Monthly spend reports
Mr Eric Pickles, the Secretary of
State for Communities and Local Government, has called upon local
authorities to provide greater financial transparency by publishing
spending information over £500* including VAT.
This spend information must be published by 31
January 2011. The Government, on the 1 October 2010, issued
guidance in relation to the information that should be reported in
support of the published expenditure. This guidance set out the
detail on the expected format and content of published spend data
and confirmed that details of any payment made to a supplier, where
the invoice total was £500* or more including VAT, must be
published. As the invoice total could comprise an element of VAT
which in most cases the Authority is able to recover, any
recoverable VAT is, as a result, excluded from the published
data.
The guidance requires further details and
analysis to be shown for each type of expenditure and also the
disclosure of the area of activity to which it relates. As
one invoice can be for different types of spend and be
charged across more than one budget heading there may be more than
one expenditure line shown for an invoice. An explanation of the
information published is shown in the glossary of terms used
below.
The Authority has published details of
spending for the months of April 2010 through to October 2010 on
this website but the new report showing all the information
required by the guidance note has been added to the reports
published from November 2010 onwards.
This detailed spend analysis will be published as soon
as possible after the end of the reporting month.
* From September 2012 this Authority started to publish spend
data where the invoice total was £250 or more including VAT.
Publishing formats
We are publishing the data in two formats - PDF (portable
document file) and CSV (comma-separated values). The PDF format is
the easiest format in which to read the data but it does not allow
the data to be analysed or sorted, so if you wish to do this then
you should use the CSV format, which allows you to put the data
into a spreadsheet.
Viewing CSV format data
Please note that the CSV format uses a standard column width and
not all entries may be completely visible.
To view all of the data, you will need to expand the columns.
You can do this in Microsoft Excel and most other spreadsheet
software by selecting all the cells in the file (the grey box
beside column A and above row 1), and then clicking on
Format > Column > AutoFitSelection.
Glossary of Terms
The reports from November 2010 include the following
information:
| Transaction date |
This is the date that the transaction was
entered into the accounting system. It is not necessarily the same
date that the supplier was paid |
| Functional
area (cost centre related) |
A summary heading that aggregates spending
for the area of the service incurring the expenditure. |
| BVACOP classification
(account code related) |
In the Best Value Accounting Code of
Practice (BVACOP) the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and
Accountancy (CIPFA) prescribe the way in which all local
authorities should summarise nominal ledger codes together to
identify all spending on employees, premises, transport, supplies
and services etc. |
| Expense type (account
code description) |
The description given to the nominal
ledger code. |
| Expense code (account
code number) |
The nominal ledger code used for
transactions of a similar type. |
| Supplier ID |
A unique identifier held within the
accounting system for each supplier. If a supplier has different
bank accounts for different areas of operation e.g Kent County
Council there may be more than one supplier ID set up for this
organisation. |
| Supplier
name |
The name of the supplier. |
| £ Amount |
The amount of spend charged to the
particular expenditure code or budget heading (excluding
reclaimable vat). |
| Invoice
number |
The supplier’s invoice number. |
| Transaction
number |
A unique identifier for each
transaction. |
| Supplier VAT
number |
This information is not a mandatory
requirement but it is shown where it has been input on to the
supplier record. |
More information
If you have any queries about the information in these reports
please email spendenquiry@kent.fire-uk.org