How ISP names money: one system, two vocabularies
If you are coming to ISPolitical from accounting software, the single most useful thing to know is that ISP deliberately uses two vocabularies for the same money:
- Entry vocabulary — the transaction types you pick when recording activity: Monetary Contribution, Expense, Loan Received, Accrued Expense, and so on.
- Reporting vocabulary — the umbrella terms your compliance reports use, which mirror FEC and state filing forms: Receipts for money in, Disbursements for money out.
Nothing is renamed behind your back; the entry types simply roll up into the reporting umbrellas when a report is generated:
| You enter it as… | Reports total it under… |
|---|---|
| Monetary Contribution, Inkind Contribution, Other Income, Accrued Income (when realized), Loan Received | Receipts |
| Expense, Non-Monetary Expense, Accrued Expense (when paid), Loan Made | Disbursements |
Most “what does ISP call this?” questions resolve to one of these two layers. The glossary below is grouped into three sections: accounting terms and their ISP equivalents, campaign-finance and agency terms, and ISP product and workflow terms.
Accounting terms and their ISP equivalents
- Donation / Contribution / Receipt
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Incoming money is entered in ISP as a Monetary Contribution — defined in the help file as “Donations made towards your committee/campaign.” “Donation” is everyday language, not a system term; “Receipt” is the report-level umbrella that totals all incoming money (contributions, other income, loans received) on compliance and financial reports.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Contribution is roughly equivalent to the revenue transaction you book; Receipts are roughly equivalent to gross inflows on a filing (think “total receipts” on a report, not a sales receipt).
- Disbursement / Expense
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Outgoing money is entered as an Expense — “the cost required for something/money spent on something for your campaign or committee.” Disbursement is the report-level umbrella for all money out (expenses, loan repayments, refunds made), matching filing-form line structure. You enter Expenses; reports show Disbursements.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Expense is roughly equivalent to the expense transaction; Disbursements are roughly equivalent to total cash outflows for the reporting period.
- Reimbursement
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A reimbursement is a transaction repaying funds that an individual or organization spent on behalf of the committee. It is a workflow, not a transaction type: if the person has not yet been repaid, record an Accrued Expense with Splits itemizing each underlying purchase, then record the repayment; if they have already been repaid, record an Expense with Splits. Both the underlying purchases and the repayment must be documented. One caution: money a candidate (or anyone) spent personally and expects back is what ISP calls an Advance of Personal Funds — recorded as an Accrued Expense (or an Expense, if repaid within the period), not a Loan Received, because no funds entered the committee’s bank account.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: the same as booking an employee-expense payable (or a direct expense report), with itemization required for compliance.
See: How Do I Enter a Reimbursement? · How Do I Enter a Non-Travel Advance of Personal Funds?
- Accrued Expense
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An Accrued Expense is a debt with a due or unpaid balance — an obligation recorded in the period it is incurred, before payment. Accrued expenses do not affect your cash balance until paid; the payment is recorded separately as an Accrued Expense Payment linked to the original. Examples include unpaid invoices, credit-card statements, and wages owed.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Accrued Expense is roughly equivalent to accounts payable / accrual-basis expense recognition. Note that ISP uses this one type for several things you may be used to splitting out (A/P, wages payable, credit-card balances).
- Invoice
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ISP is not an invoicing system — it does not generate or send invoices. What you record is the invoice’s status: if it has not yet been paid, enter the amount owed as an Accrued Expense (dated when the goods or services were received), then record an Accrued Expense Payment — partial payments included — until the balance is paid off; if it was already paid and you are recording it after the fact, enter it as an Expense.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: QuickBooks’ Enter Bill is roughly equivalent to Accrued Expense; Pay Bills is roughly equivalent to Accrued Expense Payment. There is no accounts-receivable-style invoicing of donors.
