Re: [Debconf-team] howto deal with debian/debconf money at ffis (and spi)
On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 12:20:08PM +0800, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> I'm looking forward to your further comments, and thanks for the
> precious accounting work your doing.
>
> BTW, I've another comment on the proposal summarized by Holger. What is
> the rationale of having several different earmarks at FFIS, one per
> year? AFAICT DebConf budgeting windows will never overlap, so one
> earmark should be enough which will have the invariant of being empty
> outside DebConf budgeting windows and (hopefully) full during them.
That is a good point. As long as the accountant can get a list of the
relevant transactions during a conference, it should be good. So this
would nominally work, they could figure out the start and end dates.
However, there were DC9 incomes in 2010 (!). Separate accounts for
dc9 and dc10 helped Holger to give me accurate data with minimal
effort. I'm inclined to use separate accounts just to possibly make
things a bit easier, but could deal with either. It may make things
easier for people in the future...
I am new to accounting, but thanks to having solid data, I am going to
be able to produce great budgets for DC9 and DC10.
Some more thoughts to answer some of your past questions:
Q: What is the difference between DebConf having its own
earmark/accounts, and working out of Debian's?
A: With debconf's own earmarks/accounts, the debconf accountant can
easily get a list of current debconf transactions. This means it
is easy to reconcile actual accounts with the DebConf ledger, which
means the ledger is more likely to be be accurate.
If this is not the case, someone has to go through and figure out
what transactions are DebConf's and not. This slows things down,
and makes an accurate ledger less likely. If you can't get summary
balances, you can't reconcile by just looking at total balances =
bad.
Furthermore, it will prevent DebConf from deficit spending without
someone noticing and bringing it up.
Debian people will be able to see the money either way.
And either way, it will be in the same physical bank account (I'd
say if debconf wanted to make new physical accounts, as is the case
with DIVA, that *does* require more talking).
So really all it is is an accounting trick to help accounting get
done easier - which makes it more likely to be done.
Q: What are the advantages of letting DebConf finalize its
transactions before giving Debian back equity?
A: It's better to get things done once than have to keep revisiting
it. If transactions come in after DebConfN's budget is finalized,
DebConf has to update its books - and so does Debian (the amount of
equity=surplus). When it's harder (and requires detangling two
accounts), I'm guessing it will be less likely to be done.
Then, if someone wants to go through and check numbers again,
sometime in the future, they must check both DebConf's transaction
list and Debian's. This makes things more complicated.
If DebConf can finalize all transactions it expects before closing
its books,
If we know some things will take an unreasonable amount of time, we
should close before then and pass off those things to Debian.
Q: If we are so concerned about money staying under control of Debian,
why not just not use any DebConf specific-accounts, and get the
Debian accountants to track DebConf's budget?
A: Less important reason: it would be giving them more work they don't
need to do.
More important reason: would be a lot more work for them detangling
Debian and DebConf expenses from the same accounts. In fact, they
might even want to keep separate accounts/earmarks to make it
easier... which brings us back to what I want in the first place.
But if you want to provide an accounting team, feel free to do
whatever you would like.
Q: What if DebConf was forced to not have it's own earmarks/accounts?
A: Your people would be doing a lot of work emulating an earmark, or
you'd be looking for an accountant besides darst.
Q: What if we did accounting so that sponsors donated directly to
Debian, and Debian gave money to run DebConf?
A: Great idea, would merge teams. But would make "long-term net
zero-budget" not mean so much. Still not a bad idea, but either
they are still considered in the debconf budget... or change what
stuff means.
I'm fine with whatever.
I hope this explains why I want stuff the way I am asking. I am more
than happy for someone else to say ey'll be the accountant, then I
will stop making requests.
Thanks,
- Richard
--
| Richard Darst - rkd@ - boltzmann: up 610 days, 1:40
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| "Ye shall know the truth and -- the truth shall make you free"
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