The date the decision was made to "approve" the budget transfer, and likely many other budget transfers associated with the same Review. The Decision date is actually an attribute of a Review rather than of a budget transfer (notice that for any given Review, the Decision date is the same).

To be clear, instead of individually approving each budget transfer, you associate each budget transfer with one and only one Review and then conclude the Review by entering a Decision date.

A Budget Decision is a collection of budget transfers considered during a fixed period of time. Every budget transfer must be done within the context of a Budget Decision. Until the Budget Decision is decided, the budget transfers associated with it are all tentative or pending. Budget Decisions may be as small as involving one project (e.g. a one-off adjustment to a budget for single fiscal year), or as large as involving hundreds of projects (e.g. COLA adjustments to a large portfolio of projects).

Once a Budget Decision is complete, no more budget transfers may be associated with it. Budget Decisions are concluded by entering a Decision date.

The unique identifier of the budget transfer (BudgetTransferID). If a budget transfer involves multiple funds - for example, transferring $50 from the General fund and $50 from the Reserve fund - there will be multiple budget transfer items (BudgetTransferItemID), but still only one budget transfer ID.

Given this, you may see more than one record (or BudgetTransferItem) listed in a grid with the same BudgetTransferID.

The name of the Fund that is either providing or receiving the budget transfer. Keep in mind that you can transfer budgets into a project from any Fund that has not yet distributed all of its budget, even if budgeting rules stipulate conditions for drawing budgets from certain funds. For example, you can transfer budget into a habitat project from the BPA Overhead fund, or budget into a non-Fish Accord project from a Fish Accord fund.

The fiscal year of the accounts involved in the budget transfer. The BPA fiscal year begins in October.

As stated in the Capitalization Policy, actions may be considered Capital if all of the following primary criteria are met:

1) BPA share of project costs must exceed $1M (excluding all conceptual and preliminary costs for projects that go through the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's 3-Step Review).

2) The capital construction must have an estimated useful life of 15 years or longer.

3) Provides a measurable future benefit, defined as fulfilling a legal obligation of the FCRPS.

Not Capital Projects

The following costs for project activities are not capital:

* Preliminary costs related to construction (Step 1 and Step 2*)

* Operations and Maintenance

* Monitoring and Evaluation

* Habitat Maintenance or Enhancement. An exception to this rule is in the case of restoration or stabilization of the property to the state equal to that of the pre-construction disturbance. Examples of these types of capital actions include vegetation restoration and land recontouring.

* Preliminary planning such as investigations or surveys.

NOTE: * Step1 and Step 2 refers to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s 3-Step Review Process for major construction projects.