Authorisation of Expenditure

This page is intended to be the Office Manager's draft working plan to bring together our current Authorisation of Expenditure system. Please don't edit this page directly, instead, contact Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) or leave a note on the talk page.

Key Principles

• Overall responsibility for monitoring expenditure by Wikimedia UK lies with the Trustees, who may choose to delegate some responsibility to individual staff members, or to a trusted and named volunteer, or to a committee, who is known as a budget holder. Any such delegations will be recorded in the minutes of the meeting, and on the appropriate page on the UK Wiki.
• Budget holders are required to write a budget plan, which must be approved by the Trustees.
• Budget holders are accountable for the types of purchases made and are required to justify all over/under spending in their budget.
• Budget holders are responsible for the authorisation of expenditure within their budget.
• The Trustees' approval of a project budget may be assumed to be the authorisation for expenditure, provided that the expenditure is within the description for that budget.
• The Office Manager will issue a report at each in-person board meeting to each budget holder, showing the amounts spent from their budgets, together with any comments or concerns to aid the budget holder in the control of the budget allocation.
• Budget holders can request further information from the Office Manager at any time, for example, in order to obtain greater 'drill­down' details of expenditure, or to ensure the  correct allocation of expenditure.
• Authorisation of Expenditure does not need to take place for certain items, which must be paid. If there are issues surrounding these bills, action will need to be taken after paying the bill.