Build an in-house system to create your IATI data files

While there are several third-party tools and services to help you prepare and publish your IATI data, many organisations prefer to build their own solutions.

Bespoke solutions

It is possible to build a bespoke, in-house system that can generate your data in the format you need for IATI. Large organisations that report a high number of activities often choose to do this, as it can be more cost effective than using a third-party tool or system to publish IATI data.

Most organisations that take this route have internal technical expertise and capacity; others bring in consultants to help them develop a bespoke package.

Your organisation would need to develop an internal process that pulls data together from your project management and finance systems to create IATI XML data. This requires technical knowledge of XML, the IATI Standard and your organisation’s internal systems.

Integrated solutions

See publishing tools and services for details on external tools and services that are designed to be implemented within your internal system. Rather than being a stand-alone tool, they interact with your internal software and allow for more automated IATI file creation and updating of data.

Please note, that each tool or service will require a level of set up to connect to your internal system.

Related guidance

Publishing your data files

This section explains how to host your IATI data files and link to them from the IATI Registry.

This section explains how to host …

Publishing without access restrictions

For publishers that create and publish their own XML files (i.e. they don’t use a tool like IATI Publisher or Aidstream) it’s important to publish those files on an open website which allow tools (such as the Datastore) to access them.

For publishers that create and pub…