to you all, the agencies, entities
in the federal government are entering information
into CARS daily, weekly, whenever it is
that you're entering it.
That information is being pulled out of CARS and it's
actually driving the posting of the General Funds,
general ledger, so for instance, if you're recording
a COLL BETC, that's coming in and affecting your
fund balance in treasury,
and you're reconciling to that on a monthly basis
and GTAS and probably on daily basis,
or however often you do.
But that's also driving actual posting and journal entries
in the General Funds, general ledger,
so you hit that COLL BETC and it's causing a debit
and a credit to certain USSGLS on our side.
That's kind of how the General Fund works and at a very
simplified way of thinking of how the General Fund works
that's for cash basis transactions, so think BETCs,
when you're entering a BETC you're effecting
the fund balance with treasury.
So there's that link to kind of that cash basis.
So what happened was GAO, as we talked about, said,
we need some more detail on the transactions that are
affecting your general ledger.
The main purpose for the BETCs we're gonna talk about today,
are the DISB was at a very aggregated level.
So in order for certain disbursements to be reported
appropriately and the books to be broken out appropriately
at our level, we had to give you all,
all the agencies and the entities, the ability to report
that information to us, wherever you are and when you are,
and we're reporting using DISB all that information
is kind of aggregated.
It doesn't matter if you're using borrowing authority
or authority from reimbursable activity
or appropriations from the General Fund that Congress gives
you on an annual or multi-year basis.
If you're using a disbursement BETC, you're heading DISB
and that's the story that you're telling us.
And that's what we're reporting in our general ledger.
The problem is that need to know, not only that,
that there's a disbursement,
but also what type of authority,
whether it was appropriated from the General Fund or not
appropriated from the General Fund,
that authority that you're using.
So obviously we had to break down or give you all the
ability to report that information to us.
I'm sure most of you or a lot of you have that information
available, just no means of reporting it.
So we took the DISB and broke it down into two separate
BETCs, the first being D-I-S-G-F,
which you can see down here at the bottom of the slide.
I know it's kind of small,
so you could download the presentation and zoom,
and you can see a little better.
I taught about DISGF and those are gross disbursements
of appropriations derived from the General Fund.
So if Congress appropriates your money every year and says,
we're gonna give you this amount of money to use
from the General Fund for your operations,
that's gonna be an appropriation from the General Fund.
You'll see that as a, if you're in CARS and used to that,
you'll see that as an AP BETC, a lot of times, I mean,
that's a general one.
I'm not gonna pretend to be a complete expert on
BETCs, but I know I'm pretty sure that AP is one of those
BETCs that's gonna tell you that you do get appropriations
for the General Fund.
And if you're a USSGL person that speaks that language,
it's gonna be your 3101.
So it's gonna be your appropriations outstanding that you
receive at the beginning of the year
or whenever a law is passed.
So that's what's gonna tell you,
that you're actually using General Fund Authority.
Now, as you can see, there's another BETC down there
and that's DISNGF and
that's gross disbursements of appropriations and other
sources not derived other than from the General Fund
of the United States.
So that's going to be borrowing authority, reimbursable,
you're providing a service and you're getting reimbursed
for that service.
And Congress has given you the go ahead to use
that money in your operations, to pay for those operations.
So you're paying salaries out of money that you've earned
for providing some kind of a service.
That isn't necessarily appropriated through the General Fund
that's appropriated through the collections that you're,
earning by providing the services that you're providing.
So that's kind of a high level breakdown
of what these two BETCs are.
I'm gonna go back real quick and look through my bullets,
to make sure I covered it.
I know we got I got off on a tangent there.
Yet for lack of detail, so that's,
what's driving this and then also the new BETCs
to provide the necessary classification.
So again, if you think BETCs are driving our general ledger
they're telling us what debits and credits to hit,
if you can give us the, that BETC level information,
we can then derive transaction level information in our
general ledgers using those BETCs
to drive USSGL posting logic.
Next slide please.
Okay.
So the General Fund ledger, like I said before,
and like we covered is derived from CARS from all those
BETCs that you're reporting.
So, you know, a TAS and a BETC comes through, I'm sorry,
a transaction comes through CARS if BETC does,
and it's attached to a TAS, so we get that TAS,
BETC information and it posts certain
USSGLs in our general ledger.
So we've kind of covered that.
So the next likely step for us, and this is,
I guess, I've been talking about this,
that first part was phase one.
This is kind of phase two.
That's what this slide's talking about.
Phase one is providing the BETCs.
As Joe mentioned, they're out there,
they're available in CARS, you can use them.
A lot of agencies are using them.
Second step is to say, okay,
now we have agencies using these BETCs,
are they using them correctly?
Or is there a way for us to tell
if they're using them correctly.
And the most logical way for us to determine that
was to create some or to look at USSGLs and say, okay,
DISGF equals the disbursement of an appropriation
from the General Fund.
Is there a, like USSGL that equals the disbursement
from the General Fund?
And the answer to that in short is yes.
The problem with it is that, that USSGL,
as it is in fiscal year 2020,
that 310700 USSGL folks will understand that
310700 is out there, it's just, it doesn't,
it isn't going to line up with the BETC because
it includes some accrued activities.
So think a couple of different types of ways
that you might incur an expense.
The first is you receive a bill in the mail,
and you book an accounts payable.
You say, I'll pay that in a few days.
So you book it in AP and you're not actually dispersing
any kind of money, you're you're holding on until
you just accrue it payable.
So that's that first then that's, that's an accrual.
There's no cash leaving you
so that amounts to treasury leaving.
So there's no BETC either.
The second is, alright, I received a bill
and I wanna pay, I'm just gonna pay it automatically.
Or later on down the road, I write off the accounts payable.
I say, okay, it's time to pay it.
Now I'm actually dispersing money and there's a BETC
related to that disbursement.
So now I can kind of see how I can build an edit that says
here's a BETC, what USSGL wouldn't open.
What it relates to, and kind of the same way
we deal with BETCs the information wasn't available
for you all to report at the beginning, it was actually
a breakdown that was needed in the USSGL as well.
So in order to ensure that you using the BETCs correctly,
or to test the reasonableness of that BETC usage
we asked back in May the IRC, okay, can we break down 310700
kind of renamed 310700 itself and it creates this new 310710
and IRC came back and said, the USSGL board, I'm sorry
came back and said, yeah, sure, let's do it.
So, you know, 310700 and 310710 were created.
So now we have, so let's put away BETC for a minute.
And just look at USSGL, we have this 310700,
which is appropriations use USSGL and 310710
appropriations use dispersed USSGL.
When you're accruing, so we're back to that example
of receiving a bill in the mail.
When you put it on your shelf and accrue in accounts payable
for a few days, you're going to hit the 310700
There's gonna be no BETC.
When you receive that and you wanna pay that bill
automatically, you're going to hit the 310710
cause your fund balance at the treasury is leaving
and you're also gonna have a BETC.
