If you’re responsible for your state’s OAAPS State Performance Report (SPR)—especially if it’s your first rodeo—this starter guide is designed to help you get oriented fast. It distills practical tips and hard-won lessons from state staff who have prepared and submitted SPR data over the years: what to gather, when to do it, and where the common snags tend to be. Important caveat: this guide is not official OAAPS guidance. For authoritative requirements, definitions, templates, and deadlines, always refer to the Administration for Community Living (ACL). Think of this as your quick-start companion to the official materials—something you can skim to understand the workflow and then use alongside ACL resources as you dive into your first submission.
OAAPS SPR Overview
Every state reports services funded by the Older Americans Act (OAA) to the federal government each year through the Older Americans Act Performance System (OAAPS). This is called the State Performance Report (SPR).
At a very high level, what needs to be reported is:
- Counts of clients & caregivers served
- Client demographics
- Counts of service units
- Expenditures
- Agency information (number of staff, providers, etc.)
The reporting period, or fiscal year, is October to September. Reports are due in OAAPS by January 31 each year.
Typical State Timeline
- September: Review and fill in missing demographic data from the previous fiscal year
- October: Enter final service data from the previous fiscal year; begin pulling together financial data
- November: QA service & financial data; do a test upload in OAAPS to review any errors
- December: AAA submissions are due to the state (if doing AAA OAAPS uploads) along with narrative explanations of any discrepancies from the previous year
- January: states compile AAA narratives into a state narrative; final state report is due on the 31st
Data can be uploaded and/or hand entered into OAAPS by states or AAAs. If AAAs upload their own data, then the state needs to approve their submissions before rolling the data up into the state level report.
Data will be compared to the previous year. For a subset of metrics, if their data varies more than 10%, states need to submit an explanation for the variance .
Data Preparation
Each data point reported in OAAPS is assigned with an “ACL Ref Code”.
Example: CD-02-02-C1 = total unduplicated count of clients served with a cluster 1 service who are age 60-64
To upload your data into OAAPS, you will need to format it into the Upload Template, which is a table with ACL Ref Codes identifying each data point and your totals for each one. The Upload Template can be found in the ACL Resource “Title III State Performance Report Data Dictionary”. For tips on how the upload file works, see the ACL Resource called “Title III SPR Upload Guide”.
If you are new to ACL Ref Codes, it may be helpful to review the ACL Resource called “OAAPS Title III State Performance Report with ACL Ref #s”. This file lays the codes out in a table format that shows the cross section of data points that define each one. It can be used in conjunction with the ACL Resource “Appendix A: Data Element Definitions” to understand the terms and what is required.
Before you can upload your data, there are a few data preparation steps you will likely need to take:
- Service mapping
- Missing data
- Data validation
Service Mapping
The OAAPS system has a standard set of service types that can be reported under three categories: Older Adult, Caregiver of Older Adult, and Older Relative Caregiver. States must map the services they have set up in their database system to these service types. Typically this is done well ahead of reporting season, but in some systems you may need to review and update these mappings each year to ensure they are correct.
Example: You may map the service “HDM - Hot” in your database to “Home Delivered Nutrition” for the SPR
You can find definitions of the standard service types in Table 2 of the ACL resource called “Appendix A: Data Element Definitions” in the Resources section of the OAAPS website.
Note that each standard service type has a specific unit type (e.g. ‘meal’, ‘per hour’, etc.) so services should either be tracked in your database using the same unit type or you will need to convert the unit types to match the standard before entering data in OAAPS. There are three exceptions to this rule:
- “Other Services” can use any unit type
- “Supplemental Services” can use any unit type
- “Health promotion (evidence and non evidence-based)” only require reporting clients served and not units, so any unit type can be used.
Each service type has a corresponding data point for the total funds spent on the service. This is called an “expenditure”. Each expenditure total is divided into allocation categories based on where the funds originated:
- State
- Federal
- Non-State
- Program Income
Typically this information is kept by finance teams with accounting software, but it may also be stored in an Excel spreadsheet or similar tool.
