Talk:Expenses 2012-2013: Difference between revisions

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Can someone explain how the Wikimania per diems worked? A lot of meals were provided by the conference (all lunches were and several dinners). I can't remember if breakfast was included in the ho(s)tel rates or not, but if it wasn't then presumably it was added to the bill and paid directly by the chapter. So what were people spending their own money on that required reimbursing them up to £330? --[[User:Tango|Tango]] ([[User talk:Tango|talk]]) 12:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Can someone explain how the Wikimania per diems worked? A lot of meals were provided by the conference (all lunches were and several dinners). I can't remember if breakfast was included in the ho(s)tel rates or not, but if it wasn't then presumably it was added to the bill and paid directly by the chapter. So what were people spending their own money on that required reimbursing them up to £330? --[[User:Tango|Tango]] ([[User talk:Tango|talk]]) 12:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
:Breakfast was not included, I think that would have been fifteen dollars a day extra in my hotel, which was one of the standard recommended ones from the Wikimania organizers. I used my per diem to go to the local supermarket and stock up on diabetic-friendly food (which the breakfast in the hotel certainly was not), travel around Washington and to/from the Airport, local meals out (I only recall one buffet laid on at a closing event (most of which I could not eat) and the rather nice buffet laid on at the National Archives (which I could eat), meals while travelling and a bit of cash for sundry things like coffee, snacks, tips, connection charges, the US pseudo visa thing (that was $10 I think), defray the costs of getting a new passport (mine did not have the required extra 6 months on it) and away from home items (like shaving foam which I can't take in my luggage) etc. Had I put receipts in for (some of) this, I have no doubt it would be less money than I was paid in per diems and I would probably not have bothered claiming or keeping receipts for it all and would be well out of pocket. The charity tends to balance a generous rate against the cost in staff and volunteer time in administering lots of receipts; however I do think that the current per diem rates, and those that were paid at Wikimania, are higher than they need to be. We might consider a survey of volunteers that claim per diems to see if the charity is being over-generous even if we compare favourably to other organizations in this regard (we have done a bit of benchmarking on it). Thanks --[[User:Fæ|Fæ]] ([[User talk:Fæ|talk]]) 12:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Revision as of 13:56, 1 March 2013

Thank you for putting together this page.Would it be possible to get a column added showing what budget each expense came out of? it is not always clear if something is an administration expense or if it can be directly attributed to a programme. Thanks. --Tango (talk) 16:49, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Not for some time I think. That's a lot of work, which Richard won't be able to do at the moment. Johnbod (talk) 03:49, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
It is a little concerning that the charity's accounts aren't set up in such a way as to make running off these kinds of reports easy. --Tango (talk) 11:06, 27 September 2012 (UTC)
I've not yet had time to design the report to run off ;-) Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 14:37, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Can I repeat my request of a few months ago? I believe the accounts are in better shape now, so hopefully it is possible to add that budget column. --Tango (talk) 12:25, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Updated figures for 2012/13

Any problems or questions, let me know! Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 17:53, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm just wondering about the total figure for JD's expenses. These were intended to be all his expenses since he was employed in 2011, and yet his expenses as a full time employee are ¼ of mine as a volunteer trustee. I'm not sure that makes sense. As an example, didn't Jon go to some conferences, like the one in Berlin and the one in Washington? Thanks -- (talk) 23:31, 28 February 2013 (UTC)
What you see up at present is the bulk of the costs from some of the larger budgets. I haven't gone through the smaller budgets, like the staff travel budget, yet, but I intend to - but checking the entire general ledger is a lot of work, as I need to sort them, remove the irrelevant ones (and modify some to be understandable), add them to an Excel sheet, and then change the entire sheet into a series of wikitables. These will be all the expenses for the 2012-13 Financial Year, as the records for 2011 aren't good enough to pull all of the expenses from without considerable expenditure of staff time. This shouldn't be too much of a problem I hope. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 11:07, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Okay, just to make sure nobody misreads what these tables represent, it would make sense to qualify the figures, either by saying what period they are valid for, or to say in what way they are provisional information. Thanks -- (talk) 11:30, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Wikimania per diems

Can someone explain how the Wikimania per diems worked? A lot of meals were provided by the conference (all lunches were and several dinners). I can't remember if breakfast was included in the ho(s)tel rates or not, but if it wasn't then presumably it was added to the bill and paid directly by the chapter. So what were people spending their own money on that required reimbursing them up to £330? --Tango (talk) 12:28, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Breakfast was not included, I think that would have been fifteen dollars a day extra in my hotel, which was one of the standard recommended ones from the Wikimania organizers. I used my per diem to go to the local supermarket and stock up on diabetic-friendly food (which the breakfast in the hotel certainly was not), travel around Washington and to/from the Airport, local meals out (I only recall one buffet laid on at a closing event (most of which I could not eat) and the rather nice buffet laid on at the National Archives (which I could eat), meals while travelling and a bit of cash for sundry things like coffee, snacks, tips, connection charges, the US pseudo visa thing (that was $10 I think), defray the costs of getting a new passport (mine did not have the required extra 6 months on it) and away from home items (like shaving foam which I can't take in my luggage) etc. Had I put receipts in for (some of) this, I have no doubt it would be less money than I was paid in per diems and I would probably not have bothered claiming or keeping receipts for it all and would be well out of pocket. The charity tends to balance a generous rate against the cost in staff and volunteer time in administering lots of receipts; however I do think that the current per diem rates, and those that were paid at Wikimania, are higher than they need to be. We might consider a survey of volunteers that claim per diems to see if the charity is being over-generous even if we compare favourably to other organizations in this regard (we have done a bit of benchmarking on it). Thanks -- (talk) 12:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)