Reporting Payments

All NTDOs must report to Fiscal Service on a daily basis, its anticipated aggregate level of planned disbursements for each disbursing method [for example, wire, Automated Clearing House (ACH), or check] for the following five-day period. These reports are due to Treasury each business day by 3 p.m. Eastern Time (ET). Each entity that performs its own disbursing should submit one consolidated report each day business day. Fiscal Service has prepared a template to standardize the reporting of this information: Non-Treasury Disbursing Office Reporting.

The Policy and Oversight Division (POD) of Fiscal Service will review NTDO compliance and will report to NTDOs on the status of their compliance. POD will provide assistance to NTDOs not in compliance or those requesting assistance with proper reporting.

Section 4025.10—Processing Payments Under Government Fiscal Crisis

In the event of a government budget year transition or debt ceiling constraint, Treasury will invoke rules for the processing of payments that flow through the Federal Reserve Banks (FRBs) and thus the debiting of the U.S. Treasury’s General Account (TGA).

Under a government budget year transition or debt ceiling constraint, NTDOs disbursing ACH payments must:

• send files to FRB ACH one business day before payment date for "next day" payment scheduling. This means that no government payments will be processed with an effective payment date beyond the next business day.
• segregate its originated ACH files into credit only and debit only files.
• complete ACH file transmissions by 3:00 p.m. ET to ensure files have been properly positioned at FedACH.
• send an informational spreadsheet of its ACH files to NTDOstatus2@fiscal.treasury.gov by 3:30 p.m. ET.

Under a government budget year transition or debt ceiling constraint, Treasury may take the following actions:

• Purge a file. If Treasury does not instruct the FRB to release the file at the end of 25 business days, then the file may be purged. If a file is purged, the NTDO must have the ability to resubmit or to create a new payment file.
• Disable Fedwire capabilities. Treasury may instruct the Federal Reserve Bank to disable Fedwire capabilities for NTDOs depending on the available balances in the TGA. Treasury will work with NTDOs and the Federal Reserve Bank regarding issuance of Fedwire payments.
• Require informational spreadsheets be sent for daily check payments.
• Instruct NTDOs who issue Treasury checks to hold all Treasury checks from being released and to start sending informational spreadsheets of their daily Treasury check payments to NTDOstatus2@fiscal.treasury.gov by 3:00 p.m. ET.

Section 4025.20—Processing Payments at Fiscal Budget Year-End

At the end of a Federal Fiscal year, Non-Treasury Disbursing Offices (NTDOs) must ensure that their payments are processed in time to settle with the Treasury General Account (TGA) before the commencement of the next budget cycle.

NTDOs are prohibited from using Same Day ACH, and therefore must always submit their ACH payments at least one business day in advance of settlement. As a result, NTDOs must submit their ACH payments no later than September 29^th in order to ensure that the payments settle at the TGA by September 30^th. If September 30^th lands on a Saturday or Sunday, NTDOs must submit their payments by the last Thursday before September 29th in order for them to settle on that Friday, the last business day of the month.

NTDOs making foreign payments will need to ensure there is sufficient lead-time for value date processing of U.S. dollar and foreign currency payment vouchers before the last budget date of the year. See ITS.gov for more information on the disbursement of US Dollar and foreign currencies internationally.

In situations where funds remain and contracted goods and services are outstanding, NTDOs must obligate the funds related to the outstanding goods and services in the same budget year as the funds for the contacted goods and services were appropriated, creating an unliquidated obligation (ULO). NTDOs may submit payments adjustments, expenditures, and outlays (but no new obligations) in a new budget year against established ULOs, only if:

1) The ULO was established in the same year that the appropriation was awarded.

2) There are sufficient funds in the obligation. Disbursing Officers that disburse against appropriation without sufficient funds will be in violation of Anti Deficiency Act (see TFM Volume 1, Part 4A, Chapter 2000 Section 2025—Anti-Deficiency Act).

3) The appropriation has not expired. It is important to note, appropriations with outstanding funds automatically expire and are cancelled 5 years after the date of the appropriation. NTDOs submitting payments against cancelled appropriations will be in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act. Regardless of appropriation category, after five years, funds are unavailable for obligations, obligation adjustments, expenditures, and outlays.

