Glossary of Terms – Transparent Utah
Glossary of Terms
Transparent Utah provides access to financial data. If you drill down in a graph or table to see further details you may see column titles that are “accounting” titles. This glossary provides a brief description of some of the most common terms.
Transparency File Layout Description
Please note that these terms are accounting terms that have been adapted to the Transparent Utah environment.
- Cat The category which identifies the grouping or type of revenue or expense to which the transaction was recorded.
- Contract Description A brief description of the nature of the contract between the vendor and the entity. This description may be helpful when looking up a contract on an entity’s purchasing website.
- Contract Number The number assigned by the entity which identifies the specific contract between the vendor and the entity. This number may be helpful when looking up a contract on an entity’s purchasing website.
- Entity Describes an individual governmental unit such as the State of Utah, a higher education institution, or other political subdivision that is required by statute to participate in the transparency initiative.
- Entity Transaction ID The document number by which the transaction is tracked in the entity’s accounting system.
- Fiscal Period An accounting period of 12 months. The State of Utah operates on a fiscal year basis running from July 1 to June 30 each year. Local entities may have a fiscal period the same as the State of Utah or may use a calendar year period.
- Fnct An abbreviation of the term Function which describes a way to group expenditures and revenues by a type of activity.
- Fund A self-balancing set of accounts recording assets, liabilities, and equity. A fund is used to segregate financial information for carrying on specific activities or attaining certain objectives. For the State of Utah entity, most individual funds are created by statute, although a few were created for administrative accounting purposes. At the highest level, funds for the State of Utah are grouped by fund type according to governmental accounting standards.
- Org An abbreviation of the term Organization which defines the way an entity is organized functionally, starting at the top level and drilling down to lower levels. Each entity defines its own organizational structure. For example for the State of Utah entity, the top level of organization represents agencies and departments. The second level of organization represents the line item of appropriation (legislated spending authority) and the third level represents each program within the line item of appropriation.
- Posting Date The date the transaction was recorded within the entity’s accounting system.
- Prog An abbreviation of the term Program which is a plan of activities and procedures designed to accomplish a predetermined objective or set of objectives.
- Total Calculates the total of the amounts returned by the website for a particular search.
- Transaction Description Describes the nature of the transaction.
- Transaction Detail Specific information pertaining to each transaction including amount, vendor, fund, category and organization.
- Tran The Transaction Detail which includes specific information pertaining to each transaction including amount, vendor/payee/customer, fund, category and organization.
- Type The Transaction Type. Transparent.utah.gov contains five types of transactions: Expense or monies spent from government coffers; Revenue or money received by the government entity; Employee Compensation showing salary and total employer paid benefits related information by specific employee; Stimulus Expense or monies spent under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA); and Stimulus Revenue or monies received under ARRA.
- Name Used to represent the name of the Vendor/Payee/Customer. For the Expense transaction type, this is the name of the business or individual the entity paid. For the Employee Compensation Transaction type, this is the name of the employee. For the Revenue transaction type, this is the name of the business or individual who remitted money to the government entity. At this time, the State of Utah and most local entities are not displaying names for Revenue transaction types due to privacy concerns.