School district data coming soon to FIT

Apr 20, 2022

The Office of the Washington State Auditor is excited to announce the addition of school district financial data to our Financial Intelligence Tool (FIT) this summer. FIT is a unique and powerful way to visualize and analyze the financial data of Washington's local governments.

Our Office will use FIT to publish the same data school districts are required submit to both SAO and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Before school district data will be available to the public in FIT, we wanted to provide schools with the opportunity to become familiar with the tool. While functionality will be limited at first, we encourage you to look at your district's financial data, trend information, and data visualization of revenues and expenditures.

This is the first step to fully integrating school district data into FIT, which enables users to search, filter, and compare financial data from across the state. FIT users like journalists, bond rating groups and lenders, legislators, the public and others are able to explore and compare how local governments receive and spend public dollars.

How to access your data

To access your data in FIT, follow these simple steps:

  1. Access FIT at portal.sao.wa.gov;
  2. Read and accept the information window, which says that the application contains data submitted by local governments;
  3. Click the login button near the top of the page. You should enter the credentials you use to submit your district's data to SAO; and
  4. Use the “Find Government by Name” menu on the left-hand side of FIT to find your school district and access its profile.

Learn more about FIT

Stop by the SAO booth at the WASBO 2022 Annual Conference and attend our session to get more information about FIT and what it can do with your data. Want to learn more? SAO has made it easy! The “15-Minute FIT” self-guided tour will have you feeling like an expert in 15 minutes or less. If you'd like more in-depth guidance, SAO offers personal training sessions to answer your questions and walk you through FIT. To learn more about personal training sessions, email Center@sao.wa.gov.