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OrgBudget Specification

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OrgBudget

The Modular Standard for Organizational Budgeting

OrgBudget is a modular specification for organizational budgeting that divides an organization-wide budget into independently managed departmental modules. Each department can maintain its own budget, expenditures, revenues, forecasts, commitments, priorities, and financial records while remaining connected to a unified organizational budgeting framework.

The specification is designed for businesses, governments, nonprofits, educational institutions, and other organizations that require structured, transparent, and accountable financial management. OrgBudget supports independent departmental budgeting while providing centralized reconciliation, organizational reporting, auditability, and oversight.

Specification Goals

OrgBudget is designed to:

  • Divide organizational budgets into independent departmental modules.
  • Provide consistent budgeting standards across departments.
  • Maintain separation between departmental financial records while supporting organization-wide reconciliation.
  • Track planned, committed, and actual financial activity.
  • Support operating and capital budgeting.
  • Support revenue, expenditure, personnel, procurement, contracts, grants, transfers, reserves, and shared expenses.
  • Provide forecasting and variance analysis.
  • Maintain transparent approval and amendment processes.
  • Preserve financial history and audit records.
  • Support AI-assisted budget planning and reporting.
  • Keep human authorities responsible for financial decisions and approvals.
  • Allow organizations to add, remove, modify, or expand modules as their needs change.
  • Support interoperable and vendor-neutral implementations.

Core Modules

Organizational Budget Framework

The Organizational Budget Framework establishes the organization-wide financial model.

It defines:

  • Fiscal periods.
  • Organization-wide budgets.
  • Budget categories.
  • Funding sources.
  • Organizational priorities.
  • Financial rules.
  • Budget ceilings and constraints.
  • Departmental allocations.
  • Centralized funds.
  • Restricted funds.
  • Reserves.
  • Capital and operating budgets.
  • Budget approval requirements.
  • Amendment rules.
  • Reporting requirements.

The framework provides the common structure through which departmental modules operate.

Department Budget Modules

Each department operates as an independent budget module within the organizational framework.

A Department Budget Module may contain:

  • Department identity and authority.
  • Allocated budget.
  • Revenue sources.
  • Operating expenditures.
  • Capital expenditures.
  • Personnel costs.
  • Procurement.
  • Contracts.
  • Grants.
  • Transfers.
  • Reserves.
  • Commitments.
  • Planned expenditures.
  • Actual expenditures.
  • Forecasts.
  • Budget requests.
  • Priorities.
  • Approvals.
  • Supporting documentation.
  • Budget amendments.
  • Reporting configuration.

Departments may use the same standardized structure while maintaining independent financial records and management responsibilities.

Budget Planning Module

The Budget Planning Module manages the creation and revision of budgets.

It supports:

  • Department budget requests.
  • Organizational allocation planning.
  • Proposed expenditures.
  • Revenue projections.
  • Personnel planning.
  • Capital planning.
  • Operating planning.
  • Funding requirements.
  • Budget priorities.
  • Multi-period planning.
  • Scenario planning.
  • Proposed reallocations.
  • Budget amendments.

Budget proposals remain distinguishable from approved budgets and actual financial activity.

Expenditure Management Module

The Expenditure Management Module records and manages organizational spending.

It supports:

  • Planned expenditures.
  • Approved expenditures.
  • Committed expenditures.
  • Actual expenditures.
  • Purchase orders.
  • Contracts.
  • Recurring expenses.
  • Personnel expenses.
  • Capital expenses.
  • Departmental expenses.
  • Shared expenses.
  • Funding sources.
  • Supporting documentation.

Expenditures should remain attributable to the appropriate department, budget category, funding source, and fiscal period where applicable.

Revenue Management Module

The Revenue Management Module records and manages funds available to the organization and its departments.

It supports:

  • Revenue sources.
  • Departmental revenue.
  • Organizational revenue.
  • Grants.
  • Transfers.
  • Restricted funding.
  • Dedicated funding.
  • Projected revenue.
  • Actual revenue.
  • Revenue allocation.
  • Revenue reconciliation.

Revenue records should identify their applicable restrictions and allocation rules.

Forecasting and Variance Module

The Forecasting and Variance Module compares financial expectations with actual performance.

It supports:

  • Budget versus actual analysis.
  • Revenue variance.
  • Expenditure variance.
  • Departmental variance.
  • Forecast revisions.
  • Remaining budget calculations.
  • Projected year-end balances.
  • Historical comparisons.
  • Scenario analysis.
  • Variance explanations.

