United States Navy Working Capital Fund - DWCF and NWCF Operations

DWCF and NWCF Operations

The support functions financed through the NWCF, as part of the DWCF, are grouped together at the DWCF level into business areas that are managed within DoD. Business areas receive their initial working capital through an appropriation or transfer of resources from an existing revolving fund. This working capital is called the "corpus" and is used to finance the initial costs of goods and services. Resources to replenish the corpus are generated by acceptance of customer orders. Customer orders are obligations on the appropriations of the ordering activity. The business area delivers the goods or services ordered using the funds in the corpus, and then bills the customer based on the rates set for those goods and services. The fund is replenished when the customer pays the bill to the fund.

Customer orders accepted by the NWCF activities must be either obligations of a federal government activity or cash advances from non-federal government customers. The acceptance of a customer order creates a quasi-contractual relationship between the NWCF activity and its customer. The customers of each NWCF activity are responsible for budgeting for and budgetary control of the cost of end products and services ordered from the NWCF activity. The customer cannot use its appropriated funds to do indirectly (through the NWCF activity) what it is not permitted to do directly. The availability of an appropriation cannot be expanded or otherwise changed by transfer to the NWCF. The customer bears the primary responsibility for the determination of the applicability of its appropriated funds in the orders placed with the NWCF activity.