FMS Hosts Payments Functional & Technical Sessions for Agencies

By Lori Meyer, Kansas City Financial Center

PURPOSE

Payments functional and technical sessions are being held from July through November 2012 to provide the Financial Management Service's (FMS's) federal customer agencies with information on how the Government-wide Accounting (GWA)/Central Accounting and Reporting System (CARS) Treasury Account Symbol (TAS)/Business Event Type Code (BETC) reporting mandate will impact their payment processing.

WHY SHOULD I ATTEND?

On March 23, 2012, FMS Commissioner David Lebryk, released a memo to reiterate the Oct. 14, 2014, deadline when all agencies will be required to submit valid component TAS/BETC information on all transaction types, including payments. To comply with this requirement, agencies will be required to define TAS/BETC information in any FMS payment application. In addition, agencies will be required to submit payment data using standard input formats. The formats will report your agency's TAS/BETC information to GWA/CARS in order to satisfy CARS reporting requirements. To view the memo: www.fms.treas.gov/cfo_lttr.html.

FUNCTIONAL VS. TECHNICAL SESSIONS

Functional: Focus on high-level application overview, time line, and changes to internal application screens.

Target audience: Individuals who have access and work with the payment application(s) on a day to day basis. Technical: Focus on technical changes for each application, including a walk-through of file format data elements for the application upload files.

Target audience: Individuals who are responsible for making the program changes.

WHICH SESSION SHOULD I ATTEND?

Functional: Certifying officers, accounting staff, disbursing officers, data entry operators, management, or those who need a high level understanding of the October 2014 mandate or FMS 2012 agency outreach efforts.

Technical: Programmers and subject matter experts who understand the payments process, or individuals who have a direct knowledge of the current format used to submit bulk files to Treasury.

PARTICIPATING APPLICATIONS

Functional: GWA/CARS, Secure Payment System (SPS), Payment Application Modernization (PAM)/Payment Information Repository (PIR), International Treasury Services (ITS.gov), Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP), Do Not Pay, and GoDirect^®.

Technical: GWA/CARS, SPS, PAM/PIR, and ITS.gov.

SESSION DATES:

Functional
Aug. 7 – Denver, CO
Aug. 8 – Denver, CO
Aug. 15 – Washington, DC
Sept. 25 – Chicago, IL
Oct. 23 – Washington, DC
Nov. 27 – Atlanta, GA

Technical
Aug. 9 – Denver, CO
Sept. 26 – Chicago, IL
Oct. 24 – Washington, DC
Nov. 28 – Atlanta, GA

HOW TO REGISTER?

Register for either the functional or technical session online at: www.fms.treas.gov/kfc/register_forum2012.html.