From:**thomas, dennis (HqDLA)**

**Sent:**Saturday, December 23, 2000 1:31 AM

**Subject:**Finance PRC Meeting Minutes (Dec 12-13, 2000)

DLMSO

MEMORANDUM FOR RECORD 

SUBJECT:  Defense Logistics Management Standards (DLMS) Finance Process Review Committee (PRC) Meeting, December 12-13, 2000

A.  PURPOSE:  The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS)- Indianapolis (IN) hosted the DLMS Finance PRC meeting in Building 1, The Finance Center, 2nd Floor, SW Wing, Column 212BB.  A list of meeting participants is attached below.  The next quarterly meeting of the DLMS Finance PRC is scheduled for March 6-7, 2000 and will be hosted by DAASC in Dayton, Ohio.  Please provide agenda topics and information for that meeting to Mr. Thomas as the topics come to mind.  These minutes will be posted to the PRC web page http://www.dlmso.hq.dla.mil/Finance.

B.  DISCUSSION SUMMARY

1.  **Administrative and Old Business Not On Current Agenda**.  The minutes to the Sep minutes were approved.   The provisions of the approved PDC 57 will be incorporated in the MILSBILLS re-issue.        **ACTIONS**: Administrator will add the minutes to the web page.

2. **OTHER DLMS PRC Activities**. 

a. Supply PRC met in November.  DLMSO and DAASC are developing a web-based supply discrepancy (SF 364) reporting process at DAASC.  It is intended to be a single point of entry for “manual” SDRs to or from DoD activities.  See Supply Discrepancy Reporting briefing charts for additional information.  The MILSTRIP manual was re-issued in November and may be downloaded from http://www.dlmso.hq.dla.mil/manuals . 

b. Logistics Functional Data Management PRC.  Recently established and met.  This new DLMS PRC which is chaired by DLMSO has been tasked by the ASD (Logistics) to improve the administration and management of data within DoD logistics and to work with other data administration groups in the DoD effort to improve data administration.  Will be working with other DoD data initiatives such as the integrated data environment (IDE) as well.  See the committee’s web page http://www.dlmso.hq.dla.mil/committees for POC and other information.        **ACTIONS**: None

3.  **Use of the Clearing Account**.  Accounting Policy has completed it’s staffing of policy changes to the FMR, Vol 3, Chap 11.  The new section 1115 on clearing accounts nor the other Chapter 11 changes on UMDs and NULOs will impact current interfund procedures.  It confirms the change we made last year to limit interfund items in suspense to 6 months and it does not preclude the use of the clearing account on initial charges.  In case you read the chapter, as staffed—it contained some errors in the last few lines of paragraph 111503.C.  That section will be revised to agree with 111501.B.3.        **ACTIONS**: A copy of the chapter will be forwarded under separate cover in a few days.

4  **Untimely Payment of GSA SF1080 Billings**.  GSA continues to have problems with untimely payments for some customer supply center (non purchase card) orders.  Can these noninterfund bills be converted to interfund?  Perhaps if an obligation record is feed to the finance center at the time of the order—this is what the e-mall is exploring for online “MILSTRIP/MILSBILLS” orders.  Another problem relates to payment of noninterfund bills chargeable to MIPRs.  There was some discussion on the appropriateness of DoD activities using MIPRs for some of their reimbursable orders with GSA and what might be causing the problem.  Some believe payments for MIPRs would be a problem if the bill were sent to the customer rather than the financial accountable office which is identified by the accounting station in the funds cite.  GSA is also experiencing a large number of OPAC related charge-backs—some activities charge back the entire amount when only a small portion is questioned.        **ACTIONS**: Mr. Erickson will work with GSA and develop a proposal for discussion at the next meeting to deal with some of these problems.  Mrs. Gross will provide Mr. Thomas some examples of DoD supply related OPAC agreements with GSA.

5.  **Billing Adjustment Procedures**.  The committee reviewed the Sep-Nov MILSBILLS LIDS reports for adjustments as part of the process of determining whether billing adjustment related procedures and processes are as problematic as some believe.  As shown by the comments on the information provided, the reports raise more questions than they answer.  For the period the sample indicated:  

**ACTIONS**:  Members will do what they can to try to understand what’s behind the data and answer the questions noted.  Topic will be continued next meeting.   

6.  **DoD EMALL MILSTRIP Ordering Procedures.**  The E-MALL program manager is trying to document and improve e-mall related processes.  Mr. Thomas reviewed the MILSTRIP and FEDSTRIP (pay by MILSBILLS) procedures outlined by the E-Mall program office.  A highlight of the process is the plan to identify and document the individuals and offices which indicate they will be using MILSBILLS procedures; that is interfund and noninterfund fund codes as the method of payment.

**ACTIONS**:  None, Mr. Thomas will continue to monitor this area for Finance PRC IMPAC.  A copy of the procedures will be forwarded under separate cover in a few days.

7.  **Summary Billing Record Distribution Process.**  The centers appear to be accepting and distributing billings with invalid or psuedo limit/subheads.  If psuedo limit/subheads are authorized they must be documented and provided to all centers reporting Statement of Transaction data to Treasury.**ACTIONS**:  Mr. Thomas will include this in the fund code and related appropriations process change.

8.  **Administration of Interfund fund codes and Related Appropriations**.  Deferred till the next meeting.  Mr. Thomas has not yet met with DAASC to firm up the changes.

