Help

How to get started?

Follow the 5 simple steps and you are good.

  1. Register an account, provide basic details such as your name. Verify your account via email confirmation. Click here to register.
  2. Setup your organization by providing details about your organization such as name, a brief about your organization, etc. Also select a subdomain for your organization under our domain.
  3. Download Ledger template files and fill them using Excel. Upload the filled templates back to OpenReporting.com
  4. Review your changes, see how the information looks in the web report. If you are happy with the changes, publish the report to public or your closed group.
  5. Share the published report on your website, social networks or with a closed user group (in case of private organizations)

How to fill the excel templates?

Diagram below shows the various data sets required to form the report.

Ledger and Accounts data have to be uploaded to OpenReporting in order to share it with your stakeholders. Chart of Accounts is the first dataset that needs to be uploaded, followed by Budget and Ledger. Though the report will not be complete without a Budget, it is not mandatory. The report can show the actuals alone, as well. However both Ledger data and Budget data are dependent on Chart of Accounts and hence it has to be uploaded first.

There are three template files, one each for Chart of Accounts, Budget and Ledger. You can download these template files using the links below or from Uploads section in the dashboard. Click on the links below to download the templates and then follow the instructions under the link or inside the file...

  1. Chart of Accounts template
    1. Chart of Accounts is the first dataset that should be uploaded.
    2. Do not alter column headers.
    3. All columns are mandatory.
    4. Account#: Alphanumeric string denoting account numbers. Account numbers uploaded as part of previous uploads will be ignored in this upload. If you want to update the Account, use the Accounts section in the Dashboard.
    5. Account Display Name / Category: The descriptive name for the account. This will be shown on the report legend as categories. You may want to make this look nice.
    6. Parent Account#: Parent account number for the account. This mapping decides the hierarchy for the drill down operations in the report. Parent Account numbers should be either uploaded in previous uploads or specified in this sheet with respective Account Display Name and the mapping to their Parent.
    7. The top most Accounts in the hierarchy, should fall under Income (Account# 1) or Expense (Account# 2) accounts which are preset in the database. You can configure this in the sheet by setting the parent of an account as 1 for Income or 2 for Expense.
  2. Budget template (Annual, Monthly)
    1. Chart of Accounts should be uploaded before uploading Budget.
    2. Do not alter column headers.
    3. Columns in green (Account#, Account Display Name / Category) are prepopulated for your convenience. Fill the columns in blue, against the accounts. These columns are mandatory.
    4. Fill the annual or monthly budget amounts, against the respective columns, for every account. If left out, the respective budget amounts will be considered as zero in the database.
    5. If your Fiscal year (ex: FY2015) starts on April (April 2014 - March 2015), then months after April (May, June, July, etc…) are from previous Calendar year (CY2014) and months before April (Jan, Feb and March) are from current calendar year (CY2015). Please remember this while filling in the monthly amounts in respective month columns.
    6. Changing or removing account numbers will result in not setting the budget amount for those accounts.
  3. Ledger template
    1. Chart of Accounts should be uploaded before uploading Ledger.
    2. Do not alter column headers.
    3. All columns in Blue are mandatory. Description is optional.
    4. Date: format YYYY-MM-DD
    5. Amount: numeric values only (no currency signs, commas, etc.)
    6. Rest of the columns are of type Text.
    7. Account#: All account numbers here should match with the accounts in Chart of Accounts, uploaded before.
    8. Txn#: Transaction numbers should be unique in the ledger.
    9. Type: Allowed values are "Credit" and "Debit"
    10. Description: You can add any additional details here, like a description about the transaction, links to related attachments, etc.

How to map your domain?

Once you have setup the organization and published a ledger report, you can start working on linking activities.

To do this you will have to add an A record in your DNS entries for the subdomain you want to map (transparency in this case) and set the IP address as our IP address (127.0.0.1). Users who access the transparency.yourorganization.com will be presented with the report as if it is sent from your website.

Caution: Changing DNS records is a serious business. Please seek expert advice before doing so.