The Office of the Open Source Matters (OSM) Treasurer is responsible for managing, approving, and allocating funds to support the Joomla! project with education, outreach, software development, and events.

We wanted to let you know a few of the more detailed activities in the last few months.

Reporting

Both for transparency and government regulations, we are required to provide financial reports on a timely basis. In order to improve on that we have streamlined the itemization process for leadership teams and with our bookkeeper and accountant have automated our monthly P&L statements, budget vs actuals, and year-to-date (YTD) reports. Our reports are provided to OSM on a monthly basis and posted by OSM when such reports have been approved and are requested.

Financial Policy

As a critical component of managing OSM finances, we have updated portions of the OSM Financial Policy (as of December 15, 2016), the most significant points to be aware of include:

• Reimbursement requests (e.g. travel, lodging, meals, conference costs) must be made within 30 days of your invoice or event (i.e. all expenses related to an event should be filed at the same time within 30 days after the event), failure to do so will prevent reimbursement
• OSM cannot be held responsible for delays or non-payment due to errors in requests

While these are stricter guidelines, this has already significantly improved the time for a reimbursement to be completed. We hope that everyone enjoys the benefit of more timely processing.

Updated Forms

Over the next few weeks new forms for reimbursements, travel requests, travel portal booking requests, and event financial support will be available. These forms will have significantly improved security including SSL encryption and database level encryption while stored. Throughout 2017 we will continue to review ways to improve workflow with our forms to help teams, departments, and the board keep focused on the business of improving Joomla. Existing forms will have links to redirect to the 2017 forms as there are completed. Links to the new forms include:

• Budget Request: https://osminc.formstack.com/forms/budget_request
• Event Sponsorship: https://osminc.formstack.com/forms/event_sponsorship
• Travel Request: https://osminc.formstack.com/forms/osm_travel_request_form
• Reimbursement: https://osminc.formstack.com/forms/reimbursement_form__joomla_project
• Payment Request form: https://osminc.formstack.com/forms/payment_request_form_joomla_project

Budget

The budget allocation process for 2017 has been suspended until the leadership transition is complete. In the interim, OSM voted to issue a Q1 2017 budget that is equal to 22.5% of each team’s 2016 budget (25% of the 2016 budget reduced by 10% for discretional spending). This budget will fund the current OSM, PLT, and CLT initiatives through March 31, 2017.

The budget process for the remaining portion of 2017 will be completed by the post transition board of directors and will be overseen by the new treasurer.

We would like to thank all Joomla volunteers for your hard work which has created an amazing content management system used by over 3.7% of the internet and a community that spans the globe.