The Department of Finance and the Department of FI$Cal have developed a method to track spending related to COVID-19 in the FI$Cal system. It will require departments to associate their transactions (purchase orders, vouchers, receipts) with COVID-19 attribute values so that costs can be tracked and reported consistently.

This new process enables the tagging of all COVID-19-related transactions connected to California’s response, mitigation, management and recovery activities associated with the pandemic, regardless of funding source.

In project costing, FI$Cal and the Department of Finance have established a process that will allow users to create projects with COVID-19 attributes and associate transactions with those projects using the project ID chartfield. Departments will continue to create their own project and activity IDs to maintain their internal structure. No smart coding will be required.

Relations coordinators will reach out to departments to make sure they’re following the new guidance, and FI$Cal will offer user support labs on this topic to any department that requests help with setup or assigning transactions to COVID-19 spending. A Department of Finance budget letter provides an overview of the process, and Job Aid 457 is available with step-by-step instructions.

The tracking initiative also will be the subject of a segment on the next FI$CalTV episode, to be webcast on June 25.

All of this will serve the state of California well as we track the billions of dollars being spent to combat the pandemic and deal with the economic fallout.