Spending Application Overview

Glossary of Terms

Disbursement Amount – amounts paid for goods and services that may be currently tax deductible (as opposed to capital expenditures).

Expense Category – decrease in equity caused by the using up of City assets in producing revenue or carrying out other activities that are part of the City’s operations.

Spending Category – Funds paid out (money) in buying or hiring goods or services

Issue Date – Date on which a check was created.

Contract ID – A unique number that the City assigns to track a specific contract.

Document ID – A unique number assigned.

Capital Project – Long-term investment project requiring relatively large sums to acquire, develop, improve, and/or maintain a capital asset (such as land, buildings, dykes, roads).

Payroll Spending – Total amount required to pay workers and employees during a week, month or other period.

Capital Spending – An amount spent to acquire or upgrade productive assets (such as buildings, machinery and equipment, vehicles) in order to increase the capacity or efficiency of an agency for more than one accounting period.

Contract Spending – All spending associated with any City contract that is paid to a vendor for completing the required tasks.

Trust and Agency Spending – Trust and agency funds are those monies on deposit with the City for which the City has a fiduciary responsibility, i.e. the City acts as a trustee or custodian. Such funds belong to organizations, groups, clubs, etc., which are associated with, but not under the immediate control of, the City.

Other Spending– Miscellaneous spending not associated with the above categories.

MWBE – The term M/WBE means Minority or Women-Owned Business Enterprise. The Business Enterprise is at least fifty-one percent (51%) owned by, or in the case of a publicly owned business, at least fifty-one percent (51%) of the shares are owned by citizens or permanent resident aliens who meet the definition of a designated minority group(s), including Black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific, Asian-Indian OR a woman or women.

Prime Vendors – Prime vendors are chief contractors who have a contract with the City, and have the full responsibility for its completion. A prime vendor undertakes to perform a contract, and may employ (and manage) one or more subvendors to carry out specific parts of the contract. Also may be referred to as Prime Contractors.

Sub Vendors – a secondary vendor, who contracts with a prime vendor (and not the City directly) to perform some or all of the prime vendor’s contractual obligations under the prime contract. Also may be referred to as Sub Contractors.

M/WBE Category – Refers to one of the categories of vendors who are eligible for M/WBE status. They are as follow:

• Asian American - having origins in the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Pacific Islands, or Indian subcontinent.
• Black American - having origins in any of the Black African racial groups
• Women (Non-Minority)
• Hispanic American - being of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Central or South American descent, of either Indian or Hispanic origin, regardless of race
• Native American - Native American or Alaskan Native persons having origin in the original peoples of North America.
• Emerging (Non-Minority) - A Sole Proprietorship, General Partnership, Limited Partnership, Limited Liability Partnership, Limited Liability Company, or Corporation. Nonprofit organizations that is at least 51% owned, operated, and controlled by persons who can demonstrate social and economic disadvantage, and who have experienced chronic and substantial negative treatment in the United States. The persons' ability to compete must have been impaired due to diminished access to capital and credit, and the net worth of each socially and economically disadvantaged owner must be less than $1 million.

Unit of Appropriation - Department Department Codes List
Object Class - Spending Expense Category Spending Expense Category Codes List

How to Navigate the Domain

Top Navigation Bar – Allows you to move from one domain to another.

Graph Visualization – provides visualization for the following:

• Total Spending
• Top Ten Agencies by Disbursement Amount
• Top Ten Contracts by Disbursement Amount
• Top Ten Prime Vendors by Disbursement Amount

If you allow your cursor to hover over the bars in the charts, you will be able to see what each bar represents. The graphs automatically change every 40 seconds, or you can click on the circle beneath the graph to forward through to the next visualization.

The bars on each graph are hyperlinked to the specific spending transactions that the graph illustrates.

The Grid view hyperlink above the visualization displays the information on the graphical visualization as numeric data in a table format within a new browser window which can be exported to an excel spreadsheet. (A new browser window displays the information).

Bottom Navigation Bar – Allows you to look through different contract types for the Fiscal year selected.

Show Details Hyperlink – By clicking on this hyperlink, you can expand the page to show another layer of detailed Contract information.

Column Arrows – The arrow in front of the ‘Current Amount’ and ‘Dollar Difference’ columns allow you to sort the information by greatest or least amounts.

‘+’ Button – By clicking on the ‘+’ button, the widget will expand from a ‘Top 5’ listing to display a maximum of 150 rows of record. When expanded, the ‘+’ symbol will transform to the ‘-‘ symbol and a ‘Details’ link will appear next to the ‘-‘ symbol. Clicking on the ‘Details’ link will bring you to an exportable detail transaction page. Clicking on the ‘-‘ symbol will collapse your records back down to ‘Top 5”.

'Details' link – Clicking on the ‘Details’ link will bring you to an exportable detail transaction page.

Blue Hyperlinks – Clicking on the blue hyperlinks will refresh the page for the information selected. Clicking contract number hyperlinks will bring you to a detailed contract history page and clicking on the ‘Spent to Date’ hyperlinks will take you to a Spending Domain pop-out page.

POP-OUT PAGES – Whenever you are in one domain (i.e., Spending) and click on a hyperlink which takes you to a different domain (i.e., clicking on Contract ID will take you to the Contract Domain), a pop-out page will appear displaying the information from the new domain while allowing you to stay in the current domain you have open.

Featured Dashboard M/WBE and Sub Vendors – M/WBE and sub vendor Featured Dashboards contain subsets of spending data from the Spending domain. Please view the Instructional video located on Checkbook's home page within the Help section located at the top of the page for detailed navigation instructions.