Summary

  • By 2001, the National Recreation Reservation Service sold bookings through a call centre, field computers and ReserveUSA.com, with separate destinations for recreation-use and reservation fees.
  • A 2003 GAO report identified campsite reservation fees among collections held in a suspense account, with revenue recognised later when the money was spent on other operational needs.

Getting a camping reservation onto the Internet solved a pleasant problem: people could plan their escape from the computer while sitting at the computer. Behind the screen, their payment had further travelling to do. A campsite booking ended with somewhere to stay. Public accounting needed to establish what had been collected and when it became revenue.

The National Recreation Reservation Service opened its Internet sales channel, ReserveUSA.com, in May 1999, according to the official programme’s later historical timeline, printed on page 4 of the 2014 operating manual. The call centre had started in October 1998; a field sales channel followed in summer 1999. The web joined an operation with several front doors.

The Forest Service’s report for fiscal 2001, published in May 2002, describes those doors in use: telephone, computers at field locations and an interactive website. The service covered facilities on Forest Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lands. People could find reservable campgrounds, cabins, day-use areas and wilderness permits by map or state. A toll-free number remained part of the offer.

The report also follows the fees. Money collected from the public went into a U.S. Treasury account. Recreation-use fees went back to the agency or concession managing the campground; the reservation fee paid the contractor. There was an institutional route behind the apparently small act of securing a place outdoors.

The fee’s waiting room

A May 2003 GAO report makes the accounting part unusually tangible. On printed page 14 it identifies certain collections, including map sales and campsite reservation fees, for which the Forest Service failed to record revenue when collected. The money was recorded in a suspense account. Revenue was recognised when it was used for other operating needs, rather than when earned. GAO said the practice could misstate revenue and related costs.

The customer’s payment and the agency’s recognition of revenue were landing at different points in the story. A suspense account had become a waiting room for a piece of the financial record. For managers trying to understand a service’s income and costs, the date attached to that record mattered.

The same report recorded real progress: the Forest Service had obtained its first unqualified financial-statement audit opinion for fiscal 2002 after committing substantial resources to the work. The outstanding task was to make reliable financial information part of ordinary operations. GAO recommended a comprehensive strategy assigning actions, resources, dates and responsibility. The agency agreed.

That leaves a more revealing history of an early booking website than its launch date alone. The browser gave the public another way to reserve a campsite. Inside government, receipts still had to reach the appropriate accounts, and people had to reconcile them. Even an Internet holiday came with paperwork that needed to arrive.