If you have experience keeping books in QuickBooks, Xero, or any such general ledger package, most of ISP will feel familiar. The concepts transfer, but the labels often do not. This article maps the accounting vocabulary you already use onto the words you will see on ISP screens.
Two cautions before the list. First, these are approximations, not equivalences: ISP is built for campaign-finance reporting, so a term that looks like its accounting counterpart may behave differently at the edges. Second, where a term carries reporting consequences, the treatment varies by filing agency; this article explains what ISP means, not what your agency requires.
For campaign-finance and agency vocabulary, such as conduits, reattributions, filers, and allocations, see the companion article on campaign-finance and agency terminology.
Money in and money out
- Donation / Contribution / Receipt
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Incoming money is most commonly entered as a Monetary Contribution, which ISP defines as donations made toward your committee or campaign. It is not the only inbound type: ISP also has Other Income, Accrued Income, Loan Received, Inkind Contribution, and Enforceable Pledge.
“Donation” is everyday language rather than a system term. “Receipt” is report-level vocabulary for incoming money as a group.
If you have an accounting background: a Monetary Contribution is roughly the revenue transaction you would book. “Receipts” is closer to gross inflows on a filing than to a sales receipt.
- Disbursement / Expense
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Outgoing money is most commonly entered as an Expense, the cost of something purchased for the campaign or committee. Other outbound types exist, including Non-Monetary Expense, Accrued Expense, and Loan Made.
“Disbursement” is report-level vocabulary for money out as a group.
If you have an accounting background: an Expense is roughly the expense transaction you would book; disbursements are closer to total cash outflows for a reporting period.
- Reimbursement
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Repaying someone who spent their own money on the committee’s behalf. In ISP this is a workflow rather than a transaction type: what you record depends on whether the person has already been repaid, and the underlying purchases are itemized with Splits.
Related but distinct: money a candidate or staffer spent personally and expects back is an Advance of Personal Funds, not a Loan Received, because no funds entered the committee’s bank account.
See: How Do I Enter a Reimbursement? · How Do I Enter a Non-Travel Advance of Personal Funds?
- Accrued Expense
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A debt with an unpaid balance. Accrued Expenses do not affect your cash balance until paid; the payment is recorded separately as an Accrued Expense Payment linked to the original. For most reporting agencies, an Accrued Expense is reported in the period it was incurred.
ISP applies this one type broadly: essentially any time a debt is owed. Documented examples include unpaid invoices, monthly credit card statements, wages due to staff, recurring office space costs, and loans with a balance still to pay off.
If you have an accounting background: this is roughly accounts payable and accrual-basis expense recognition combined. Note that ISP uses a single type where you may be used to separating A/P, wages payable, and credit card balances.
- Invoice
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In ISP, an invoice means a bill your committee received from a vendor for goods or services not yet paid for. ISP does not generate or send invoices to anyone.
What you record is the bill’s status: unpaid bills are entered as an Accrued Expense dated when the goods or services were received, then resolved with Accrued Expense Payments; a bill already paid before you entered it is recorded as an Expense.
Money owed to the committee is a different matter. Political organizations rarely bill anyone, but when an amount is owed to you, ISP has Accrued Income, resolved by an Accrued Income Payment.
If you have an accounting background: entering a bill is roughly Enter Bill, and recording its payment is roughly Pay Bills.
- Enforceable Pledge
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A transaction type for recording a donor’s commitment to contribute that is not yet fulfilled, and which you are obligated to report to your campaign finance agency. Not every pledge carries that obligation, and the criteria by which the obligation to disclose is determined vary by the applicable laws and campaign finance regulations.
This should not be confused with the Pledges & Targets tool, a fundraising entry made on Individual or Organization records. These entries record non-transaction goals and expected contributions for fundraising, rather than accounting and disclosure purposes.
See: What Are the Available Transaction Types in ISP? · What Are Pledges & Targets and How Do I Add Them to Records?
