How to Read Federal Obligations, De-Obligations, and Fiscal Years

Every dollar figure on this site is a net federal obligation, not a contract's total ceiling value, and every year is a federal fiscal year, which does not line up with the calendar year. Both trip people up reading contract data for the first time.

The federal fiscal year

The U.S. government's fiscal year runs October 1 through September 30, and is named for the calendar year it ends in — fiscal year 2026 (FY2026) runs from October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026. A contract action dated November 2025 falls in FY2026, not FY2025, which is the single most common source of confusion when comparing this site's figures against calendar-year expectations.

The current fiscal year is always partial until it closes on September 30 — the "Obligations by fiscal year" table on a contractor profile marks it explicitly as a partial year, and every KPI figure labeled "3-year" on that page uses the last three closed fiscal years, not the current one, specifically so a partial year doesn't make a contractor look like its business is shrinking.

What "obligation" means, and what it isn't

An obligation is the dollar amount the government has legally committed to pay under a contract action as of that transaction. It is not the same as a contract's maximum potential value. Many federal contracts, especially indefinite-delivery vehicles and multi-year awards, are obligated incrementally: an agency might sign a five-year contract with a $50 million ceiling but only obligate a few million dollars at signing, adding more in later transactions as funding becomes available and the work is actually ordered. The obligation totals on this site reflect what has actually been committed and recorded to date, not a contract's headline ceiling figure.

Why a fiscal year can show a negative number

A de-obligation reduces a previously obligated amount — for example, an agency exercises less of an option than planned, or a contract is modified downward, or partially terminated. Because this site's fiscal-year figures are net — new obligations minus de-obligations within that year — a fiscal year in which de-obligations outpaced new obligations for a given contractor will show as negative. That does not necessarily mean the company lost business that year; it more often reflects the normal life cycle of large contracts being adjusted as requirements firm up. Where a contractor's data shows this pattern, its profile page includes a specific sentence noting the net negative year and the amount involved.

Why year-over-year figures use only closed years

Comparing a full closed fiscal year against a still-partial current one would understate the current year by definition — it simply has not finished yet. Every year-over-year comparison and every "3-year total" figure on this site is computed from closed fiscal years only, with the current partial year shown separately in the fiscal-year table and chart, clearly marked, rather than folded into a trend calculation where it would distort the comparison.

Department of Defense data lags other agencies

USAspending.gov publishes Department of Defense contract data with roughly a 90-day delay relative to other agencies, a longstanding reporting-timeline difference between DoD's own financial systems and the government-wide spending database. For a contractor whose federal work is concentrated at DoD, the most recent one to two months of activity may not yet be reflected, even though this site's underlying download is current as of the date shown in each profile's source box.

Why this site's "3-year" figures aren't the same as a fiscal year's total

A contractor profile's "3-year total" and "contract actions, 3-year" figures sum the last three closed fiscal years together — currently FY2023 through FY2025 — as a single window, rather than showing each year's total separately with an average. Three years smooths out the normal lumpiness of contract timing: a company can win a large multi-year award that obligates unevenly, heavy in one year and light in the next, without that timing alone making its 3-year standing swing wildly. The full year-by-year breakdown, including the current partial year, is always shown separately in the fiscal-year table and chart underneath the summary figures, so nothing is hidden by the 3-year window — it is a ranking and comparison figure, not a replacement for the year-by-year detail.

See also: the full methodology page for exactly how each figure is calculated.