A new employee must have a RACF ID before being added to AFRS by their agencies AFRS Administrator:

• Larger agencies have a Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) Administrator.
• Agencies that don’t have their own RACF Administrators submit a ticket to: WaTech Support Center at 360-586-1000 or support or support@watech.wa.gov to obtain/remove a RACF ID. The ticket will be routed to the WaTech High Capacity Computing Group who create/delete RACF IDs for systems which run on the WaTech mainframe.
• OFM Employees contact Heretohelp@ofm.wa.gov or call 360-407-9100.

After a RACF ID is granted, your agency AFRS Administrator will then add you to AFRS & provide you with guidance as to how to access AFRS through your agencies preferred emulator.

Call or email the OFM Help Desk, HereToHelp@ofm.wa.gov or (360) 407-9100.

Most likely the new employee still needs a RACF ID.

AFRS will time you out of all sessions (those in white mean you are logged into them) after 30 minutes of no activity.

Another thing to try is press the ‘Clear’ key on your keyboard. Different keys can be mapped to be the ‘Clear’ key; yours may be the Pause/Break key, the Escape key, or the F12 key.

Your emulator might also have a ‘Clear’ key,  try clicking that as well.

If you are still locked up after the above steps have been taken, contact the OFM Help Desk, HereToHelp@ofm.wa.gov or (360) 407-9100.

Call your agency network administrator or Help desk. The mainframe systems can be running but individual PCs can lose their connection to the mainframe. You can also contact the OFM Help Desk, HereToHelp@ofm.wa.gov or (360) 407-9100.

AFRS operating hours are as follows:

     Mon-Fri     6:30 AM to 7:30 PM

     Sat             7:00 AM to 7:30 PM

     Sun            7:00 AM to 1:00 PM

If AFRS is down, a message will be sent to subscribers via GovDelivery. The OFM System Outages website is also another great resource. You also may want to check with your agency’s Information Technology staff (Network Group) to see if there is an internal agency problem. If you are having difficulty, contact the OFM Help Desk, HereToHelp@ofm.wa.gov or (360) 407-9100.

1. OFM Employees should contact HeretoHelp@ofm.wa.gov.
2. Agencies that have their own Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) Administrator should contact their RACF admin (sometimes referred to as their agencies AFRS Help Desk).
3. Agencies that don’t have their own RACF Administrators (or don’t know if they do) need to submit a ticket to:  WaTech Support Center at 360-586-1000 or support@watech.wa.gov.

To arrange testing your applications with AFRS, please complete the AFRS Testing Services Request then email it to the OFM Help Desk at:  HereToHelp@ofm.wa.gov or (360) 407-9100. Note: Once a request is received an AFRS team member will contact you to discuss your needs.

Agencies can look up the error codes from the ERROR CODE MANUAL on the OFM website. This guide provides you with ideas on what might be causing the problem and possible solutions.

1. Identify the batch information. (Batch Type, Batch Number, Batch date etc.)
2. Look on your agencies AFRS IN.3 screen to see if the batch is sitting in held or error status.
3. Look in ER/Webi to see if the batch was previously released in AFRS.

If you are still unable to locate the batch, contact the OFM Help Desk at: HereToHelp@ofm.wa.gov or (360) 407-9100.

For payments, see the Payment Options In AFRS guide starting on page 17 for how to run the Warrant register or remittance advise reports.

For transactions, running an Enterprise Reporting (ER) standard report is recommended, for example, the AFRS Transaction History report found under the daily reports.

To update the contact information on your agencies billing report, please see page 8 of the Report Request user document. Please note, only someone from your agency with an AFRS security level 2 will be able to update this.

AFRS requires certain transactions (like encumbrance reductions) to have a reference document number that matches the original encumbrance. Research the original encumbrance document and add that document number to the liquidation document's reference doc number field.

There is an AFRS feature that assists agencies in liquidating encumbrances called “RETRIEVE AN ENCUMBRANCE”. For more information about using this feature, refer to page 40 in the Transaction Input Batch Bal Rel Err Corr document.

If the employee has valid banking information in HRMS and you are still seeing the EFT flag in AFRS as “N”, submit a ticket to HereToHelp@ofm.wa.gov. 

Only the employee’s name & employee number are needed with the request to change the EFT Flag in AFRS. Please note, no further information is needed, please do NOT send banking information or Personally Identifiable Information.

• Due date error: Due dates are usually the current date but if a future date is selected, warrants will not process until that date. Verify the due date on the  AFRS IN.2 screen. If the document needs to be released prior to the Due Date, see the Payment Maintenance Screen IN.2 document. If you do not see the payment on the IN.2 screen, the problem is likely one of the next two issues.
• Transaction code error: To review the transaction code, OFM recommends running an Enterprise Reporting or Web Intelligence (Webi) report to verify that a warrant producing transaction code was used (210, 211,955…). If you find the transaction code is incorrect you will need to reverse the entry and resubmit the payment.
• Batch posting error: Verify the batch is not on your agencies AFRS IN.3 screen. If the batch is here, it was not posted to AFRS. Another way to verify if a batch was posted is to run an Enterprise Reporting or Webi report.

If you are unable to locate your payment, please contact the OFM Help Desk at:  HereToHelp@ofm.wa.gov or (360) 407-9100.

AFRS creates warrant payments and depending on the payment type (Inserted vs Regular),  the warrant is either sent out by Consolidated Mail Services (CMS) or delivered to agencies by the Office of State Treasurer (OST). See the Payment Options in AFRS document

• Inserted warrants, once processed, are sent to recipients by CMS.
• Regular warrants, once processed, they are sent to OST then distributed to agencies by OST. Please call the OST Warrant desk at (360) 902-8994 for warrant location information.

If you are seeing the payment in AFRS, and you’ve verified the transaction code is one that creates a warrant, it is recommended to contact Office of State Treasurer (OST). Please call the OST Warrant desk at (360) 902-8994 for warrant location information.

For instruction on how to re-print a warrant register or remittance advice, please see the Payment Options In AFRS guide.

The warrant register number is the Julian date of when the warrants were issued. For example, if the warrants were issued on January 1, 2021 the warrant register would be 001.

For full instructions on how to cancel a warrant please see the AFRS Payment Cancellations and Returns user document.

On the IN.3 screen (BATCH HEADER SUMMARY) place an L (PRINT) next to the warrant cancellation transaction and hit enter. This will bring up the IN.3.1 screen (ONLINE BATCH REPORTS). You then will enter an S next to the “DWP91002 Warrant Cancellation” report which includes the JV. Further instructions can be found here starting on page 25: AFRS Payment Cancellations and Returns.