So now we can tie that DISGF to the 310710
and say, "Okay, this is reasonable usage."
Next slide please.
Okay.
So I guess I jumped ahead of myself, I should have,
we should have switched slides a couple of minutes ago.
but I guess, so we will get through this real quick.
So breaking up at 310700, as you can see here,
this is a helpful screen to help you understand what
that 310700 breakout means.
It allows for certain appropriations,
it uses information to be fed to the General Fund
and balance up against
what's being reported in CARS.
So if it's 310700 unexpended appropriations used
accrued, there is no impact to the BETCs,
there's no impact to fund balance with treasury.
So there is no BETC in CARS.
The General Fund receives these balances
via quarterly entity submission form.
So just like you report your RCs 38 and 39 to us
now in the future, you report those balances for your
accrued portions only after you using the new BETCs.
310710 that's a
brand new USSGL.
And this has Unexpended Appropriations Used
that have been disbursed.
So this is used in concert with that DISGF BETC.
So fund balance with treasury is actually leaving,
being dispersed that's described in that description
there's would be a BETC associated with it,
and that's the DISGF.
So for these,
when the entity switches over and we'll get to a point in
the future when everyone's switched over and you'll no
longer have to submit these actual disbursed amounts via
a General Fund entity submission form,
because you'll be feeding all of that information to the
General Fund via the BETCs that you're using.
So providing this USSGL breakout as is highlighted
here at the bottom, the result is a tie point between
a BETC and USSGL, validating traceability required for
the General Funds auditability.
So now we've went to, from no ability
to even report that information to us,
to giving the agencies the ability to report it to us,
test its reasonableness, using the USSGLs and ultimately,
you know, help on the auditability of the General Fund
and the FR as a whole.
Next slide please.
Perfect.
Okay, so any of you who are used to working with USSGLs,
as I said, we, we were kind of speaking two languages there.
One's BETC and one's USSGL.
Maybe some of you speak both,
but if you're USSGL and you kind of speak that language,
you know that, that USSGL is never used alone.
The 310700 is always mimicked by the 570000.
So the same way we broke out the 310700 and 310710,
the 570000 was broken up that way as well.
So 570000 is accrued, 570010 is dispersed for the agencies.
We worked in again with, with ITRB on this,
as we were implementing it, definitely their opinions
mattered and it was very much used.
And we were able to come up with this slide here,
explaining the impact on other Reciprocal Categories.
So, RC 38 you can see that the 5700s
are all gonna be grouped together in RC 38
and then all of the 3107s will be grouped together in RC 39.
So no major changes to RCs because of this breakdown.
Reciprocal Categories,
they'll all be kind of grouped together.
Next slide.
Okay.
All right, so I'm gonna,
I'll start with a question and then I'll,
I'll put in a little disclaimer here.
So over the last 12 to 15 months,
how many times have you heard about the breakout of the DISB
to the DISGF in DISNGF BETCs?
So A is 0, B is one, C is 2, D is more than 3.
My hope is that you guys are tired.
Everybody's tired of hearing my voice,
that you've heard it a bunch.
My worry is that maybe this is the first time
you're hearing it, either way is fine.
I appreciate you letting me know.
One thing I do wanna say before I turn it over,
I have one more question after this,
that we'll do a follow on, but I know I tried to cover it
and I know sometimes I speak over myself.
I'm just so excited about the General Fund
that I just don't even know when to stop.
I just keep talking.
So if for any reason you have any questions
or there needs to be any clarification,
please make sure you put those questions into the box and
Holly will get those to us,
and if we can't answer them today,
then we'll definitely answer them in the future
or get a response out to you all.
So this first question is probably over,
over the last 12 or 15 months, how many times have
you heard about the breakout of the DISB?
I'm very excited for the results.
All right.
My biggest fear has come true.
Okay, so,
hopefully, the 44% of you who have not heard about it,
definitely take this back and tell some of your friends
about it or your enemies if it's bad news.
But,
we really just wanna get this information out to everyone
so that we can have a good implementation that we have
Fiscal year 2021 to work on it.
So we definitely want you guys to work on it.
You'll see my contact information in the General Funds
contact information at the end of this presentation,
make sure that you're getting in touch with us.
And we'll also be trying to get in touch with you all.
We wanna get this information out to agencies.
We know that this BETC is fundamental
and the breakout is very important.
So we wanna work with you all.
We can go to the next poll question.
Okay.
Over the last six months, cause like I said,
the USSGL board meeting wasn't until May,
when these new USSGLs were approved.
How many times have you heard about the new 310710,
and 570010, for appropriations disbursed?
A is zero, B is one, C is two and B is three or more.
Again,
My guess is if you haven't heard about it,
maybe you'll surprise me,
but my guess is if you haven't heard about the BETC,
you probably haven't heard about the USSGLs either,
all this means is that you're gonna,
if you're some of those people that have heard us
two or three times,
you're likely to hear us five or six times now
because we still have work to do in getting all this
information out and we will work with all the agencies
that wanna work with us.
So continue, please to contact us.
You have our contact information there at the end.
So with that,
I'm sure the poll results are probably
getting ready to wrap up.
Okay.
Same, all right, you guys are consistent.
So 44%, haven't heard about this either.
Okay.
So for the 23%, I mean, that's good, a quarter of,
you heard this more than three times,
so I appreciate you hear this and listen to me again,
a couple of things I do want to say real quick because
I'm sure we'll have questions on it
before I pass it over to Abby,
the edit that we talked about or the reasonable mis-check
that we're doing a GTAS, we're working with GLAB,
the General Ledger Accounting Branch
to work on that edit right now.
It's not in GTAS yet, so it isn't even analytical
at this point, that being said,
it wouldn't be fatal until sometime in 2022.
Fiscal year 2022.
So no need to worry about that.
I don't wanna worry anybody with that.
I'm sure that's a question that we would get
if there are any more,
I'm sure I will get them at the end of this presentation.
So I appreciate everyone's time again,
Carol thanks for putting this on and wanna pass it over
to Abby to talk about these loan BETCs.
Abby: Okay. Good afternoon, everyone.
I'm Abby Flaherty.
And as Joel mentioned earlier, one of the,
one of GAO's reasons for providing the General Fund and
Disclaimer of opinion, was that they felt there needed to
be a way to identify and trace transactions in the
schedule's general ledger.
The second schedule and the General Fund known as the
schedule of changes in cash balance
is also a financial statement.
in the financial report of the United States
called the Statement of Changes in Cash Balance
from budget and other activities.
And because of this, the data that's presented
in the second schedule of the General Fund
is a direct copy from BFR.
Next slide please.
Okay, and in previous years, because this was a financial
statement and the FR fiscal service used GTAS data
to populate the lines in the cash statement.
But when the statement became the second schedule
of the General Fund GAO required that this data
now comes from CARS transactions.
The lines highlighted in red in this slide,
and then in the next slide as well,
represent the Loan Financing Account Activity.
