Reading Your Budget in the Portal: What the Numbers Mean

Every Financial Management Service (FMS) in the Self-Determination Program (SDP) is required to give you a monthly expenditure report showing what was allocated, what was spent in the last 30 days, and what remains. Here is how to read those numbers, how they connect to your spending plan, and how to tell whether you are on pace.

The three numbers DDS requires

As of 2026 the Department of Developmental Services (DDS) requires every FMS to report three things each month:

• Allocated. The amount in the individual budget and, within it, the amount assigned to each service or category on your spending plan.
• Spent in the last 30 days. What was paid out over the most recent month.
• Remaining. Allocated minus everything paid so far in the plan year.

Portals vary in how they label these. Whatever the labels, look for those three ideas.

How the spending plan becomes rows in a portal

Your spending plan lists each service, how often it happens, what it costs, and which uniform budget category it falls in. When the FMS receives the approved plan, it maps each line to a regional center service code, because that is what authorizations and payments run on. A single category on your plan may contain several service codes, and a single caregiver may be paid under more than one code if they provide more than one service.

So when you look at the portal, you are usually looking at:

• the whole budget at the top,
• categories underneath it, matching the uniform categories on the plan,
• service codes or individual services within each category,
• and the providers paid under each.

If a row in the portal does not match your memory of the plan, compare it against the signed spending plan. The plan is the source; the portal reflects it. See Breaking Down the Spending Plan.

Committed, paid and remaining

Three words come up a lot, and they do not mean the same thing:

• Paid. Money that has already gone out to a caregiver or vendor.
• Committed (sometimes called pending or encumbered). Money that is spoken for but not yet paid: approved timesheets waiting for payday, invoices in validation, a purchase request that has been approved.
• Remaining. What is left after paid, and in some views after committed as well.

The trap is reading "remaining" as if it were free to spend when a large committed amount is about to clear. If your portal shows committed amounts, subtract them before deciding what you can still buy. If it does not, ask your case manager what is in the pipeline.

Pace: are you spending faster than the year?

A spending plan usually spreads a service evenly across the plan year, but real life does not. Summer respite, a caregiver who picks up extra hours, or a rate increase can pull spending ahead of schedule. A simple check:

1. Work out how much of the plan year has passed. Three months into a twelve-month plan is one quarter.
2. Compare that with how much of the category has been spent. If one quarter of the year has passed and half the category is gone, you are spending at roughly twice the planned pace.
3. Do the same for the whole budget.

Some categories are supposed to be uneven. A one-time purchase spends all at once and then stops. A summer program spends in three months. Judge pace against what the plan intended, not against a straight line. See One-Time Purchases and Next Year's Budget.

What to do when a category runs low

Do not wait for it to hit zero. When a category looks like it will run out before the plan year ends:

• Talk to your case manager at the FMS. They can confirm the numbers, show what is committed, and tell you how many weeks of the current pattern the category will cover.
• Talk to your service coordinator. Only the regional center can approve moving money between categories or adjusting the individual budget. The FMS cannot do either.
• Decide early whether the fix is a spending plan revision (moving money within the budget) or a budget adjustment (changing the budget itself). See Changing Your Spending Plan Mid-Year and Individual Budget vs. Spending Plan.

A category that runs dry means the caregiver or vendor paid from it cannot be paid until it is fixed. That is the situation everyone is trying to avoid, and the report exists so you see it coming.

How Sentinel Four handles this

• Your secure portal is available 24/7 and shows budget, invoices, approvals and payment records. The budget is mapped into it during implementation, line by line from the approved spending plan.
• The monthly report shows allocated, spent in the last 30 days, and remaining, as DDS requires.
• Your dedicated case manager sees the same numbers you see. If you are unsure what a row means or whether something is committed, ask them rather than guessing.
• Payroll is weekly, paid on Mondays, so caregiver spending appears in the portal on a weekly rhythm rather than in one monthly jump.
• Approved spending plan revisions and budget adjustments are updated in the portal once we receive them from the regional center. See How Do Spending Plans Work.