- Liability / Payable
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ISP’s interface does not use the words “liability” or “payable.” Its vocabulary for obligations is debt, outstanding, and (on reports) Debts & Obligations. Outstanding obligations live on the Transaction Balances page, which lists transactions that carry a debt — Accrued Expenses, Loans Received — filterable by outstanding vs. resolved. Your agency’s forms, however, may still use the word: unpaid accrued-expense balances at the close of a period can disclose on a liabilities schedule (New York’s Schedule N, for example). In short: ISP’s screens don’t say “liability,” but your filing might.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: accounts payable is roughly equivalent to Accrued Expense; loans payable are roughly equivalent to Loan Received; notes receivable are roughly equivalent to Loan Made; your A/P aging view is roughly equivalent to Transaction Balances filtered to outstanding.
- Deposit (Record Deposit)
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Record Deposit groups received money into the bank deposit it arrived in, so your ISP records match your bank activity line for line. Money received but not yet deposited sits as Undeposited Funds (see next entry) until you record the deposit.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Record Deposit is roughly equivalent to Make Deposit from Undeposited Funds — near-identical workflow.
See: About Record Deposit
- Undeposited Funds
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The staging state between receiving money and recording its bank deposit. Contributions you have entered but not yet grouped into a deposit are undeposited; the Transaction Balances page links to an Undeposited Funds view.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: the same concept as QuickBooks’ Undeposited Funds account — same name, same job.
See: About Record Deposit
- Reconciliation
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Bank statement reconciliation in ISP matches your Register against each bank statement: you set the Account, Closing Date, Starting Balance, and Ending Balance, check off cleared transactions, identify Outstanding Transactions, and work the Difference to $0. ISP can auto-match transactions from an uploaded statement, and past reconciliations can be reviewed or undone.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: the same bank-reconciliation process, with the same field names — this is the least-translation-needed part of ISP.
See: What Is Bank Statement Reconciliation & How Do I Use It?
- Bank Balance (and starting balances)
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ISP distinguishes Cash on Hand (the figure your records and compliance reports calculate) from Bank Balance (what the bank statement says); the Cash vs Bank Balance report identifies the transactions causing any difference between the two. If your account has history that predates your ISP data, that prior activity is factored into the Starting Balance you enter when reconciling. To start from a known balance and backload history later, enter the balance as a temporary Bookkeeping Transaction, backload the real transactions, then delete the Bookkeeping Transaction — balances recalculate automatically (see Bookkeeping Transaction).
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: the Starting Balance is roughly equivalent to an opening-balance entry, with the expectation that you replace it with real historical data rather than keep it.
See: What Is Bank Statement Reconciliation & How Do I Use It?
- Financial Account
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A Financial Account is ISP’s record of an actual money-holding account — checking, savings, or another account your committee controls. It is not the same thing as your ISP Account, which means your whole ISP database (see ISP Account). Financial Accounts are what you reconcile against bank statements, what deposits post to, and what the Net Worth report totals; they are separate from Budget Categories, which classify what the money was for.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: when translating a QuickBooks chart of accounts, the “Bank”-type account rows become Financial Accounts in ISP; your income and expense accounts become Budget Categories.
- Chart of Accounts
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Your chart of accounts becomes your Budget Category list. The set of Budget Categories as a whole is ISP’s counterpart to the chart itself, and each individual category corresponds to one of your income or expense accounts, with Parent Categories available as rollups. Two exceptions are worth knowing before you migrate. First, your bank accounts do not become categories — they become Financial Accounts. Second, there is nothing to build for assets, liabilities, or equity: account behavior (what acts like income, expense, asset, or debt) is fixed by ISP’s built-in transaction types, and obligations are tracked as transaction balances rather than as liability accounts. What you maintain, in other words, is the Budget Category list rather than a chart of accounts as such.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: a practical import rule — the “Bank”-type rows in your chart of accounts become Financial Accounts, everything else becomes a Budget Category, and transaction types handle the rest.
