From January 2014 through May 2015, a joint working group with experts from each Service, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Readiness and Force Management) developed the NAFSGL. The working group dedicated over 3000 work hours to analyze, develop, and validate the NAFSGL and common framework. They cross-walked over 800 accounts in each Service’s existing chart of accounts and researched commercial industry standards and generally-accepted accounting principles to create a uniform chart of accounts, complete with 185 accompanying account definitions, that met each Service’s financial accounting and reporting needs.

The NAFSGL is a modified version of the United States Standard General Ledger and must be used for accounting and financial statement reporting to ensure the information in the financial statements is consistent for all Nonappropriated Fund Instrumentalities (NAFIs). Use of the NAFSGL provides standardization and sufficient traceability from the financial statements through the general ledger balances to the source documentation for audit purposes.

The NAFSGL applies to all NAFIs in DoD, except NAFIs whose accounting is currently handled through a Military Service exchange financial system.