Glossary

Every term below is one this site actually stamps on a figure — a basis chip, a citation locator, or a card label. Each definition traces back to how the term is used here, not a generic gloss.

TOA Total Obligational Authority

The dollar amount reported on the R-1 (RDT&E) and P-1 (procurement) budget exhibits — the workbook rollup total Congress is asked to authorize. Fiscal Receipts uses TOA as the headline dollar basis for every figure on the site (the “P-1/R-1 TOA” chip); it can differ from the R-2/P-40 project-detail total for the same line because TOA includes budget rows, such as advance procurement, that the detail exhibit excludes.

P-1 Procurement Programs exhibit

The official DoD budget exhibit listing every procurement budget line item and its Total Obligational Authority (TOA). Fiscal Receipts downloads the P-1 Excel rollup as an independent control total for procurement lines.

R-1 RDT&E Programs exhibit

The official DoD budget exhibit listing every research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) program element and its Total Obligational Authority (TOA). Fiscal Receipts downloads the R-1 Excel rollup as an independent control total for RDT&E lines.

R-2 RDT&E Project Justification exhibit

The detailed budget-justification exhibit for one RDT&E program element: program narrative, project-level cost tables, and the congressional justification text. Cited detail figures on RDT&E program pages come from this exhibit.

P-40 Procurement Budget Item Justification exhibit

The detailed budget-justification exhibit for one procurement budget line item: program narrative, project-level cost tables, and the congressional justification text. Cited detail figures on procurement program pages come from this exhibit.

PE Program Element

The identifying code DoD assigns to an RDT&E budget line (7 digits + a letter, e.g. 0601101E). Fiscal Receipts uses the PE code — or PE/BLI, for lines identified either way — as the row key, page URL, and citation anchor for every RDT&E program.

BLI Budget Line Item

The identifying code DoD assigns to a procurement budget line (e.g. BLI 1445). A handful of BLI codes are reused across services for the same equipment type; where that happens, this site attributes each organization's own reported slice, never a shared total.

PB20XX President's Budget edition

The fiscal year of the President's Budget submission a figure was published in — e.g. PB2026 is the FY2026 request submitted to Congress. Each edition reports three fiscal years (its own request, the prior year's enacted total, and the year before that as actuals); Fiscal Receipts loads ten defense-wide editions (PB2017–PB2026) and states which edition every figure comes from, because editions are parallel publications, never corrected into one another.

Actuals What the year finally came to

The amount a budget book reports for a fiscal year that has already finished. Each President's Budget edition reports the year two before it as actuals — PB2026 reports FY2024 actuals — so an actuals figure is the government's own later account of a completed year, not a plan. It is still Total Obligational Authority, not cash out the door: see Obligation for the money that was actually committed.

Enacted What Congress appropriated

The amount for the year in progress, as passed by Congress in an appropriations act. Each edition reports the year before its own as enacted — PB2026 reports FY2025 enacted. Where a book went to press under a continuing resolution it fills that row with a request column instead; those cells are marked on this site and explained under Enacted (request column). Treat an unmarked enacted figure as what was appropriated, and a marked one as what was asked for.

Request What the Pentagon asked for

The amount the President's Budget asks Congress to provide for the budget year — the headline number in the book's own title year, and nothing more than a proposal at the time it is published. PB2026 requests FY2026. Congress may fund more, less, or nothing; the Request-vs-actuals gaps in the anomaly feed are exactly the distance between the two, per program.

J-book Budget Justification Book

The Pentagon's detailed budget submission to Congress each spring, covering every RDT&E program (R-2 exhibits) and procurement budget line (P-40 exhibits) with program narratives, project-level cost tables, and congressional justifications.

Discretionary Annual appropriation (not reconciliation)

Regular annual funding set through the normal appropriations process, as distinct from one-time reconciliation-bill money (see Reconciliation). Where a program's FY2026 request includes both, Fiscal Receipts shows the split explicitly — discretionary amount plus reconciliation amount — rather than folding them into one unlabeled total.

