Publication of payments data general notes
1. A key to the data, which describes the data under each of the column headings, is in a separate file on this web page.
2. The date given in the date column relates to the date the transaction was posted in the respective feeder system and not the actual date the item was posted in the general ledger. The dates shown can therefore sometimes be outside of the month in which they are actually posted to the Council’s accounts as payments systems and purchase card systems feed the general ledger and there is often a short time lag between the 2 systems updating.
3. Some items can be entered as credits on the payments system and remain unprocessed, awaiting a further invoice from the supplier, to take the credit against. This can occasionally be several months or a considerable time before the credit is eventually taken and will show as a transaction from an earlier period although it was actually processed in the publication month.
4. Some payments relate to credit card transactions and for these there is no vendor or supplier number available as suppliers are paid directly by the credit card company and the Council reimburses the credit card company for the whole monthly balance due to them. The supplier name is given as appropriate and the type of expense listed.
5. Some payments shown as income may relate to payments made for adult care, where the recipient of the service has to make a contribution towards the cost. This is shown as an income item in the transaction.
6. Similarly, some loan payments issued contain a fee/insurance element, which is also shown as a negative amount. As an example if a loan were issued for £1000 and a 2 percent insurance premium was added, the payment would show as +£1,020 and -£20 to another separate code. The net figure would be £1,000 in the Council’s accounts.
7. Other negative amounts may be due to various reasons such as:
- a credit given by the supplier against faulty goods
- discounts given for early payment or other reasons.
9. Where the supplier column shows **REDACTED PERSONAL DATA**, we have removed the name of the payee as this is personal data. However, the rest of the information remains available to view.
| Column | Column content | Example | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1A | Open Data Link | http://opendatacommunities.org/ | Open data website link |
| 2B | Body Name | London Borough of Havering | Name of the organisation making the payment - in this case the London Borough of Havering. |
| 3C | Posted Fiscal Date | 17/12/2010 | The date the payment transaction was recorded in the payables system. This is not the actual date of payment, which is generally a day or so later. |
| 4D | Amount | 1950.00 | This is the actual value of the transaction. Where there are several lines in a transaction, the value of each line is given. This most commonly occurs where a particular invoice contains goods or services supplied to more than one Council department. Negative amounts are preceded by a minus sign and generally relate to credits or corrections. This does not include VAT. |
| 5E | Transaction Number | JUN15L19 | This is a unique number for each individual transaction in the dataset. |
| 6F | Supplier Name | A COMPANY NAME LTD | This is the full name of the supplier. |
| 7G | Directorate | Community and Resources | This shows the directorate within the Council - which is in essence a grouping of services - to which the expenditure relates. |
| 8H | Service | Streetcare | This denotes the service area responsible for spending the money and is useful to compare spend between different organisations or authorities. |
| 9I | Activity | Borough Roads | This identifies the specific area within the service where the spend occurred. |
| 10J | Cost Centre Name | New Rds And St Works Act | A further hierarchy step where the spend actually took place. |
| 11K | Subjective Name | PHOTOCOPYING | This identifies the spend type. This is a general heading to describe the nature of the spend. The descriptions and categories derive from the Best Value Accounting Code of Practice (BVACoP). |