Example: The City of Toronto 2023 budget using the ‘cash allocation basis’ of budget accounting

This is a demonstration of what the application of the ‘cash allocation basis’ would look like when applied to a real Toronto budget. I took the <a href="https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/budget-operating-budget-program-summary-by-expenditure-category/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Operating Budget Program Summary by Expenditure Category</a> spreadsheet for 2023 from Toronto’s open data portal (about 20,000 line items), and applied the ‘cash allocation basis’ to summarize it. Here are the results. It turns out the 2023 budget is closer to $15.1B, with $13.4B spent on expenses, and $1.7B (net) transferred to corporate accounts for reserves, capital investments, and repayment of debt principal. (But note the fully corrected revenue and expense figures could be even lower — see Note 1 below). <a href="https://medium.com/@henrikbechmann/example-the-city-of-toronto-2023-budget-using-the-cash-allocation-basis-of-budget-accounting-683e8b53b0c4">Website</a>