Tracking money in and out
The Finance page gives you a running picture of what your campaign has raised and spent, with receipts attached and a CSV you can hand to whoever does your compliance filings.
What this is, and what it isn't
It's a visibility tool, not your books of record. It exists so you can answer "what have we spent on printing?" without opening a spreadsheet nobody has updated since March. It does not generate filing artifacts, it is not accounting software, and it does not replace your treasurer.
The CSV export is the deliberate exit ramp: everything you record here comes back out in a form your actual compliance software or treasurer can use. Record it here for your own visibility; file from your real system.
No report, no schedule, no submission. If your jurisdiction wants a form, that is still your treasurer's job — this page just means they aren't starting from a shoebox.
Money out
Add an expense with an amount, a date, a payee and a category. Categories come ready to use — advertising, printing, staff, consulting, travel, events, office, fees and other — so the spelling stays consistent, which is the whole point when you later want a total per category.
Rows edit like a spreadsheet. Fix a typo, recategorise something, delete a duplicate.
Receipts
Attach a receipt to any expense — a photo or a PDF, up to 10 MB. It stays attached for as long as your campaign exists: there is no automatic deletion, and the only way a receipt disappears is you deleting it or the expense it hangs off.
On Rally and above, Electbase can also read the receipt and pull out the amount and the date so you're checking a filled-in form rather than typing from a crumpled photo. On other plans you attach the file and type the details.
Money in
You can record contributions by hand: who gave, how much, when.
Money raised through a connected donation processor is not included here yet. That is worth stating plainly, because a total that silently omitted your ActBlue receipts would be worse than no total at all. The page says so on screen for the same reason.
If you do connect a processor that feeds contributions automatically, Electbase stops you adding new ones by hand for that source and tells you which processor is now the origin — two records of the same donation is precisely the mess this avoids. Anything you already entered stays, and stays editable.
Currencies
Totals are in US dollars. If a row is in another currency it is left out of the total and named underneath it, with a count, rather than quietly dropped or wrongly added in. You'll always be able to see that something was excluded and what it was.
Which plans
The Finance page is included from Grassroots upward. Reading receipts automatically is Rally and above.
Getting it out
Export CSV for both sides. That file is the handoff — to your treasurer, to your compliance vendor, or into a spreadsheet where you do the arithmetic your own way.
Contribution limits, reporting thresholds, disclosure schedules and what counts as an in-kind contribution vary by jurisdiction and change between cycles. Electbase records what you enter; confirming it satisfies your rules is between you, your treasurer and your counsel.