Missing Data
For certain services, states are required to report on the client demographics and scores for the clients served. If a client received qualifying services, but the demographics and/or scores were not collected, that data is reported as “missing”. States can only have 10% of demographic data missing in their SPR.
The standard SPR service types (e.g. home delivered nutrition, homemaker, etc.) are grouped into larger categories that have different requirements for client demographic and score data.
- Registered Services: These services require demographic information for clients
- Cluster 1: These services also require ADL/IADL scores
- Cluster 2: These services do not require ADL/IADL scores
- Nutrition Services: These services also require Nutrition Risk Scores
- Non-Registered Services: These services do not require client demographics
- Restricted Services: This is Legal services, which require demographics but must be collected confidentially.
You can find the list of service types in each of these categories in Table 3 of the ACL resource “Appendix A: Data Element Definitions” in the Resources section of the OAAPS website.
Using these categories tied to your service mapping, you should be able to build a report to identify clients missing required information (e.g. clients that received homemaker services that are missing ADL/IADL scores).
Most states ask their providers to fix missing data. Typically, it makes sense to reach out to the provider that served the client most recently with a service that requires the information. Providers will typically either enter paper forms into the database that were missed or call the client to complete the intake information.
Data Validation
There are many validation rules enforced in the OAAPS system that apply whether you upload the data or enter it manually.
- For rules about the format of data in the upload file, see the ACL Resource called “Title III State Performance Report Data Dictionary”. This includes the data type for each ACL Ref Code and whether or not the field is required.
- For rules about how specific ACL Ref Codes should relate to each other in the upload file, see the Resource called “Title III Data Validation Checks”. This includes things like how codes should add together to get correct total values.
If your reporting tool generates the upload file for you, it should have the validations referenced above built in.
Some ideas for other things you can check in your data:
- The ages of clients served and care recipients under each funding source and/or service type. Some services do not allow clients to be served who are under age 60, for example.
- NSIP eligibility for clients receiving meal services
- Care relationships on clients receiving caregiver services
- If there are units reported for a service type, there should be >$0 expenditures, and if there are >$0 expenditures for a service type, there should be units and clients served.
- Check that the number of total unduplicated clients served is reasonable (sometimes this number is too high if group services are not reported correctly).
- Reconcile annual expenditure data with invoices throughout the year.
Uploading Data
It can be a good idea to upload a test file in OAAPS as soon as possible after the October 1 start date in order to see the errors you may run into. You can always upload again and overwrite the previous upload, so it doesn’t hurt to test it out early.
One important thing to note is that if you enter data manually and then upload data with the same ACL Ref Code, the upload will overwrite the manually entered data. It’s usually best to get a complete upload done before making any manual edits to avoid issues with losing manually entered data.
If AAAs are uploading their data separately, the state will need to generate a “roll up” report of all of their data when they are done to generate the final state report.
Variance Explanations
Once you’ve uploaded your data, most likely you will have some ACL Ref Codes flagged for variance >10% which you will need to write a variance explanation for. You can find the list of ACL Ref Codes that require a variance explanation in the ACL Resource called “Title III State Performance Report Data Dictionary” (filter on the “Variance Statement Required” column).
Variance explanations need to be fairly specific. You can find examples of what a specific variance explanation looks like in the ACL Resource called “Generating Variance Explanations and Analysis Reports”.
Other Tips
- Many states will do a mid-year review of their OAAPS data to catch any potential issues early. For example, doing a review of missing data in the spring or summer can help reduce the workload in the fall.
- Having your finance team track your agency’s expenditures for OAAPS every month can make it much easier to manage reporting in the fall. You may still need to make adjustments at the end of the year, but it can be a major time saver to have the allocations worked out ahead of time!
- The OAAPS system and reporting requirements can change year to year. There is an ACL Resource called the “Universal Change Log” which lists all of the changes. It is a good idea to check this in late summer or early fall to make sure you know about anything you may need to update in your upload file or data mapping.