Activity data

Your activity data describes your development and humanitarian work — referred to as “activities” in IATI. It includes details such as where your activities take place, how they’re financed, and what results they achieve.

The table below lists the information you can include about an activity, and shows whether each item is mandatory, recommended, or optional.

Tip

For the formal specification, please refer to the IATI Standard activity reference.

Basic activity information

IATI Element	Field required?	Comments
Activity Identifier	Mandatory	Constructed from your organisation’s IATI identifier and a string of your choice to identify the activity. Once you have published an activity, its IATI identifier will not change.
Reporting Organisation	Mandatory	Unique identifier and name of organisation reporting the activity.
Title	Mandatory	A short title to describe the activity.
Description	Mandatory	A longer description that explains what the activity is (minimum short paragraph).
Activity Status	Mandatory	A description of which stage of implementation the activity is currently at. As the activity progresses over time, the activity status should be updated.
Activity Date	Mandatory	The start and end dates of the activity. Start dates may reflect the beginning of funding, planning or physical activity. End dates should, wherever possible, reflect the ending of physical activity.
Sector	Mandatory	Information on the sector(s) that the activity targets or supports, such as primary education or agriculture. Use OECD DAC 5-digit sector codes, where possible.
Participating Organisation	Mandatory	Funding - the organisation(s) funding the project. Implementing - the organisation carrying out the actual work of the project. Accountable - the organisation responsible for managing the delivery of the project.
Recipient Country and/or Region	Mandatory	The country or countries that benefit from the activity – i.e. where impact is felt. These should be eligible for Official Development Assistance (ODA) and may differ from the location of the activity. Regions can be specified instead of, or as well as, individual countries. When using percentages, all percentages across countries and regions must add up to 100%
Contact Info	Mandatory	Contact information for the activity. You can add multiple points of contact if needed.
Location	Optional	The sub-national location of an activity, if known and safe to disclose. You can provide geographic coordinates, an administrative area, or general description.
Documents	Optional	Documents relating to the activity such as a project proposal, Theory of Change, or annual report.

Financials

IATI Element	Field required?	Comments
Budget	Mandatory	The value of the activity’s budget for each financial quarter or year over its lifetime.
Transactions (Incoming Funds)	Mandatory (if applicable)	Use transaction type “1 - Incoming Funds” for received funds, or transaction type “11 - Incoming Commitment” for future agreed incoming funds. Use the field “provider activity id” to reference your funder’s activity and link your data to theirs.
Transactions (Outgoing Funds)	Mandatory (if applicable)	Use transaction type “3 - Disbursement” for funds paid to other organisations, or transaction type “2 - Outgoing Commitment” for future agreed payments. If your organisation hasn’t made any outgoing fund transactions yet, you can publish your activity and add them later.
Transactions (Administrative costs and overheads)	Mandatory (if applicable)	Use transaction type “4 - Expenditure” for funds spent on goods or services for the activity. These can be aggregated into one expenditure transaction per quarter.
Planned Disbursements	Optional	Planned disbursements allow you to publish predefined payment schedules. They should be reported for a specific date or period, and should not replace the activity’s budget.

Classifications

IATI Element	Field required?	Comments
Policy Marker	Recommended	Information about the policy or theme addressed by your activity, such as ‘disability’ or ‘nutrition’. An activity can have multiple policy markers.
Activity Scope	Optional	The geographical scope of the activity: regional, national, subnational, etc.
Collaboration Type	Optional	The type of collaboration involved in the activity’s funding disbursements, e.g. “bilateral” or “multilateral”.
Conditions	Optional	Specific terms and conditions attached to the activity that may influence the delivery of commitments.
Default Aid Type	Optional	The type of development or humanitarian work (project-type intervention, budget support, debt relief, etc.).
Default Finance Type	Optional	The financial instrument that is being used for this activity. For example, financing is most commonly delivered as a grant or a loan.
Default Flow Type	Optional	Flow type is a way to categorise financial flows. It distinguishes between official development assistance (ODA), other official flows (OOF), or several types of private flows.
Default Tied Status	Optional	Whether funding is untied, tied, or partially tied. Tied funding must be spent on goods or services procured from a particular country or group of countries.
Humanitarian Scope	Optional	You can use this section to specify the emergency or appeal that your activity is responding to.
Legacy Data	Optional	You can link this activity to your organisation’s internal data and record which IATI Standard element it relates to.
Other Activity Identifier(s)	Optional	Another identifier for the activity. This may be an identifier internal to your organisation that you want to record with the activity, or your previous organisation identifier if this has changed.
Related Activities	Optional	A separately reported IATI activity that is related to this one. The ‘type’ attribute describes the type of relationship - e.g. parent, child, multifunded. Please only refer to your own activities here.
Tag	Optional	You can provide other useful information about your activity by ‘tagging’ it using categorisations such as the UN Sustainable Development Goal(s).

Results

IATI Element	Field required?	Comments
Results	Varies by funder (more information)	An output, outcome, impact or other intended benefit from the activity. Multiple results can be added and each must have at least one indicator.