Receipt #195371 to Collective Punishment Campaign

Expense Policy

This is a living document. As the movement grows, we need to regularly adapt our policies to make sure that we use the money that we have where it is most needed, while staying true to our values of transparency, inclusiveness and actively mitigating for power.

Board of Finance Monitors (admins)

Their role is to approve expenses. Feel free to reach out to them if you have questions about an expense that you'd like to make for the movement. 

Below you find the basic steps to spend money. Tracking and tracing expenses via opencollective makes it all very easy: everything is transparent, and the reports follow automatically.

This is the process we will follow to approve an expense claim on the collective balance:

Step 1: submit your expenses

Any member of the collective that spent money, can submit an expense to the collective page: by uploading a receipt or an invoice Receipts/reimbursements 

Receipts are for things that you buy for the community and for which you need to be reimbursed. Think of groceries, printing flyers, paint for banners etc.

Make sure that you keep the receipt. Take a clear picture of it and submit it to your collective (click on "submit expense" on your collective page).

A valid expense must contain the name and address of the vendor, the amount, the date, and the description of the items purchased. More info here.

Tip: you can also submit a receipt that you haven't paid yet yourself. Simply put the bank account of the vendor in 'communications' and add a small explanation. The money will be transferred immediately to the vendor.
Invoices 

Invoices are used to pay people for a service (a vendor, a company, a freelancer). They directly charges the collective for this service. When you upload an invoice, you are considered an independent contractor or freelancer.

The invoice needs to contain following essential information:

Submit the invoice on the collective page (click on "Submit Expense"). If needed, here is a useful template to create a proper invoice. Payout methods

We can pay back expenses or pay invoices via bank transfer, PayPal and TransferWise for international payments.

Step 2: get your expenses approved

When a member of the collective submitted an expense (receipt or invoice), its status is PENDING. An email is automatically sent to all the administrators (core contributors) of your collective to invite them to approve it (or comment on it to ask for more information).

The fiscal host has no decision making power on approving your expense (the administrators of your collective are the ones that know you better, are closer to what you do and can better tell if this or that expense is a valid one and helps the collective fulfill its mission).

Step 3: get paid

Once approved and if there is enough balance to cover for it in your collective, your expense will show up in the list of expenses that READY TO PAY . One of the administrators of the fiscal host (https://opencollective.com/collective-punishment-campaign) goes through this list every week and reimburses the approved expenses (or pays directly the vendor if that is what the communication asks us to do). . As long as the receipt/invoice is legal and approved by one of the admins of your group and comply with the transparency and accountability rules (i.e. it is not a lump sum amount sent to an intermediary to hide how the money is spent), it will be paid.

Once the payment is done, the status of the expense will go to PAID and the balance of your collective will be automatically updated.

Note: whenever you edit your expense, its status will go back to PENDING

Payments are made fortnightly weekly on Wednesdays, once they have been approved by a core contributor. We are only able to pay via Paypal, so be sure to input your Paypal address.

Here is an invoice template (Google Doc) you can use (fill out the blue parts and leave the black parts).

FAQT 
o whom should we address invoices?

They need to be addressed to the collective and use the address of any of its members (usually the person in the collective that has the relationship with the vendor).Can we hire people?

Only as contractors (freelancers). They basically need to be able to submit an invoice. Can we spend the money outside of Europe?

No. We can only send money in the eurozone. If you need to buy a product from elsewhere (e.g. an online subscription), one of you will have to pay for it and then expense it to your collective. In all cases, we highly recommend to spend the money of your collective in the local and sustainable economy. Can I ask to be reimbursed for less than the amount of the expense?

Yes. When you file the expense, you can enter any amount lower or equal to the amount visible on the actual receipt. This is useful when you go grocery shopping and you end up with a total bill with things for your collective and things for you. Can we get compensation as a volunteer?

At present, we can only reimburse volunteers for travel expenses.