From Fedora Project Wiki

This is a projected forecast for the general Fedora budget for the remainder of FY13.

General Information

Notes on Quarters and Fiscal Years

Fedora's fiscal year is split into four quarters, which run from:

  • March 1 - May 31 (Q1)
  • June 1 - August 31 (Q2)
  • September 1 - November 30 (Q3)
  • December 1 - February 28 (Q4)

The current fiscal year for Red Hat is FY13, and thus for ease of things we also refer to this as FY13 in Fedora. FY13 started in March 2012, and will end in February 2013.

PLEASE NOTE: Items are booked against a specific quarter when the actual expense report is filed inside of Red Hat. That means:

  • If Robyn pays for a sponsorship for an event that is taking place in Q3 during the course of Q2, it will get booked into the Q2 budget.
  • If you request a reimbursement for sometihng in Q2 and receive it in Q3, it will go against the Q3 budget.

Additionally: Things which occur within the last 2 weeks of a quarter will generally fall into the next quarter for accounting purposes.

"Buckets" of budget

PLEASE NOTE: We have governance in place for how "premier Fedora events" and "regional support" funds are spent in a community-collaborative way. The "discretionary funds" had in the past been allocated at the discretion of the Community Architecture team, who chose to make that line item of its larger budget transparent because most discretionary spending ends up being on Fedora. Because the new OSAS group will have significantly larger scope, the way the discretionary bucket is handled may change, but the items previously paid for within that budget will likely still be paid for out of a similarly named bucket, but may have more of a fixed amount that is strictly dedicated to Fedora.

Historically, Fedora budget has been divided up into three "buckets":

Premier Fedora Events

Premier Fedora Eventsare events that are all about Fedora. FUDCons and FADs are the events that make up this portion of the budget.

Regional Support

Regional support has traditionally referred to the money that was managed by FAmSCo and Regional Ambassadors to provide support for events, travel, media, swag, hardware for event boxes, etc.

Discretionary Budget

The "discretionary funds" part of the Fedora Budget has traditionally been used for the following purposes:

  • Payment of yearly LWN subscription for use by Fedora Community members
  • AWS (Amazon Web Services) bills
  • Other items (travel, etc.) at the discretion of Community Architecture (and now, possibly OSAS and/or FPL)

Budget in FY12

In FY12, the following amounts were allocated to the aforementioned buckets:

  • Premier Fedora Events: $90,000
  • Regional Support: $80,000
  • Discretionary Funds: $15,000

The final numbers posted for FY12 are can be seen here. Unfortunately, there is no transparency AT THIS TIME as to how / where money was spent after late July, 2011.

Budget in FY13

Why no total budget # provided to just work within?


Budget for FY13 for Q1 (Mar. 1 - May 31, 2012)

The official wrapup of finances as they were transferred from Community Architecture to OSAS ended at the end of Q1. The report out from CommArch stated that Fedora had utilized ~$34k ($33,900) through Q1.

The only unknown at this point is whether or not the Community Credit Cards that ended in May or June were booked into Q1 or not. Finance is currently investigating whether or not these were built into the final Q1 number or not.

Purchase orders for the F17 media, because they were booked against the Community Architecture cost center during the course of Q1, are (according to Robyn's information) included in this Q1 total figure, regardless or whether or not that PO has been fully paid out at this point.

Unfortunately, as with the latter half of FY12, there is no detail available at this time regarding what this money was spent on. I do know that it includes spending from regional support, premier fedora events, and discretionary spending buckets.

Budget Projections for Remainder of FY13

Why?


FY13 Q2 -- Jun. 1 - Aug. 31, 2012

This section is currently IN PROCESS - as in, we are literally in

Regional Spending:

Premier Fedora Events:

  • FUDCon Venezuela: $10,000 (estimate; expected to be mostly/nearly all airfare)
  • FUDCon Paris: $5,000 (estimate; airfare bought in this quarter, prior to Aug. 15th-ish. IF WE DONT EXPECT TO BUY TICKETS FOR PARIS IN THIS QUARTER ROBYN NEEDS TO KNOW.)
  • Translations FAD @ FISL: $3,200 (estimate) - https://fedorahosted.org/famsco/ticket/301

Discretionary Spending:

  • Amazon Web Services: $150 (estimate)
  • Reimbursement to nmccallum for fosdem 2011 (yes, 2011): $1000 (pending)

FY13 Q3 -- Sept. 1 - Nov. 30, 2012

FY13 Q4 -- Dec. 1, 2012 - Feb. 28, 2013

MOVING FORWARD

The OSAS team intends to provide updates to the budget/accounting page at least once a month. It may take a few weeks to get this straightened out the first time, and there may be mistakes, but the goal is to improve and make it easy for everyone.

Things that would be additionally useful going forward (please note, this section is solely Robyn's opinions, and I am full of them as the person that ultimately needs to ensure that the flow of information between OSAS and Fedora is going well):

  • Thinking more clearly each year about likely events, projections, new needs, etc. Because the fiscal year starts in March, planning for the upcoming fiscal year begins typically in December/January.
  • Consider having a consoli