GFEBS completes final Wave for Full Deployment - changes way Army does business

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Army News Service, July 24, 2012) -- During a time of increased scrutiny of government spending, the General Fund Enterprise Business System (GFEBS) steps forward to transform the way Army manages its finance and real property accounting.


On July 1, GFEBS completed the final Wave for Full Deployment and supporting over 50,000 customers world-wide to facilitate the management of nearly $140 billion in the General Fund, and an additional $80 billion in Overseas Contingency Operations funds.

Previously, the U.S. Army's finances were tracked by multiple systems that were increasingly inefficient, costly and outdated, some more than 30 years old. In an effort to gain visibility over finances and inventories, many Army commands established their own methods and internal systems. These antiquated and fragmented systems impacted military leaders' ability to make informed decisions because there was no clear picture of full resources. This ultimately affected the Soldier.

GFEBS transformed this approach. The GFEBS solution will subsume 107 legacy systems into an enterprise-wide system integrating financial, real property, cost management and performance data. Leaders have visibility through GFEBS to data that has never been available through a single access point, taking into account the true costs of operations, functions, and organizations when making budgeting decisions in support of war fighting capabilities. GFEBS allows leadership to make smarter, faster decisions, ranging from provisioning troops in the midst of battle to budget planning.

GFEBS is the Army's response to the 1990 Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act, which mandates federal agencies to centralize their finance systems to better account for their spending, and the 1996 Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (FFMIA), requiring federal financial management systems to provide accurate, reliable and timely financial management information to the government's managers.


In the last three years, GFEBS grew from one million transactions and $1.2 billion in obligations in fiscal year 2009 to 20 million transactions and $30.8 billion in obligations in fiscal year 2011. GFEBS currently processes approximately one million transactions a day and $140 billion of the general fund annually.