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Federal Accounting Corner

New Treasury Agency Symbols

The Common Governmentwide Accounting Classification (CGAC) structure document discussed using a longer Treasury Agency (Fund) Symbol, known as TAS or TAFS. In particular, the Agency Identifier component of the symbol at the beginning will be expanded from two to three digits. A preliminary crosswalk was finally released in October.

Comparison
Of the 100 possible codes under the old system, only 77 are currently assigned (several have gone away or were merged with other codes over the years, e.g., there is no more Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation, and Resolution Trust Corporation had ID 22 but now uses Treasury's ID 20). Of the 1,000 possible codes under the new system, 123 are in use, though 24 symbols have an agency ID of blank or question mark (these are not included in the 123). The numbers range from 001 to 572, so there is a good spread of the different values. FMS' list of just agency codes shows only 118 values as some smaller agencies, such as 46 Appalachian Regional Commission, aren't on the agency list but they are in the fund group crosswalk.

Of the 6,485 fund groups listed on that crosswalk, only 674 have a new Agency ID that is not simply the old ID appended to "0". Excluding the 24 blanks, that means 5,835 or almost exactly 90 percent of the funds effectively keep their old ID. Many of the funds with new IDs (280 out of 650 or 43 percent) were in the independent agencies FMS Department Codes of 48 or 95. Also, 347 (or 53 percent) seemed to use the existing three-digit OMB Department Code, although I had to use the names to map the fund groups and some of them had generic names (so it's likely I've understated the true value). This means around 95 percent of the new Agency IDs are effectively one of the IDs already used by the fund group.

Conclusion
Agencies will be expected to support both the original TAS and the new CGAC TAS in FY2011. This means agencies must be able to send other agencies one or both codes in reports and transactions. At some point, agencies will want to convert their internal records and reports over to the new codes. In some systems, that could just mean a simple remapping; others may require making a new copy of the journals or other transaction data.

SF-133 Update
In December, FMS issued a new update to the SF-133 crosswalk. There were not enough changes to warrant an entire column, but I thought I’d summarize the more significant changes here. Lines 1930 and 1940, which were extra total lines with no real connection to the rest of section one, have been eliminated. Account 4690 now also has an Availability Flag value of “A” on line 2303 and so is now treated the same as account 4590 on line 2203.  Lines 4052 and 4142, which were total lines that seemed to duplicate the information on lines 4040 and 4130, have also been eliminated. — Simcha Kuritzky, CGFM, CPA

This column is provided as part of a free exchange of ideas in federal accounting, and is not reviewed substantively before publication. Please send all comments, queries, or corrections to Simcha.Kuritzky@CGIFederal.com