Reconciliation Two meanings on this site

Used two ways here. (1) The verification check where a program's P-1/R-1 workbook TOA is compared against its R-2/P-40 detail-exhibit total for the same year, shown as the reconciliation strip under a program's figures. (2) For FY2026 specifically, the congressional budget reconciliation process: a one-time funding mechanism separate from the annual discretionary appropriations bill. Context on the page makes clear which sense applies.

Partial Reconciliation The badge on a program page's header

The reconciliation badge states the result of the checks described under How we verify. “Reconciled” means every scenario this site checks — prior-year actuals, current-year enacted, and the budget-year request and its base — ties to the R-1/P-1 workbook rollup for that line. “Partial Reconciliation” means at least one of those checks failed and the failure is filed in the review queue; it is a real, specific disagreement, not a to-do. “No detail to reconcile” means the line has no R-2/P-40 detail to check against, so no check ran. One scenario in the J-book XML, All Prior Years, is a cumulative to-date figure with no R-1 or P-1 column to compare it to; it is never checked and never counted against a line's badge.

Enacted (request column) An enacted year reported through a request column

Some President's Budget editions publish no enacted column for the prior year, because that year ran under a continuing resolution when the book went to press. The PB2025 books report FY2024 in a column headed “FY 2024 PB Request with CR Amounts*” — the request, adjusted for the CR, not an appropriation Congress passed. FY2017 and FY2018 have the same shape in the PB2018 and PB2019 books. Fiscal Receipts still files those figures under the year's Enacted row, because that is the slot the book itself fills, and marks every such column so the label never reads as an enacted total. Treat these cells as “asked for”, never as “got”.

HHI Herfindahl-Hirschman Index

A standard market-concentration measure: the sum of each contractor family's obligation share squared (× 10,000), counting only positive obligations. Fiscal Receipts computes it in two places. The anomaly feed reports one program's HHI for a single fiscal year over high-confidence award links only. Each program page's Contractor concentration card reports a pooled all-years HHI over high-confidence links alone, and publishes it only where the program has at least three such awards across two or more contractor families holding positive obligations; below that floor the card publishes no index and says so. The figure over every published link, including medium-confidence ones, is computed and ships in the downloadable warehouse — it is never printed in place of a withheld one. Bands follow the 2023 Merger Guidelines of the Justice Department and the FTC: an HHI from 1,000 to 1,800 is moderately concentrated and one above 1,800 is highly concentrated. This site calls an HHI below 1,000 unconcentrated.

Obligation Money legally committed to be paid

The point at which a federal agency legally commits to pay for goods or services, such as when a contract is signed. Obligation figures on this site come from USAspending.gov award records and are a different quantity from TOA: TOA is what was requested or authorized; an obligation is what was actually committed, tracked separately by fiscal year.

Organization code The workbook's short name for a DoD component

Each budget-justification workbook files its rows under a short organization code — A, N and F for the Army, Navy and Air Force, and an acronym for each defense-wide component (DTRA, DMACT, TJS, DHRA, …). The code is the workbook's own key, so this site keeps it on every agency page and every citation, and prints the component's full name beside it. Codes are not agencies in the budget-authority sense: several defense-wide components share one appropriation account.

Add / Non-Add The P-1 column that decides what is summable

Every P-1 row carries an Add/Non-Add flag. A Non-Add row is informational — a memo or reference figure already counted inside another row, such as an advance-procurement entry booked in one fiscal year for delivery in a later one, or a ship-class memo line — and the exhibit does not add it into its own totals. Fiscal Receipts loads Add rows only. This is the single most consequential aggregation decision on the site: summing the P-1 workbook without the filter produces a materially larger total than any figure published here, and the difference is double-counted memo money, not missing coverage. The flag appears verbatim in a workbook citation's preview whenever the source row carries it.

P-1R Procurement Programs — Reserve Components exhibit

The reserve-component companion to the P-1, listing National Guard and Reserve equipment procurement. Its rows are a subset of the same budget lines the P-1 already reports, so they are never added to a P-1 total — the site's FY2026 request denominator is built from P-1 and R-1 rows only. The P-1R is loaded and citable in its own right; it is the summing that is excluded, not the data.