FSS Transaction Management Overview

The Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) and Welfare-to-Work (WtW) programs help housing choice voucher families to become economically self-sufficient. The participant's FSS contract sets goals that should result in income increases. As the income rises, HAP payments decrease. The difference between the higher and lower HAP that you pay to the landlord is available for the family's FSS escrow account deposit.

For more information about qualifying families for FSS participation, see Chapter 6, “Resident Services Program Management.”

If the family completes the FSS contract, and no member of the family is receiving welfare, the family becomes eligible to receive the funds that you have deposited on its behalf. If the family fails to complete the contract before the expiration date, the family's FSS escrow funds could be forfeited.

Your agency is responsible for tracking the participant's escrow funds and making HUD-authorized transactions on behalf of the family.

If you are uncertain about FSS regulations, see the most recent HUD guidelines.

If you want to successfully manage Family Self-Sufficiency in Voyager, you must use the Voyager FSS accounting procedures to execute all FSS financial transactions. For example, you must use a Voyager FSS journal entry to record the FSS beginning balances on the participant's FSS ledger. As a participant makes progress, you can credit the participant's FSS escrow account based on increases in earned income.

You can find all of the needed FSS procedures on the Housing Authority Manager side menu as follows: Functions > Financial > FSS Accounting.

You can allocate the interest earned on escrow funds, either as a dollar amount or as an allocation percentage, according to each participant's escrow credit balance.

Before allocating interest, you should review the participants' resident subsidy schedules, FSS escrow worksheets, and latest 50058s. You must confirm that all participant rents are current, and that you have abated any needed FSS escrow credits.

If you want to allocate interest, Voyager requires at least one FSS property list. If needed, you can have more than one FSS property list. For example, you can create one property list that contains all properties, or you can create one property list for all housing choice voucher properties and another property list for all public housing properties.

For information about adding property lists to your database, see “Property Setup” in the Voyager Core Setup Guide.

For FSS payables, you must use the appropriate FSS payable balance sheet and cash general ledger accounts.

Before performing FSS transaction procedures, your system administrator must have added the following FSS general ledger accounts to your database: FSS Ledger, FSS Cash, FSS Disbursement, and FSS Rounding. For more information about adding general ledger accounts, see “Financials Setup” in the Voyager Core Setup Guide. You must also have selected the Use FSS Accounting check box on the Environment Options tab of the Voyager Accounts and Options screen. For information, see “Accounts, Defaults, and Options Setup” in the Voyager Public Housing Setup Guide.