Code of conduct for directors

OBSOLETE

Expences and payments by Wikimedia Belgium vzw

Wikimedia Belgium VZW will incur different kinds of operating expenditures. There are applicable paths on how those will be paid or refunded.

Standard operating expences, recurring or contractual expenditures

The association will have some standard operating expences such as office rent, communication, utility bills (water, electricity gas or heating) and standard operating costs like insurance. The board will take the formal decisions to rent, or make use of those facilities, that approval implies the approval of

• the signing of an appropriate contract, these supplier contracts will be signed by the treasurer or the president
• the treasurer will monitor and follow up on these contracts
• payment of invoices, will be made by the treasurer
• the board will be informed of important changes (that might lead to the decision to terminate or re-evaluate the contract
• the board will be informed for purposes of the financial reporting and before the renewal of the contract of the status and financial impact of the contract by the treasurer.
  

To hire staff the board will decide the number and qualification of the vacant position(s) and the board will be presented with a budget in the form of a wage fork (legal changes, such as indexation, will modify the fork but will not influence the approval) and adjuvant cost. Staff hiring will be dealt with by the president and the treasurer, all payment of wages will be dealt with by the treasurer through a so called "sociaal secretariaat".

Operating standards on expenditure

For all intends and purposes, it is the implied intention of the founders to run this association in a project based manner. A project has an Objective, a plan, a budget, an account and one or more report(s).

• the objective is clearly what we want to achieve with the project
• the plan is what actions are to be taken to achieve the objective of the project
  • the plan has a term a start, a duration and (eventually an end date),
  • with the plan goes a budget of allocated resources, and planned expences and or revenues,
  • plan and budget are approved ,
    • continuous projects that run over several years have an annual plan and annual budget, and carry-overs from one fiscal year to the next,
    • the approval of continuous project doesn't imply the automatic approval of the annual plan and budget
    • before each fiscal year plans and budgets for the continuous projects have to be approved
• each plan has its own account
• projects are regularly reported to the board at least annually or at the end of the project
  • • plans might require regular progress reports both for activities but most certainly for the financial side
    • each plan and budget has at least a final report listing the actions undertaken and the expences incurred and revenues obtained
      

In the planning of a project some expenditures might be identified that that require ordering and invoicing by a supplier. Such costs will be approved by the board and handled through following procedure :

• Planning and budget : cost identified and budgetted
• approval of plan and budget
• a project-manager appointed to lead /execute the project
• a board member appointed to oversee execution and as signatory of contracts and orders to suppliers
  • the board member is responsible for ordering and financial follow-up of the whole project even is he is not the project manager
• Orders will indicate the treasurer and the official address of the association as invoicing deatils.
• signed orders will be send to the treasurer ,
• the invoice will be send to the board-member for approval, the board member has to return within 15 days of reception of the invoice the approved invoice
  • any disputes/complaints towards the invoice should be notified to the treasurer
  • any undisputed parts should be notified to the treasurer
• approval by the baord member requires all countersigned delivery documents for the full delivery of the ordered goods or services
• invoices will be paid by the treasurer after complete approval
  

Payments, advances and cash advances

Cash should not be used. All expenses go via expense claims. The organisation does not have bank, nor credit cards.

Planned expenditure shall be payable with 30 days after reception of a valid invoice. Requests for advance payments to suppliers should preferably be dealt with through payment via bank transfer. In order to obtain an advance from the treasurer the project manager will submit a signed order form with an advance request to the board member overseeing his project. The board member approves the request for advance and sends it with the signed order to the treasurer. The maximum advance is limited to 25% of the total invoice amount or 30% of the invoice total excluding VAT and should be mentioned on the order form.

The treasurer will pay through a bank transfer within at most 15 days after reception of the request. Cash advances are limited to 25 € maximum; the treasurer will provide any cash advance requested to the project manager.

Submission and Approval of expenses and disbursements

• Expenses and payments for projects and events or for personal travel should be claimed through an expense declaration form.
• Expenses paid and personal cash advanced by board members, project managers or members in general that are entitled to refund should be submitted on the expense declaration form, motivated and duly supported by supplier invoices or tickets from the vendor (not with ATM or POS-terminal tickets). When buying in shops using a bank or credit card you will usually get a purchase ticket and a payment terminal ticket. The latter is not acceptable for submission of a claim. Combined tickets are. In Belgium the tax law requires for meals and for fuel a valid VAT ticket, so for claims for meals and drinks in Belgium restaurants or cafes, ask for the VAT ticket and not a handwritten ticket (make sure that the establishment can be identified by its name address and VAT number).
• Expenses for different projects should not be mixed on a single expense declaration form.
• Unspecified or general expenses should be claimed on separate forms and clearly motivated.
• Expenses should be approved before reimbursements can be made. All reimbursements will be made by bank transfer to the account of the claimant

Approval tree

Payment requests have to be approved by:

• Under 100 EUR or equivalent : Any BOARD MEMBER.
• Under 500 EUR: Any two BOARD MEMBERs
• Above 500 EUR: approval by the full BOARD (email)

Approval has to be obtained before committing to the costs. In all three situations, payment is processed by the TREASURER and the deputy TREASURER.

