Budget Dust

As you may be aware, SAF/FM AFAFO-Banking is responsible for the Enterprise Centrally Billed Account (CBA) Card Program Management (HL2 with DTMO and Citibank), SAF/FM AFAFO-A is responsible for Air Force Accounting Policy and SAF/FM AFAOC (HL2 with Citibank) is responsible for Oversight of the CBA card delinquencies and exception requests. 

The CBA payment process is very time sensitive.  As such, the SAF/FM AFAOC provides a weekly delinquency report to leadership and sends out notices individual to cardholders whose accounts in danger of suspension with a suspense date to clear the unpaid balance. The goal is actively work with delinquent  cardholders to ensure the full card balance is paid, and to ensure timely and accurate payments are sent to the payment disbursing office to avoid suspension.   

We would like your additional leadership support with clearing the delinquency report ensuring the CBA credit cards are paid. Our office would also like your assistance in coordinating/forwarding to our partnering MAJCOM/COCOM A4 POCs for assistance.  Please include the SAF/FM AFAOC in any forwarding action. 

In recent months, CBA cardholders have asked why after their card statement is paid each month, there is still an unpaid balance on their card.  In most cases, this is due to a rolling balance where a charge was  unaccounted for on previous statements, or there was a payment error at the disbursing station. For unaccounted charges, this could be one charge on one statement or many charges over several statements. As such, a cardholder’s account reconciliation is needed to determine where the un-reconciled charge(s). This is not a tasking or inspection to reconcile ALL the CBA cards, but accounts that appear on the delinquency report should complete a reconciliation to ensure they don’t have a rolling balance.

Although there is still a requirement to maintain supporting documentation, during this specific reconciliation process, there are times when the supporting documentation may not be available due to various circumstances beyond anyone’s control.  In the past, that  prevented certain charges from being paid and the account not fully reconciled, causing rolling balances contributing to account delinquencies and possible card suspensions.  As a remedy to these continuous delinquencies, we are pleased to provide these tools to assist in the reconciliation process and possible payment of those charges. 

1) The memo below outlines the process to assist with long standing (rolling balances) for Centrally Billed Accounts (CBA) when documentation is missing or destroyed.  The memo applies to Traditional, Unit, MEPs and Special Program Cards for both DEAMS and Legacy Systems covered under the Air Force CBA program. 

 A lost or destroyed record could be any required supporting documentation to include receipts or orders. The records custodian is usually the cardholder as they are required to keep supporting documentation for their charges.  Additionally all  card activity is subject to inspection by SAF/FM AFAFO – Banking. A reconciliation can be part of an official inspection.  Again, this is not a tasking or inspection to reconcile ALL the CBA cards, but accounts that appear on the delinquency report should complete a reconciliation to ensure they don’t have a rolling balance.

• In addition the memo, if the reconciliation issue is in prior fiscal year and cardholder still has the records….the best practice will be for the reconciler to send a similar package to the comptroller prior to sending the supplemental payment package to the disbursing office to ensure funding is still available for that year. 

• Dormant obligations are de-obligated if they are thought to be complete.  Financial Managers may have received confirmation in the past this was complete only to find in the reconciliation it was not complete.  In those cases, if the obligation was de-obligated, an upward obligation adjustment package may need to be completed by  comptroller office personnel depending on funds available at that location. 

2) The attached CBA Recon Template (MS Excel Spreadsheet) will assist in researching and reconciling the account to determine the rolling balance over time (whether it is a consistent balance year after year or if there are multiple charges over multiple invoices contributing to this residual/rolling balance).  The next steps in reducing delinquencies are to effectively meet the requirements and controls for timely and accurate packages to the payment disbursing office, and improve payment times at the payment disbursing offices.  Your assistance with this effort is greatly appreciated as there is a renewed focus on prompt payment interest amounts.

Also attached is the weekly CBA Delinquency report. Our office provides this report report in hopes each responsible party will assist in clearing the over due balances.   As mentioned above, the payment process is very time sensitive. When the required cut offs are not met; it can greatly impact the card’s availability status.  As such, the first tab of the report is a dashboard tab reporting metrics including the total number of cards per MAJCOM that are in delinquent status, which bases with traditional cards didn’t accept their invoice within the 5 day limit, which base didn’t sent their payment request to DFAS within 10 days, which traditional invoices sent to DFAS still have pending requests for information, and which invoices were not assigned to a DFAS technician within 5 days of receipt from the base.  Also included is a trend line of delinquent card totals.

Within the data itself are highlighted columns for the account number, card type, account delinquency status, number of days past due. These will be valuable in assisting in the research of payments.  In some cases, payment requests have been prepared and sent to the payment disbursing office. Our office doesn’t have record of payments sent to DFAS or Combined Services Center when the PO field is blank. 

Our office is available if you have any further questions or need assistance with the use of the tools provided.  Thank you in advance for anticipated cooperation as we work together with our partners to move the mission forward.

Source:

Spencer Whitcraft

AFAOC Data Analytics & Field Support

Resources:

Download CBA Reconciliation Template