Bill Payer

The one-sentence answer

The simplest of the three Financial Management Service models: the FMS pays your bills and your vendors out of your budget, and nobody is hired as an employee.

What this means for you

This is the model for buying things, not for employing people. If your plan is mostly purchases and vendor services — a gym membership, a music therapist who invoices you, equipment, classes — Bill Payer does the job.

There is no employer burden. Burden is the extra cost of employing someone. If nobody is an employee, there is nothing to add. That makes Bill Payer the cheapest model in terms of what your budget actually spends — not because the FMS charges less, but because there are no payroll taxes, no workers' compensation and no sick leave accrual sitting on top of an hourly wage.

The catch is that you cannot hire anyone under it. The moment you want to employ a support worker directly — someone you set the hours for, someone you supervise — you need Co-Employer or Sole Employer instead.

You can still use most providers. Aside from the FMS itself, providers you buy from do not need to be regional center vendors. Bill Payer is about how the money moves, not about who you are allowed to choose.

For the detail-oriented

The official DDS name for code 315 is FMS – Fiscal Agent. "Bill Payer" is the plain-language name used in the DDS FAQ and on the FMS contact list. Both are current; no single DDS document puts them side by side, which is why you will see each on its own.

What the regional center pays for it — not you. The published DDS rate schedule is tiered by how many employees and providers appear in your spending plan, and single goods purchases are excluded from that count:

Employees / providers in the plan	Monthly rate
0–4	$230
5–10	$450
11+	$690

Slightly higher rates apply where the participant's preferred language is not English — $255, $495 and $760 respectively. Since 1 July 2022 the regional center pays this outside your individual budget, so it does not reduce what you have to spend, and it is the same to you whichever provider you choose.

Note that the DDS rate documents use the plain model names and do not print the code numbers, which is a common source of confusion when comparing a rate sheet against a spending plan.

Not every FMS offers every model. Ask before you assume, and ask in writing.