These lines include interest revenue on uninvested funds,
interest expense on entity borrowings,
downwards subsidy payment/reestimates and
upward subsidy payments/reestimates.
Next slide please.
And activity such as Loan disbursements,
Fees and principal and interest repayments
are also examples of loan financing activities
that are broken out in the statement.
Because these are individual lines on the statement,
we need to gather this individual transaction activity
with the use of new loan BETCs.
Next slide, please.
This is a table of the new loan BETCs.
There are approximately 25 new Loans BETCs created with
additional adjustment BETCs for each.
You will see that the activity listed on the statement lines
have a new BETC created.
So as mentioned before, Fees, for example,
is a line on the statement/schedule.
There is now a BETC titled C-O-L-L
that will need to be used when your agency's collecting fees
into a loan financing fund.
And because we also used to utilize GTAS accounts to
populate the statement, we will be creating GTAS edits.
That will be analytical only for the first three quarters
of FY 2021, but will turn fatal in the fourth quarter
of FY 2021.
Because these BETCs and USSGLS record the activity during
the year, it would be beneficial for your agency
to go ahead and try to use these BETCs
as early as possible so that you can monitor the edits
and resolve any issues before it becomes fourth quarter.
Okay, our next slide please.
Okay, so we have a polling question.
When will the GTAS edits for the new loan
BETCs go fatal?
A, fourth quarter, FY, 2020,
B, first quarter of 2021,
C, third quarter, FY 2021
or D, fourth quarter FY 2021.
And again, with the other question,
you'll have about 30 seconds to go ahead
and select your answer.
I'm more confident,
in the response.
than Joel got, I think he got a little bit crushed,
but I feel like that we going to have this one.
And like I said before,
we were going to have this as GTAS edits
just because we had used the GTAs accounts before.
And of course GTAS edits are a great way to get
things resolved before year end.
I think we'll be. -: Abby you could tell I-
-: Yeah, -: You could tell I was crushed?
-: What's that?
Joel: I said you could tell, I was crushed?
Abby: A little bit, yeah, I could hear it in your voice.
-: Of course yeah (laughing)
-: Its all right Joel -: No, I'm happy,
I'm happy we were just reaching people (laughing)
-: Okay, well,
got it.
Fourth quarter 2021 is the well majority of you
ticked that answer and that is the correct,
the correct answer.
They will be going fatal in the fourth quarter of FY 2021.
Okay?
I think we can move on to our next slide here.
Okay, so,
here you can find the contact information for Joe,
Joel and myself, as well as the,
where the recording will be posted.
If you wanna look back at this for the future use,
of course, any questions that you would come up with,
or you wanna walk through anything that we would discuss
today, please feel free to get ahold of us and reach out.
Carol, I'll hand it back over to you.
-: Great, thanks so much.
Thank you to Joe, Joel and Abby.
Great presentation.
Let's go to Holly to see what questions
we might have for you guys.
Holly?
Holly: Hi, good afternoon.
Thanks Carol.
We do have several questions coming in
for the panelists today.
I'll see how many I, well,
I assume we'll just kind of get one
or we'll get a couple of them and then we'll go,
go on to the next presentation, I'm assuming.
So we have a question here.
What is the effective date for the new codes again?
Joel: Okay, so I can take this if that's all right.
And then if anybody has anything to add, so this is Joel.
And so the expected date for the new BETC codes,
I believe would probably be the question
and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but those,
those BETCs are actually available.
And I'm sorry if I didn't mention this,
those BETCs are available in CARS and have been since
March 17th, I believe was the day.
Not that I'm counting or anything when I say March 17th,
but I'm pretty sure that was the date.
So they've been out there for agencies to use,
as I said before, the, any edits related to those
haven't even been put in GTAS's analytical yet.
They're out there for you guys to use
and test and get used to.
We are deriving information on the schedule of the
General Fund with those new BETCs, now I speak for both
of the DISGF, DISNGF as well as those loan BETCs.
So we worked with Abby's group to kind of determine
the effects that would have on General Fund.
So those are out there and available for you to use now.
I guess that was a long way of answering that question.
Holly: Okay, Thank you,
Carol, do we have time for more?
Should we wait until the Q&A session?
Carol: I think, I think we have time for one more.
Holly: Oh, fabulous, okay.
Another quick one here.
Are the new
Loan BETCs available in the new guidance?
Joe: Yeah, this is Joe, I think I can handle that one.
They are available in the new guidance.
They are in the current publication that's available
on the fiscal service website, at the link provided,
and it does have Loan BETCs with their description of
usage and when more information becomes available regarding
edits and et cetera on those that will be published as well.
Holly: Okay, I think you mentioned the link provided,
do you, what, is there a, is there a particular web page
or could you let folks know that link again?
-: That link is there in the slides.
That might be the easiest way for everyone to obtain that
without me just repeating it, but I can, if you-
Carol: Sure, go ahead.
Since we're on a different slide now they can't see it.
Joe: Sure.
It's you can go to
www.fiscal.treasury.gov/files
/CARS/BETC/guidance
-: Great, thank you. .xlxx
And that will get you there.
Carol: Great.
All right, well maybe, should we keep going?
Carol: We, this is great, we're doing well on time
and we have one more topic to cover before we close and,
and the intention is to have more time
at the end to ask questions.
So let's go ahead and plow forward
and thanks again to our presenters on that first panel.
Really appreciated.
All right, moving on to the next topic
in the discussion GTAS,
TFM,
GTAS API
How it can help you, and our two panelists
on, this one include Alex Abshire, Supervisory Accountant,
General Ledger and Advisory Branch in the FR reports
in Advisory Division and Dan Adams,
Senior Accountant, General Ledger and Advisory Branch also
from the Financial Reports and Advisory Division.
Thanks, you too for joining us today
and I'll turn it over to Alex.
Alex: All right, thank you, Carol, I appreciate it.
So good afternoon everyone.
My name is Alex Abshire.
I'm the Supervisor of the General Ledger Control Team,
or a lot of you guys might know it as the GTAS team.
So first of all, I wanna thank you guys for,
I'm sure it's been a long day, listening to webinars,
and that's a little harder to do it virtually
and be stuck in this all day, but I really thank you guys
I've seen a lot of good information,
that's definitely going to better our year end reporting
and improve all of the data that feeds into the FR.
So the last presentation today, we're gonna be talking
about the GTAS TFM API and how it can help you guys out.
I think this is a little known topic,
so we're really gonna try to explain the API and its
benefits to you and kind of show you the problem we plan
that it's going to resolve.
So on this slide right here, you'll see the agenda that
we're gonna cover during the presentation today.
So we'll first talk about what exactly the GTAS TFM API is,
explain the problem we're trying to resolve.
We'll then cover some obstacles for entities
you guys are currently facing when trying to update your
financial systems and trying to stay up to date on the
policy that Treasury and OMB are pushing out
that you must conform to when you're uploading
your bulk files within GTAS.
So we wanna kind of really cover what you guys have to do
now to update your financial assistance, to basically
prepare your bulk files before you upload into GTAS.
