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By Faye Allen and Carol Cole, ASAP Program Office

The Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) is an electronic payment system used by Federal Program Agencies (FPAs) to disburse funds to grant recipients. ASAP’s Federal Agency User Group meeting was held June 30, 2009 in Washington, DC. The ASAP Federal Agency User Group meeting is a forum to exchange information with FPAs and to discuss enhancements that have been made to the application since the previous meeting. We also solicit feedback from the users on issues that they may be experiencing and modifications that they would like to see in the application.

The focal point for this year’s Federal Agency User Group Meeting was an overview of ASAP’s plans for meeting Governmentwide Accounting (GWA) requirements. These requirements include the ability to capture the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) and Business Event Type Code (BETC) for every payment transaction.

FPAs create and fund accounts in ASAP and recipients initiate payments from these accounts. FPAs will define one or more TAS values at the account level and ASAP will offer FPAs a choice of two models for allocating the TAS/BETC to a payment: the Percentage model and First in First out (FIFO) model. 

Multiple ASAP releases are required to develop complete GWA functionality for capturing, allocating, and reporting the TAS/BETC. The first release was implemented in May 2009 but will not be available in the application until all GWA functionality is developed.

A representative from GWA attended the Federal Agency User Group Meeting to answer agency questions regarding TAS/BETC requirements. GWA communicates their plans and schedules with federal FPAs through their GWA Agency Liaison Group. GWA also presents at numerous forums such as the FMS Regional Financial Center Customer Agency Boards, the Association of Government Accountants (AGA) conference, and FMS’s Annual Government Financial Conference. GWA representatives will also attend agency meetings and conferences, upon request. 

As FMS continues designing and developing GWA functionality in ASAP, we will continue to solicit input from FPA users and the GWA staff to ensure that customer and program needs are met.

For more information about ASAP, contact Carol Cole, ASAP Operations Manager, at 202-874-6923.

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