Expenses

Managing Expenses

Using funds from your collective’s budget to pay expenses is simple:

1. Someone submits an expense on your collective's page OR collective admins draft an expense and send an invitation to someone else to complete and submit it.

   • There are 2 main types of Expenses: (For all payout options available, check our Payouts page.)

     • Reimbursements

     • Invoices

2. Once the expense is created, the collective's admin (someone on your team) reviews it (confirms that the expense meets requirements, e.g., a valid receipt, the amounts match, etc.) and approves it as an accurate and expected expense.

3. Next, a member of OC Europe's team reviews and approves the expense. OC Europe uses a Double-Approval Process to ensure the expenses comply with the tax authority guidelines.

4. Once the expense is verified, the expense recipient gets paid.

5. All the expenses have to be paid by the collective's members or collaborators and only after that a reimbursement can be requested. Only in rare exceptional cases Open Collective Europe will pay that expense directly to the provider in the name of the collective.

Collective admins can set an expense policy to give guidance to expense submitters.

Expenses are processed and paid within 7 days. 🌏 Our finance team works across multiple time zones, which may mean transaction payments do not process until later in the day.

OC Europe can pay out funds via PayPal and electronic bank transfer via Wise.

Make sure to review the Expenses and Getting Paid section of Open Collective’s documentation for a full overview of the process.

The nature of the expenses

Our tax status and the terms of our fiscal sponsorship agreement define that funds can only be used to further the cause of the projects we accept.

We have an incredibly broad policy on expenses that we will allow but sometimes we may need more information to understand how an expense meets our policy.

If you have any issues with a specific expense, the best way to get an answer is to post a comment on that expense's page.

Receipts or invoices that include a reference to Open Collective Europe cannot be accepted.

Receipts and invoices must be addressed to another business' name or the name of the collective and to the name and address of one of the admins of the collective.

See our Tax & Invoices policy for more info.

You’re responsible for understanding and fulfilling all of your tax obligations. If you’re not sure whether you need to charge or pay tax, we encourage you to consult a tax professional to better understand your tax obligations. OCE can’t give you tax advice.