Organizations may establish thresholds that require review when significant variances occur.

Reconciliation Module

The Reconciliation Module ensures that departmental financial information remains consistent with the organization-wide budget.

It supports:

  • Departmental allocation reconciliation.
  • Organization-wide totals.
  • Transfers between departments.
  • Shared expenses.
  • Centralized services.
  • Unallocated funds.
  • Restricted funds.
  • Reserves.
  • Capital budgets.
  • Revenue attribution.
  • Budget amendments.
  • Reconciliation exceptions.

The module should identify discrepancies between departmental records and organizational totals without silently modifying financial records.

Approval and Governance Module

The Approval and Governance Module defines authority over financial decisions.

It supports:

  • Budget approvals.
  • Expenditure approvals.
  • Allocation approvals.
  • Transfers.
  • Amendments.
  • Forecast approvals.
  • Departmental authority.
  • Organizational authority.
  • Delegated authority.
  • Approval history.
  • Rejected proposals.
  • Escalation requirements.

Human authorization remains authoritative for financial decisions, including decisions informed by AI-generated recommendations.

Reporting Module

The Reporting Module provides standardized financial reporting across departmental and organizational levels.

It supports:

  • Department reports.
  • Organization-wide reports.
  • Budget reports.
  • Expenditure reports.
  • Revenue reports.
  • Forecast reports.
  • Variance reports.
  • Capital reports.
  • Personnel reports.
  • Grant reports.
  • Management summaries.
  • Public transparency reports.
  • Custom reporting periods.

Reports should identify whether information represents planned, approved, committed, forecast, or actual financial activity.

Transparency and Audit Module

The Transparency and Audit Module maintains an accountable record of financial activity and decision-making.

It supports:

  • Original budgets.
  • Budget amendments.
  • Departmental changes.
  • Allocations.
  • Transfers.
  • Approvals.
  • Rejections.
  • AI recommendations.
  • Human decisions.
  • Supporting documents.
  • Timestamps.
  • Responsible authorities.
  • Version history.
  • Reconciliation records.
  • Audit trails.

Historical records should remain traceable so that changes to financial information can be understood over time.

AI Assistance Module

The AI Assistance Module provides optional assistance for budgeting, analysis, reconciliation, and reporting.

AI assistance may include:

  • Organizing budget requests.
  • Categorizing expenditures.
  • Identifying missing budget information.
  • Detecting duplicate entries.
  • Identifying unusual expenditures.
  • Comparing current spending with historical patterns.
  • Forecasting potential variances.
  • Identifying inconsistencies.
  • Summarizing departmental budgets.
  • Generating organizational financial summaries.
  • Identifying potential budget conflicts.
  • Suggesting possible reallocations.
  • Assisting with report preparation.

AI-generated information must remain distinguishable from human-approved financial information. AI recommendations do not constitute financial authorization and must not independently approve, modify, or execute financial decisions unless explicitly authorized through an applicable governance process.

Optional Plugin Modules

OrgBudget may be extended through optional plugin modules without changing the core specification.

Payroll Plugin

Provides specialized personnel budgeting and payroll analysis.

It may support:

  • Salaries.
  • Benefits.
  • Overtime.
  • Staffing projections.
  • Position budgets.
  • Personnel forecasting.
  • Departmental workforce costs.

Procurement Plugin

Provides expanded procurement management.

It may support:

  • Vendor records.
  • Purchasing workflows.
  • Bid processes.
  • Purchase orders.
  • Contract tracking.
  • Procurement thresholds.
  • Vendor spending analysis.

Grants Plugin

Provides specialized grant budgeting and administration.

It may support:

  • Grant awards.
  • Grant restrictions.
  • Matching requirements.
  • Grant expenditures.
  • Grant revenue.
  • Grant reporting.
  • Compliance tracking.

Capital Planning Plugin

Provides specialized capital budgeting.

It may support:

  • Capital projects.
  • Project budgets.
  • Asset acquisition.
  • Construction expenses.
  • Long-term capital forecasts.
  • Project commitments.
  • Capital funding sources.

Public Transparency Plugin

Provides public-facing financial reporting.

It may support:

  • Public budgets.
  • Departmental spending dashboards.
  • Revenue disclosures.
  • Budget amendments.
  • Approved expenditures.
  • Historical financial reports.
  • Machine-readable public records.

Taxpayer Cost Transparency Plugin

Provides additional visibility into costs associated with government budgeting and financial administration.

