Once an expense is created, a collective admin (someone on your team) must review and approve it as an accurate and expected expense.
3.
Next, a member of OC Europe's team reviews and approves the expense. This is done to ensure the expense meets requirements, e.g., having a valid receipt.
4.
Once the expense is verified, the expense recipient gets paid.
Expenses are processed and paid out by Open Collective Europe twice per week (on Mondays and Thursdays).
OC Europe can pay out funds via PayPal and electronic bank transfer via Wise (f.k.a. Transferwise). Make sure to review the Expenses and Getting Paid section of Open Collective’s documentation for a full overview of the process.
Our tax status and the terms of our fiscal sponsorship agreement state 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 page.
All receipts and invoices must be addressed to the name of the collective and to the name and address of one of the admin of the collective.
Receipts or invoices that include a reference to Open Collective Europe will not be accepted!
Invoices should be used to pay individuals for work completed on behalf of the collective:
Invoices are used to pay people for work or their services.
When someone uses an invoice, they are treated as an independent contractor. The independent contractor must upload an additional invoice including:
Full identification (name, address, tax/company number)
Nature of the service
Tax rate (if tax rate is 0%, please explain why on the invoice)
Reimbursements
Create a reimbursement to pay for purchases made on behalf of the collective:
Reimbursements are used to pay people (often volunteers) back when they have made purchases for the group.
Receipts are required so that we can ensure the requested amount matches the purchased amount in order to approve the reimbursement.
For a receipt to be approved by our team it must:
include an amount equal to the amount requested
include the identification of the vendor
include the nature of the expense
include tax information (VAT)
An order confirmation is not a valid receipt.
Virtual Cards
Open Collective Europe provides virtual cards to Collectives on request. Virtual cards act like credit cards and allow you to pay for expenses online using your Collective's balance.