Transparent Utah Disclaimers
Periodic Upload of All transactions
This website, Transparent.Utah.gov, contains detailled transactions which are uploaded to the website periodically by the individual entity. Revenue and expense transactions are uploaded at least quarterly. When data is uploaded during the year, the transactions will not be audited and will not “tie”, that is will not perfectly agree with, year end audited financial statements. This is not a flaw in the system, but rather a reflection of the fact that the goal is timely and frequent access to data by the public, while accounting reconciliations are performed annually.
Also, all expenditure transactions are posted to the website such as internal transactions which do not relate to any payee/vendor/customer. These non-vendor transactions will display “Not Applicable” in the vendor field on the detail transaction page. During the year, more and more transactions will be loaded to the website, including correcting entries which may reverse or change the effect of previous entries. The original entry is not modified on the website but both the original and subsequent correcting entry will be included.
Protected and Excluded Data
The expenditure data includes payments to vendors and employees whose names are considered protected due to one or more of the following reasons:
- Legal protective orders.
- Federal or State privacy laws.
- Vendors who are not corporations.
An example of this are law enforcement officers who work undercover or whose identity otherwise needs to be protected.
All expenditure transactions are included on the website, however if the vendor or employee name is protected for any of the reasons listed above, the vendor name on the specific transaction will be displayed as “Not Provided”. At this time, customer names are not displayed for any revenue transaction.
The following State Independent Entities are not required by statute to send information to the website:
- Utah State Retirement Office
- Worker’s Compensation Fund
Employee Compensation
The salaries or wages shown in the Employee Compensation transaction type are the actual amounts paid to an employee during the annual reporting period and may only reflect a portion of the reporting period due to timing of hiring or leaving employment or other reasons.
The actual amount paid may also only be for part-time employment, job sharing (multiple positions), or for a position occupied only a portion of the annual reporting period due to a change in status such as a promotion.
The amounts shown should not be construed to represent the budgeted, contracted, or negotiated wage or salary for an employee. The amount should also not be used in an attempt to determine weekly, monthly or other periodic payments made to an employee.
Employee Compensation amounts shown are not necessarily comparable between entities. Job descriptions in one entity may be different than that of another entity for the same job titles, causing a corresponding difference in salary. Length of service and previous experience upon hire are other factors that may cause differences.
In addition to salary information, employee compensation amounts include benefit amounts paid on behalf of, but not necessarily to, the employee, such as health and dental insurance, FICA, unemployment tax, retirement rates, etc. Employee Compensation transactions are uploaded annually.
Employee Compensation amounts include only taxable employee reimbursements. Nontaxable employee reimbursements are included in the Expense transaction type.