- Liability / Payable
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ISP has no liability or payable layer. Obligations are simply the transaction types that carry them: Accrued Expense and Loan Received. Accounts Payable appears only as the name of a financial report listing outstanding Accrued Expenses, and Debts & Obligations is agency phrasing from the compliance reports ISP supports.
If you have an accounting background: accounts payable is roughly an Accrued Expense, loans payable roughly a Loan Received, and notes receivable roughly a Loan Made.
- Transaction Balances
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The page under Accounting > Balances listing transactions that carry an outstanding balance, such as Loans Received and Accrued Expenses.
- Reversal vs. Refund
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Both reduce cash, and the distinction is about whether the money ever cleared.
- A Reversal applies when a deposit was never fully completed, most commonly an NSF bounce on a deposited check.
- A Refund applies when the money did clear and a separate action sends it back, such as returning a contribution to a donor.
If you have an accounting background: on a Profit & Loss, a reversed Monetary Contribution appears as a negative on the profit side, while a refunded contribution appears on the loss side. Reporting treatment varies by agency.
ISP recommends against deleting the original transaction in either case: keeping the original plus its reversal or refund is what allows the bank account to reconcile and keeps a complete record.
Banking and reconciliation
- Deposit (Record Deposit)
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Grouping received money into the bank deposit that actually hit the account. Until you record the deposit, the money sits in Undeposited Funds.
See: About Record Deposit
- Undeposited Funds
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The staging state between receiving money and recording its bank deposit. It has the same name and the same job as in common accounting software. Undeposited transactions have their own screen, reachable from the bottom of the Register.
- Reconciliation
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Matching ISP’s records against a bank statement for a period and clearing the transactions that appear on both. It is the familiar process, under the familiar name.
See: What Is Bank Statement Reconciliation & How Do I Use It?
- Bank Balance
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Worth keeping three ideas apart, because they are easy to conflate:
- the balance on your bank statement, which is the external fact;
- the starting balance a reconciliation works from;
- the running balance shown in the Register.
- Register
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A chronological list of financial transactions with a running bank balance.
Money you have entered but not yet deposited does not appear here. It lives on the Undeposited Funds screen until the deposit is recorded, so a contribution you just entered will not show in the Register or its balance yet. This is a common early surprise.
If you have an accounting background: the Register is the account register. It is not a general ledger and should not be read as one.
- Cash on Hand
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You may find that Cash on Hand on a compliance report does not match the Register. This is a timing difference between two ISP figures, not a difference between your books and your bank.
The usual causes are a transaction that is still undeposited, or, most commonly, one that was received before the period closed but deposited after it. To identify the specific transactions, use the Cash vs Bank Balance report on the Compliance Tools page.
See: Why Is My Compliance Report Cash on Hand Different From My Register Cash on Hand?
Accounts, categories, and structure
- ISP Account
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Your ISP database as a whole: the container your records, transactions, and lists live in. It is not a bank account, and it is not the same thing as a Financial Account.
- Financial Account
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ISP’s record of an account that holds money, typically a checking or savings account your committee controls. Financial Accounts are what deposits post to, what you reconcile against statements, and what the Net Worth report totals. Each is associated with a filer, and there is no limit on how many you can create.
ISP also supports virtual accounting: Financial Accounts that do not correspond to a real bank account, used to track certain income or expenses separately. A virtual account is not reconciled against a bank statement.
See: What Are Financial Accounts and How Do I Add Them? · How Do I Use Financial Accounts for Virtual Accounting?
- Chart of Accounts
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ISP does not provide a single unified chart of accounts. The same lists exist, but as separate structures:
- Financial Accounts: where the money sits.
- Budget Categories: what the money was for.
If you are arriving from another system, Budget Categories can be imported from a spreadsheet; see the Budget Categories documentation for the supported file formats and limits.
- Budget Category
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How ISP classifies what a transaction was for. It is the closest counterpart to the expense and income accounts in a chart of accounts.