It may track:

  • Administrative costs.
  • Licensing-related costs.
  • Financial system costs.
  • Contracted services.
  • Budget administration expenses.
  • Cost allocation.
  • Costs attributable to specific programs or activities.

Where licensing is used, costs directly associated with licensing issuance, administration, verification, renewal, and enforcement should be recovered through the licensing activity itself rather than being shifted into unrelated tax-funded budgets.

Scenario Planning Plugin

Provides expanded financial modeling.

It may support:

  • Alternative budgets.
  • Funding scenarios.
  • Revenue changes.
  • Staffing changes.
  • Program expansion.
  • Program reduction.
  • Economic assumptions.
  • Contingency planning.
  • Long-term projections.

Integration Plugin

Provides controlled integration with external financial systems.

It may support:

  • Financial records.
  • Payroll systems.
  • Procurement systems.
  • Grant systems.
  • Accounting systems.
  • Reporting systems.
  • Data import and export.
  • Scheduled synchronization.

Integrations should preserve OrgBudget’s financial classifications, approval history, auditability, and data provenance.

Modular Design Requirements

OrgBudget implementations should maintain clear separation between modules while allowing controlled communication between them.

Modules should:

  • Have defined responsibilities.
  • Maintain clearly identified records.
  • Use consistent financial identifiers.
  • Preserve departmental boundaries.
  • Support controlled data exchange.
  • Maintain auditability.
  • Avoid unnecessary duplication.
  • Permit optional functionality to be added without requiring unrelated modules.
  • Allow organizations to modify or expand their implementation as requirements change.

Optional plugins should not be required for organizations that do not need their functionality.

Data Integrity Requirements

Implementations should maintain accurate distinctions between:

  • Proposed amounts.
  • Approved amounts.
  • Committed amounts.
  • Actual amounts.
  • Forecast amounts.
  • Amended amounts.
  • Transferred amounts.
  • Restricted amounts.
  • Unallocated amounts.

Financial records should not be overwritten in a manner that eliminates the ability to reconstruct previous states.

Human Oversight Requirements

AI and automated processes may assist with financial analysis and administration but should not replace accountable human authority.

Implementations should provide mechanisms for:

  • Reviewing AI recommendations.
  • Approving or rejecting recommendations.
  • Recording human decisions.
  • Identifying responsible authorities.
  • Reviewing automated classifications.
  • Correcting erroneous classifications.
  • Auditing automated activity.

Financial decisions should remain attributable to an authorized human or formally established governing authority.

Interoperability Requirements

OrgBudget implementations should support exchange of organizational budget information without requiring dependence on a single vendor or service provider.

Implementations should provide consistent representations for:

  • Departments.
  • Budget periods.
  • Allocations.
  • Revenues.
  • Expenditures.
  • Commitments.
  • Forecasts.
  • Approvals.
  • Amendments.
  • Transfers.
  • Reconciliation records.
  • Audit records.

Licensing Cost Recovery

Where an implementation uses licensing fees associated with OrgBudget specifications or related licensing services, revenue generated from licensing should directly cover the expenses associated with issuing, administering, verifying, renewing, and enforcing those licenses.

Licensing administration costs should not be shifted into unrelated organizational budgets or passed to taxpayers through unrelated tax-funded activities.

Compliance

An OrgBudget implementation should maintain:

  • Modular departmental budgeting.
  • Organization-wide reconciliation.
  • Financial traceability.
  • Approval accountability.
  • Audit history.
  • Transparent reporting.
  • Human oversight of AI-assisted decisions.
  • Accurate separation of planned and actual financial activity.
  • Compliance with the applicable AGPL-3.0+ licensing requirements.

Specification Branding License (SBL)

Standard

Optional

License & Notice Requirements

OrgBudget is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

By contributing to any Open Arsenal project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.

Please note the following:

  • All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
  • Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to:
    Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
  • OrgBudget specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
  • The project’s notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments. Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also update notice.md.
  • When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
  • Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.

For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.

Notice – OrgBudget

Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.

Contributors

This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.

  • Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – September 6, 2026
    Created the repository for OrgBudget. Created the modular standard for organizational budgeting, including departmental budget modules, AI-assisted budget planning and reporting, financial accountability, and licensing cost recovery requirements.
  • [Add other contributors here] – [Date]
    [Describe contribution in one sentence]

License – OrgBudget

This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

Key Points

  • You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
  • All redistributions, forks, and derivative works or network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
  • The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.

For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.

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