Caution

These guidelines are draft and not yet finalised. This site is for discussion purposes only.

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 with the Reporting Organisation unique identifier and the organisation’s chosen activity number.
Reporting Organisation	Mandatory	Unique identifier and name of organisation reporting the activity.
Title	Mandatory	Title of the activity.
Description	Mandatory	Meaningful description of the activity (minimum short paragraph).
Activity Status	Mandatory	Status of the activity (Pipeline/Implementation/…).
Activity Date	Mandatory	Planned start and end dates of the activity.
Sector	Mandatory	Use OECD DAC 5-digit sector codes, where possible. These describe the thematic focus of your activity.
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. For example, activities undertaken in the territory of the donor country (e.g. research scholarships, training courses) should be assigned to individual recipient countries where the services are performed for the benefit of those countries. Regions can be specified instead of, or as well as, individual countries if needed. When using percentages, all percentages across countries and regions must add up to 100%.
Contact Info	Mandatory	Contact address and email for the reporting organisation. This can be a generic enquiry email address.
Location	Optional	Location of the activity or its beneficiaries on a sub-national level.
Documents	Optional	Documents relating to the activity including project proposal, Theory of Change, reports, pictures, project updates etc.

Financials

IATI Element	Field required?	Comments
Budget	Mandatory
Transactions (Incoming Funds)	Mandatory	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 their’s.
Transactions (Outgoing Funds)	Mandatory	Use transaction type “3 - Disbursement” for funds paid to other organisations, or transaction type “2 - Outgoing commitment” for future agreed payments.
Transactions (Administrative costs and overheads)	Mandatory	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

Classifications

IATI Element	Field required?	Comments
Policy Marker	Recommended
Tag	Optional
Humanitarian Scope	Optional
Activity Scope	Optional	The geographical scope of the activity: regional, national, subnational, etc.
Collaboration Type	Optional
Default Flow Type	Optional
Default Finance Type	Optional
Default Aid Type	Optional
Default Tied Status	Optional
Other Activity Identifier(s)	Optional	An internal reference number for the activity (if applicable).
Related Activities	Optional	Another separately reported IATI activity that is related to this one.
Legacy Data	Optional	The legacy data element allows for the reporting of values held in a field in the reporting organisation’s system which is similar, but not identical to an IATI element.
Conditions	Optional	Information on the conditions for the project.

Results

IATI Element	Field required?	Comments
Results	Varies by funder (more information)	Data on results and indicators of the project. This can include links to published documents.