Hello,
I am currently working on the accounting for July 2025, and I would like to make a proposal for changes to how we handle our travel refunds. What I note below is a repeating issue, which creates quite some administrative pain, so I would like to solve it.
First, I think we should put a time-limit in place for how long travel refunds can be sent. We need to have a proper understanding of our budget, and usually, expenses should have a proper receipt in time, so there rarely is a reason for asking belated. Sometimes we get refund requests that date back months, if not years, and this kind of dilutes the budgeting.
I sugges to only accept refund requests for eight weeks after they occured, and otherwise refuse payment. This should factor in vacations and longer absences, and even for an event that takes place late December, we would know the final numbers then before finalizing next year’s budget usually around FOSDEM.
Under specific conditons (e.g. someone falls sick for a long period of time) we can grant exceptions, but currently it seems to be more the rule than the exception, and this doesn’t work.
Second, I think we should find a better way to organize the files. Every so often we have a variety of files with different names, which makes grouping things for accounting much harder.
I would suggest we either adjust our travel tool to create standardized file names (e.g. Year - Month - Event - Name - Refund Type), or if that is not possible, ask people who request a refund to name files accordingly and refuse the request unless files are in proper order.
That is a little bit more work for everyone, but overall, could reduce the amount of work on travel refunds by quite a lot.
Thoughts welcome.
Florian