A plan and a ledger
The adopted budget is a set of appropriations: authority to spend, by department and account, agreed by the Mayor and Council before the fiscal year starts on July 1. The Controller is the City's auditor and general accountant and keeps the official books, which show the state of each fund and what money was spent on. The two records start from the same numbers and then diverge.
The budget changes during the year
After adoption, money can be transferred between accounts and departments, and the Council can appropriate money from the Reserve Fund and the Unappropriated Balance. The CAO's Financial Status Reports recommend many of these changes during the year.
The Controller's budget and expenditures data records each step for every account: the adopted amount, amendments, transfers in and out, and a total budget “net of changes and transfers.” LA Receipts calls that total the final budget. It can be larger or smaller than the adopted amount, which is why a department can spend more than its adopted budget.
Spent, committed, or neither
The same data separates money spent from money promised. It lists the actual cash expense; the encumbrance, an “obligation or commitment to pay for a good or service”; anticipated commitments; and the uncommitted balance left after both.
The budget is kept on a modified cash basis: appropriations cover both payments and encumbrances for purchase orders and contracts, and encumbered money not paid by year-end is paid in a later year. Under the City's General Fund encumbrance policy, unspent encumbrances generally revert after one fiscal year, or three for supplies and equipment, with exceptions for legal obligations and projects that cannot be finished in time. Special funds' continuing appropriations are carried forward to the next year. The budget is not prepared on generally accepted accounting principles; the City's Annual Comprehensive Financial Report is, and also classifies transfers between funds differently.
Timing and scope
The budget data is organized by budget fiscal year, while the checkbook records each payment with its own transaction date. A payment made in August against a contract encumbered the previous year can therefore appear in different years in the two records. The Controller lists both datasets as refreshed monthly, so the latest weeks can be incomplete in either.
Scope differs too. Budget figures include salaries and every other cost, while the checkbook lists payments to payees, and LA Receipts' spending pages narrow it further to outside vendors (see what the checkbook shows).
The departments page shows adopted budget, final budget and spending side by side; All City funds adds money committed but not yet spent.