Program Offices cannot use appropriated funds in the cancelled period to pay invoices, even if those invoices are approved and legitimate. Although funds within the cancelled period can no longer be utilized by Program Offices, the funds can still be tracked for accounting and financial execution purposes.

The first week of September, Fiscal Service will send reminder emails to all NTDO disbursing officers with active routing and transit numbers, reminding them that they need to process their payments in accordance with the instructions outlined in this TFM chapter.

PIR is used to house federal payment data that includes details on all federal payments made by Treasury Disbursing Office (TDO) federal entities, as well as Non-Treasury Disbursing Office (NTDO) federal entities.

NTDO federal entities must report to PIR, payment and returned payment or other debit activities that affect the TGA to include TAS/BETCs, and PIR reports those transactions to CARS. The only exception to this requirement is transactions that are specifically identified by Treasury as not going through PIR. Payment TAS/BETC classifications must be reported daily on the date of the payment through PIR using the Standard Reporting Format (SRF). The PIR will report summarized TAS/BETCs to CARS.

Because Fiscal Service requires all federal payments to be reported through PIR, a federal entity must either disburse its payments through a TDO, or an NTDO must have the capability to report through PIR. If for any reason an NTDO is not able to report its payments through PIR or to convert to its payments to being disbursed through a TDO, it must send a letter of explanation to the Fiscal Accounting office of Fiscal Service and request a waiver via the email address CashAnalysisSection.FAO@fiscal.treasury.gov.

NTDO federal entities that disburse electronic payments through Federal Reserve Banks (FRBs) must access PIR to view all payment related debit vouchers and credit vouchers. See the PIR website for enrollment procedures for accessing PIR. Federal entities that issue Treasury checks will report through PIR daily using the PIR Standard Reporting Format (SRF). PIR files containing check payments will be consumed by both PIR and TCIS. Only those NTDO federal entities with a waiver from Fiscal Service will be allowed to continue to send its monthly check issue files to PIR via the Treasury Check Information System (TCIS) format. The requirements and rules for check issue reporting as outlined in the PIR SRF replace the requirements in TFM Volume I, Part 4, Chapter 6000, section 6025. For information on submitting claims for nonreceipt of checks drawn on the U.S. Treasury, see TFM Volume I, Part 4, Chapter 7000.

4045.10—Submission of Files

As outlined in the PIR SRF, federal entities must submit files to PIR by 8 p.m. Eastern/7 p.m. Central Time on the date of payment. The “date of payment” is defined below for various methods of payment.

• Check Payments - The date of payment is the issue date of the check (the date inscribed on the check). Files containing check payments will be consumed by both PIR and TCIS. All validation messages for check payment files are communicated via the Transmittal Control and Disbursing Office Maintenance System within TCIS.
• ACH (original and return) Payments - The date of payment is the settlement date of the ACH transaction, which is in the acknowledgment received from FedACH.
• Wire and International (ITS.gov) Payments - The date of payment is the value date specified in the payment request.

4045.20—PIR Standard Reporting Format (SRF)

Federal entities use the PIR SRF to submit one or more files, each containing one or more batches. A batch is described below, based on the method of payment.

• ACH (original payment and returns), Wire, International (ITS.gov)—All transactions that are accounted for with a single voucher (SF 5515/SF 215) should be included in a batch.
• Check—All checks issued with the same DO symbol and sequential contiguous serial numbers should be included in a batch. This represents the current issue file sent by NTDOs to TCIS.

Note: Federal entities that do not submit payments with the TAS/BETC classified on the SRF on the date of payment will have their vouchers default in CARS to the default TAS/BETC defined in SAM for payment transactions. Then, the federal entity must reclassify the voucher in the CARS Classification Transaction Accountability (CTA) module. Federal entities must clear the default account by the third workday after month-end or it negatively impacts the quarterly scorecard that is sent to federal entities’ Chief Financial Officers.

Note: Only the Department of Defense may receive a waiver from the timely reporting of payment transactions when ships or active service units are operating under “brown-out” or “silent-running” conditions, where non-mission-critical transmissions are prohibited.