We'll then explain phase one verse phase two,
and what we plan on offering you guys both
in the short term and the long term and the form of
the Data Readable Share File at first and then the,
a true API in the long term,
and kind of cover both options there that we see
our longterm vision going.
We'll wrap up today by covering some recent GTAS updates
that could provide some benefit to you who are using GTAS.
So Carol you can go to the next slide, please.
So here's our first polling question.
Have you ever utilized an API in the past?
And this could be any type of API,
both at work or at home and the choices there are
A for yes or B for no,
I think this is a really good lead in to our topic here to
see how many people have any familiarity with an API and how
much benefit it could provide you.
So we'll give it about another 15 seconds
or so to see the results on this.
I'm excited to see how many people
have experience with this.
All right.
Then we could probably,
the answer's probably in for the most part.
So 83% have said that they've never used an API
in the past and we got 17% saying yes they have.
So I think that's some very interesting results
for the most part for the people who answered no,
you probably don't realize that
you utilize APIs almost on a daily basis.
It's probably more in a personal manner at home.
So some of the examples of APIs that you might've used in
your personal life are on your phone and in App form.
So those can include the weather channel.
So they're using an API for your phone to be constantly,
constantly updating the weather,
Your weather forecast and stuff like that.
You can have your ESPN App on your phone.
That's constantly updating score stats, if you're a big
sports fan and you could have Finance Apps on your phone
that are using your APIs to update,
stock prices and trends in the stock market currently
on a daily, I mean on a minute basis
every time you refresh your data,
it's using an API to call up the servers
to update the App on your phone.
So I think it's interesting a lot of you guys didn't know
that technology is actually out there, but it's actually
very beneficial for you.
So moving on to slide four.
So what exactly is the GTAS TFM API?
So as we've talked about that a little bit,
but an API is an application programming interface,
which I'm not, I'm an accountant,
I'm not a super technical guy, but I can see the benefits,
it could provide you guys down the road.
So it will give you all the ability to update your
financial ERP systems for any policy changes
on a more real time instant basis.
So this policy changes can include any changes to
USSGL accounts or any changes or additions
to the validations or edits that your GTAS bulk files
get checked against within GTAS.
So I know we just had Joel Abby and Joe talking about
new edits that are possibly hidden GTAS.
And so obviously you guys know those new edits
validations GTAS are constantly changing
constantly being modified.
So we really think to update your internal systems,
it is kind of very laborsome process currently
to get that updated in your system.
Have those checks before you upload in GTAS,
when you're having to work with the GTAS team to clear
any failed validations or failed edits.
So we really think this will be a huge benefit for agencies
and really reduce the burden that is currently on you guys
for capturing these updates that tend to TFM.
So moving on to slide five.
So what are the Current Obstacles for Entities?
So what are the current obstacles
you guys are currently facing?
So right now, for the most part, you all referring to the
human readable USSGL TFM supplement for any changes
and you're most likely looking at the summary of
changes out there to see what types of changes have been,
have happened since the last TFM publish.
So I mentioned the last slide that could be changes
or additions to your edits or validations,
or it could be changes or modifications
to the USSGL accounts.
So we've been talking to agencies and this could be a very
labor intensive and very manual process
for an agency to get these updates into your financial system.
We've heard from agencies where the changes had to be
hand keyed into their system.
So they're looking and having to interpret all the changes
from a documentation we've put out and make those changes
into your financial systems for all these,
all of these new USSGL accounts or
changes to edits or validations to
make sure your system is up to date with what GTAS
is going to be checking it against.
So we've also heard from agencies that they're mainly
converting the Excel and PDF files into a usable format
to upload into their systems, which I mean,
that's gonna cause a lot of extra work to get GTAS
systems updated.
I mean, taking that file and trying to get it converted into
a manner where that the ERP system can actually consume
that data can be a big lift on agencies.
So we think that we needed some, what is the most part,
we're trying to solve a problem and trying to reduce the
manual labor for any constant changes in the guidance that
we're putting out there.
So moving on to the next slide.
So what types of benefits does the GTAS TFM API provide you guys?
So first thing is it'll save you time.
I mean, as I mentioned before,
it will be reducing the burden on you guys from,
manual systems, to your financial systems.
It will also minimize the time spent on manual updates and
analyze and what changes you need to be making,
how having to actually go through all of the policy and
guidance to kind of figure that out on your own.
So another thing we've done and Dan's gonna hit on this a
little bit more about our short term,
we're gonna be looking at the data readable share file,
and then longterm, we'll be looking at the API,
but we've actually been working with HHS on
testing out this Data Readable Share File.
So if you guys wanna reach out to us,
we can put you in contact of HHS they have,
and they're testing, they think it's been very beneficial
on the reduction of the
manual changes they've had to make.
And they thought it was a really good, so they've kind of,
we've been working with them almost pretty monthly basis and
they've reached out to us and basically offered up to kinda
help out other agencies with their lessons learned for any
stuff that they've learned through the process.
So they can help out agencies that are picking up
this file for the first time.
The next benefit that we see they'll help automate the
process for agencies that are currently converting
the TFM USSGL supplement.
So therefore eliminate the manual converting of that for
consumptions that, as I mentioned before,
that you guys are currently doing, it will kind of take
the work off your hands and already
have it done for you guys, you guys be able to consume that.
It'll keep your systems in sync between your
ERP financial systems and GTAS.
It'll allow for more timely updates,
thus allowing you guys' financial systems to stay in
sync with the most current GTAS release.
So right now the TFM publishes almost on a quarterly basis.
So I know sometimes publishes happened more frequently
than that in GTAS for small changes,
are there recently we had the COVID funding
and getting pushed in.
I know a lot of agencies had validation exceptions
for the COVID death codes within GTAS.
So that was quick changes that we had to add into the system
that you guys could have pulled down your system with this
API or Data Readable Share File.
Next benefit. There is the accuracy of your GTAS ATB files.
So it'll help in detecting edit validation failures prior
to GTAS submission due to having an internal systems
or ERP systems updated more frequently.
So we think that's a huge benefit for you guys.
Next, the last one, there is added functionality
within your financial system.
And obviously this is not gonna be on a lot of
the end users within your agency.
This may be more on system folks to develop this,
but we really think this,
you can add functionality within your internal system to be
able to search data and build customized reports
from your financial system.
So we think that's a really beneficial,
a lot of the benefits of things that can help you guys out.
As I mentioned, I know on the phone,
there's probably a lot of end users.
So you guys probably don't,
wouldn't be the one to actually implement this
into your system so if you guys really think
it'd be a big benefit for you guys,
actually help get your GTAS data more accurate
and more complete.
So if you think this can be a benefit,
kind of talk to your superiors,
get the system folks involved and then reach out to us.
And we can point you to our FRB St. Louis system folks,
and kind of get you a set up for how to actually utilize
this Data Readable Share File in the short term
and then possibly API in the long term.
But that's all I had for today.