- Balance Sheet
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ISP has no report named Balance Sheet, and the closest equivalent depends on what you are trying to reconstruct. For a point-in-time financial position, use the Net Worth report: it totals each of your Financial Accounts as of a chosen date (or comprehensively, if you leave the date blank), then subtracts outstanding obligations such as unpaid Accrued Expense balances; outstanding loan balances appear the same way when present. Pledges and Targets can optionally be shown alongside for reference. Net Worth by Month provides the monthly series, and Cash vs Net Worth shows which transactions make up the difference between Cash on Hand and Net Worth. If you are instead rebuilding activity, the Profit & Loss report, Budget Category report, or Detailed Financials may serve better. There is no equity section — a committee’s “equity” is simply its net worth.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Balance Sheet is roughly equivalent to Net Worth report for position; the liabilities detail behind it lives on the Transaction Balances page.
- Profit & Loss / Income Statement
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ISP does have a Profit & Loss report: it breaks down Income and Expenses by Budget Category. The name comes from standard accounting — committees do not earn “profit,” but the report structure (income vs. expenses by category) is the same one accountants expect from a P&L. For the filing-form view of the same activity, the Detailed Financials report covers Receipts, Disbursements, Loans, and Other Debts & Obligations.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: P&L is roughly equivalent to P&L, organized by Budget Category instead of by account.
- Cash Basis vs. Net Worth Basis
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Budgets and some reports can toggle between Cash Basis (paid/received activity only) and Net Worth Basis (including accrued items and obligations). Net Worth Basis is ISP’s name for the accrual-inclusive view.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Cash Basis is roughly equivalent to cash basis; Net Worth Basis is roughly equivalent to accrual basis.
Campaign-finance and agency terms
- Filer
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Your Filer is the committee for which an ISP Account generates and submits reports. In ISP, a Filer is a reporting setup record that points to the committee’s Organization record and connects the relationships and Financial Accounts ISP needs for compliance reporting — including Treasurer information and, for candidate committees, Candidate information. ISP reads those links to determine which rules apply to your committee — they drive your compliance reports, the contribution limit information ISP displays, and the limit notifications you receive. Because that information comes from the links, a Financial Account that is not linked to the Filer can show as zero on reports. You must set a Filer before ISP can generate compliance reports, and one ISP Account can hold multiple Filers, with balances and reports viewable per Filer or combined. Don’t worry if the same person appears both as their own record and inside the Filer’s relationships — that is how ISP connects people to the committee, not a duplicate.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Filer is roughly equivalent to the company a company file belongs to — the entity the books and reports are about. The habit to unlearn: in QuickBooks, each company needs its own file, while in ISP several Filers can sit side by side in one ISP Account. Switching Filers is closer to changing which committee a report covers than to opening a different set of books.
- Agency Assigned Identifier
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An optional field on Event records that stores an event ID issued by your filing agency. Certain agencies (Michigan, for example) require unique identifiers for events on their reports; if your agency does not — including all federal filers — you can leave the field blank.
- “Contribution to another committee”
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When your committee gives money to another candidate or committee, it is a contribution on the recipient’s books — but in your ISP records it is entered as an Expense to the recipient committee, with a Support/Oppose memo for the candidate or committee involved (ISP prompts to add one if you skip it); your compliance report then pulls it to the correct line. Entering it as a Monetary Contribution would record money coming in to your committee, which is the opposite of what happened.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: think direction, not label — Contribution always means money in, Expense always means money out, even when the payment is itself a “contribution” from the recipient’s point of view.
See: How Do I Add a Contribution to Other Committees? About Support/Oppose Memos
- In-Kind (Inkind Contribution / Non-Monetary Expense)
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Non-cash activity has a type in each direction: an Inkind Contribution is “a gift of something rather than money” received by the committee, and a Non-Monetary Expense is a transfer of a good or service out that does not require the use of funds. Budgets and reports let you include or exclude in-kind activity from receipts and disbursements.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Inkind Contribution and Non-Monetary Expense are roughly equivalent to in-kind revenue and the matching non-cash expense — ISP pairs them as mirror-image transaction types.
