Product
Why we built FMSLio specifically for California SDP
5 min read
California's Self-Determination Program serves thousands of participants through a network of FMS providers, Regional Centers, vendors, workers, and Authorized Representatives. Each role has its own responsibilities, its own touchpoints, its own compliance requirements. And until recently, all of that operated on spreadsheets and Google Forms held together by the goodwill of the people running each FMS organization.
The gap we kept seeing
Talking to FMS providers, the same picture came up again and again: Excel files for participant tracking, QuickBooks for invoicing, a separate timesheet tool for workers, paper sign-offs for vendor relationships, a shared inbox for everything else. The tooling couldn't keep up with the program's complexity, and each FMS provider was solving the same problems in slightly different ways — every solution a one-off, none of them shareable.
Why generic tools don't fit
Generic ERPs treat every transaction as interchangeable. California SDP isn't like that. A timesheet entry references a participant, a worker, a service code, an authorization, a regional center, and possibly a budget threshold. A vendor invoice references many of the same things plus W-9 status, insurance dates, and document expirations. None of that fits cleanly into an ERP's "general ledger" view of the world.
Generic payroll tools don't understand parallel approval. They don't know that a timesheet needs sign-off from both the participant and the FMS admin before it can be paid. They don't model EVV exceptions. They don't know what a "burden rate" is.
What we decided to build
FMSLio is built specifically for the California SDP ecosystem. Participants, ARs, workers, vendors, and FMS admins each get a portal designed for their actual workflow. Service codes are first-class. EVV is built in. Burden rate tracking, document expiration management, regional center workflows — all of these are core features, not afterthoughts.
We're launching with a small cohort of California FMS providers and growing from there. The goal isn't to be a generic platform that California happens to use; it's to be the platform California FMS providers choose because it speaks the same language they do.
Want to see how FMSLio handles this?
30-minute demo. We'll show your specific California SDP scenarios.