[FAmSCo] Budget issues: Where are we?

Jiri Eischmann jeischma at redhat.com
Fri Sep 28 23:50:24 UTC 2012


----- Original Message -----
From: "Alejandro Pérez" <alejandro.perez.torres at gmail.com>
To: "Fedora Ambassadors Steering Committee" <famsco at lists.fedoraproject.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2012 4:39:23 PM
Subject: Re: [FAmSCo] Budget issues: Where are we?

On Thu, 2012-09-20 at 16:09 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
> Christoph Wickert píše v St 19. 09. 2012 v 13:00 +0200:
> > 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].
> 
> I think the new guidelines explain this pretty clearly. Regions are
> responsible for expenses up to $2,000. Anything above goes to FAmSCo. I
> don't see any problem here and it has started working pretty well in
> EMEA. I explained it to ambassadors, they understand it. Of course,
> there are sill requests going to FAmSCo, it needs time.
> 
> What's not clear for me now are premium events. But I think there was
> some thought to send requests for FAD funding to FAmSCo. FAmSCo receives
> it, pre-approves it, and give it to FPL/OSAS for the final decision.
> 
> >       * What can these people actually approve? We already agreed on
> >         limits [2] but then Herlo found it counterproductive.
> 
> I what way are they counterproductive? Let me use EMEA as an example:
> $0-499 - Peer review (FAmSCo member, credit card holder, it means you,
> me, and Joerg now)
> $500-1999 - Bi-weekly Ambassadors meetings (we agreed on that the quorum
> in EMEA is 5 ambassadors)
> $2000 and more - FAmSCo
> 
> Regions are allowed to set up the first two limits as long as the
> regional limit is not higher than $1999. AFAIK APAC set up the peer
> review limit to $300. EMEA kept it at $500.
> For me, it works OK so far.
> 
> >       * Tracking of the decision making process: Depending on who made a
> >         decision, it is hard or impossible to follow the decision making
> >         process.
> 
> IMO all decisions done by the region should be tracked in its trac. No
> matter if it's peer review or not. Anything above $2,000 should be in
> FAmSCo trac.
> Well, there is not one place to look for decisions, but I still find it
> pretty clear.
> 
> >       * 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.
> 
> I would distinguish two things: approvals and resource allocation.
> IMO the approval processes and responsibilities are set up well (see
> above). What I see as a problem now is budget/resource allocation. In
> EMEA, we know how to approve things, but we don't know how much money we
> can actually spend, we don't know what our budget is. Then it's pretty
> hard to the second thing regions are supposed to do now - planning. This
> is not defined at all.
> 
> IMO our goal situation is:
> Regions do planning. Based on planned expenses and Fedora's budget
> overall resources, regions are given a budget and deal with it by
> themselves.
> FAmSCo is the point of contact for FAD funding requests. Now, we're
> getting rid of a lot of small requests, so we can focus on big ones
> more. FAmSCo can work with the organizers and participants on the FAD
> budget, then pre-approve it and relegate it to FPL/OSAS for the final
> decision because I don't think there will ever be any given budget for
> FADs, so there will always have to be FPL or some from OSAS involved.
> 
> > 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
> 
> This is a valid argument. I don't know if the limits can be lifted up.
> Here in Red Hat EMEA, we all get default €5,000 per credit card period. 
> 
> >       * 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?
> 
> I don't think it will ever be possible. I, as someone who makes quite a
> lot of purchases in Red Hat, cannot make bank transfers myself. And
> there is no way I can do it which is why I don't think it's possible
> that our financial department will give this right to someone outside
> Red Hat. In fact, at least here in Red Hat Czech, no one is allowed to
> make wire transfers. It's all done by an external accounting company
> once a week based on approved requests we give them.
> Unless we find a service that charges credit cards and makes a wire
> transfer we won't solve this. I've never heard of such a service.
> 
> >       * 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.
> 
> I understand this, but have almost no experience with such services, so
> I can't really give any suggestions.
> 
> >       * 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.
> 
> The more problematic is getting the supplier/vendor to our system.
> Someone, who has the rights (our accountant in my case), adds it to the
> system. It gets processed in the financials. The system sends an email
> to the vendor to verify the request and fill out all necessary info. The
> email very often ends up in spam and it may take weeks.
> When the vendor is in our system, making a PO is pretty
> straight-forward. I just give info (what, how much, CC, vendor) to our
> accountant, she makes a PO, and when a person who is in charge of that
> CC approves it, it's good to go.
> Unfortunately, I don't see any way to make it easier or workaround it. 
> 
> > 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).
> 
> My main three problems we have to address:
> 1. Reporting (we need reliable data about expenses in the past)
> 2. Budget Allocation (we need to know what's the available global
> budget, and find a way to allocate it to the regions).
> 3. Payments (we need to make payments as fast and easy as possible, I
> don't think there is any way to make wire transfers possible. Maybe we
> can ask our financial department if there is any way to get a global
> corporate payment provider (such as Paypal, Western Union) where
> payments are easy to send and receive globally and fees are directly
> covered by Red Hat. If we can have global partners for shipping,
> travel/hotels, why not for this?)
> 
> Jiri

To move the discussion forward, I'd like to break down the problem and suggest ways out based on the discussion in FAmSCo meeting:

1.BUDGET PLANNING
Problem: we don't know what's the available global budget and how to allocate it to the regions.
Solution: who should make the first step? Should the regions come up with figures, how much they want to spend, and see if there is enough money for that, or should OSAS/Robyn give us a budget and let us reasonably spend it? 


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