Posting of Financial Information by All
Participating Entities
Policy #01-01.02
Effective: January 19th, 2010
Last Revised: March 20th, 2024
Last Reviewed: March 20th, 2024
Purpose
The purpose of this policy is to establish procedures related to the posting of participating entities'
financial information to Transparent Utah or to their own website.
Definitions
Transparent Utah - The Utah Public Finance Website created by UC 67-3-12 and administered by the Office of the State Auditor.
Participating Entity - has the same meaning defined by UC 67-3-12 1.C
Board - The Utah Transparency Advisory Board created by UC 63A-18
Policy
No Entity Size or Budget Threshold
Effective May 10, 2016, there is no longer an entity size requirement or budget
threshold for reporting to Transparent Utah. Senate Bill 99, passed in the 2016 Legislative
General Session, removed the option for the Board to set a budget threshold for
reporting to Transparent Utah. All participating entities, regardless of budget size, are now
required to report to Transparent Utah as outlined in this policy. Also see Utah Code 63A-3-
405(4) – (5).
Except as noted in Policy (A)(3) below, those participating entities who previously
were not required to report financial information to Transparent Utah must begin reporting on
or before January 1, 2017. They must include financial information generated on or
after the first day of the entity’s fiscal year that includes January 1, 2017.
If the participating entities’ annual budget is less than $100,000, they have until July
1, 2017 to start reporting financial information generated on or after the first day of
the entity’s fiscal year that includes January 1, 2017.
Required Public Financial Information
Local Education Agencies (LEAs) must use the Utah State Board of Education’s
(USBE) standard chart of accounts when submitting data to Transparent Utah. The USBE
standard chart of accounts can be found at https://schools.utah.gov/financialoperations/reporting
All other participating entities, except for state participating entities, must follow the
Uniform Chart of Accounts requirements issued by the Office of the Utah State Auditor
when submitting data to Transparent Utah. Information on the State Auditor’s Uniform Chart
of Accounts can be found at https://resources.auditor.utah.gov/s/article/Forms-Manuals-Guides
Revenue and Expense Transactions: Participating entities shall submit detail revenue and
expense transactions from their financial accounting system to Transparent Utah at least quarterly and
within one month after the end of the fiscal quarter. However, all entities must report revenue and
expenditure transactions at least annually.
A participating entity must send a request which may be by email or by online webform, to the
Office of the State Auditor to request approval to report less frequently than quarterly.
The Office of the State Auditor may consider the participating entity’s extenuating
circumstances such as: staffing, i.e. all volunteer; lack of a computerized
accounting system; or severely limited number, value, and/or timing of
transactions.
If approved, the Office of the State Auditor will issue a written exception to the
requesting entity explaining the parameters of the exception
The Office of the State Auditor will report to the Board the entities granted an
exception and the reason for the exception.
At yearend, entities should submit year end transactions as soon as possible. Entities with
the system capability to do so are encouraged to upload adjusting entry files during year
end closing as transactions are posted to their accounting system. Entities without this
capability should upload a replacement file or files and have the files(s) being replaced
deleted to avoid duplication. All transactions such as audit adjustments shall be submitted
within 6 months of fiscal year end
Nontaxable employee allowances and reimbursements must not be reported as part of
employee compensation data, but must be reported, in detail by employee, at least
quarterly with expense transactions, even if paid through a separate payroll system. No
change is needed if nontaxable employee allowances and reimbursements by employee
are already included in expense transactions because they were paid through their
integrated financial accounting system
Employee Compensation: Participating entities will submit employee compensation and
taxable reimbursement summary information on a basis consistent with its fiscal year to Transparent
Utah at least once per year
and within 90 days after the end of the fiscal year.
Submit Expenditures Recorded NOT W-2 Income.
Employee compensation and taxable reimbursement summary information will
represent all expenditures recorded by the entity related to the employee’s salary and
benefits. The information may NOT agree to what was reported on an employee’s W-2
since the actual expenditures incurred by the entity to keep an employee in the position
can be greater than taxable income. The differences can be due to items such as deferred
compensation and non-taxable employee insurance premiums.
