City-Parish Departmental Expenditure Records

Department-level spending data for the City-Parish of Baton Rouge supports the Open Checkbook BR web portal. The dataset includes payments categorized by fund, department, function, and expense type. It is published by data.brla.gov and was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyze spending trends over time using YEAR, CHECK DATE, and INVOICE LINE ITEM AMOUNT.
• Categorize expenditures by government function using DEPARTMENT, FUNCTION, and EXPENSE CATEGORY.
• Track vendor payments and identify major payees using VENDOR NAME and VENDOR ZIP.
• Audit payment processing workflows using PAYMENT STATUS, INVOICE STATUS, and SOURCE DOCUMENT TYPE.
• Associate financial transactions with budget codes using FUND ID, COMMODITY CODE, and DIVISION ID.

Strengths

• Provides detailed categorization with 29 columns including department, function, and expense codes.
• Supports transaction-level auditing with fields for CHECK NUMBER, INVOICE NUMBER, and SOURCE DOCUMENT NUMBER.

Limitations

• Some expenditures are excluded as they are not tied to a particular department.
• Sensitive information like full check numbers and account numbers are masked, reducing traceability.
• Sample data and total row count are unavailable for assessing dataset scale.

Provenance

Source

data.brla.gov

Collection Method

Extracted from City-Parish financial systems to support the Open Checkbook BR portal.

Freshness

Last updated April 2026.

Geography

City-Parish of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.