How to read public contracts and spend

Two different files

A Contracts Finder row is a notice. It says a buyer published an opportunity, an award, or a similar record on that service. It is not the council minute that agreed the spend, and it is not the invoice that paid it. A payment line is a row in a spend file a body published. A committee paper is a PDF from the body's papers page. Three grains. Do not collapse them.

The Sources catalogue is where the papers live. Money holdings sit beside them. Logged out, the Money page is a short public landing. The rows themselves need a seat. That split is the same as titles versus full text.

A notice can name a supplier. The name is what the notice printed. If the notice also prints a company number, the number is the identifier. A name alone does not attach a company. See company numbers.

Empty spend is not proof

If a body has no spend file on this index, that means no file is held here. It does not mean the body paid nobody. It may publish spend somewhere we have not loaded. It may publish under a threshold. It may use a format this pass did not take. Absence of a row is absence of a row.

The same caution runs the other way. A payment line is not proof of a contract award, and an award notice is not proof the invoice was paid. Match them only when both files exist and you can cite each one. Do not infer the missing file.

NHS payment rows are their own files. They are not Contracts Finder, and they are not board papers. The NHS desk keeps that split. Do not add NHSBSA rows to trust payment lines and call the sum one account.

A worked example

Open Birmingham City Council for papers. A Cabinet minute about a procurement is a minute. If you also want the award notice, that is a contract record, not a second copy of the minute. Read the publisher and the type.

If the minute names a supplier and does not print a company number, you have a name in a paper. You do not yet have an attached company. Search the number only when you have the number. Inventing a number from a trading name is how two firms get merged.

Methodology states that a published identifier attaches two records and a name in the text does not. Use that rule on a notice the same way you use it on a minute.

What this is not

Keep a notice, a payment line, and a minute in three lines of your notes. Write the publisher on each. If one of the three is missing, leave the gap. Filling the gap with a likely supplier is how a briefing becomes unfair. The index will not fill it for you.

Thresholds matter. A spend file of payments over a published floor will not show a smaller invoice. Say 'over the published floor' if you describe the file. Do not describe it as all spending. NHS payment files have their own floors and their own payers. Read the file name. When you brief someone, show them one notice and one minute side by side and ask which decision each records. The notice records what was published on the contract service. The minute records what the meeting agreed to publish. Neither records the other's fact. A later invoice, if you have it, records a payment line. Three sentences, three files. If your note has only one sentence, you only have one file, and the note should say so in the first line. Readers forgive a gap. They do not forgive a gap that was papered over with a confident supplier name. Leave the name in quotes as the file spelled it. If you later find the number in a different file, attach the number there, and say which file printed it. Do not quietly edit yesterday's note so it looks as if the number was always in the minute. The minute did not change. Your knowledge did. The citation should show that.

It is not a claim that a contract was poor value. It is not a complete national spend database. It is the notices and payment lines held here, cited back to the publisher.

Full rows need a seat. Start a trial to open them.