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Dallas ISD check registers
2:46 PM Mon, Feb 04, 2008 | Permalink
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April 2008
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A commenter on another thread recently expressed frustration over the district’s on-line check register. I think we can help. Click here to download, in an Excel spreadsheet, the last six monthly check registers, dating to the start of this fiscal year. Have at them. HOWEVER – there are some caveats that you MUST read before you do any sort of sifting or calculating of this data. Click the jump to read the data caveats. We have registers going back five years, if anybody wants more of them. The dataplanation: 1. The data is exactly as we received it from the district. If a field is blank, that’s how the district gave it to us. 2. Many, many checks are listed multiple times. If, for example, a single check bought multiple items, or the money involved came from several accounts, the check will be listed for each item and/or account. As a result, checks are often duplicated in the dataset. You need to account for the duplicated checks when totaling dollars. 3. The data is best viewed in a database manager that will allow you to filter it in specific ways. Group the data by Check#, Date, Amount and Vendor to obtain a data set containing totals for single checks. From this, you can compile totals for vendors. Always refer back to the original list of checks when you want to see details - like what was purchased or which accounts paid the bill. |
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Comments
Posted by park @ 12:23 PM Tue, Feb 05, 2008
$2500 for an office chair? Is it a chair or a throne?
Posted by Kent Fischer @ 3:30 PM Tue, Feb 05, 2008
Caution is advised when looking at these checks, please the read caveats. This is a good example of why.
There are several chairs associated with amounts around $2500.00. Let's look at one bought on Sept 24, 2007.
If you were to search or sort by the word chair in data you would find:
988696 9/24/2007 $2,543.00 500733 Chair WE BID FURNITURE
This looks like Check 988696 bought 1 chair for $2543.00.
But if you search the data for this check number you will see that other items were included in this purchase:
988696 9/24/2007 $2,543.00 500731 Sofa WE BID FURNITURE
988696 9/24/2007 $2,543.00 500732 Seat WE BID FURNITURE
988696 9/24/2007 $2,543.00 500733 Chair WE BID FURNITURE
988696 9/24/2007 $2,543.00 700285 Coffee and End Table Combo WE BID FURNITURE
988696 9/24/2007 $2,543.00 100355 Counter Height Table WE BID FURNITURE
988696 9/24/2007 $2,543.00 100357 Stool, Black WE BID FURNITURE 2
988696 9/24/2007 $2,543.00 7173 Computer Desk WE BID FURNITURE
So that purchase bought a sofa, a loveseat, three tables, a stool and a computer desk in addition to the office chair. That's why we published the caveats along with the data and that we strongly urge people to read and understand them before they make use of the spreadsheets.
Posted by Taxedout @ 10:15 AM Wed, Feb 06, 2008
Wonder if that sofa makes into a bed? Shades of Yvonne to me. I know I am bitter, however, flowers, furniture for offices, and fancy restaurants irritate me when most of us are trimming out budgets.