Mesh/Accounting/1 May 2018

Sudo Mesh Accunting WG Meeting #1 - 5/1/2018

Agenda

• Intros & Intention-setting
• Overview of income, expenses & assets as well as current/draft policies
• Discussion: Purchase pwer & Reimbursement/Budget Requests
• Action Items

Attendees & Intros

• jenny - intention: same as mai. Distributing purchase power. Could add more people to accounts; can bring this up at meeting. Potentially moving to a different bank - Beneficial State Bank, in particular.
  • No limit on cosigners, and we'll be using them when we refinance the mortgage.
  • Overview of our Quickbooks and generating reporting using it
• mai - intention: come out of this with knowledge of what jenny's been doing so that work can be distributed a bit more. Better picture of where we are financially, where our accounts are... we've been using an ad hoc way of figuring out in meetings what to spend money on. Would like to revisit that to open up a proposal to the group.
• ben - intention: want to distribute the workload of organizing this. Clarify and establish group culture around doing this. Want to be active in doing that.
• robb - Here to shadow

Overview Current Moneypaths & Policies

• Sudo Mesh Projected Budget: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QJetruKfHrO5bpaLDk_smXYpLSvGlzytda_6koMjlCc/edit#gid=0
  • Jenny - copypasta from past work; feel free to iterate on it
    • A bug chunk of it is just how to fill our 990s. See Chart of Accounts at bottom.
    • mai - can we just do an electronic 990n?
      • jenny - if we make less than 50k, but we have to do a full one if we make more (e.g. from a big grant)
• Budget/Fundraising
  • Ben: Differentiate between one-time procurement of services/payment vs. recurring support/involvement/participation. Good to think about where we put our ask.
    • Mai: also between those donating their bandwidth, those who are essentially guinea pigs for the project.. other forms of participation
      • Ben: can set up monitoring so we know when their node is down (aside)
        • Mai: better to set up a way to pay maintainers/etc for their dedicated time
• Sudo Mesh Fiscal Policies & Procedures (DRAFT): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PeFoJUe4X3ww4mFKUMvbC4A-Yc_6sh5qbYdEgTdJpYQ/edit#
  • Jenny: First part draft of organizational fiscal processes, second part (11) is line item-by line
• Internal Logistics & Bureaucracy Trello Board: https://trello.com/b/LzVQlW3X/internal-logistics-bureaucracy-brainstorms

Discussion: Allocating Purchase Power & Reimbursement/Budget Request Processes

• Current Reimbursement/Budget Request Form: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13XzQBoRTMiMhZLPc8Ikuf14ur1JSSAHWNICFdpszPis/edit#gid=4
• Current Process:
  • Propose on weekly meeting minutes, discuss at meeting, and approve by consensus
• Proposed Process:
  • Purchase order accounts (possibly with cap)
  • Account Working Group: those with debit cards (chosen in some way) also need to approve purchases
  • Google form (such as /budget-requests) that goes into Trello, then the accounting working group approves that
    • mai: +1

Action Items

• set up finance@sudomesh.org (<< peoplesopen.net?) and add accounting wg members [jenny]
• info on seller's permit / wholesale resale [jenny]
• inventory of our equipment [mai + ben + everyone!]
  • date?
• let's look for additional grant money [mai] / patreon campaign
• Port existing purchasing spreadsheet to a Google Form, then work out some combination of the integrations below [mai]

   ** Trello, Rocket.chat, email (Jenny can set up finance@peoplesopen.net)
   ** Would be nice to consolidate into a single rocket.chat channel.

• Bi-weekly finance meetings (this time?)
• Locked petty cash box for discretionary funds; e.g. buying zip ties on the day of a node mount (robb/jenny)