Transaction

Definition

The IATI activity standard enables transaction information to be published.

The transaction data is a core component to IATI, detailing the flow of monies between organisations.

Considerations

When using the IATI activity standard to declare transaction, the following should be considered:

  • Every iati-activity should contain at least one transaction. However, this may not always be possible for early-stage activities, for example.

  • Every transaction must contain a transaction-date , value, value-date and transaction-type.

  • For every transaction a type contained on the TransactionType codelist is required,

  • There are several types of transactions. The most common are:

    • Incoming funds (code*1*) - the funds received from a funding source (e.g. a donor).

    • Outgoing Commitment (code*2*) - the total agreed committed budget for the activity (this may or may not match the value of the activity’s budget)

    • Disbursement (code*3*) - the amount transferred to another organisation in the aid delivery chain (e.g. a partner organisation being funded).

    • Expenditure (code*4*) - the outlay on goods and services and project overheads.

  • The value of a transaction can be positive or negative, and contain decimals. It should not contain comma separators (eg: 3,000)

    • example: 3000 or 3000.00 or -3000 is acceptable. 3,000 is not

  • Both the transaction-date and value-date must be in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD), eg: 2014-03-21.

  • Neither of transaction-date and value-date can be in the “future”. A transaction always describes something that has taken place.

  • A transaction can be declared in any currency on the Currency codelist.

  • A transaction can also include finance-type , flow-type , aid-type and/or tied-status information.

  • Both currency and finance-type , flow-type , aid-type, tied-status can be set as defaults in the iati-activity element. There is no requirement to restate these within a transaction if they are the same.

  • A transaction can also contain information on the source and destination organisation. When describing these the provider-org and receiver-org should be used. Ideally, the unique organisation identifier would be included.

  • Where possible, it is recommended that a transaction includes the provider-activity-id and/or receiver-activity-id to reference the iati-activity from which funds flow from/to.

2.01+ Considerations

In versions 2.01 and above, the following must also be considered:

  • Dates should be a valid xsd:date, and a datetimes should be a valid xsd:dateTime.

  • A recipient-country, recipient-region` and sector can also be published as child elements of a transaction. When this is done, it is expected that all transaction include such data, whilst the relevant element is subsequently not included at the iati-activity level. Also none of these elements when published as child elements of a transaction need or use a percentage attribute as they do at the iati-activity level.