Categories can be made inactive rather than deleted once they are in use, and duplicates can be merged.
Every transaction needs a Budget Category, but how much detail you build into your categories is up to you, whether close line-item tracking is a priority for you or not. Budget Categories have no effect on compliance reports. They are not used in any compliance calculation and do not appear on compliance reports. Anything a compliance report needs has its own dedicated field.
- Parent Category
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A grouping that rolls up several related Budget Categories. For example, an Administrative parent can cover Bookkeeping and Bank Fees.
The hierarchy is exactly two levels: Parent Budget Categories and Budget Categories. There is no further nesting.
If you have an accounting background: this is roughly a parent account with sub-accounts, but only one level deep.
- Events
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A way to group transactions around a specific fundraising event or activity, separate from how those transactions are categorized. An Event answers “which occasion did this belong to,” while a Budget Category answers “what was this for.”
- Splits
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Parts of another transaction: the end vendors behind a single credit card payment or reimbursement, or a conduit contribution itemized to the donors it came from. Splits can also divide one transaction across multiple Budget Categories.
The splits are where the attribution lives. On a credit card payment, the expenses belong to the vendors named in the splits, not to the credit card company on the parent transaction; on a conduit contribution, the donations are attributed to the individual donors, not to the processor. The cash stays with the parent. Splits change how the money is reported, not how much of it there is. Compliance reporting needs that itemized detail rather than a lump sum.
Nested splits (splits of splits) are needed in extremely rare cases when a specific data entry is needed to comply with an agency requirement. If entered incorrectly, they can cause calculation issues on compliance reports, and are not recommended unless absolutely necessary.
- Memo
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A shadow version of a transaction, carrying no financial impact. Memos are standalone: a memo can relate to another transaction without being part of it, which is what separates it from a Split. Documented examples include redesignations and donated legal services that are not treated as in-kind contributions.
The specific kinds you meet in reporting, such as Support/Oppose memos and Conduit memos, are covered in the companion article.
Reports and period views
- Profit & Loss / Income Statement
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ISP has a Profit & Loss report, which breaks down income and expenses by Budget Category.
See: What Are the Financial Reports in ISP?
Trial Balance
ISP’s Trial Balance report brings Financial Account balances and Budget Category totals together in Debit and Credit columns as of a selected date.See: What Is the Trial Balance Report?
- Balance Sheet
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ISP does not produce a balance sheet. The report closest in spirit is Net Worth, which totals each of your Financial Accounts as of a date you choose.
It is not a balance sheet substitute. A balance sheet is built around owners’ equity and capital accumulation, which is generally not how political committees operate. ISP also generally does not support asset tracking.
- Cash Basis vs. Net Worth Basis
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ISP distinguishes a transaction’s cash impact from its net worth impact, and reports can be run on either footing. Simple transactions affect both the same way; debt-related ones do not. A Loan Received, for example, increases cash but does not change net worth, because the money is still owed.
In the product this appears as a Cash Basis option on the financial reports where it applies. Leaving it unchecked runs the report on the accrual footing, which ISP also calls the net worth basis.
If you have an accounting background: treat this as ISP’s own distinction rather than as cash-basis versus accrual-basis accounting in the textbook sense. Net Worth Basis takes certain obligations into account; it is not a full accrual basis.
Compliance reports have no such checkbox. The basis they are built on is set by your filing agency, not chosen in ISP. It is worth confirming with the agency, since the basis is one reason a report total can differ slightly from the figure you expected for the same date.
- Bookkeeping Transaction
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A quick correction to Cash on Hand balances on reports, entered through the Bookkeeping option on the Other Entities page.
Use it as a last resort. ISP documents it as a last resort, to be used only after you have researched a discrepancy fully and found no other solution. It is not a routine period-end adjustment, and reaching for it early tends to hide the underlying problem rather than fix it.
See: What Is a Bookkeeping Transaction and How Do I Add One?