- Conduit / Earmarked contribution
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A contribution passed to your committee through an intermediary (conduit), with memo entries preserving the original donor for compliance itemization. Conduit and earmark memos apply to federal (FEC) filers; if you file with a state or local agency, you will not encounter them. ISP distinguishes a Conduit Check (funds transferred from the conduit) from a Donor Check (donor’s own check passed through the conduit) via transaction tags.
- Reattribution / Redesignation
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Both are ways to resolve a contribution that came in over a limit, without refunding it: rather than sending the excess back, you reassign it. Reattribution moves part of a contribution to a different contributor — most commonly a spouse, where a joint contribution counts against both people’s limits. Redesignation moves all or part of a contribution to a different election, such as applying an over-limit primary contribution to the general. In ISP, both are recorded as transaction tags on the original contribution, which is what tells your compliance report to treat it correctly. When each remedy is allowed, and what the donor must provide for it, is set by your filing agency rather than by ISP.
ISP product and workflow terms
- ISP Account (also called your ISP database)
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Your ISP Account is your organization’s entire ISP workspace — everything your login gives you access to: all Entities, transactions, Budget Categories, Filers, and Financial Accounts. “ISP Account” and “ISP database” mean the same thing and are used interchangeably in ISP documentation and by support.
There is one wrinkle worth knowing before you go looking: in ISP’s own screens, the word “Account” with no modifier means a Financial Account. So bare “Account” in the interface is a bank account, while “ISP Account” is your whole database. This glossary always writes “ISP Account” in full when it means the database.
One distinction is worth pinning down early, because the words look alike: an ISP Account is not a Financial Account. A Financial Account is ISP’s record of a single real money-holding account, such as a checking account. Your ISP Account is the container that holds all of your Financial Accounts, plus every other record in your books. A single ISP Account can hold multiple Filers and multiple Financial Accounts.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: your ISP Account is roughly equivalent to a QuickBooks company file itself — the container — while a Financial Account is roughly equivalent to one “Bank”-type account inside it.
- Register
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ISP’s internal transaction ledger — a chronological list of your transactions with a running bank balance, and the source of the “Register Cash on Hand” figure. The Register report lists the transactions included in it. If you keep more than one Filer or Financial Account, you can view the register for a single Filer/Account or view all transactions at once.
One thing to know early: money you have entered but not yet deposited does not appear in the Register. Undeposited transactions live on their own Undeposited Funds screen, reachable from the bottom of the Register, until you record the deposit — so a contribution you just entered will not show in the Register or its running balance until it is part of a recorded deposit. This is a common early surprise; the money is not lost, it is one screen over.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: the Register is roughly equivalent to the account register / general ledger view.
- Cash on Hand (Register vs. compliance report)
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Cash on Hand is your committee’s cash position, but ISP surfaces two versions: the Register Cash on Hand (calculated from all transactions in your database) and the compliance-report Cash on Hand (calculated per the filing form’s rules and period). They can legitimately differ; a dedicated help file explains why, and the Cash vs Bank Balance report bridges Cash on Hand to your actual bank figure.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: the two Cash on Hand figures are roughly equivalent to book balance vs. statement/report balance — expect the difference, don’t fight it.
See: Why Is My Compliance Report Cash on Hand Different From My Register Cash on Hand?
- Budget Category
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The transaction-classification layer: “Budget Categories are a great way to understand where transactions occur and how they play a role in your committee’s finances.” Categories feed Budgets (budgeted vs. actual vs. percent), the Budget Category report, and the Profit & Loss report. Budget Categories are an internal management layer only: they do not affect compliance reporting in any way. They do not enter any compliance calculation, and they are not displayed on compliance reports — so how you categorize a transaction, or whether you categorize it at all, has no effect on what your agency sees. Categorize in whatever way is most useful to you and your committee. A category in use cannot be deleted; it is made Inactive instead, so historical transactions keep their categorization.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Budget Categories are roughly equivalent to your income and expense accounts (the P&L side of a chart of accounts) — see the Chart of Accounts entry for what it does not cover. The same field travels under other names: donor and fundraising systems often call it a source code, and ledger-side accounting software usually calls it a GL code. In ISP, both belong on the Budget Category of the transaction.
