Most guides to California's Self-Determination Program (SDP) stop when the spending plan is approved, which is exactly when a family's real questions begin. This article follows one family through a plan year and traces two dollars, a support worker's hours and a summer camp invoice, from the Purchase of Service (POS) to the paycheck, the regional center bill, and the updated spending plan. It is written for new families and for the independent facilitators who guide them. At Ankota, we build the software that financial management services (FMS) providers use to run this process, so we see every step of it every day.
Here is a comparison we find helpful. In the Self-Determination Program, a family effectively runs a very small home care agency. They recruit, they schedule, and they decide who provides which service. The FMS, also called a fiscal intermediary or financial management service, is that agency's back office. Once you see it that way, the rest of the process makes a lot more sense.
To make this concrete, meet the Rivera family. They're a composite, built from the families we work with every day, but every step they go through is real. Sofia Rivera is 26 and has a developmental disability. She lives at home with her parents, Elena and Rob. Elena is the one who manages Sofia's self-determination budget, and she's about to learn what happens after the paperwork is done.
Six parties touch every dollar in the Self-Determination Program: the participant and family, the independent facilitator, the direct service workers, the vendors, the FMS, and the regional center. The participant and family decide what services to buy and who provides them. The independent facilitator helps build the person-centered plan and the spending plan. Direct service workers (also called support workers or direct service professionals) are individuals paid by the hour. Vendors are businesses paid by invoice. The FMS checks and pays for everything, and the regional center funds it.
For the Riveras, the cast looks like this. Sofia is the participant. Elena is her participant contact, the person who approves services and watches the budget. Carla, their independent facilitator, helped them build the spending plan. Jasmine is a support worker who takes Sofia to community activities a few afternoons a week. Rob, Sofia's dad, is also paid for some of the support he provides at home. And this summer, Sofia wants to attend an art camp run by a local nonprofit. That makes Jasmine and Rob direct service workers and the camp a vendor, and that difference matters later.
After the spending plan is approved, the regional center issues a Purchase of Service, or POS, for each service category, and the FMS turns those authorizations into a working setup. The FMS enters each POS with its dates and dollar amount, creates each worker and vendor, links them to the participant and to the services they're allowed to charge, and gives the family a login to see it all. Nothing gets paid until every one of those pieces is in place.
The order matters, and it surprises people. A well-run FMS sets up the suppliers first (Jasmine, Rob, and the camp), then Sofia and her POS authorizations, then the connections between them. When the FMS assigns Jasmine to Sofia's community support service, that's also where it enters Jasmine's hourly pay rate. When it assigns Rob, it picks a live-in version of the service. Because Rob is a family member living in the home, his hours may be exempt from Electronic Visit Verification (EVV), while Jasmine's are not. Two workers, same budget, different rules. That's one of the details that trips up programs, and it's a rule we've handled for years on the home care and EVV side.
Finally, Elena gets access to the FMS app on her phone and on the web. On day one, she can already see Sofia's authorizations with nothing spent yet. Carla, the independent facilitator, can get access too. If Carla already works with other families at the same FMS, the FMS doesn't need to create her again. She's set up once and simply added to each new participant she supports.
A direct service worker gets paid when their hours have been recorded, approved by the family, screened by the FMS, and sent to payroll. The worker clocks in and out on a mobile app, the family approves the visit, the FMS checks it for EVV compliance and runs payroll, and then the FMS bills the regional center for those hours. The worker's paycheck and the regional center bill come from the same visit record.
Here's how it looks on a Saturday. Jasmine picks Sofia up for a four-hour community outing. When they start, Jasmine opens the Ankota Caregiver NextGen app, selects Sofia and the service, and clocks in. When they're done, she clocks out. The app creates the visit and calculates the time, the billable 15-minute units, and any California overtime or double time. If Jasmine forgets to clock out, she can correct the time. If she misses the visit entirely, she can add it afterward. Clocking in and out as it happens is still the norm, because repeated manual entries raise EVV questions.
Next, Elena sees the visit in her app and approves it. Then the FMS screens it. A clean visit goes to Sandata, California's EVV aggregator. A manual or incomplete visit needs an FMS reason code first. From there, the money splits two ways. Jasmine earns $25 an hour, so this outing is $100 in pay, sent through payroll to a system such as ADP, Paychex, or QuickBooks. The FMS bills the regional center for Jasmine's pay plus a burden rate that covers employer costs. With an illustrative 20 percent burden, that's $30 an hour, or $120 for the outing.
Vendor invoices are paid as a pass-through: the vendor submits an invoice, the family approves it, the FMS reviews it, and the vendor is paid exactly the invoiced amount, which is also exactly what the regional center is billed. There is no payroll and no burden rate. A $1,250 summer camp invoice produces a $1,250 payment to the camp and a $1,250 charge on the regional center bill.
When camp ends, the camp's office manager opens the same Ankota app Jasmine uses, but her version shows an invoice screen instead of a clock. She enters the invoice, attaches a photo of it, and submits. Elena approves it on her phone. Then the FMS reviews it. At Ankota, an AI check reads the attached invoice first and compares the supplier, the date, the amount, and the description to what was submitted, and it confirms the charge fits inside Sofia's POS budget. It recommends approval or a closer look, and a person at the FMS makes the final call.
Once approved, the invoice goes to the FMS accounts payable team as its own payment to the camp. The same invoice also lands on the next regional center bill. Because both come from the same record, the FMS can prove that every service was billed and every invoice was paid.
Your budget goes down as soon as a visit is completed or an invoice is submitted, not when you approve it, and that's on purpose. The system assumes the charge will be approved and shows it right away, so money that's already spoken for never looks available. If something is corrected later, such as a clock-out time, the balance updates to match. In Ankota, changes typically appear within about five minutes.