9.  **Accessorial (PCH&T) Refunds for Directed Returns**.  Mr. Thomas met with the security assistance folks to review and assist them in understanding the PCH&T reimbursements (appropriation refunds) provided for ICP/IMM directed returns.  They are struggling with the proper routing and accounting for the PCH&T reimbursements (appropriation refunds) among other issues.  DFAS offices must work with their customers to ensure that the FN_/FQ_ MILSBILLS credits (appropriation refunds) for directed returns, including discrepancy reports, are applied to the account(s) used to fund; that is, incurred the costs of the material return. **ACTIONS:**  Ms Rush will contact Mr. Stofko (DSN 977-8795) to assist him in transferring the refunds he has to security assistance staff at DFAS Denver.

10.  **Adoption of Commercial EDI Standards for Logistics**.  DFAS and other Components briefed their plans to implement EDI in logistics at the Dec 5th IPT meeting.  All of the plans are works in progress.  DFAS identified several transactional areas they had unanswered questions on and Mr. Thomas offered to assist.  The brief of the DFAS plan seemed slanted towards the financial aspects of the “procurement/logistics” process and, Mr. Thomas believes, requires more coverage of the “internal” supply related processes.  For example; inventory accounting (gains, losses, returns) and logistics transfers.  The DFAS briefer was very open to this idea.  There wasn’t sufficient time to coordinate with the DFAS-IN EDI program office to begin exploring the DFAS questions and DLMSO concerns.    

**ACTION**:  Mr. Thomas plans to meet with the DFAS Log EDI program mgr to discuss the “logistics” questions.  He plans to review the logistics EDI transactions and basic processes with the DFAS EDI program people for potential financial impact.  He will try to delay the session until the March PRC meeting—which will be before the next EDI IPT meeting.

11.  **Other Topics**.

a. DoD Activity Address Codes.  

(1.)  The issue of billing addresses for DoDAACs was again raised.  “Good” interfund billing addresses are quite a bit more complicated than TAC 3 addresses.  In today’s world there is almost always a difference between the “billed to” customer and the “invoice to” office.  While the ordering activity and the billed activity may be correctly identified in the DoDAACs TAC 1 and TAC 3 (or simply by the TAC 1), this does not ensure proper routing of interfund bills.  The key for interfund and the focus of the finance PRC reps should be the assignment the PROPER billing communications routing identifier (COMMRI).  The billing COMMRI associated with a DoDAAC or RI code determines the routing for financial transactions and the COMMRI (or supply COMMRI) does the same for the supply transactions.  It is important that all DFAS accounts offices identify their customer DoDAACs and ensure that the proper billing COMMRI is assigned—the clear text (TAC 1 or 3) used as the billing address is important for mailing or perhaps in some small way after the bill gets to the proper accounts office.  A COMMRI of RUMMMM indicates no electronic routing address. 

(2.)   Also discussed was what is a valid billing DoDAAC.  When a DoDAAC’s deletion date is reached it may no longer be used for ordering or shipping purposes—it is “invalid”.  However, although hidden, the DoDAAC is not removed from DAASCs files for three years and interfund bills matching those “deleted” but not yet “purged” DoDAACs will process through DAASC and are consider valid for billing purposes.  

(3.)   DoDAACs have essentially remained unchanged since their creation in the 1960s.  The challenges and demands placed on DoDAACs has increased significantly as indicated by several audits. The DAASC and DLMSO DoDAAC/MAPAC managers met to discuss DoDAACs and to consider their approach to for overcoming the challenges.  For example, there are some financial “requirements” we would like to include the accounting station or finance office identification for every DoDAAC not to mention the ALC for OPAC related transactions.  Service points place limitations on DoDAACs (e.g., ship-to only) but our logistics processes and systems are not set up to recognize these limits.  Mr. Thomas believes the DoDAAD administrator will have a meeting during the 1st quarter of the calendar year.  The DoDAAD service points are identified at the DLMSO web site.**ACTION**:  Focal points will work with their locations and DAASC to ensure that the proper billing COMMRI is assigned to DoDAACs used by their customers for billing.  Mr. Thomas monitor DoDAAC related changes and processes and keep the members informed.

b. Into-Plane Billing Changes.  DLA (DESC) is changing (planning to change?) the FP_ format to eliminate the tail number on bills by the 1st of March.  Apparently, in their re-engineered processes into-plane charges will be obligated and billed at a “summarized” level.  Specific “transactional” details, including the tail numbers, will be available through other sources.  There also appears to be a problem with the use of floating rather than fixed decimal places on into-plane bills.       **ACTION:**  Mr. Thomas will confirm these issues with DESC and, with the assistance of DESC, identify the MILSBILLS or DESC changes needed to support the DESC re-engineering process changes.      

c. Misuse of Bill Numbers.  Some sellers are using the same bill number for their bills within the same calendar year in violation of MILSBILLS procedures.  This forces the positive identification of bills from the current three data elements:  seller DoDAAC, bill number, and billing year to include a fourth; that is, billing month.  Should DAASC reject this bills?  DAASC is opposed to adding this edit.  The billing history necessary to include this edit is not currently available at the bill edit process level.  Also, the number of violations do not support the changes required.        **ACTION:**  The committee agreed to take no action at this time.  At the next meeting we will consider removing the “do not duplicate the bill number within a calendar year” requirement currently imposed on sellers.  If we retain the requirement, what is the impact of the violation on the DAASC bill retention and retrieval processes?  On billed offices duplicate bill check processes?  Members will also try to get more specific information on the number of bills in violation and the identity of the sellers.