- Parent Category
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A rollup grouping for Budget Categories: “Parent Categories are more global in purpose and can cover multiple similar Budget Categories” — for example, an Administrative parent covering Bookkeeping and Bank Fees. A category becomes a parent when you select it as the parent while creating or editing another Budget Category. A category already serving as a parent cannot itself be assigned a parent: Budget Categories do not support multi-level nesting. The hierarchy is exactly two levels.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Parent Categories are roughly equivalent to parent account and sub-account pairs, capped at two levels.
- Events
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The Events tool tracks fundraising events and opportunities, along with the donors and donations tied to them. An Event carries a Name, Date, and Event Type, and has its own dashboard collecting Flags, Communication Types, and Saved Advanced Searches. Transactions can be linked to an Event — one at a time, or in bulk through Bulk Update — which lets you total the activity for a single event across multiple Budget Categories and Financial Accounts and report on it through the Financial Transaction Report. The Agency Assigned Identifier field also lives on Event records. Events is an installable tool, so it may not be switched on in your ISP Account.
Budget Category and Event answer different questions and are meant to work together: the Budget Category records what the money was for, while the Event records what effort brought it in.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: the aggregation behavior resembles a QuickBooks Class — a grouping that cuts across your categories and accounts — though Events are purpose-built for events rather than a general-purpose dimension. Fundraisers arriving from a donor CRM will find it the nearest thing to an appeal or campaign code.
See: What Are Events & How Do I Use Them? · What Is Event Management?
- Bookkeeping Transaction
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A correction entry for Cash On Hand balances on reports, entered against a dedicated “Bookkeeping” entity and dated far in the past so it stays out of reporting periods. Use it only after discrepancy research is complete and no other solution is found — or as a deliberate temporary bridge: enter a known starting balance as a Bookkeeping Transaction, backload the real historical transactions, then delete it; balances recalculate automatically. Entering real data is always preferred to keeping a Bookkeeping Transaction long-term.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: a Bookkeeping Transaction is roughly equivalent to an adjusting journal entry to true up a balance — ISP has no general journal, so the adjustment travels as a transaction.
See: What Is a Bookkeeping Transaction and How Do I Add One?
- Splits
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Itemization of a single transaction into its component pieces — for example, listing each underlying purchase inside one reimbursement, or dividing a transaction across multiple Budget Categories. Compliance reporting often requires the itemized detail, which is why workflows like reimbursements call for Splits rather than a single lump amount.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Splits are roughly equivalent to split lines on a transaction.
- Transaction Balances (page)
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The page that tracks every transaction carrying a balance to resolve: outstanding Accrued Expenses, Loans Received, Pledges, and Targets, filterable by Filer and by outstanding vs. resolved status. Loan entries offer payment, reduction, and repayment actions; the page also links to Undeposited Funds and the Register.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: the Transaction Balances page is roughly equivalent to your open-payables/open-loans view — the closest thing ISP has to a liabilities register.
- Reversal vs. Refund
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Both are negative-cash transactions, but the line between them is whether the original money ever fully cleared. A Reversal (Bounce) is used when the deposit never completed — for example, a check returned for insufficient funds; it is created from the original transaction and automatically linked to it, and most commonly reports as a negative on the contribution schedule. A Refund is a separate action taken after the money cleared — for example, returning a contribution because a donor exceeded limits; it is recorded as its own transaction and most commonly reports with expenses (schedules vary by agency). In either case, never delete the original transaction — the pair is what keeps reconciliation and compliance records accurate.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Reversal is roughly equivalent to an NSF/bounce entry tied to the original; Refund is roughly equivalent to a refund check you actually send back.