I'm gonna be passing over to Dan Adams, the GTAS man,
to kind of talk about your phase one, phase two approach
of what we're gonna be planning and also talk about
the GTAS updates that are recently put into the system.
So Dan.
Dan: Thank you Alex, good afternoon, everyone.
As Alex said, we have a two phase approach.
We weren't real sure we started out questioning these things
and weren't sure of the complexities and the timeline.
So our initial thoughts were to try to get out
a Data Readable Share File that we could post.
It would have the information, again,
all the same information you would see on the
USSGL TFM supplement page it's in, you know, at that point,
it's humanly readable, but this is more just for
machines, this is something you could go out
and download and have at least have the information
available to upload in your systems.
And then once we progress further,
we would have the true API to kind of automate
that process a lot more.
So you see here phase one that shared file is
a .JSON format.
Our folks at FRB thought that it was probably the
most, universal or, you know, one of the easier versions
or formats to use that everyone kinda take
and convert for their systems.
Again, this is still a manual process.
So the file is actually posted out there
and I will get to that coming up,
but got ahead of ourselves a bit and actually got ahead of
schedule and got that out there and is available for you to
go, there's a couple of places you can go to get it,
but you just would have to go out and manually download it,
probably save it to a desktop or something,
and then upload it into your system.
That may work for most people.
I know we have a survey on,
we gonna question on it later about that,
but moving on to phase two,
which is actually coming up a lot quicker than we expected
too, we're gonna have that true API now where it's,
it's gonna be more automated.
I don't know if that's gonna be click a button
and it'll go out and do it, or if it's gonna be,
it can be scheduled to go and do it.
I like how Alex said, we're accounts,
that sometimes I wonder if I'm even that, but,
you know, we don't know the technical side
so we do have the experts on the line and certainly
we work closely with them
to how that will work in the end there's still a lot,
a lot of questions to be answered on how it's gonna work
and how we want it to work.
You know, in terms of things like,
do we want multiple releases available?
You know, so that you can start looking at things
in the future or do we want to keep it strictly with
the current version that's within GTAS so that
you're in sync with the rules where we're
checking for that particular period.
So again, there's more to come on that, but we are,
we are moving along pretty well and,
and probably expecting that sooner than later,
you know, again, this hopefully whether you need it or not,
at least it will be there as an option and hopefully will,
will serve you well.
Next slide please.
Okay, again, it's a .Json format.
If you don't know what that is, that's okay.
I didn't either, but again, like I said, this is, you know,
the system folks will understand that
how to utilize that.
We've got, this is really just it's housed.
I believe on the USSGL website page you'll see it there,
but we also have a link on the GTAS website
that will take you, take you to a couple of places there
may pop up or link at least may pop up in other places too,
to make it easier, but we just wanted to kind of
get something out as soon as possible.
So folks can start trying it out and see,
see how it works for them to see if it's something
that they can use and like Alex said,
we can put you in touch with HHS folks and
how it's working for them.
They may have some insights or some tips.
We hope to keep this updated on a regular basis.
One of the big things about this and Alex alluded to
is that, you know, our published, the human readable version
is a process, it takes a little while and it's done
like quarterly, but we do often have small changes.
Typically some, sometimes something that will impact
government wide, but usually it's more agencies specific,
excuse me, but those do happen quite frequently,
especially with DEF Code, there's always updates.
GTAS is being added or something is being added for exceptions,
a lot of other things like that.
So quite often you're gonna find that GTAS or what's,
what we've got running in the system is not necessarily
gonna, sync up with what's posted in the,
on the TFM supplement site.
This is because of those little things that come in.
So we're gonna try to, as we make updates within a GTAS
system to put a new JSON file out there
and match apps that you guys can, can kind of go out
periodically and pull that and have what's hopefully the,
the most current version.
Next slide please.
Okay, so here's a little bit of an example
of what the file looks like.
The first block there is sort of what you would see in the
human readable version,
the next block and it's a little hard to read with
the font and everything, but that's,
that's kind of the system certainly, you know,
how, how it looks in the actual JSON file
so it's just as definitely not as easy to read
as the one above, but from a system standpoint,
this is,
you know, probably plain English to the system.
So again, it's a small sample, but something your,
your system folks could take a look at.
They may understand it a lot better and,
and they'll probably see how they can incorporate that in.
And again, the file is out there,
so they could look at the whole file now
if they want to.
Next slide, please.
So again, long term vision for this is to have the true API.
This will hopefully like maybe you can set up on a schedule
to where you don't have to go in,
go through the process of downloading, uploading, you know,
making sure changes are in there.
The system could periodically go out and pull the file and
have that updated for you and, you know,
set that to do in the morning before you show up to work
and get there and everything's already,
already in and ready to go.
As I said, it's still in development.
A lot of different groups working on this
to try to hash out all the details,
trying to make sure we cover everything we have to cover.
There may be stuff in the initial areas
where we end up wanting to enhance it or,
or do different things with it.
But I wanna make sure we have the major basic style.
So that the key point of this, mainly is to get
you guys something to where we can keep your,
especially if you're building these internally
and your systems to keep you in sync with what GTAS
is actually looking at.
I mean, we often get that question, like,
"Hey, I'm suddenly fell on this and it's like,
well, we had a change that happened since, you know,
the last IRC or whatever that something given had to be
fixed across what gotta be changed."
And this is why it's working differently.
Sometimes it happened during a window and,
and communication is tough to get out there to,
to explain what happened so
like so we plan to have both, you know, the JSON file
so sitting where it's at now and having the API running at
the same time, so you'll have the option if you, you know,
if you're not comfortable with,
with using the API or aren't able to set that up,
but maybe you can still use the file itself,
then that'll be available to you.
Maybe you just have a preference for that either way,
we plan to keep that, keep those both up and running
and let you do, whatever works best for you.
Next slide please.
Okay.
So like I said, we, we had a survey, went out
not too long ago, kind of this question on it.
You may or may not have seen that.
So here's your chance or second chance to answer that.
It's basically, it's alluded to, you know, which,
which format do you think is gonna work better for you
or that you would use more often?
It's gonna be the Data Readable Shared file or JSON file.
There's letter A or the API itself.
Once we get that up and running,
I'll give you sometime there to answer that.
I would seek for you the Jeopardy music,
but there's probably a trademark issue there, so -
Most of you probably still scratching your heads,
trying to understand what an API is.
I don't blame you, I'd do the same.
Again, we don't have a timeline yet for,
for the API itself or
I know the folks that are working on it
have been, are moving along pretty fast.
So I think it's gonna show up sooner than we were
probably ready to get it out there,
but hopefully we'll have something before too long
and start testing out.
Okay, wow, this is a pretty much almost 50/50,
so that's good. and both options will be available.
So hopefully everyone will have what they need.
We'll be happy with that.
Next slide please.
Okay, so moving off the main topic API
into what people always like to ask about is sort of
recent GTAS updates, things that are happening,
not a whole lot going on here, most work we're doing
is for internal purposes right now,
but here's some things that came out recently
is that the, the SF133, we now have a CSV format for that.
