How to read the evidence

Clear methods. Honest limits.

Audited annual Treasury facts. Financial year means its June end year. The score is a transparent experimental indicator, not a service quality, political performance or corruption verdict.

The principle

Make the numbers useful.
Keep the evidence visible.

Financial resilience describes financial position. It is not a score for service quality, corruption, political responsibility or voting choices. Use the evidence alongside lived experience and other credible sources.

Indicator definitions

Repairs and maintenance

100 × capital_v2 REPAIR_MNT / financial_position_v2 (0230 + 0220)

Annual repairs as a percentage of property, plant, equipment and investment property; reference target 8%.

Cash coverage

cflow_v2 item 0430 / (annual operating expenditure / 12)

Months of operating expenditure supported by year-end cash; reference target 3 months.

Operating balance

100 × (incexp_v2 item2900 − item4400) / item2900, summed across government functions

Annual operating surplus or deficit as a percentage of revenue excluding capital transfers.

Resilience indicator

Mean of 100×clamp(maintenance%/8,0,1), 100×clamp(cash months/3,0,1), 100×clamp((balance%+10)/20,0,1). Any missing input, maintenance outside 0–100%, negative asset component, negative revenue/expenditure, or negative cash coverage => unavailable.

Equal-weight experimental financial resilience score. Targets and weighting are design choices, not Treasury endorsement. The source-quality gate flags implausible ratios for review, preserving raw values.

Limits you should know

Only amount_type AUDA and period_length year contribute to financial metrics.
Live Treasury v2 item codes differ from old Municipal Money fixtures. Verified total revenue2900 and total expenditure4400 are summed across functions; component expenses3100–4300 are shown separately and never added to these totals.
Financial dashboards currently use v2 datasets; historic v1 facts remain browsable without mixing incompatible schemas.
Missing submissions and missing operands stay unavailable; a zero numerator is distinct from missing evidence.
A national sum includes local and district municipalities; overlapping areas are not additive population coverage.
Boundaries and names change. The source metadata contains historical/disestablished municipalities.
Partial imports do not imply complete national coverage. Always inspect the coverage banner and datasets page.
Source corrections can change reported values; retrievable snapshots and retrieval timestamps are preserved.

National Treasury source documentation

AGSA accountability and Stats SA service evidence

Independent source periods

AGSA years are municipal financial-year ends: 2024/25 is shown as year 2025. Stats SA P9115 service records use calendar reference years, as at 30 June. The 2023 source publication pairs revised 2022 and preliminary 2023 figures. Retrieval dates describe when evidence was captured, not when services were measured.

Accountability without a new score

AGSA opinions retain exact source wording. Creditor days are withheld for source zeros or excluded audit outcomes; values of 1,400 or more are shown as “more than 1,400 days”. Qualified financial-health figures retain their source reliability note. Consultant costs cover financial reporting, not all consultancy. Reported zeros retain qualifications. SCM findings include non-material findings; missing flags remain unknown.

Units, provision and responsibility

Served consumer units combine domestic and non-domestic administrative units; free basic provision counts domestic units. They are not resident counts, percentages of households with access, or measures of service reliability. Municipal provider flags do not establish whether other providers operate in the area. National/provincial official source aggregates are separate from observed municipal sums; category-filtered sums cannot reuse all-category official totals.

Source disagreements remain visible alongside the Treasury record. Current geography is used for comparisons; a consistent cohort requires every selected metric in every selected year and can be empty when older observations are unavailable. Missing records never become zero. No new resilience, corruption, service-quality or political score is calculated from these sources.

Inspect source publications, coverage and preserved checksums →

Read every comparison with care.

Compare the same period

Municipal financial years end in June. The year shown is the financial-year end. Budget, actual and audited figures describe different things and must not be combined without identifying them.

Keep missing data visible

A missing record is not a zero. A rating may be withheld when essential inputs are unavailable. Dataset coverage and source retrieval dates are shown separately from financial periods.

Understand responsibility

Metropolitan, local and district municipalities have different functions. Population, geography and service responsibilities affect expenditure. Absolute spending is not an efficiency measure.