The immutable ledger for Hawaii political campaigns.
Connect the campaign bank account. Every contribution and expenditure is categorized to the Campaign Spending Commission’s rules, your disclosure reports are drafted for the treasurer to approve, and a public transparency feed lets anyone verify the numbers.
Why this is hard today.
The Hawaii Campaign Spending Commission (CSC) requires organized campaigns to disclose every contribution and every expenditure on a fixed calendar under HRS Chapter 11. Most committees run this on a spreadsheet that quietly drifts from the bank statement — until a reporting deadline forces a scramble to reconcile weeks of activity from memory.
The cadence is unforgiving: preliminary reports before an election, a final report after, and supplemental reports on the Commission’s ongoing schedule. A single miscategorized in-kind contribution, an unrecorded refund, or a late filing can turn into a Commission penalty and an avoidable headline — and the treasurer, who is personally accountable for the records, wears it.
It also overlaps a second regime. A candidate who holds or seeks state office may separately owe financial-disclosure statements to the Hawaii State Ethics Commission under HRS Chapter 84. Two regulators, two filings, one bank account — and the campaign that keeps a clean, categorized ledger from day one is the only one that isn’t reconstructing history at deadline.
The obligations, in plain language.
The obligations below are set by Hawaii law and the Campaign Spending Commission. OpenBooks categorizes to them and drafts the filings; your treasurer reviews and files. This is recordkeeping software, not legal or campaign-finance advice.
| Requirement | Authority | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Register and appoint a treasurer | HRS ch. 11, Part XIII | Candidate and noncandidate committees organize with the CSC and name a treasurer responsible for keeping complete records of contributions and expenditures. |
| File disclosure reports on schedule | CSC filing calendar | Preliminary, Supplemental, and Final reports are filed on the Commission’s schedule through its electronic filing system. |
| Categorize every expenditure by purpose | HRS ch. 11 | Each expenditure is classified and reported by purpose; in-kind contributions are valued and disclosed like cash. |
| Respect contribution limits | HRS §11-357 | Aggregate contribution limits apply per election period — for example, $6,000 to a candidate for a four-year statewide or county office, with lower caps for shorter-term offices. |
| Ethics financial disclosure (if applicable) | HRS ch. 84 · State Ethics Commission | Candidates who hold or seek state office may separately owe financial-disclosure statements to the State Ethics Commission — a distinct filing from the CSC report. |
Connect once. Approve. Publish.
Connect the account once. The agent does the recordkeeping so the treasurer stays in the approver seat and the public sees the ledger, always current.
Bank + platform connect
Read-only connection to the campaign account and donation platforms. Every deposit and disbursement is imported as it clears.
Categorize to CSC rules
Individual, PAC, party, in-kind, loan, refund — each contribution and expenditure typed to the category the Commission expects.
Contribution-limit watch
Running per-donor aggregate against the statutory cap for the office, flagged before a limit is crossed — not after.
Treasurer approval workflow
Nothing is filed or published until the treasurer approves. The approver seat is always a human.
Report draft
A CSC-ready Preliminary, Supplemental, or Final report generated from real activity, export-ready for the electronic filing system.
Public verify page
A live, hash-chained transparency feed voters and reporters can independently recompute.
Artifact produced: a CSC disclosure report draft (Preliminary / Supplemental / Final) plus a public, verifiable contributions-and-expenditures feed.
What “verify” looks like here.
Publish a live ledger where every contribution and expenditure is chained with SHA-256 to the entry before it. Anyone — a reporter, an opponent, a voter — can download the full event stream and recompute the head hash themselves. It is transparency you don’t have to be trusted for.
Priced for campaigns.
Non-partisan by construction. Draft-first, treasurer-approved.
- ✓Bank + platform connect
- ✓CSC categorization
- ✓Final report draft
- ✓Public verify page
- ✓Everything in Local
- ✓Preliminary + Supplemental + Final drafts
- ✓Contribution-limit watch
- ✓Treasurer approval workflow
- ✓Everything in Campaign
- ✓High-volume donation ingestion
- ✓Priority filing support
- ✓Ethics-disclosure record prep
Prices are introductory and per organization. Not legal or tax advice.
Campaigns — questions officers ask.
Is OpenBooks partisan?+
No. It is non-partisan by construction — the same categorization rules apply to every committee, regardless of party or position.
Does it file with the Commission for me?+
It drafts a CSC-ready report from your real activity. Your treasurer reviews and files it through the Commission’s electronic system. We do not file on your behalf.
Who approves before anything is filed or public?+
Your treasurer. Nothing leaves draft — filed or published — without a human approval.
How does it handle in-kind contributions?+
In-kind contributions are valued and categorized like cash, then flagged for the treasurer to confirm before the report is drafted.
Does it track contribution limits?+
Yes. It keeps a running per-donor aggregate against the statutory cap for the office and flags a donor before a limit is crossed.
What about the State Ethics Commission filing?+
That is a separate regime under HRS Chapter 84. We keep the underlying records clean so both are easier, but the report we draft is the CSC campaign-finance report.
Is this legal or campaign-finance advice?+
No. It is recordkeeping software. Your treasurer and counsel remain responsible for compliance and for what is filed.
What happens when we correct a mistake?+
Corrections are appended as new entries that reference the original by hash. Nothing is overwritten, so the audit trail stays intact and verifiable.
Bring campaigns into the open.
Draft-first, officer-approved, cryptographically verifiable. Non-partisan and non-sectarian by construction.