Chapter 40 of the State Administrative & Accounting Manual (SAAM) requires agencies to prepare an Economic Feasibility Study (EFS) for certain electronic payment projects. The EFS requires agencies to complete and submit two forms to the Office of Financial Management (OFM) for approval:

  • EFS Business Case Form
  • EFS Cost Benefit Analysis Form

Both forms were updated in May 2026. These forms have been simplified while still meeting RCW requirements.

Changes to the EFS Business Case include:

  • Section 1:
    • If your project includes the acceptance of bankcards (credit and/or debit cards), we no longer ask which card brands that you plan to accept.
  • Section 2:
    • Instead of asking whether an agency has contacted the Office of the State Treasurer (OST) to discuss their electronic payments project, we have included information on the form clarifying that agencies must have a discussion with OST and requiring the agency to certify that they have had those discussions.
    • Several of the questions have been broken into separate sub-questions to avoid leaving out required information.
    • Checkboxes have been added to several of the questions.
  • Section 3:
    • This section had duplicative information between the Business Case form and Cost Benefit Analysis form. This will now be collected only on the Cost Benefit Analysis form.
  • Section 4:
    • Request for Project Sponsor information has been updated to Agency Chief Financial Officer as it is important that an agency’s accounting and finance staff are involved in the preparation of an agency’s EFS.

Changes to the EFS Cost Benefit Analysis include:

  • Previously the form had five tabs: Instructions, Agency, Other State Agencies, Customer, and Summary. The form now just has two tabs: Instructions and Cost Benefit Analysis Form.
  • We have consolidated the information that was previously on the Agency, Other State Agencies, Customer, and Summary tabs into one “Cost Benefit Analysis Form” tab. This tab should now include all dollar amounts and written descriptions of those dollar amounts in one place instead of being split between the two EFS forms.

The updated EFS forms can be found on OFM’s E-Commerce webpage.

For questions about the EFS process, contact the agency’s assigned Statewide Accountant, or the OFM E-Commerce

Statewide Accountant Pam Valencia at pam.valencia@ofm.wa.gov.