This is the question Elena asked Carla the first week, and it's one of the most common calls an FMS gets. The alternative is worse. If balances only moved after approval, a family could see $3,000 left when $2,500 of it was already committed to visits sitting in the approval queue. Showing charges immediately keeps families from overspending by accident.
Tip
Independent facilitators, walk new families through this in the first meeting. "Your balance moves when the work happens, not when you approve it" heads off a lot of worried phone calls.
If a family doesn't approve in time, nothing is lost. The items are picked up in the next processing cycle. The FMS will usually reach out to remind the family about anything waiting. And if the approver is going to be unavailable, the FMS can approve on the family's behalf, but only with the family's documented permission.
In March, Elena spent a week on a work trip and fell behind on approvals. Jasmine's hours from that week simply rolled into the next pay cycle. For longer absences, the Riveras could have given the FMS written permission to approve for them.
Caution
If an FMS approves on a family's behalf, it must have documented permission from the family and record each approval it makes. Families should know this option exists, and should expect to put it in writing.
The FMS bills each regional center separately, because each regional center accepts bills and releases payments through its own web portal. When the FMS runs billing, Ankota pulls every approved visit and invoice for that regional center's participants into the regional center's format. The regional center assigns its own invoice numbers, and the FMS matches them to its records so each payment can be traced back to the service it covers.
Families rarely see this step, but it explains a lot about timing. A regional center bill might cover a week or a month of activity for many participants. The vendor payments, by contrast, go out one invoice at a time. Those are two different rhythms running from the same set of records, and keeping them in sync is a big part of what an FMS actually does. For Sofia, it means Jasmine's hours, Rob's hours, and the camp invoice each appear once on a bill and once as a payment, and never twice.
Families track spending in the FMS app, which shows each authorization, what has been spent, and what's left, plus a monthly spending plan report. The report shows each completed month's visits and invoices and compares spending so far to the annual budget. California requires that families be able to see where they stand, month by month and year to date.
By September, Elena can see that Sofia's community support budget is on pace and that the camp came in right where they planned. She and Carla use the report to plan next year's spending plan. If spending plans are new to you, our guide to California Self-Determination Program spending plans goes deeper on how they're built.
Look for an FMS that makes three things easy: seeing the budget in real time, approving visits and invoices from a phone, and getting a clear monthly spending plan report. Behind those, ask how the FMS handles family and live-in workers, how quickly it reviews vendor invoices, and whether your independent facilitator can see what you see. The software an FMS runs on shapes nearly every one of those answers.
We learned that lesson the hard way.
When we first came into California's Self-Determination Program, a few bill-payer FMS companies looked at our software and told us it wasn't ready for them. They were right. We had grown up on the direct service worker side, with clock-ins, EVV, and billing, and a bill payer's world is invoices for goods and services. It took us a while to understand how the work flows between suppliers and families, and how frictionless invoice approval needs to be for FMS staff. We rebuilt around what they told us, and it made the product better for everyone.
- Ken Accardi, CEO, Ankota
That history is also why we see this process from both sides. Our background in EVV and home care is what taught us the live-in exemption and the clock-in rules. Our work with bill-payer and full-service FMS providers taught us the invoice side. For a broader look at how self-direction works across states, our guide to self-direction and FMS is a good next read.
The Self-Determination Program gives families real control, and with that control comes a process that can feel opaque at first. Once you follow a single visit or invoice from start to finish, it gets much simpler: authorize, set up, deliver, approve, check, pay, bill, and report. If you're an FMS looking for software that makes that cycle simpler for families, facilitators, and your own staff, take a look at Ankota's self-direction FMS software or reach out to our team. For more on the program itself, Disability Rights California's overview of the Self-Determination Program is a helpful reference.
A financial management services (FMS) provider, or fiscal intermediary, is the back office for a self-determination participant. It sets up the participant's authorizations, workers, and vendors, pays direct service workers through payroll, pays vendor invoices, checks visits for EVV compliance, bills the regional center, and keeps the family's budget and spending plan report current.
What is a POS in the Self-Determination Program?POS stands for Purchase of Service. It's the regional center's authorization for a service category, a time period, and a dollar amount. The FMS enters each POS so every visit and invoice can be checked against it and the remaining budget can be tracked.
Can a parent be paid to support their adult child in SDP?In many cases, yes. A family member who lives in the home can often be paid as a direct service worker. Their hours are usually set up under a live-in version of the service, which may be exempt from Electronic Visit Verification. Confirm the specifics with your regional center and your FMS.
Why is the regional center billed more than a support worker's hourly pay?The regional center bill for a direct service worker includes the worker's pay plus a burden rate that covers employer costs such as payroll taxes. For example, a worker earning $25 an hour with a 20 percent burden is billed at $30 an hour. Vendor invoices have no burden and pass through at the invoiced amount.
Can an independent facilitator see the family's budget?Yes, when the FMS gives them access. In Ankota, independent facilitators can use the FMS app on the web or a smartphone. A facilitator who works with several families at the same FMS is set up once and then added to each participant they support.
What happens if we switch FMS providers in the middle of the year?The new FMS enters your POS for the months that remain, with the remaining dollars rather than the full-year amount. Any final transactions should be posted in the old system first, so your starting balance with the new FMS is accurate.
Ankota's mission is to enable the Heroes who keep older and disabled people living at home to focus on care because we take care of the tech. If you need software for home care, EVV, I/DD Services, Self-Direction FMS, Adult Day Care centers, or Caregiver Recruiting, please Contact Ankota. And if you're ready to see how the most innovative agencies are using AI to empower their caregivers and automate the rest, meet your new companion at www.kota.care.