And that came out just last week.
So if you,
like to take the 133 and sort of convert it and
potentially upload it in your system to use for checking
your data act stuff or anything like that,
or just checking your internal system against what we've
showing, what OMB may have,
this is potentially a file format that you could use for
that, maybe some other uses, this was generated by agency
requests, so I know there's at least a few folks
out there that, that were looking for this,
that came out of this one, does not have the DEF Code
breakout similar to what we send to the Data Act folks
for their, their file A stuff.
So we may get to that one day, but that's a whole nother
topic and presentation on the budget of the class
and program activity codes but we may one day
have something, added to GTAS for you to run
file A and file B's, but for now, this is again,
it's just not gonna have that breakout by DEF code,
is just your normal 133 in a CSV format.
We also added
the ability to run the 133 by FR entity,
I think before it was via
maybe by all my tabs or user ID or just AID.
So now you have the, the FR Entity option
and we removed a reclassified statement in
your class where excalation statement reports.
These are, these were replaced essentially
by the reclassified financial statement report,
which is sort of a combination of the two and all of its
features, this was something we'd talked about it.
Some IRCs, CRTs, they just, with our latest deployment,
those two older reports were removed.
So we have just the one now we'll hopefully
will clean that up.
And one other thing I don't know,
maybe we'll check the next slide and see if it's there.
I can't remember.
Yep, there it is.
So we added Report Name Customization,
not sure what to call it.
This is something that I worked on the general logic Control team
for five years and still do a lot of work running
reports within the last year that
I've been in this new position and have wanted this
an entire six years, and now we have it,
but this is a feature where there's an extra box down
on the parameter section, when you're running a report
that you can give it a it's called additional information,
but since what it is, you can give a custom name
to the report.
So the purpose of this is, is you can see from the example,
hopefully if you run a reclassified financial statement
report, if you run the balance sheet,
you run the net costs and that position like those all show
up under report name as reclassified financial statement,
they're not distinguished by the actual statement.
So if you were running a bunch of these,
which we often did at year end with our agency analysis,
you may have, you know, 15 to 20 reports out there
with the same report name, and you don't know which one
belong to, you know, which one was the balance sheet
or which one was like the statement cost
or which one was run for this agency or that agency.
So we now have this feature where you can put a custom name
in there to explain to yourself,
this doesn't show up on the report,
it only shows up in the library here.
So, you know which report it was.
So if you, if you're running reports for different periods,
you can label it by which period you ran it by,
or for different tabs or anything you want there.
I mean, there's a character limit.
I'm not sure what it is, but it's more than enough
if you use some shorthand.
So it's just to help you keep track of exactly which report
that was, if you're running a lot of them.
So, like I said, I don't know, on the agency perspective.
I'm sure it is gonna come in useful, the degree,
and I know internally for our side, it's,
it's definitely gonna be helpful,
but just wanted to make sure you knew it was out there.
It is out there now you can go out and check it out.
So hopefully you'll be, be happy with it.
Okay, next slide please.
So that's pretty much what we have for this presentation,
Alex's name there, my name.
If you need any assistance, send in some questions.
Again, if we don't know, we can,
we can work you towards the right, right people,
to answer the question for you,
especially the technical stuff.
So feel free to reach out, let us know.
Carol: Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Alex and Dan,
There was a lot of really good information and I learned
a lot that I didn't know about APIs today.
So thanks for that.
Let's check in with Holly to see what questions we have,
Holly?
Holly: Yes, hi Carol.
Thank you, yes, we have many questions.
So bear with me as I get through this
So panelists, speakers, I have quite a few for you.
So let's get started with the first one here.
When will the GTAS edits for the new BETCs become fatal?
And then,
then it has DISGF/DISNGF.
(all speaking at once) -: Oh sorry, This is Joel
-: Luke you're welcome to take that, if you want
Luke: Yeah, I can answer this.
So the plan right now is for the edit to go fatal no earlier
than the first reporting period of fiscal year 2022.
And the reason I say right now for that is as Joel alluded
to earlier in the day,
we are still finalizing the design of that.
And there are some, there are some options and
some choices that we're gonna have to make that
might delay that going fatal in 2022
but the best information I can give you right now.
Is the first reporting period in FY 2022 is the
first time you would see that edit going fatal.
It's typically for the DISB that is.
Now remember that doesn't cover the loan BETCs in GTAS
(indefinite) which should be going fatal in
first quarter or fourth quarter of 2021.
Hope I got that correct.
Holly: Okay, great, thank you.
Tom: Hey Holly, this is Tom.
Can I jump in real quick?
Holly: Absolutely, thank you.
I think the second question was a little different.
It was, can agencies use both DISB
and DISGF
now?
-: Okay,
Joel: Tom, thanks, this is Joel, I can take that one too.
And the answer to that is yes.
You know, when we first started,
started messaging this back GFMC last year,
I think it was one of the first times we started talking
about these BETCs.
Our goal is to try to make fiscal year 2021.
The year that we switched over,
we sent that out to agencies and got feedback and that isn't
gonna be possible, so for the duration of 2021,
both BETCs will be available, so start using it,
start testing it as quickly as possible, it's out there,
it's available and through all of 2021,
both BETCs will be available.
The DISB, I'm sorry, all three BETCs,
DISB, DISGF and DISNGF.
Holly: Great, thank you very much.
Hopefully that answers the question.
Sorry, if I got confused there,
Tom, I appreciate you helping me out.
Tom: That's really good question, so it works.
Holly: Okay, moving on to another question here.
When will GTAS edits involving new fiscal year 2021,
SGLs
310710
and 570010.
go fatal?
Joel: That kind of goes, this is Joel,
again, I'll take that.
It kind of goes back to what Luke was saying before and what
I mentioned during the presentation,
those edits still aren't even analytical in GTAS.
So we're still working on those edits,
trying to determine how we can work with GLAB to implement
that DISGF to 310710
edit to make it work correctly.
As you all, for the 44% of you.
I did remember that number 44% who haven't heard it
may stumble across, I guess I'll just let you know,
We've heard from some agencies who looked at this six months
ago and said, "Hey, this is great and we understand
what it is that you're trying to do,
but you may have missed something in that's in advances.
So just to get into it very quickly of the holdup for
getting these analytical edits into GTAS.
And what we're currently working on
is trying to account for advances.
If you think of what advances are,
you actually dispersing some bounce to treasury,
to someone and, and recording like a prepaid
and you wouldn't actually be incurring an expense
from the appropriation.
So you're gonna have a break in what we thought was gonna
be that reasonable tie point, so now you're BETC,
you're going to have a BETC with no corresponding SGL.
So we're trying to work through that currently and determine
how we're gonna, figure out, how we're going to determine
reasonableness on that.
So stay tuned on the edits.
We'll definitely keep everyone posted and we've already
talked to GLAB and I mean, that's the whole,
I think they're understanding I'm not gonna speak for them.
