SPARC Terms

Program

Entities enter into binding agreements with DCF to provide program services including W-2, Child Care, Refugee, Domestic Violence, Runaway services, PARC, Training and other grant programs. A program may include a group of related contracts.

Reports on the SPARC webpage use Programs as the sorting tabs at the bottom of each report screen.

Contract Code

After program agreements are signed, the contract codes are entered into the SPARC system. The contract codes and amounts (if applicable) are listed in the grant agreement.

The contract code controls the grant payments. SPARC has two types of funding: capped and not capped. Reimbursements are limited to the contract amounts by agency for capped contracts. Non-capped contracts will be fully reimbursed.

SPARC reimburses agencies at the contract code level based on expenditures. Agencies enter their expenditures to DCF listing data by Line Code. Several line codes can be associated with one contract code or a line code can be allocated into different contract codes including reimbursable and non-reimbursable codes. SPARC sums the reimbursable line codes and compares the total to the prior payments. For some contracts data for payment is uploaded from external reports. The difference is the current payment.

Line Code

Agencies report categories of expenditures (i.e. program, administration, match, etc.) by line code.

The agencies are responsible for classifying the expenditures into the proper line codes when they enter their data into the SPARC portal. These expenditures are saved in SPARC, summarized by contract code, and payments are calculated as discussed above.

Class Code

Class codes are used by certain grant programs to track the source of the expenditure (salary, fringe benefits, supplies, etc). The W-2 and Child Support programs do not use Class Codes.