Foundational concepts critical for understanding or operating FAMIS.
Core Concept: “Vendor-on-Hold” Checks
Published: April 5, 2024
Texas state law prohibits a state agency from making payments to any person or corporation indebted to the State of Texas. The Texas State Comptroller keeps a list of these entities, commonly called the state vendor-on-hold file. On the morning of each…
Core Concept: Budget Versions
Published: July 25, 2023
As the budget is developed in the budget module for the upcoming year, it goes through a series of iterations, such as when system members enter budgets, when amounts are negotiated and when budgets come in from different system members. So, for each set of…
Core Concept: Memo Banks
Published: December 15, 2022
In FAMIS, memo banks are used to represent physical bank accounts held at financial institutions and balances in state appropriations held in the State treasury. A one-to-one relationship can exist between actual accounts or one-to-many memo banks to a…
Core Concept: Program Cost Account Profiles (PCAs)
Published: December 14, 2022
The Uniform Statewide Account System (USAS) uses Program Cost Account Profiles (PCAs) to track revenues and expenditures for agency goals, objectives and strategies, as well as administrative and support costs and other activities. PCAs infer the agency’s…
Core Concept: Automatic Budget Reallocation
Published: February 8, 2022
In FAMIS, Automatic Budget Reallocation (ABR) allows FAMIS accounts to be budgeted at a pool level (special object codes designated as pool codes) rather than requiring budget at every individual object code level. This is accomplished through the use…
Core Content: Debits and Credits in FAMIS
Published: August 13, 2021
In FAMIS, debits and credits are often displayed in the same column. To differentiate the credits from the debits, credits are “signed” (negative) and debits are “unsigned” (positive). FAMIS is an expenditure-based system where expenses are expressed…
Core Concept: Subsidiary Ledger (SL) Account
Published: July 20, 2020
In FAMIS, Subsidiary Ledger (SL) accounts are six-digit numbers used to track revenues, expenses, budgets and encumbrances for a single department and purpose. Other accounting systems may use the term “cost center” or “profit center” to describe…
Core Concept: General Ledger (GL) Account
Published: June 23, 2020
In FAMIS, General Ledger (GL) accounts are six-digit numbers that represent and contain accounts in a self-balancing fund. Each GL account (or fund) has its own balanced set of accounts consisting of assets, liabilities, fund balances, revenues/additions and…
Core Concept: Transaction Codes
Published: June 11, 2020
An accounting transaction is a business event having a monetary impact on the financial statements of a business. It is recorded in the accounting records of the business. FAMIS uses the concept of transaction codes (or T-Codes) in…