Alex, feel free to jump in if you want.
The whole thing is that anytime an edit is introduced it's
analytic for at least three months,
nobody's trying to break that rule.
You all will have plenty of input and time into that edit
time to implement that edit. So just stay tuned and we'll,
we'll keep you all updated as we get more information on it.
So to kind of summarize the BETCs are out there,
the USSGLs are gonna be available in 2021.
The there's kind of a gap in that direct edit
related to advances, and we'll continue to work on it
and introduce edits as would normally be introduced.
Tom: Okay, this is Tom.
I wanna mention something about some questions that came in
and really just sort of asked the speakers how they want to
approach these, 'cause I know we do have some time,
got about 15 minutes so we can get
into some of these questions,
but most of the remaining questions are very specific
about posting logic for particular situations.
I don't know if you'll have the answer for these questions
off the top of your heads,
or if you're going to really need to analyze the question
and the posting logic involved in the use of the BETCs
and get back to the person who posed a question in an email.
So what do you wanna do guys?
You want me to start asking some of these really detailed
posting logic questions,
or do you want to get them in an email afterwards and
address them that way?
Luke: So this is Luke.
As opposed to having answer these detailed questions
about posting logics, I would prefer to just follow on
both Joel and I, in on those, if you wanna email
Joel Erb and Luke Shepherd these questions to the general
fun posting logic with these BETCs and then we'll
get back to you guys with something or literally
anticipating from agencies is quite a pleasure.
Luke: Yeah and that's based on the assumption,
certainly that's based on the assumption
that those are DISGF and DISNGF or 3107, 5700
postings.
If there are loans, then you're gonna
wanna get in touch with Abby and her group.
But that's kind of what we want
is to start these conversations
with you all and work on specific scenarios
with you, because we know that, you know,
it may not be a one size fits all, and that's why we have,
we have accountants that can work with you all on specific
transactions and that sort of thing.
So we definitely want to have this conversations just maybe
like as we just said maybe they'll understand you.
We could just kind of set up meetings with you
individually and talk through those.
That's on DISGF and DISNGF I'll let Abby
decide if that works for her group as well.
Abby: Okay, that's fine.
Tom: Okay, well then let's get to some
of the questions and I don't know if Holly wants to ask
these or if I want to
Holly: Yeah, not really, that's fine continue
thanks Tom for your assistance I appreciate it.
We do have another, I guess maybe, maybe equally technical.
I'm not sure question that's come in,
Can you clarify why someone would use the Data Readable file
versus the true API
option?
-: This is David
my thoughts would it just be maybe how they're,
how the system works?
You know, maybe they,
they don't want to set it up to be automated that way.
Maybe they still wanna have the manual process maybe for
checks, you know, verification that you know,
going on and looking at the file first or,
or things of that nature.
I don't know.
I mean, obviously like I would think it'd be faster
using the API, but again,
I think it comes down to just technical issues and,
and setting their system up. It may maybe rely upon that.
It seems like there's a lot of folks out there.
Maybe they just don't want to deal with that system
enhancement for that.
But that's the only thing I can think of, I don't know,
Alex, if can think of anything or David, I know you're.
Panelist: I can add a different perspective on that while
someone might want to use those, so when you're,
when you're developing, how you're going to use this API,
you probably do it in stages.
And the first stage will be figuring out how your machine is
going to digest or how your system
is going to digest the file.
And then the other one would be testing the transmission path.
So you might, you might test the file first,
make sure that works then test the transmission path
which would be the API.
So that could mean more folks who start out doing one way
until they can get fully to the API.
But I imagine some may not ever get to the API just for,
like I said again, maybe,
maybe not wanting to do that extra step that we talked about
with the transmission piece,
maybe for cost benefit stuff or technical limitations.
Holly: Well talking about technical limitations.
There's another question that came in that says my system is
in desperate need of updates.
This TFM API is available for use now?
the question.
Panelist: So the API is not,
we're still developing that, the JSON file is available.
If you wanted to download it and upload into the system,
your system may not be able to digest it.
And you know, maybe hopefully this might give you the
catalyst, you need to go to go get those system upgrades
or to be able to get someone to sign off on it.
If not, I mean, it, if you can't use them, then,
then you can't use them, it doesn't,
you're not missing anything in terms of the data.
I mean the, we still post the files out and they just like,
sometimes they're a little bit
behind on what's actually in GTAS.
So really, if you're not able to use this stuff yet,
it's just sort of status quo for what,
what you've always had.
So you're not being hurt by not being able to use them.
You just might, you know, it would benefit you if you could.
So, you know, like I said,
maybe if you're planning system upgrades,
you can kinda factor this into those upgrades.
And it would be good if especially we already had a plan.
You can just say, "Hey, let's get this done with this"
so that you don't have to do any,
any additional upgrades later.
But if you're not able to use it, then, like I said,
we still have the human readable format that you can look at
to, to know and understand what's what's being checked.
And if there's any questions and the amount of changes that
haven't been posted to the web yet
you can always reach out to the GTAS team.
And we'd be happy to answer that for you.
-: I think we're gonna stick on the API for now.
So we have another question here.
It's just trying to understand the purpose of the API.
It will allow agencies to state,
okay, this is part of the question, sorry.
It will allow agencies to stay in sync with the most recent
TFM and GTAS guidance, right?
Panelist: Yeah, so again, that's correct.
-: Go ahead Dan.
Dan: Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, a lot of,
for, for ACs, it's hard to understand,
cause you're not involved in the internal process for,
for how it's supposed to work within GTAS, but essentially,
you know, we have what we call a system release
within GTAS and then we have the published,
released the human readable, so,
you know,
periodically we will download the information from GTAS,
format it to be all similar and,
and easy to read.
And that's what we posted out on the web, and that's,
that was, you know, the set of rules.
I always treat release as a common set of rules
or the rule book is what GTAS is using to match,
to bump your bulk file up against
and comparing doing all the checks..
So initially those will be in sync.
What were put at posting on the web is going to match what
we're actually checking.
And then sometime after that, we get, you know,
we come back, "Hey, this," you know,
we find this error or this exception has to be made
or this or that happened.
And then we will go in and we can either script in a change
to the release that GTAS is looking at.
So it's of the mind is that there's multiple releases
available in GTAS, but we, we only select one
to be in effect for each period.
So if we need to have already looked at that one
and we need to update it, we can do a script
we will attempt to do a script.
Our folks in FRB will do that for us.
But if it's, something else or even in conjunction
with that, we'll have to update the system.
So the next time we do a release,
it will be involved included in that.
So, with all these changes coming in between
sometimes the release, we're looking at that
rule book that we're looking at within
GTAS is not 100% the same as what you would see on the
TFM supplement website.
It's because of that stuff that comes in after the fact and
that it takes, you know, three to four months
to update the stuff on the web.
So by having this API, that is once we,
once we do a publish and create a release within the system
that we're gonna use, we take and run this JSON file,
which has all that information from that latest release.
