Creating Annotations

What Are Annotations?

Annotations are brief explanatory statements you can add to the top of sections of your budget drill down to give context to the information shown, similarly to how you might add annotations or footnotes in your budget packet. We often see customers use annotations to explain if funds/items are specifically included or excluded in a particular budget bucket, or to point users to additional information about a particular department, program, or service. They are a way to give extra color to the data! Annotations are accessible via the admin panel of your finance app.

Annotations can be added to the hierarchy fields, but also to the fiscal year. These annotations are treated differently and appear in different places on the budget page.

Note: You may add annotations to each of the modules of your Open Budget or Open Checkbook site(s) and each module’s annotations are independent.

Adding an Annotation

To add an annotation, you will want to map out where you would like it to show up within your site by tracing the hierarchy drill down. Under Field Annotations, the API Field Name maps back to the columns in your underlying dataset (and therefore to the hierarchy you demarcated when you initially set up the module of the site). Once you’ve selected an item from this drop down tool, the Item Name drop down tool will populate with all of the items grouped under that column (once you’ve selected the bucket, it will show you all of the things in the bucket). This indicates the page your annotation will show on. For example, in this walkthrough image below, the “department” bucket is selected in the API Field Name column, and “Police” as the Item Name. When adding this annotation in the Annotation field, we expect the Police department page in the Revenues module to show my annotation.

To add additional annotations, simply click “Add Additional Annotation” at the bottom of the page. To delete an annotation, select the trash can icon on the far right side of the row. Deleting an annotation is permanent and they are not retrievable once deleted.

Always remember to save your changes regularly by clicking “Save Changes” at the top of the page!

Upload & Editing Options

Most people choose to manually input and edit their annotations. However, we have provided a csv upload and download option as well.