Mailing list approval procedure

1. Send the request + the quote to the WM BE board mailing list.
   1. please state if the quoted price is fixed (goods will be supplied for that price) or if the price may change (over time like for airline tickets) or unknown supplements may arise
   2. if the price depends on the quantity used/supplied, provide an estimate of the usage, and the unit price, the minimum purchase and/or the maximum (if usage is capped) and the estimated price example purchase of beer by the crate, if we need 200 beers at a unit price of 1.5€/beer bottle but we need to purchase them in crates of 24, then the unit price is 24*1.50€=36€ minimum purchase is 1 crate of 24 and maximum is 9 crates (216 bottles) the capped price is 324€ , assume that you stumble on a promotion for 10 crates for less then 360€ then you will get the expense deviation approved and the expenses reimbursed, the excess beer is then transferred to the association for a later event.
2. Approvals are added as "reply to all".
3. Effective invoice and proof of payment must be supplied to the treasurer, and added as reply to the email.
4. Deviations of the quoted/capped expense value ,
   1. for deviations less then 20% of the capped value and less then 100€ in total the treasurer can approve on his own;
   2. for deviations en excess of 20% and less then 40% of the capped value and less then 500€ the treasurer will issue a complementary approval procedure,
   3. deviations in excess of 40% of the quoted value and in excess of 500€ must obtain a full approval form the board.
   4. some emergencies may require unapproved expences, the board will decide on approval

Flights, accomodation

Board members will insure that everybody travelling on WM BE business will adhere to the WMF travel policy.]
All travel on WM BE business or on behalf of WM BE should be approved ahead of departure.
Approved travel arrangements may be based on estimated expences and should include cancellation insurance , and deviations of the estimate can be allowed but should be reported asap after booking/reservation confimation (preferrably before departure)

following particularities apply

• Reimbursement for kilometer-based travel with private cars on WMBE activities are reimbursable at the applicable fiscal rate; see Kilometer allowance.
  • kilometercount can be taken from following sources:
    • the cars counter using the end count and start count,
    • for a single destination the trip kilometercount may be obtained using Mappy of ViaMichelin (on-line route planners)
    • a multi-destination trip may be supported by any of the above or a trip download from a car GPS system
    • fuel tickets at beginning and/or end of the trip may be appended for support

• Reimbursements for organised travel (bus, train or airline) and accomodation on WM BE business

Will be reimbursable based on the actual hotel 7invoices, travel tickets or invoices, airline tickets (exceptionally credit card invoice copies might be acceptable) presented with the expense declaration form.

• Reimbursements of local travel(abroad) by rental car

Will be reimbursable based on the actual rental invoice, fuel tickets or invoices presented with the expense declaration form, however check the WMF travel policy.]

• Per diem or other travel related expenses
  • Approved travel might be accompanied with a per diem allowance for meals, refreshments, communication and local travel. The per diem allowance is the limit what is being paid, and is reimbursed based on the number of days stayed at the travel destination (number of overnight stay +1).
  • If for reasons beyond the control of the traveller his stay is extended (like annulled or delayed flight, weather conditions, industrial action etc) the per diem allowance will be applied (or actual cost reimbursed : hotel room + per diem)
  • If no per diem has been approved the travel (destination) approval should mention either that local expenses are covered by the eventhosts (no claims allowed) or if nothing is mentioned it is assumed that the traveller can claim reimbursements of actual expences for meals, refreshements, visits, communication, local travel etc based on invoices and tickets, and as per WMF travel policy.

Volunteers

• Reimbursements for volunteers, bicycle travel on WM BE Business for local volunteers

It is customary in Belgium for volunteers that help out at events with ticket/access control, setting up and cleaning, serving food and refreshments, cloak rooms, parking assistance etc to be paid a volunteersfee, their bus, tram or train ticket and to compensate them for bicycle travel.

• the fiscal bicycle fee is 0.22 € per km and is
• the volunteers fee is a daily fee of max 32,71€ and accumumlated per fiscal year may not exceed 1.308,38€ .

General code of conduct

Board members adhere to the WMF Code of Conduct Policy:

1. Treat other people with respect
2. Respect confidentiality and privacy
3. Protect Foundation/Association property
4. Maintain accurate, honest and complete books and records
5. Represent the best interests of the Foundation/Association

Approval by board

During startup phase, Dimi and Maarten signed the 2013 version of the code of conduct as signatories of the WM BE bank account:

• As signatory of the WM BE Bank account, MADe (talk) 13:31, 17 June 2013 (UTC)
• As signatory of the WMBE bankt account, Dimi z (talk) 13:41, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

After setting up the vzw/asbl, the following board members signed the code of conduct:

Footnotes

¹If necessary for approval by bank