ANN ARBOR -- The city of Ann Arbor Tuesday launched A2OpenBook, an interactive Web site designed to increase financial transparency by disclosing all City of Ann Arbor expenses and revenue in a simple and easy to use format.

The online resource, at www.a2gov.org/a2openbook, allows citizens easy access to information to better understand how the city is spending tax dollars, fees and other city revenue.

"While the city of Ann Arbor has always believed that local government should be accountable for every dollar spent and has shared financial data and records online with citizens, the A2OpenBook website takes financial transparency to the next level by making information even more accessible to all," said Ann Arbor interim city  administrator and CFO Tom Crawford. "This Web site is a great example of how our city government is working to share financial information with our public in an easy to understand format that doesn't require any knowledge of our accounting structure or system."

How does A2OpenBook work?
* Every 24 hours, City of Ann Arbor financial data is downloaded directly from the city's Logos financial database and uploaded to the A2OpenBook Web site.
* A2OpenBook allows citizens to view city spending and revenue information, which can be browsed in a variety of ways, including vendor (search by alphabetical list or expense amounts); expense type (choose from more than 300 categories such as utilities, materials and supplies or travel); service area; service unit; and fund (choose from all budgeted funds, such as the City's General Fund, Water and Sewer funds, Major Streets fund, or Parks Maintenance and Capital Improvements Millage fund)
* All budgets and actual amounts are included, except the budget of the Housing Commission which is not required to be approved by City Council and expenditures for the DDA and Housing Commission, which maintain their own financial systems.
* Information is available for expenses beginning July 1, 2010 through the present. A2OpenBook will continue to accumulate data for each subsequent fiscal year.
* Data is updated daily.

For user convenience, each data set is available to download via Microsoft Excel. Specific instructions are provided on each webpage.