Transparency is the fifth of Status’ Principles and also in Finance we’d like to propose a way to get more transparent by opening up the expenses to all core contributors to see every expense report from each other. Reducing the information symmetry shall lead to more self regulated processes and reduction of centralized control mechanisms over time.
There are two options to give access to the information:
either via new access rights in Expensify (the entire history of expenses will be visible) or
via monthly reports (starting e.g. in September, where directly some key figures and a summary will be communicated)
Which option do you prefer? What potential challenges or advantages do you see with which version? Please leave a comment.
My vote is for monthly reports published to the Status blog, which is then shared with the community.
We should publish as much raw data around individual’s monthly expenses (that doesn’t intrude on PII beyond name/amounts). From a report/summary perspective, it would be interesting to see:
(a) Our month/month trend on expenses per person
(b) The categories where we spent the most (e.g. travel, software, etc.)
Not a fan of the Expensify access because (a) it’s closed to non-CC’s, and (b) potentially has some sensitive PII that people would not like to disclose in the receipts (e.g. credit card 4 digits, addresses, etc.)
This might be a controversial opinion, but why do we have expense reports at all? As opposed to baking it into compensation. Would simplify admin a lot, and there’s no need to coordinate “oh you went to this and this conf already” but it’s instead up to each individual.
+1 for a monthly report of expenses and particularly aggregated + median ranges for categories. This would be particularly helpful for budgeting travel expenses for cities we go to frequently for meet ups, etc. Or how much people are spending on equipment by job function.
Hi @oskarth! I can’t speak for @dani, but I believe there is a tax justification for doing it this way, i.e. a lump sum allowance can be considered taxable income on the individual, whereas a reimbursed business expense supported by the appropriate paperwork can be paid across tax free.
correct, thanks @ceri for the quick reaction!
Very good ideas @patrick , potentially possible in the future. We need to further categorize the expenses to be able to draw out very specific analysis such as e.g. how much is spent on equipment.