Talk:Expense procedures

Background

The Expenses Procedures were previously embedded within the WMUK's Finance Policy, but will in future be treated as a separate document.

The procedures are left substantially unchanged, except for point 5 of the Per Diem section which gives the CEO authority to revise the per diem rates to keep them current. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:09, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Community comments

Highlighting changes

Please could all changes be marked up? There currently seem to be removals of sentences that aren't highlighted at all here - see [1]. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:19, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

CE being able to change per diem rates

I think this clause needs some re-thinking. Some questions to think about:

1. If the CE can change the amounts, then why are the amounts specified in this policy page? Shouldn't they be split off onto another page to avoid a policy page being changed without the board's approval?
2. Isn't there a COI with the CE being able to change the rates and also claim per diems? Shouldn't at least the treasurer be involved in the decision to adjust these rates?
3. Why would the CE need to change the rates? I guess this might be due to inflation/rising cost of living; if so, wouldn't it make sense to restrict changes to just being related to those, rather than allowing them to be changed arbitrarily?

(BTW, why was the minimum wage point removed from this section?) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 17:30, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it might be worth including language to the effect that the Chief Exec can make cost-of-living adjustments (which I think is the intent), rather than giving them more discretion. The Land (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Delegating it to the CEO was to simplify matters and reduce board time spent on it. This includes the treasurer who is not an infinite resource. There is of course a potential COI for anyone who receives a Per Diem - we just have to be sensible. If I did something unreasonable then that would be picked up. Tieing it down to anything seems a bit too detailed to me and would end up with strange amounts. e.g. £26.27. I do not anticipate any dranatic changes at all FYI.

Re the Minimum wage point, nobody on the ARC could remember why it was there. Can you? Jon Davies (WMUK) (talk) 11:50, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

I would imagine it was to avoid a situation in which we paid someone such that the expenses we were covering left them in deficit and thus took them below the level of the minimum wage. I've no idea what the legal situation is in such cases but it would certainly be undesirable. I'm not sure we need to explicitly say it though Sjgknight (talk) 12:06, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

It's there because there was a risk that some volunteers could be claiming per diems so often (e.g. every day for 2 weeks if they were being particularly active) that the per diem could essentially be viewed as their wage, which would then be less than the minimum wage and hence illegal. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:27, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

This is all to do with a simple way of handling the reimbursement of expenses, isn't it? It's nothing to do with payment of wages or payment for services rendered. So I can't see that the minimum wage point has anything to do with this. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:33, 28 January 2014 (UTC)