Ledger
The ledger is our source of truth at Open Collective. It is the foundation that makes possible crowdfunding contributions, added funds, grants and expenses. All these financial interactions generate transactions that are recorded in the ledger. Most users interact with the ledger indirectly by making contributions and submitting expenses and for most users that is enough. However, as the platform has grown, larger organizations who rely on the platform, primarily fiscal hosts and medium-to-large collectives, need to use information from the platform for accounting purposes. In response to these needs we are making the ledger itself more visible, accessible and legible to users.
Stay tuned for an in-depth explanation of the Open Collective ledger
Interested in exploring the Ledger? Dive into the transactions table
Separate payment processor fees and taxes
From January 2024 payment processor fees and taxes were separated from the transaction record in the ledger.
Over the last couple of years, we’ve received feedback from fiscal hosts and accountants that has prompted us to make a change to the ledger to make more it more consistent and future proof. We’ve modified the ledger so that payment processor fees and taxes are recorded as separate transactions.
This is how payment processor fees and taxes were represented in the ledger until now, as fields/properties of a transaction:
| type | kind | amount | paymentProcessorFee | netAmount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
CREDIT | CONTRIBUTION | 100 | 1.8 | 98.2 |
For contributions or expenses made after January 2024, separate transactions will be recorded for payment processor fees and taxes. For example:
| type | kind | amount |
|---|---|---|
CREDIT | CONTRIBUTION | 100 |
DEBIT | PAYMENT_PROCESSOR_FEE | -1.8 |
CSV Export Backwards Compatibility
The default export configuration hasn’t changed and still includes a column for payment processor fees. However, from 2024, payment processor fees are exported as separate transactions and the payment processor fee column will be set to zero. If you need to continue to export data (from the 1st of January 2024 and onward) with payment processor fees as a column (instead of separate transactions) enable the “Separate transactions compatibility” option. This will convert the newly separated payment processor fee transactions back into transaction columns.
Dashboard Transactions List
In the dashboard transactions tool the new transactions (for payment processor fees and taxes) will appear as separate transactions. In this screenshot the blue line on the right hand side of the table is a visual indicator for a group of related transactions. Here you can see that a (now separate) Payment processor fee transaction is related to the contribution transaction.
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