Barkly Financial Transparency System

Functional Requirements — Draft 0.1

Purpose: Provide Barkly Labs with a human-readable, auditable system for importing financial documents, extracting structured financial records, requiring human verification, and automatically publishing approved financial information to the public website.

Core idea: Upload once → understand → verify → publish → automatically update.

01 — Document Intake

FR-001 — Upload Financial Documents

The system SHALL allow authorized Barkly administrators to upload financial documents.

Supported formats SHOULD include:

PDF

CSV

XLSX

TXT

JSON

image-based documents where practical

FR-002 — Preserve Original Documents

The system SHALL retain the original uploaded document as the source record.

The original document SHALL NOT be modified during extraction.

FR-003 — Document Metadata

Each uploaded document SHALL receive metadata including:

document ID

upload timestamp

document type

reporting period

source

processing status

verification status

02 — Document Understanding

FR-004 — Extract Financial Records

The system SHALL attempt to identify financial information from uploaded documents.

Possible records include:

income

donations

grants

sponsorships

expenses

purchases

reimbursements

transfers

fees

refunds

FR-005 — Normalize Records

Extracted information SHALL be converted into a consistent internal representation.

Example:

{

"id": "txn-2026-0001",

"date": "2026-09-28",

"type": "expense",

"category": "equipment",

"amount": 842.17,

"currency": "USD",

"description": "Development hardware",

"source_document": "invoice-2026-09-28.pdf"

}

FR-006 — Extraction Confidence

The system SHOULD indicate when extracted information is uncertain.

For example:

Amount $842.17 ✓

Date 09/28/2026 ✓

Category Equipment ✓

Description Hardware ?

The system SHALL NOT silently invent missing financial information.

03 — Human Verification

FR-007 — Human Review Required

Extracted financial records SHALL NOT automatically become public records.

An authorized human SHALL be able to review the extracted information before publication.

FR-008 — Edit Extracted Records

The reviewer SHALL be able to correct:

dates

amounts

FR-009 — Approve Records

The reviewer SHALL be able to mark records as:

Pending

Reviewed

Approved

Rejected

Needs Correction

FR-010 — Preserve Review History

The system SHOULD maintain an audit trail showing:

what changed

when it changed

who approved it

previous values where appropriate

04 — Financial Data Model

FR-011 — Canonical Financial Record

Every approved transaction SHOULD conform to a common schema.

Minimum fields:

Date

Type

Amount

Currency

05 — Public Transparency

FR-012 — Public Financial Dataset

Approved records SHALL be available through a public-facing financial transparency interface.

FR-013 — Human-Readable Presentation

The public interface SHOULD provide:

total income

total expenses

current balance where appropriate

spending categories

funding sources

reporting periods

individual approved records

FR-014 — Raw Data Access

The system SHOULD provide downloadable machine-readable data such as:

financials.json

financials.csv

This allows other people to independently analyze or visualize Barkly's public financial information.

06 — Automatic Website Generation

FR-015 — Financial Page Generation

The public financial webpage SHALL be generated from the structured financial dataset rather than requiring manual editing of individual webpage entries.

FR-016 — Automatic Updates

When approved financial records are added or modified, the public financial interface SHOULD update automatically during the next deployment/build.

New Document

↓

Extraction

↓

Human Approval

↓

financials.json

↓

Astro Build

↓

Updated Public Page

FR-017 — No Duplicate Data Entry

Administrators SHOULD NOT have to manually enter the same financial information into both the financial system and the website.

The structured financial record SHALL be the source of truth.

07 — Privacy & Safety

FR-018 — Public/Private Separation

The system SHALL distinguish between information required for financial transparency and information that should remain private.

The public system SHALL NOT expose sensitive information such as:

bank account numbers

passwords

authentication credentials

private addresses

payment-card information

unnecessary personal information

FR-019 — Public Redaction

The system SHOULD support redaction or exclusion of sensitive fields before publication.

FR-020 — Original Document Protection

Original financial documents MAY contain information that cannot be publicly released.

The system SHALL allow the public record to contain a sanitized representation rather than exposing the original document.

08 — Auditability

FR-021 — Source Traceability

Every published financial record SHOULD be traceable back to its source document.

Public Transaction

↓

Record ID

↓

Source Document

↓

Original Evidence

FR-022 — Immutable Published History

Once a financial reporting period has been formally published, changes SHOULD be recorded rather than silently overwriting history.

For example:

Original:

$842.17

Correction:

$847.17

Reason:

Invoice transcription correction

09 — Accessibility

FR-023 — Human-First Interface

The financial interface SHALL prioritize human comprehension over accounting complexity.

FR-024 — Accessible Presentation

The public interface SHOULD support:

keyboard navigation

screen readers

readable typography

sufficient contrast

responsive layouts

plain-language explanations

accessible tables

downloadable data

FR-025 — Explain the Numbers

The system SHOULD explain financial categories and summaries in ordinary language.

Not merely:

Operating Expenses: $4,281.19

but:

Operating expenses — $4,281.19 Money spent keeping Barkly Labs running, including hosting, supplies, software, and administrative costs.

10 — Automation

FR-026 — Processing Pipeline

The system SHOULD support an automated pipeline:

INGEST

↓

PARSE

↓

EXTRACT

↓

NORMALIZE

↓

VALIDATE

↓

HUMAN REVIEW

↓

APPROVE

↓

PUBLISH

FR-027 — Processing Status

Documents SHOULD expose their current state:

UPLOADED

PROCESSING

EXTRACTED

NEEDS REVIEW

APPROVED

PUBLISHED

ARCHIVED

FR-028 — Failure Visibility

If processing fails, the system SHALL clearly explain that processing failed.

It SHALL NOT silently discard the document.

11 — Barkly Standard Requirements

FR-029 — Transparency

Financial information intended to demonstrate organizational accountability SHALL be publicly accessible in an understandable form.

FR-030 — Human Oversight

Automation SHALL assist financial documentation but SHALL NOT replace human responsibility for publication.

FR-031 — Understandability

Financial information SHALL be presented so that a person without accounting expertise can reasonably understand it.

FR-032 — Reproducibility

The public financial dataset SHOULD allow another person to reproduce the major published totals.

FR-033 — Open Data

Where legally and practically appropriate, financial data SHOULD be published in open machine-readable formats.

FR-034 — No Hidden Automation

Automated extraction SHALL be distinguishable from human verification.

12 — Future Extensions

These are not required for 0.1, but the architecture SHOULD leave room for:

automatic receipt OCR

bank-feed imports

accounting-software imports

grant tracking

project budgets

donation tracking

recurring expenses

financial dashboards

yearly reports

PDF annual-report generation

public API

JSON Schema

automated consistency checks

anomaly detection

multi-organization support