Financial Transparency

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Transparency Portal

The City of Eau Claire is committed to financial transparency. In this spirit, the City has partnered with OpenGov to develop this Financial Transparency Portal to give you, the Eau Claire stakeholder, a transparent view of how your funds are invested in the delivery of outstanding services that distinguish us as an All America City. From this landing page, you can access budget documents, financial reports, as well as interact with financial data through our innovative Open Finances and Open Checkbook functionality (see below).

OPEN FINANCES
This site provides you the opportunity to view, filter, and analyze revenue, expense, and balance sheet financial data for your City. You can analyze financial trends from 2012 to current from a micro point-of-view (e.g. salaries within the Operations Division of the Fire Department) to a macro point-of-view (e.g. total budget for the Public Works Department). Also, you are not limited to viewing your City’s financial data online as you can download the data (e.g. in Excel) for offline analysis at a time and place that it is convenient for you.

OPEN CHECKBOOK
This site provides you the opportunity to view, filter, and analyze every expenditure transaction from 2012 to current including such detail as vendor name, $ amount, transaction date, description, etc. It’s your money; you have a right to know how it’s spent.

Tips on How to Use the Financial Transparency Portal

The portal allows you to explore budget and historical finances in a simple graphical user interface. The main view includes a chart or graph, a legend and various controls to view expenses by departments out of various funds.
You'll notice the title of the chart or graph you are viewing on top along with the account type selector. You can use the filter to see the data that is of most interest to you.
To focus on specific data - like a fund, department, expense type, or any combination - look to the left and use the menu on the side panel. These selectors allow you to specify exactly what breakdown you want the graph or table to represent. When you select "Filtered By" the data filter pops up and allows you to turn-on or turn-off selected filters for that category - funds, departments, expense type.
Keep in mind that some departments or expenses only receive funds from specific funds - if the department or expense is not funded from a particular fund, it will be grayed out.
There are five different types of visual representations of the data - an area graph, an area graph by percentage, a line graph, a pie chart, and a table. You can change your view at any time by simply selecting the different type of representation. The data will automatically convert. These functions are on the top right.
You can also download the data into a .csv spreadsheet or a .png image.
You can share the data, in any view, on a social network or by email.
The City of Eau Claire's main fund is the General Fund which includes all City departments (e.g. Police, Fire, Parks & Recreation, Public Works, Community Development, etc.). With the exception of the Health Department and Library, all property tax dollars flow through the General Fund. Other functions of City government will be reported in separate funds (e.g. Emergency-911 Fund, Sanitation Fund, etc.).
Some expenditures or revenues do not track year to year. For example, there may be expenditure for a specific item or project in Fiscal Year 2014 that the City no longer uses. These expenditure categories will only be visible for the years they were used. After that, they will be zeroed out.

Free viewers are required for some of the attached documents.
They can be downloaded by clicking on the icons below.

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