NESFA Treasury Procedures: Expense Reports

An expense report is a report of money spent on behalf of NESFA by an individual on their advance account. It is not a bill paid by check (those are dealt with under Writing Checks and Paying Bills) nor is it a request for a check to be written (we don't have any special forms for that; that kind of expenditure is treated the same way as a bill paid by check after the check is written.)

It's typical for an expense report to report expenses to multiple accounts -- people usually save up their reports and turn in one or two a month. It's also not uncommon for expenses on behalf of Boskone or MCFI to be reported on an expense report. (This is deprecated, but what can we do?)

NESFA requires documentation of all expenses, normally in the form of receipts attached to the expense report. The Treasurer can waive that requirement for non-officers in cases where he has independent reason to believe that the expense was actually incurred. (For example, a software package was acquired and no one else has claimed it as an expense.) In the case of officers or of the Treasurer, such waivers should be grated by the E-board and not by the Treasurer. Waivers should be documented in writing and attached to the expense report.

The total for the report is entered on the first line as a debit to the person's advance account, AD-name.  The description for the line can simply be "Expense report".   The individual expenses (you can aggregate multiple lines which represent the same kind of expense to the same expense account) are then listed as credits to their various EX-xxxxx accounts. The specific account to put a given expense in is usually clear, but sometimes confusing. See the discussion on Program and non-Program expenses for some confusing details.

An expense which is Boskone's or MCFI's is listed as a credit to the AD-Bxx or AD-MCFI cross-charge account.