- Entity
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Every person, organization, committee, or vendor in your database is an Entity, each with its own Entity ID. Transactions attach to Entities, and special-purpose records (such as the Bookkeeping entity) live in the Other Entities list.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Entities are roughly equivalent to names/customers/vendors, unified into one record type.
- Compliance Tools
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A suite of roughly thirty-five diagnostic reports under Reports > Compliance Tools, meant for catching problems before you file rather than after a filing agency finds them. Six worth knowing by name:
- Issue Counts — a brief summary of every other Compliance Tool report, so you can see where your problems are without running each one. Any count above zero is clickable and takes you to that report’s results. This is the one to start with.
- Check Transaction Limits — transactions that may be over the allowable limits.
- Changed Transactions — transactions added, deleted, or edited after a specific date, or after a report was marked as filed. (Two neighbors do related jobs: Changed Reconciled Transactions for edits made after a transaction was reconciled, and Changed Entities for address changes around a report’s close date.)
- Missing Occupation/Employer — records with no Occupation and/or Employer listed. After correcting them you can re-import the information in bulk using the Update Occupations and Employers format on the Quick Imports page.
- Cash vs Bank Balance — which transactions are causing the discrepancy between Cash on Hand and Bank Balance.
- Cash vs Net Worth — which transactions make up the difference between Cash on Hand and Net Worth.
See: About Compliance Tools — the full list of reports
- Allocations / Allocation Transfer
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Allocations apply to organizations that conduct both federal and non-federal political activity through two affiliated committees — one registered with the FEC, one registered with the state. This is most common for state and local party committees, though PACs do it as well. When the two committees share an expense (or, less often, fundraising contributions), FEC rules govern how the cost is divided, and an Allocation is the ISP record that holds that division: you create it under Accounting > Allocations, give it an Allocation Type, and set its federal/non-federal ratio — fixed by FEC rule for most types, freely chosen for a few. Once an Allocation exists, an Allocation drop-down appears on transactions; selecting it tells ISP the transaction belongs on Form 3X Schedule H as shared activity, so leave it blank unless the activity genuinely is shared. Allocations generally must be recreated each year or election cycle.
An Allocation Transfer is the separate transaction that reimburses the federal side for the non-federal share, since the federal account normally pays first. It moves money from a non-federal Financial Account to a federal Financial Account, appears on the Register as money out of one and money in to the other, and is the only transfer between Financial Accounts that is reportable. Before any of this works, your ISP Account must be set up for Joint State/Federal Filing, with a Filer set and at least one Financial Account on both the state and federal side.
Not an accounting translation: the nearest analogue is allocating shared overhead between two related entities, but the ratios come from FEC rule rather than from your own cost-allocation policy, and the reimbursement leg is itself a reportable transaction.
See: What Are Allocations & How Do I Use Them? — full Allocation Type list, the fixed ratio tables, and step-by-step setup · What Is an Allocation Transfer? — how to add one, and where it lands on Form 3X
- Transaction Tags
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Tags you add to a transaction to change how it lands on your compliance report. The transaction itself stays as you entered it; the tag is what tells ISP that something about it must be disclosed differently.
On Monetary Contributions the available tags are Conduit – Conduit Check, Conduit – Donor Check, Reattribution, Redesignation, and Transfer — funds moved between authorized committees of the same candidate or sponsoring organization. The first four are covered in their own entries above; Transfer is specific to this list. A parallel tag set exists for Expenses, and the tags available to you vary by jurisdiction.
- Pledges & Targets / Enforceable Pledge
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An Enforceable Pledge records contributions “pledged to be given, but have not yet been realized”; Pledges and Targets appear on the Transaction Balances page and can optionally be included in Net Worth figures.
If you have an accounting or bookkeeping background: Pledges and Targets are roughly equivalent to pledges receivable, tracked as balances rather than booked revenue.
- Consultant
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In ISP parlance, a consultant is a user with access to two or more ISP Accounts — not necessarily a consulting firm — and Consultant Tools apply to any user with more than one ISP Account.
