proposal for the travel policy - no receipts for <= $500

[Karen Sandler]

As many of you know, the travel policy has caused a tremendous amount of 
work
for Conservancy, where we have to track all of the appropriate records 
to
demonstrate that the policy was followed.  Our policy is designed to 
make
sure that no funds are inappropriately used or wasted to ensure maximum
benefit to our charitable mission, while allowing as much flexibility as 
we
can to travelers (for example, travelers can pick their own airlines and
times provided that they save a search showing that the fare is 
reasonable).

Over the number of years, we've found that this doesn't always work out 
well.
Many travelers, particularly those new to the policy or who only travel 
once
on behalf of the project,  don't read the rules and leave Conservancy 
without
adequate documentation.  Further, the goal of keeping the spending to
reasonable amounts gets lost for smaller trips. We also find that we're
spending more and more staff time scrutinizing smaller travel. After a 
lot
of thought, we've decided the documentation we currently require for 
smaller
reimbursement amounts may not be necessary for what we want to 
accomplish.
We still think that the policy as it stands does a good job when the
expenses are higher.

We'd like to propose a blanket exception on receipts for anything $500 
or
less, so long as we get attestations by both the PLC and the traveler 
that
they have indeed followed the policy. The rules would still apply, and 
we'd
still require a report on what was accomplished during the event. PLCs, 
if
they'd like more documentation before they provide their attestation, 
can
require receipts if they want, but they'd be responsible for evaluating 
and
organizing them.  I think this is a sensible limit for all of our 
projects.

Of course this is subject to our board as well as our outside auditor's
approval.

The relevant excerpt is below and you can review it in context at

https://k.sfconservancy.org/policies/pull-request/4/_/five-hundred-dollar-receipt-limit

karen

-------------

For any travel reimbursement requests that are $500 or less for all
expenses related to a single trip, no receipts or fare search are 
required
to be provided with the reimbursement report, provided that:

* the traveler attests that all expenses are bonafide and within the
travel policy requirements, includes their aforementioned trip
report and indicates the dates of travel, and

* the PLC attests that to the best of its knowledge, the expenses
were appropriately incurred and within the travel policy, that
the travel did in fact occur.

PLCs may at their discretion impose any additional documentation 
required
for PLC approval.



Karen M. Sandler
Executive Director, Software Freedom Conservancy
__________
Become a Supporter today! http://sfconservancy.org/supporter/