The city of Ann Arbor's checkbook is now open for the public to see — essentially in real-time — on a new interactive website called A2OpenBook.

Ann Arbor officials said the new tool is an effort to increase the city's financial transparency by disclosing all city expenses and revenue in a format the average citizen can understand.

"It will give you some insights into our financial status — virtually live," said Tom Crawford, the city's chief financial officer.

Karen Lancaster, the city's accounting manager, and Josh Baron, a senior application specialist in the city's IT department, led the effort to launch A2OpenBook.

Baron said city financial data is downloaded directly from the city’s financial database every 24 hours and uploaded to A2OpenBook.

"The way that this works is the data gets refreshed nightly, so it's actually a one-day lag," he said. "So for all intents and purposes, it is actually real-time."

Citizens can browse expenditure and revenue information in a variety of ways, including by searching alphabetical lists of vendors and by expense amounts and expense types. Citizens also can drill down into specific funds such as the city's general fund, water and sewer funds, major streets fund, or parks maintenance and capital improvements millage fund.

"Once inside these service areas, you can actually drill down and it will take you down into the service unit, so now you have a deeper picture into how that money is being spent," Baron said during a run-through of the new site earlier this week.

Information is available for expenses beginning July 1, 2010, through the present. Not included on A2OpenBook are expenditures for the Downtown Development Authority and Housing Commission, which maintain their own financial systems.

Baron said A2OpenBook will continue to accumulate data on a daily basis. For user convenience, he noted, data sets are downloadable via Microsoft Excel.

Crawford said while the city has always believed that local government should be accountable for every dollar spent and has shared financial data and records online with citizens, the A2OpenBook website takes financial transparency to the next level.

Accountability and transparency is one of three categories where Gov. Rick Snyder is calling on Michigan municipalities to show improvements in order to receive state revenue sharing payments in the next fiscal year. Ann Arbor and other cities have until Oct. 1 to submit information to the state showing they're making progress in that area.

Crawford said A2OpenBook is over and above what the state is requiring. He said the city is working on other accountability and transparency efforts.

"That includes a performance dashboard, which are some metrics for the community to look at," he said. "For example, how much recycling we have, the quality of life, how we utilize fund balance — that kind of thing. And then the second thing we're publishing is a citizens guide to finance and budget, and both of those will be complete by the end of the month and put on our website. The citizens guide to finance and budget builds on what we already have out there and incorporates some of the graphs and information that the state has suggested."

Ryan J. Stanton covers government and politics for AnnArbor.com. Reach him at ryanstanton@annarbor.com or 734-623-2529. You also can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to AnnArbor.com's e-mail newsletters.