Glossary.

A binding promise to pay — the moment the government signs a contract or awards a grant, the money is committed. Federal accounting calls this an obligation; we call it committed. It's the number we lead with everywhere, because it's when the spending decision actually gets made. Recorded the day the award is signed.

The cash physically leaving the Treasury to settle a commitment — the check clearing. How far it trails the commitment depends on the award: a direct payment like a Social Security check goes out almost as soon as it's committed, while a five-year contract commits the money up front and pays it out over five years. We lead with committed figures everywhere, but where the government reports award-level outlays comprehensively — from FY2022 on — we show the “paid” figure alongside the “committed” one. The gap between them is money promised but not yet disbursed — and it's almost entirely a contracts-and-grants story.

A later amendment that takes money back — a negative obligation. If a $10,000 contract only spends $9,000, a –$1,000 record nets it to the true total. Enough of these in one year can push a recipient's, program's, or even a whole year's total negative — common in the long tail of a discontinued or winding-down program, where old multi-year contracts keep getting closed out with no new ones replacing them. It's real money un-committing, not a data error.

The federal government's budget year, running October 1 through September 30 and named for the calendar year it ends in — FY2025 began October 1, 2024. The most recent fiscal year on these pages is always still partial.

When we total spending for a fiscal year, we count each transaction in the year it actually happened — a five-year award contributes to all five years, not one lump. This “transaction-grain” counting is why our annual figures are honest, and sometimes lower than a headline that dumps an award's whole lifetime value into the single year it was last touched.

How many distinct awards a total covers — the number of unique awards with at least one action in the period. An award that runs several years is counted once in each year it was active (never double-counted), and it's a count of awards, not of the individual transactions — signings, amendments, de-obligations — that make them up.

The umbrella term for any one of these: a contract, grant, direct payment, loan, or insurance commitment. Money committed through federal awards is the scope of these pages — a large share of what the government does, but a different measure from the government's total spending, which Treasury reports separately as net outlays (interest on the debt, salaries, benefits, and the cash actually paid out on awards, this year's and prior years').

The government buying goods or services from a company — a fighter jet, a consulting engagement, office supplies. Reported through the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS).

Money given to a recipient — a university, a state, a nonprofit — to carry out a public purpose, with no goods or services flowing back to the government in return. Reported through the financial-assistance system (FABS).

A benefit paid straight to individuals — Social Security, Medicare, veterans' disability, SSI. This is the single largest category of federal awards, and the source of the “Multiple Recipients” bucket below.

Money lent that's expected to be repaid (student loans, SBA loans). The loan's face value is NOT counted as committed — what counts is its subsidy cost, the government's estimate of what the loan will actually cost it, which can even be negative for a profitable program.

Federal insurance and loan-guarantee commitments — flood insurance, crop insurance, mortgage guarantees. Like loans, the headline coverage amount isn't the same as money spent.

A master ordering contract — a pre-negotiated vehicle (a GWAC, an IDIQ, a schedule) that agencies place individual orders against. The IDV itself is a container; the actual spending lands on the task and delivery orders placed under it.

The entity that received the award — a company, university, state government, or nonprofit. We show recipient names exactly as they appear in federal filings; the government doesn't standardize them, so one company can show up under several spelling variants.

The aggregated bucket for benefits that go to millions of individuals at once — Social Security, Medicare, and the like. The government reports these as one synthetic recipient because naming every person would breach their privacy. Read it as a program, in a state — not as a company. It usually tops the leaderboard.

The part of the government that awarded the money. A top-tier agency is a department (Defense, Health & Human Services); a sub-tier agency is a component inside it (the Army, the NIH). We attribute spending to the agency that made the award.

Where the work of an award is actually performed — which can differ from where the recipient is headquartered. “Money to a state” means place of performance; a recipient's HQ address is a separate thing.

The 12-character ID that SAM.gov assigns to every entity that does business with the government. It replaced the older DUNS number in 2022, and it's the key we use to follow one organization across awards.

When a prime recipient — a big contractor or a state — hands part of its award down to a subcontractor or sub-grantee. We count the money where it first lands, with the prime, and don't roll sub-awards back up, because the source's sub-award reporting is incomplete and stacking it would double-count.

The industry code on a contract — “shipbuilding,” “engineering services,” “janitorial.” It answers “what industry did this buy from.” Contracts only.

A finer-grained code for the specific thing a contract bought — a particular product or service line, more precise than the broad NAICS industry. Contracts only.

The catalog number that identifies a specific federal assistance program — “Medicare,” “Section 8 housing,” “Pell Grants.” It's how a grant or direct payment is tied to the program that funds it, and how we read the “Multiple Recipients” bucket by program.

Each individual action on an award — the original signing, plus every later amendment, extension, or re-pricing. An award's total is the sum of all its transactions, which is why a figure you bookmarked can shift between monthly snapshots as new modifications land.

No set-aside — the contract is competed in the open field, where any qualified business can bid. Everything below is a carve-out from this.

A contract reserved for small businesses, by the SBA's size standards for the industry. Includes partial set-asides, where only part of the work is reserved.

Reserved for firms in the SBA's 8(a) program for small businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged people. Can be competed among 8(a) firms or awarded sole-source to one.

Reserved for businesses in a Historically Underutilized Business Zone — economically distressed areas. Can be competed, sole-source, or partial.

Reserved for small businesses owned and controlled by service-disabled veterans. Competed among such firms or awarded sole-source.

Reserved for veteran-owned small businesses (a broader category than service-disabled). Competed or sole-source.

Reserved for women-owned small businesses, with a sub-category — economically disadvantaged women-owned (EDWOSB) — for firms that also meet a disadvantage test. Competed or sole-source.

Reserved for Indian-owned economic enterprises and small businesses, including Buy Indian Act set-asides on the civilian side.

Reserved for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other minority-serving institutions.

Smaller carve-outs: emerging small businesses, contracts reserved for small business generally, and local-area set-asides used in disaster-response contracting.