By Subbarao Mupparaju, Chief Deputy Director, Department of FISCal
2025 was a year of progress and expanded system functionality at the Department of FISCal (FI$Cal). We have worked toward several major enhancements and hit important milestones, all while continuing to provide excellent customer service and maintaining 99.9% availability of the system.
Our roadmap of activities continues to guide our progress. Of the 51 projects identified in our roadmap plan, 19 have been completed, and another 19 are currently in progress. These plans cover a wide range of work, including onboarding departments, continued technical optimization of the system, maintaining security of the system, supporting the transition of the accounting book of record, working with partners to implement needed products, and ensuring the system remains up-to-date.
In July, we welcomed the California State Auditor to the FI$Cal system after a one-year onboarding, bringing the number of departments on the system to 151. In addition, the California Department of Transportation will continue its planned onboarding, working with the FI$Cal team to address gaps and train their staff. We were also pleased to begin onboarding the California Department of Justice in July, for what will be a two-year onboarding plan.
This summer, as a companion to our month-end close (MEC) playbook, our teams developed the year-end close (YEC) playbook. The YEC playbook guides departments through the various steps of the YEC process and includes close activities and dependencies, roles and responsibilities, start and end dates, timeframes, and a sample calendar and checklist. After departments have completed the month’s transactions, and are preparing to close the final month of the fiscal year, departments can utilize the YEC playbook to outline the sequence of required YEC activities.
This year, in addition to the progress on roadmap projects, we released 77 system enhancements, the result of an ongoing commitment to engaging with our partners and system end users to ensure the FI$Cal system provides relevant, useful, and up-to-date functionality.
Among those enhancements, is a new report that allows the State Controller’s Office to review journal vouchers for approval, for post auditing and reconciliation, and to help assist with process improvements.
We also enhanced reports used for MEC and YEC for assets and outstanding module transactions. These reports help departments identify open transactions that are blocking their ability to close periods and provide required information for year-end reporting.
In addition, we automated the State Treasurer’s Office payment request process. This automation enables departments to enter stop payment requests in the system, removing the need for manual processing.
To provide departments with a clear visual summary of their assets and depreciation details in one place, we created a new asset management dashboard in Power BI. We also created a comprehensive PowerBI report with dashboards for statewide procurement data. This new Procurement PowerBI report allows users to find, sort, and see procurement data more efficiently.
This year, we began a series of projects to streamline invoicing and payment processes, aimed at making these processes more efficient and modern for end users and suppliers. Electronic invoicing capabilities, a self-service supplier portal, and electronic funds transfer functionality will be added to the FI$Cal system as a suite of projects aimed to modernize and streamline payment processes. The first of these is electronic invoicing, which allows suppliers to submit invoices electronically, and introduced such features as expanded approval options, automated creation of FI$Cal vouchers, electronic dispute capabilities, and tracking of invoice aging.
We continue to make progress toward FI$Cal becoming the accounting book of record for the state. As of December 2025, FI$Cal and the State Controller’s Office have successfully completed 68 out of 121 enhancements to the system for the accounting and reporting book of record projects. These projects are on track for successful completion by July 2026.
Customer service is one of our core values. This year, we resolved more than 34,000 customer support cases via the FI$Cal Service Center (FSC). Through continuous improvements, including efficient triage and internal notifications, 55 percent of these tickets were resolved the same day. 86 percent of these cases were resolved in less than five days, and 96 percent of these cases were resolved in less than two weeks.
Our commitment to supporting departments once they’re on the system has also resulted in improvements in their ability to transact in the system. Since 2019, departments have improved in closing their books by nearly 25% at the same point in time in previous years.
In addition to the assistance we provide through the FSC, our FI$Cal Learning Center team continues to update and develop trainings and resources to help people navigate the system. In 2025, our team delivered training to more than 1,060 attendees, including virtual instructor-led training sessions and flipped classroom style trainings.
This year, we continued progress on our roadmap of activities, and made significant strides to provide several major enhancements to the system, expanding services, modernizing processes, and providing efficiencies for system end users. As we reflect on our accomplishments of 2025, we look forward to all of the exciting new changes we are working toward in 2026. Thank you to our staff and partners for providing the feedback and work necessary to continue our efforts to make the system modern, reliable and secure.