Hello,
if this mail is to long for you: We will work on the budget groups during today's call. The current progress can be seen at https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/WikiAction/edit/User:Floeff/Budget2013Proposal, don't forget to reload every once in a while.
In preparation for our call at 1600 UTC, I have worked on the budget. I checked all BoD decisions so far [1] and all account reports available, to ensure I did not overlook any item.
The following is my proposal, which we can use as basis for discussion in the call. Discussions on that should take place directly on the phone, [2] and for those who can't attend, please use the public board-discuss@documentfoundation.org mailing list. Be advised, however, that we plan to finalize the first iteration of the budget during today's call, so mails coming in later might not be considered for the first iteration.
In contrast to the cashflow overview sent out yesterday, and updated just a few minutes ago, [3] the budget we want to fix for 2013 should:
- be combined into handy groups with budget holders,
- start back on January 1st to ease booking and accounting,
- should waive all prior budget assignments when feasible.
In terms of whose budget is affected, the general notion should be to use the most logical one. As an example, there will be no extra general budget for travel funding, but rather, the money needs to come out of existing budgets, like the administrative one for meetings with the tax advisor, or the infrastructure one for admin meetings. I assume it will need some experience to see how and if that works, and probably some adaption of the sums - time will grow our experience here.
For travel refunds, we first will try to let SPI refund those costs out of the money they collect for the LibreOffice project. SPI spendings are at the sole discretion of SPI, as it is not TDF's money, which is why it is not included in this budget.
The numbers mentioned in the budget are rounded up generously. This does not mean costs have grown all of a sudden, but rather should help in being a bit flexible with spending, without needing new approvals for every ¤ spent.
For the running operations with the budget, I will later on come up with a spreadsheet, where budget holders can enter their current spendings, so we can get a close-to-realtime overview on available and spent money.
A note on finalizing the budget: Finalizing here means that we should try to come up with a proposal that we can stick to for a while. Of course, we can always adapt it towards our needs and demands, but we should avoid on changing it on a daily basis. This will greatly help us to focus on some other work, if the budget parameters are set.
A note on the term budget holders: For each development budget, we should have two holders/authorizers. Spendings on each budget need to be approved by those two together, and need to follow our general spending policies and guidelines. A formal approval of all the board is not necessary. Budget holders are therefore responsible towards the board and the members to ensure proper spending and proper receipts. If in doubt, feel free to poke treasurer@documentfoundation.org anytime.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to put my proposal in a nice calc sheet because of lack of time. We will work on the budget "live" during the call, which is temporarily hosted at
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/WikiAction/edit/User:Floeff/Budget2013Proposal
Feel free to open the page and reload it during the call, to see the current progress.
Looking forward to hearing you soon in the call,
Florian
[1] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Decisions
[2] https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDF/BoD_Meetings
[3] http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/board-discuss/msg03102.html