And we're putting that JSON out there, so now if you are,
if you are maintaining essentially a mirror image of GTAS
within your internal systems, as far as the
validations edits, the SGL definitions,
USSGL definitions, or crosswalks or anything like that,
you could take this now more recent version and incorporate
it and update your system to be matching what we're actually
looking at.
Like in most of the time, those changes are agency specific,
they're all minor, most people wouldn't be impacted.
Occasionally there is something like a crosswalk change that
may have a more Government-Wide impact.
You know what we do now, we try to put the information out,
especially something that's Government-Wide.
We're gonna try to notify everyone that,
"Hey, this changed"
through home page messages or email blast,
but it's just nice for you guys to be able to,
especially if you are maintaining it a similar thing in your
internal system, to be able to get that and update it
more frequently, as opposed to having to go out every
three months or four months and pull the,
the human readable version down, convert it,
upload it in your system, or just even interpret it.
Holly: Okay, thank you.
It looks like I do have time for a few more questions that
I'm gonna kind of jump to some questions that came in
earlier in the presentation,
earlier in the, that this 90 minutes here.
So we have a question that's come in about BETCs.
The question is,
have you all considered the system improvements required by
agencies in order to implement these new BETCs.
The new SGLs that our plan
to tie these BETCs appear in the fiscal year, 2021
TFM within months of-
Oh dear.
All right, just hiccuped on me.
Panelist: You're good.
Is that's the end of the question, Holly?
Holly: No, it wasn't,
I'm sorry. -: Oh Okay.
It's another question came in and it, and it,
it booted my view out of the way.
-: Okay, there it goes.
It's have you considered this system improvements required
by agencies in order to implement these new BETCs
the new SGLs that are being planned to tie these BETCs
appear in the fiscal year 2021 TFM within months
of it first being mentioned,
how have other agencies implemented this
in such a short turnaround time?
Joel: Great, so, yeah, I appreciate that Holly.
And yeah, for sure.
We did take this into consideration and that's the reason we
started, like I was talking about in that first slide,
in that that survey that we wanted to take was to see how
many times y'all had heard about it.
And that's why, you know, Abby pointed out
I was kind of disappointed,
but that's what we've realized is we still have some work to
do here originally, like I said,
we were for DISGF and DISNGF, we were shooting for 2021.
That date has been pushed.
We've spoken to the agencies and the agencies have said,
Hey, we need, some time here to implement these changes
for these BETCs.
And then the USSGL was just introduced there.
And by the USSGL board was approved in May.
And that's gonna be 2021 as well.
We've tried to get out ahead of this and speak to as many
agencies as we can.
A lot of those agencies who have implemented,
I won't speak for them on how they did it.
I wish it was kind of open, so you might,
might take someone's view on how an agency implemented it.
But I know that there were some agencies who implemented the
BETCs, you know, in April,
we started messaging this more than a year ago so that these
BETCs were gonna be broken out and that the names and
descriptions and their usages haven't changed in that year,
in the past, you know, almost 15 months.
So we've tried our best to message it,
and we will just continue to work with any agency who's
willing to work with us and, and work with you all
to implement them as quickly as possible and
as completely as possible.
So I guess that's, that's how I can answer that question.
Holly: Okay, well, thank you.
I appreciate that. -: Yep.
[Holly] Okay, the questions are still
coming in, but again, I wanna stay with
some of the material, that was some of the questions that
were asked earlier on in the presentation.
Here's another one regarding Grant Payments.
So Grant Payment Reporting and CARS.
We are currently using BETCs, DISB and DISBAJ.
What would be the correct new BETC for these grant payments
reporting in CARS?
Panelist: Okay, and this is this is probably getting back
to what Tom was saying when you're talking specifics,
but this is a good opening question.
Something for you to think about.
And one thing to always keep in mind is, you know,
myself and Luke and others within the General Fund,
Logan and David are a couple of the accountants that will be
in those meetings as well.
You can always contact us, that sheet is out there.
We can work through these scenarios with you,
but so, the way I would answer that question is to say,
we don't know your activity specifically.
I don't know how those grants are,
how the money is being derived.
That's up to your agency to kind of know that I can help and
nudge you in the right directions and say,
where does the source of your funding that this has that's
dispersing those funds, where does it derive its funding?
And that should help you to get on that path to, okay,
is this DISGF or is this DISNGF?
If the answer to your question is appropriations annually
from the General Fund, in other words,
I'm hitting 3101 every year,
because I'm getting more appropriations to use.
And those appropriations are coming from the General Fund
where the likely those payments, those DISBs
are gonna be switched over to DISGF.
If the answer is, "I'm earning revenue and I have to give it
out in the form of grants,"
then the answer is probably gonna be DISNGF.
Again, that's very general.
Don't take what I said and run with it.
I mean, you can, because it's up to you to decide
how to use this but this is,
that's, how I would prod you along in answering
that question for yourselves, for your activity.
Holly: Great, thank you.
And serving here, Tom, are there any additional questions?
Tom: Yeah, it looks like we've only got a minute left.
So like we were saying, you probably don't have time
to get into details of specific transactions.
However, there is one question here that I think
could be answered fairly quickly, it's that,
Are there other CARS changes coming this year or
next year in the TFM seeing there was mention
of a modernization effort?
The question is about future CARS changes.
Are there more coming next year or this year?
Davis: Hey Tom, this is Mike Davis, I can take that one.
So I would
I would say
I can't
I can't tell you for sure that it, well, I can,
I can tell you for sure that it won't be this year.
And I can't tell you for sure whether it will be next year
or not for sure, but we do have some CARS changes
coming in the way a reclassification transactions
are processed within the system.
So that is, is something that we are working on currently
and are meeting with pretty much every agency that we can
to talk about the reclassification activity that you have
and why you have that reclassification activity so that we
can understand,
you know, the best way to implement changes going forward.
So that's something that we're,
we're on the very front end of it will probably be awhile
before those changes come down the, down the pike,
but it is something that we're working on and that is
another change that I'm aware of right now.
Holly: Wonderful, thank you very much.
We're at time so Carol can I turn right back to you.
Thank you, Holly.
And thank you Tom too,
those were a lot of great questions.
Thanks you guys for participating and thanks for joining us.
We did it, we're done for today.
Thank you to our presenters, Joe Joel, Abby, Alex, and Dan
really appreciate you, your,you and your time as well.
So just a few brief items before we close we've,
we've covered so much information.
The final webinar recordings will be in our training area,
fiscal.treasury.gov/training.
And you'll give us about a couple of weeks probably to post
those, we'll get them done as soon as we can,
but probably in a couple of weeks.
If there are still any unanswered questions,
Holly and Tom will be helping us get back to you on those.
At the conclusion of this webinar will be a very brief,
I promise, survey.
Please let us know how we did today.
We really appreciate getting that feedback from you.
And finally on behalf of the team,
wishing you a good evening,
and good health, stay safe everybody.