Where every figure comes from

One page for the sources and methodology behind San Francisco’s budget, payees, contracts and payroll — the datasets, their perimeters, the privacy rules and the choices we made reading them. Each content page keeps its per-section source line; the full method lives here.

One break to know about: fiscal year 2018. In FY2018 the City moved its financial system to PeopleSoft. Several things change in the data at that point — none of them are policy changes:

The chart of accounts switched (legacy numeric codes → modern mnemonics), and FY2018 itself mixes both systems — so this site shows citywide, service-area and fund totals for FY2018, but no department or category breakdown.
Program detail collapses: before 2018, hundreds of real per-department programs; from FY2019, ~10 generic activity tags (Operating, Capital, Administrative…).
Contract numbers and nonprofit flags only begin in FY2018 — earlier payments can’t be tied to contracts or nonprofit status.
Vendor-level granularity changes across the break — long payee series need care.

A chart that kinks at 2018 reflects the system migration, not a change in policy. Department-level history is shown from FY2019 onward; service-area (organization group) history is comparable across the whole range.

Classification: Two manual in-session batches (2026-07-16): the top FY2025 payees, then the measured per-FY top-30 union + all-time top-200 + six study-named individual landlords (232 exact vendor strings). A classified string carries its bucket into every fiscal year it appears in; bucket is null for unclassified names. Per-FY coverage of dollars is exported as bucket_coverage_pct — strong FY2024+ (62-66%), weak pre-2018 (~26-46%), where the page shows a coverage badge. Buckets categorize payees for DISPLAY — every amount comes from the voucher dataset itself.

Downloadstop_payees.json payees_search.json n9pm-xkyq

Method notes:

One row per contract: amounts are summed over the register’s prime-contractor rows (40 contracts carry two prime rows that net additive amendments); 75 register entries have only subcontractor rows and are excluded from money totals.
The register’s own consumed/remaining columns fail basic arithmetic and are never published here. “Remaining” anywhere on this page is agreed minus paid, floored at zero.
Payments can exceed the agreed amount (1,053 active contracts): payments accumulate across modifications while agreed reflects the base document.
Per-contract payment curves come from the City’s voucher data, joined on contract number — 98.8% of voucher dollars carrying a contract number match this register; detail begins FY2018.
370 contracts have no recorded end date and are never counted as active; 25 placeholder end dates (year 2200) were removed.

Downloadscontracts_overview.json contracts_active.json Source dataset (data.sfgov.org)

Small groups: No dollar aggregate in this file covers fewer than 5 employees. Groups under 5 people are pooled into visible 'Other roles' rows per department; pools that would themselves stay under the threshold are folded into the department total with no row. Departments under the threshold (the Law Library in practice, 2-3 people) are included in citywide totals but not listed. Pooling moves ~1.2% of total dollars into visible 'Other roles' rows; the department-level fold is under $600k/year (<0.01% of compensation). Nothing is removed from totals. Counts of employees above fixed thresholds (>$200k…>$500k) are published exactly, including values under 5: they attach no dollar amount to any group. The source itself is public at row level (pseudonymized); this site publishes aggregates only.

Where every figure comes from

One break to know about: fiscal year 2018. In FY2018 the City moved its financial system to PeopleSoft. Several things change in the data at that point — none of them are policy changes:

The chart of accounts switched (legacy numeric codes → modern mnemonics), and FY2018 itself mixes both systems — so this site shows citywide, service-area and fund totals for FY2018, but no department or category breakdown.
Program detail collapses: before 2018, hundreds of real per-department programs; from FY2019, ~10 generic activity tags (Operating, Capital, Administrative…).
Contract numbers and nonprofit flags only begin in FY2018 — earlier payments can’t be tied to contracts or nonprofit status.
Vendor-level granularity changes across the break — long payee series need care.

Downloadstop_payees.json payees_search.json n9pm-xkyq

Method notes:

One row per contract: amounts are summed over the register’s prime-contractor rows (40 contracts carry two prime rows that net additive amendments); 75 register entries have only subcontractor rows and are excluded from money totals.
The register’s own consumed/remaining columns fail basic arithmetic and are never published here. “Remaining” anywhere on this page is agreed minus paid, floored at zero.
Payments can exceed the agreed amount (1,053 active contracts): payments accumulate across modifications while agreed reflects the base document.
Per-contract payment curves come from the City’s voucher data, joined on contract number — 98.8% of voucher dollars carrying a contract number match this register; detail begins FY2018.
370 contracts have no recorded end date and are never counted as active; 25 placeholder end dates (year 2200) were removed.

Downloadscontracts_overview.json contracts_active.json Source dataset (data.sfgov.org)