Architecture

Collectives

In Open Collective, every entity is a collective and can be accessed publicly via their unique slug https://opencollective.com/:slug.

A Collective can be of type:

• COLLECTIVE e.g. Webpack

• EVENT e.g. BrusselsTogether Meetup 4

• ORGANIZATION e.g. iDoneThis, DigitalOcean, etc.

• USER e.g. xdamman

Members

A Member connects a User to a Collective. It can have multiple roles (one role per row):

• HOST legal holder of the bank account that holds the money on behalf of the collective

• ADMIN users who can approve expenses for the collective (aka core contributors)

• MEMBER aka contributors

• BACKER users who gave money to the collective

• FOLLOWER used atm for users interested in an event collective

Orders

An Order is the intent to give or withdraw money from a Collective. It is created by a UserId on behalf of a collective (which can be their own UserCollective or any other Collective that they are a member of).

Attributes:

Attribute	Definition	Example
type	type of order	EXPENSE|DONATION
UserCollectiveId	User who created the order	/xdamman
FromCollectiveId	Source of the money	/digitalocean
ToCollectiveId	Destination of the money	/webpack
currency	currency of the ToCollectiveId	USD
amount	amount in cents	10000
SubscriptionId	References recurring subscription
status	status of the order	PENDING -> APPROVED|REJECTED -> PAID

Transactions

A Transaction records money moving from one Collective to another Collective. In this example, a collective webpack is giving €100 to Women Who Code Berlin hosted by Women Who Code 501(c)(3).

Attribute	Definition	Example
OrderId	References the order	1
FromCollectiveId	Source of the money (virtual account)	/webpack
ToCollectiveId	Destination of the money (virtual account)	/wwcodeberlin
PaymentMethodId	Payment method (e.g. if there wasn't enough funds in the FromCollectiveId)	NULL
FromHostId	Source of the money	/opensource
ToHostId	Destination of the money	/wwcode
FromHostAmount	total amount in cents paid by the host of the FromCollectiveId in the currency of the host	-11481 (-$114.81)
FromCollectiveAmount	total amount that increases/decreases the balance of the FromCollectiveId in the currency of the FromCollectiveId	-11481
paymentProcessorFeesInHostCurrency	fees for the payment processor in cents
hostFeesInHostCurrency	fees for the host in cents in the currency of the host (which might be different than the currency of the collective, e.g. WWCode (USD) and WWCode Berlin (EUR)	574 (5% of €100 in USD)
platformFeesInHostCurrency	fees for the platform (Open Collective)	574 (5% of €100 in USD)
ToHostAmount	net amount in cents received by the host of the ToCollectiveId in the currency of the ToHostId	9630 (€100 - (2.9% + $0.30) - €5 platform fee)
ToCollectiveAmount	total amount that increases/decreases the balance of the ToCollectiveId in the currency of the order	9580 (€96.30 - €5 host fee)
FromHostCurrency	currency of the FromHostId	USD
FromCollectiveCurrency	currency of the FromCollectiveId	USD
ToCollectiveCurrency	currency of the collective that receives the money	EUR
ToHostCurrency	currency of the order (currency of the ToCollectiveId)	USD
fxrate	Foreign eXchange Rate from the currency of the order (ToCollectiveCurrency) to the currency of the host of the FromCollectiveId (float)	1.15

Note: The Collective currency might be different than the Host Currency (both for the source "From" and the recipient "To"). The fxrate only takes into account the conversion between ToCollectiveCurrency to ToHostId.