Employee compensation and taxable reimbursement summary
information will, at a minimum, break out the following amounts
separately for each employee:
Actual total wages or salary recorded as an expense by the entity, (not
budgeted amounts), and may include employer paid deferred compensation;
Total employer-expensed (employer paid and employer accrued) benefits only,
which shall include all employer-expensed benefits like FICA, retirement and 401K
contributions, deferred compensation (not included in wages and salaries in (a)(i)
above), health and dental insurance, workers compensation, unemployment insurance,
self-assessed internal rates for leave payouts, life insurance, and other similar items
recorded as a personnel-related expense by the entity, benefit detail is not allowed;
Incentive awards;
Taxable allowances and taxable reimbursements, if recorded separately in the
participating entity’s payroll system;
Leave paid, if recorded separately from wages or salary inthe participating
entity’s payroll system.
In addition, the following information will be submitted for each employee
Employee Name
Hourly rate for those employees paid on an hourly basis. Not required for
salaried employees, or transactions such as benefits, incentives, or
reimbursement items not paid on an hourly basis.
Gender
Job Title
A unique number used to identify each employee must be included on every
employee compensation transaction in the Vendor ID code field. This unique number
will be used by the website and users who download data to summarize and group
employee compensation data accurately for each employee.
All detail transactions or records are required to be submitted; however, the words "REDACTED" shall
be inserted into any applicable data field in lieu of permanently private,
protected, or controlled information.
Entities are encouraged not to submit the actual transaction description for each record.
Actual transaction descriptions may include private data such as student names, account
numbers, or other confidential information because it is usually data in a free-form field
that isn’t edited by their accounting system.
Data Submission Procedures
Public financial information will be submitted to Transparent Utah in a pipe delimited text file.
The detail file layout is available from the Office of the State Auditor and can be found transparent.utah.gov/detail_file_layout.php
Data will be submitted to Transparent Utah at the detail transaction level. Transactions for
compensation information for each employee may be summarized into transactions that
represent an entire fiscal year.
Each transaction submitted to the website must contain the information required
in the detail file layout including:
Organization – Classifies transactions within the entity’s organizational or
functional structure. If available in the entity’s systems, at least 2 levels of
organization will be submitted but not more than 10 levels.
Category – Classifies transactions and further describes the transaction type
such as revenues or expenses. If available in the entity’s systems, at least 2
levels of category will be submitted but not more than 7 levels.
Fund – Classifies transactions by fund types and individual funds. At least
1 but not more than 4 levels of fund will be submitted.
Each detail revenue and expense transaction record in file layout form should be
constructed so as not to duplicate information from general and subsidiary ledgers for the
same related transaction or summary general ledger posting. In order to construct the file
layout record, it may be necessary to extract related detail transaction record information
from integrated ledgers within a financial accounting system or another system. This may
include such information as payee, vendor, contract name/number, etc. if such information
is not available from the general ledger. Duplicate information resulting from separate
transaction entries such as correcting or adjusting entries is permitted.
Entities Using their Own Website
Entities that wish to post public financial information to their own websites must post
information similar to what is described in this policy for entities that are posting information to the
UPFW. This includes searchable and downloadable information at the detail transaction level from
their general ledger and annual compensation information for each employee.
Each entity that wishes to use its own website must submit a proposal to the Office of State Auditor of
Finance
describing how the required public financial information will be posted to their website and how it
will meet the requirements of this policy. The Office of State Auditor will review the proposal and
make an initial determination on whether the entity’s website meets the requirements of this policy.
The Office of the State Auditor will report its findings to the Board for final action. If the Office of
the State Auditor does not feel that the website meets the requirements of this policy, the entity may
appeal
the decision to the Board for further consideration and a final decision on whether the entity’s
website is adequate.