[FAmSCo] Budget issues: Where are we?

Christoph Wickert christoph.wickert at gmail.com
Wed Sep 19 11:00:48 UTC 2012


Hi there,

I am trying to summarize the previous discussion about all the budget
related issues and what we have agreed on so far. Sorry it took so long.


I. PROBLEMS

Decision making:
      * Who is to review and approve expenses? Our current process lists
        three different options: FAmSCo, credit card holders and the FPL
        [1].
      * What can these people actually approve? We already agreed on
        limits [2] but then Herlo found it counterproductive.
      * Tracking of the decision making process: Depending on who made a
        decision, it is hard or impossible to follow the decision making
        process.
      * Unclear process for premier events: The budget for FUDCons and
        FADs is owned by the "budget owner", but it is unclear who the
        budget owners are. While this is not necessarily a problem for
        FUDCons where we have a big team of organizers and the FPL
        usually is one of them, it is a problem for FADs which are often
        handled by just a single person. There is no control whatsoever
        and organizers themselves have a hard time requesting budget
        because nobody knows where the money is to come from.
      * Transition from CommArch to OSAS: Most documentation is
        obsolete.
      * Lack of documentation: Depending on the outcome of all this, we
        need to update our documentation.

Payments:
      * Unresponsive budget owners or credit card holders: People often
        have to wait too long until they get reimbursed.
      * Community credit card limits are too low: Having to wait for a
        reimbursement often is not caused by an unresponsive card owner
        but by the limit being too low. Here in EMEA we are often out of
        money and have to wait for for the next month or quarter
      * Credit card holders cannot make bank transfers. If I produce
        swag, I have to pay the bill and wait for reimbursements. Why
        not have the credit card owner pay directly?
      * No advance payments: For some people, it is simply impossible to
        pay something in advance and wait for reimbursements.
      * PayPal only: The only way I can get reimbursed it PayPal and if
        one receives too much money, PayPal assumes one is trading
        something and wants to see some paper work. My account was
        suspended 3 times already.
      * Some countries are having serious problems with money transfers.
        Sometimes Western Union is the only way.
      * Cumbersome POs: For everything above USD 2000 we need a PO but
        issuing one is hardly documented: Cost centers and all that,
        even inside RH people often don't have a clue.

Accounting:
      * No reliable reporting: We spend money but we have no clue where
        or on what we spent it.
      * No overview for FAmSCo: Even though budget is managed by FAmSCo
        and will continue to be so on a global level, FAmSCo hardly has
        an overview of the spendings, especially of the community credit
        cards as the reports go to RH accounting and are not available
        for us.
      * No common reporting: Some credit card holders report with great
        level of details, others don't. It's a problem of transparency
        vs privacy (at least one card owner thinks so, personally I
        don't).
      * No planing: Because of the problems mentioned earlier we have no
        reliable numbers to divide the budget among the regions and
        throughout the year.


II. WHAT WE HAVE AGREED ON SO FAR

      * We want to move budget away form FAmSCo to the local communities
        and the others.
      * We want regional communities to handle their own budget.
      * Regions should be able to define their own rules for approval.
      * This means we need one budget wrangler per region
              * APAC: bckurera
              * EMEA: eischmann
              * LATAM: aeperezt?
              * NA: rsuehle?
      * Review and approval of expenses should happen in the regional
        trac instances.
      * For accounting and planing, we need one global trac instance,
        probably the draftbudget [3] one.
      * The tickets in the central budget trac should only hold the
        budget relevant info and a link to the regional trac ticket with
        further info.
      * In order to not screw up things, the budget, only some people
        should have access to the central budget trac: OSAS, FAmSCo,
        regional budget wranglers and credit card holders.


III. SUGGESTIONS HOW TO MOVE ON
     1. Make sure we have identified all problems. If you think
        something is missing, please reply to this mail.
     2. Once we have a complete overview of the problems, move it to the
        wiki.
     3. Try to prioritize and break everything down into smaller chunks.
     4. Work in small groups of 2-3 ppl to address the individual
        problems. E.g. as Ruth and Robyn are the ones to work with the
        budget most, they are to define what the central trac should
        look like.
     5. Have regular meetings to review the progress (or the lack
        thereof).


IV. LINKS
[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Community_credit_card_process
[2] https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/281
[3] https://fedorahosted.org/draftbudget/

Kind regards,
Christoph



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